“Make us instruments of your peace.”
“Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.”
You might know those words as part of the Prayer of St. Francis (although he’s probably not the one who wrote it). I heard a version of the prayer this week set to music. I loved it as much as I always do, but I also noticed how much of its language overlaps with the language of today’s Gospel passage. Peace. Doubt. Joy. Sadness. Even injury and pardon. They’re all in there.
But as I thought more about it, it occurred to me that there’s no way on God’s green earth that the disciples described in today’s reading could have prayed that prayer.
Picture the room. It’s the evening of Easter Day itself. Jesus’s tomb is empty and Mary Magdalene has told the other disciples a strange story, but they’re not sure what to make of it. They’re locked behind doors, afraid that they might be next to be arrested. They’re tired and frightened and uncertain.
Imagine asking that group to pray the prayer of St. Francis. “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is sadness, joy.” They couldn’t have done it. Not that evening, anyway. Fear, doubt, and despair were all they could see. They weren’t ready to be instruments of any great mission. They were just trying to survive the week.
And what happens next? Jesus doesn’t knock on the door armed with a pep talk and a call to have more faith and try harder. He simply appears among them, behind the locked door, in the midst of their fear and confusion.
“Peace be with you,” he says. He shows them his hands and his side. His wounds are still there to be seen. And at least for a moment, something shifts. The disciples rejoice.
“Peace be with you,” Jesus says again. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And he breathes on them. He sends those weak, frightened people out, not just to do something vaguely helpful, but to step into the same kind of work Jesus himself was sent to do.
Right there. In that locked room. Before they’re ready. Before they understand what any of it means.
I love the Prayer of St. Francis, but I think we too often get the logic of grace backwards. “Make us instruments of your peace.” We often understand those words in a way that puts us at the center of the action. As if we alone can carry peace into rooms where hatred lives. As if we alone bear the responsibility of driving out doubt and despair and sadness wherever we find them.
That’s a noble goal, but it’s not where the Gospel begins.
The Gospel begins in a locked room full of frightened people who have nothing left to offer.
And into that room, Jesus comes. Everything the prayer of St. Francis asks for, Jesus brings with him. Love, pardon, union, faith, hope, light, and joy walk into the room on that first Easter evening.
Of course, not everyone was there to see it.
Thomas gets a bad rap. “Doubting Thomas,” we call him. But if you read today’s Gospel closely, you’ll notice that really Thomas and the other disciples shared the same doubt, and needed the same reassurance. The others only believed after Jesus showed them his hands and his side. Thomas just had to wait a week. And when he did — when Jesus came back, through locked doors again, and stood in front of him and said “put your finger here, see my hands, reach out,” Thomas answered with perhaps the deepest confession of faith in the entire Gospel: “My Lord and my God.”
All of this means that this isn’t a story about people who mustered up the intestinal fortitude to become instruments of peace. It’s a story about people who first were found. In their fear. In their doubt. In their locked room. It’s a story about people who were sent out. Not because they were particularly strong or able or courageous, but because God first came to them.
I suspect we all know what it is to lock a door. Sometimes because the world has given us good reason to be afraid. Sometimes because we’re tired. Sometimes because we’re not sure we have anything left to offer.
Many of us also probably know what it’s like to wonder if we’ll ever be ready to truly live out the words of the prayer of St. Francis.
But the promise of the Gospel is that we don’t have to wait. Christ comes into the room first. Before we’re ready. Before our doubts have been resolved. Before our fear has lifted. He stands among us and speaks peace.
And then he sends us. Into places of hatred and injury and doubt and despair. Not because we’ve conquered those things in ourselves. But because he’s already gone ahead of us into every one of them.
We don’t make ourselves into instruments of God’s peace. We’re made so. By a God who keeps showing up in locked rooms, who keeps breathing his Spirit on frightened people, who keeps saying “peace be with you,” and who keeps sending us out—whether we feel ready or not.