Preached by the Rev. Dn. Tim Jones on April 12, 2026
I want to tell you about an absolutely fascinating place in Jerusalem’s Old City. It’s called St. Mark’s Syriac Orthodox Monastery. The small Christian community there still holds a regular liturgy in Aramaic, the language that Jesus and his disciples spoke. It is one of the oldest living links we have to the worship of the early Church in Jerusalem. And when the Lord’s Prayer is offered in that liturgy, you’re hearing it spoken like it was when Jesus first taught his followers how to pray. That alone makes it worth a visit.
But that’s not the only thing that makes St. Mark’s so special. The community there has long held in memory a living tradition about what lies beneath their monastery. If you visit, you can go down, down, down through multiple levels until you eventually reach a space where you are standing inside the interior of a first century house in Jerusalem, which is amazing just on its own. But it’s not just any first century house, because it’s believed to be one of the houses that was used as a gathering space for the very earliest Christian community. The memory that was kept alive about this specific space was that it was the house of Mary of Jerusalem, a wealthy widow, who was most likely the sister of St. Barnabas and the mother of St. Mark.
Archeology has confirmed that it is a house that existed before the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70. And in the 1940s excavations there unearthed an inscription that was written almost 1500 years ago. You can see it if you visit. Part of that inscription reads, “This is the house of Mary, mother of John Mark.” So, that’s a pretty good clue that the community memory about the identity of this place stretches back a really long time.
What’s amazing is that we hear about that house in the New Testament. After the Apostle Peter miraculously escaped from his imprisonment by Herod Agrippa, Acts 12:12 says, “He went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many had gathered and were praying.”
But that’s not the only place in the Bible where this house is possibly mentioned. Another long held community memory is that the house belonging to Mary of Jeruslaem is where Jesus’ disciples gathered in the chaos that followed the crucifixion and resurrection.
And if so, that would mean that this space may have been where those disciples had these mysterious, intimate, Easter experiences of Jesus that we hear about in our Gospel reading today.
Maybe it’s because 2000 years later it’s now so deep beneath the Old City that it feels like you’re going down in a bomb shelter. But what I can say about it is that it feels enclosed and sequestered away from everything going on in the world, which matches the mood and atmosphere our passage invites us into today.
After the awful and unexpected experience of watching their leader be arrested, tortured and executed, the followers of Jesus instinctively hunkered down, huddled together, like we might do inside a basement or even a tornado shelter when a severe storm rolls through.
I don’t know how it is for you, but it’s been a year and a half since the hurricane came through and when the wind really starts whipping outside I still find myself moving toward the interior of our house. It’s just my instinct now. I’m beginning to wonder if I will ever stop paying attention to the wind outside.
For these disciples, Good Friday was a storm that blew their world apart. And in the uncertainty about what dangers might still be lurking outside, they sought safety in numbers with each other, safety behind those well-built walls, safety to try to process what they had been through, safety to try to sort through all kinds of now confusing, conflicting reports about an empty tomb.
Do you remember how frustrating it was to try to find out what was actually going on after the hurricane wiped out our power grid and our cell phones?
Remember how the complete breakdown in communication made everything even worse? Imagine what it must have been like for these disciples. Their anxiety was already through the roof, and now there’s more trauma from information like maybe the burial space might have been violated and desecrated. Add to that the reports of Jesus being encountered by some of his followers. Reports that probably sounded like hallucinations.
Even behind those walls and locked doors, there still was no escape from the fact that everything felt destabilized and they had no idea what in the world was going on out there, or what was going to happen next.
What I realized standing there that day inside that first century house is how many times I have been right there in that room over the course of my life, and how many times we all have stood where those disciples were standing that evening in fear and confusion.
I don’t know if it actually is the house where Jesus met his disciples, but I do know from daily life about the location where he met them. Jesus met his disciples where paralyzing fear and uncertainty had collected them. He met them with all the embodied love and patience he had shown to them so many times throughout his ministry. But then he did something that the grace of God always does when it meets us in those places too. He didn’t let them stay there. He energized them so they could leave the nest. He empowered them with a renewed purpose.
Or to use the specific words of Jesus: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Just as the Father sent Jesus in the world to reveal the love of God in word and deed. Jesus says, that’s where and how and why I’m now sending you. To be the continuation of what he was sent into the world to do, which is really what the Book of the Acts of the Apostles is a record of, and what every successive generation of the Church is.
We don’t have a new mission or new ministry. We’re part of an expanding mission to keep doing what Jesus had been doing, of continuing the ministry that had already existed around him up to that point.
And here’s the important thing, the vital thing the Church needs to remember: it’s a mission that always exists outside of locked doors.
Please understand what I’m trying to say here. This is not in any way meant to communicate that there is anything wrong with wanting to feel protected, or to be safe.
Fear in the face of something overwhelming is not some kind of spiritual weakness—it’s a normal protective response.
When something traumatic happens, our nervous systems, our bodies, our brains shift into survival mode. That’s not a moral failing. That’s just how God has wired us to survive.
That’s how we get those classic responses that we’re all probably familiar with: fight, flight, or freeze. The first two of those are very dramatic and visible responses. We can see both the fight and flight reactions on display in the Garden of Gethsemane. Peter pulls out his sword and takes off someone’s ear. (Fight) The other disciples run off into the darkness of the surrounding landscape. (Flee to safety) But it’s the “freeze” response that is relevant to this passage. That one’s quieter, less noticeable, but it has staying power. It can last for a much longer time.
What it looks like is withdrawing / staying in place / avoiding decisions / delaying movement. The “freeze” response narrows our world and shrinks the radius of how we live. It’s the voice that says, “Stay put.” “Stick with what you know.” “Don’t risk anything else.” “Shelter in place and control whatever you can in this unpredictable situation.”
Or in the words of the Gospel, “The doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear.”
But here’s the paradox about that response: The very place that protects us can also begin to be the thing that confines us.
What starts as: “I need some space to feel safe” can slowly become: “I ain’t going out there no more.” And it doesn’t take long for a fortress to turn into a prison.
With that in mind, pay attention to how the Risen Christ liberates them from their own entombment behind those walls. He doesn’t say the phrase that is so often used throughout the Gospel accounts: “Be not afraid.” That’s what you say when something that has momentarily startled or frightened someone. But in the face of paralyzing, long term fear, Jesus says something else, and he says it over and over, “Peace be with you.”
It’s more than a message of personal greeting. It’s a message of presence and trust.
Friends, no one ever gets set free from the long term grip of fear simply by being told, “Stop being afraid.” We move forward only when we feel accompanied into safety.
Jesus doesn’t show up and shame their fears. He doesn’t show up and force them to leave. He shows up and opens the door by saying I have something I need you to do and I will go with you. “He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Jesus says this is how my presence will travel with you.
This is at the heart of what Resurrection Hope is all about: a path of new life. Easter is the presence of God in the Risen Christ meeting us unexpectedly in our fear and confusion and offering a way forward—offering a way to go on living by revealing to us that God’s presence will accompany us beyond our walls, beyond our locked doors.
And if that’s who Jesus is to his followers after Easter— the one who comes to us in our fear, who speaks peace into our chaos, and who gently gets us moving again—
And if he says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”…then maybe that’s also who we’re called to be for one another.
To be people, who instead of shaming others when they’re afraid, show up with presence.
To be people, who instead of trying to force others forward, try to help create enough safety so that some kind of movement becomes possible again.
To be people who carry the peace of Christ by standing with others when they are paralyzed because their world has come undone.
Peace isn’t where this story ends—it’s what makes the next steps possible.
This is what I learned standing inside an ancient 1st century house in Jerusalem
Of course, we’re going to be afraid. And, of course, there are going to be times when we’re confused, and of course there are going to be situations that cause us to shut down and make us just want to stay put.
But Easter means that God’s peace comes to us there, raises us up, and sends us out into the sunlight again so that we can become that same living presence of peace to someone else in this world.