THE IMPOSSIBILITIES OF OUR LIVES
It’s the evening of Easter. The disciples are gathered in a room. The doors are locked. It’s impossible for someone to get in. They’ve made sure of that. Then the impossible happened. Jesus showed up! He’s not dead! He’s alive! He “came and stood among them” (John 20:19, 26). He breathed peace upon them. That didn’t happen just once, it happened twice; Jesus stepping into that room of frightened disciples hiding behind their locked doors of impossibility. But that that kind of thing is happening all the time. It is as much a part of our lives as it was part of the disciples’? Every impossibility of our lives that is realized is an experience of resurrection. Each one is a time when Jesus stepped through the locked door of our lives. Isn’t that what happened in today’s Gospel (John 20:19-31)?
The possibility of the impossible isn’t just the story of Easter, it’s the story of Jesus. He is always stepping through our locked doors of impossibility. That’s the good news of His gospel. Think about all the stories of impossibilities that became real. God became human in Jesus. “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). That’s impossible. Who would believe that God would become one of us?
A virgin gives birth to a child. “How can this be” (Luke 1:34)? That’s not only Mary’s question. It’s ours too. That kind of thing is impossible. Water is turned into wine (John 2:1-11). Don’t we wish?! Five thousand are fed with two fish and five loaves of bread (John 6:1:13). Until it happened Philip would never have thought it possible.
Martha knows the impossibility of her brother, Lazarus, coming out of the tomb. And then the dead man walks out, the door of death having been unlocked and opened.
And then there’s Jesus’ own resurrection. The women’s good news of the empty tomb seemed to the men “an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (Luke 24:11). Dead men can’t live, it’s impossible.
None of that was possible until it happened. I can’t tell you how any of it happened, just like I don’t know how it has happened in my life. I don’t know how it has happened in your life. But that doesn’t mean it cannot or did not happen.
Unexplainable and impossible are not the same thing. “The impossible becomes possible without becoming understandable.” And when it does doors are flung open and a whole new field of possibilities lies before us. That’s what has brought me to this moment nearly twenty-five years ago. And here I stand before you. I could have never imagined that back then.
So what are the doors of impossibility for you today? What possibilities have you locked out of your life? We’ll never know unless we consider the impossible possible. So what if we began with the impossible? Let’s go to the place of impossibility in our life. That is where Jesus is showing up. That is where doors are being opened. And that’s where I want to be, don’t you?
What if the impossible isn’t really impossible? What if what we see as impossible is really just us catching up to Jesus?
