In the Same Way, I Send You - Reflections on John 20:19-23, Pentecost, Year A
by John C. Holbert on Monday, March 23, 2026
This tiny scene in John’s Gospel serves as a bridge between the scene at the tomb (John 20:17-18) and the final scene in the house (John 20:24-29). 20:19 takes place “on the evening of that day.” Mary Magdelene left the tomb to announce Jesus’s message to the disciples (vs.18a), to the place "where the disciples were” (vs.19a). We should always remember that John uses Mary’s faith experience as a certain “missionary” one (vss.17-18), to suggest that her words to the disciples might be communicated beyond the story of these particular characters and this particular time. In other words, John is fashioning his tale to move beyond its own context to include all those future readers of his story. The small portion we address today makes that certain.
“On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace to you” (John 20:19). This scene is often portrayed as a sort of spooky event where the resurrected Jesus, ghost-like, slips into the locked room and wows the disciples with his new wraith-like being. However, rather than see the experience as some sort of demonstration of Jesus’ miraculous powers, John uses it for proclamation; like the empty cloths in the tomb, so Jesus shows us here his victory over the constraints of human expectation. After all, for John, Jesus is both human and divine, as he has announced to us from the very beginning of his Gospel.
This opening sentence contains a wealth of other important ideas. While Mary has been to the tomb, and has seen the resurrected Jesus in the garden, though at first mistaking him for the gardener, the disciples have locked themselves away “for fear of the Jews.” John never fails to present the “Jews” as the unflagging antagonists of Jesus, a fact that has caused no end of bitter resentment toward Judaism by angry Christians, who very early found Judaism to be the instigators of the killing of, if not the actual killers of, Jesus. The resulting horrors down through the centuries have been nothing less than monstrous. Though many commentators have tried to soften this grievous attack against Jews, either by different translations (“religious authorities?”), or by some theological legerdemain, no evident positive results have been seen. After all, nearly all of Jesus’s first followers were Jews, as he himself was, so the problem presented is nothing less than a tragic irony.
Still, this fear of the Jews is not John’s primary concern. Jesus is suddenly with them, in the locked room, and says, very simply, “Peace to you.” There is no verb in the sentence, merely two words that have become perhaps the most famous greeting in Christianity. And we note one other fact in this scene: no names are assigned to these disciples. These are, for John, then disciples that represent all disciples. Jesus says to all of those who subsequently want to be his disciples, “Peace.”
“When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side” (John 20:20). Unlike in Luke 24:38-39, for John this demonstration is not an apologetic one, proving to the doubting disciples that he is in reality the one they thought dead. This is for John pure revelation; I am, he says by showing them who he is still. “Then the disciples were glad when the saw the Lord.” It does not say that their fear has gone; Jesus does not say, as he often does, “do not be afraid.” That fear is now matched with “gladness,” a joy that may be able to drive fear away, but does not do so, and may never do so completely.
John 20:21 is the key to the section. “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace to you,” reminding them that only he gives the sort of peace that can offer both calm and hope, “not as the world gives,” as earlier claimed in the Gospel. “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” John here makes it as plain as he can that the disciples of Jesus are to be in the world what Jesus has been to the world. But, of course, Jesus is all too aware of the frailty of human beings, so he goes on in John to make them holy in order that they may sustain the work that Jesus has just given to them. Such holiness, such sustained work for Jesus, may only be possible through the presence of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit from God (see John 14:16-17, 26; 15:26-27; 16:7-11, 12-15).
And here we see the connections with Pentecost, that festival that enshrines the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church. Without this Spirit, we would-be disciples will never be able to continue the great work that Jesus has given us, namely to be in this world what he was in this world. The gift of Pentecost, whether found in Numbers 11, Acts 2, or here in John 20 is exactly that: the gift of the empowering divine Spirit, commanding us to go into the world and proclaim the gospel of Jesus in order that the rule of God might at last come upon the earth.