Extraordinary

You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.

 – Frederick Buechner

Almost every church building has a room like this. It might differ in style and furnishing. It might be called a parlor, a lounge, a meeting space. It might be named for some long-forgotten saint of the church. But most every faith community has this room. The chairs are jammed in at odd angles and might be mismatched. The sofa sags a bit in the middle. There is religious art on the wall of undetermined origin (and quality).

This room is the very definition of ordinary.

Except this room is in the Clonard Monastery in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Clonard straddles the infamous “peace wall” separating Protestant and Catholic communities; its windows look out on a divided city. In this room – and later, in the library of the same building – began secret talks between long entrenched antagonists that led to the Good Friday Agreement.

In John’s Gospel, Easter evening finds the disciples far from Easter alleluias:

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the religious establishment, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”        (John 20:19-23)

The disciples were locked in an ordinary room in the most human of circumstances: behind a closed door, fearful, hiding. A group of people who had run out of hope. And the Risen Christ entered anyway. The room didn’t become extraordinary because of its furnishings – or even because of the people gathered there. It became extraordinary because of who entered it.

The disciples came into that room depleted and defeated. The Risen Christ’s presence in that ordinary room sent them back into the world – bearing the very peace they had just received.

There are so many ways to interpret Easter in our world. One of the most important: in an Easter world, no room stays ordinary when we open its doors to God’s extraordinary presence and power.