How different the scene a week earlier - the disciples had arrived in Jerusalem to the most unbelieveable welcome on what we call Palm Sunday - a kind of New York ticker tape / World Cup winning open top bus parade. The crowds were giving Jesus the names and titles the disciples had hardly dared believe for - yes this man was really going to deliver them all from poverty and oppression. And yet, within 48 hours it had all started to go downhill. There was a hage gap between what the disciples had so earnestly hoped andbelieved for when it looked so possible to what they then actually experienced. Everything dissapated, their hope faith, future, etc., and here we find them behind locked doors. The city for them had become a place of fear, all had assured Jesus they would stand with Him but none had. It was all so far removed from what they had expected. It was in this place of fear, guilt and defeat that Jesus chose to meet them - not in a field of victory but in their place of failure.

            He said to them that He had done all He had done just for them, He was no giving up on them no matter what had happened. He came to bring them a touch, to speak peace because He knew their fears and to say it is OK. It is a peace to cover the things that keep us awake at night, the things that give us a tightness in our heart because the news has been so bad and you realise you can no longer really believe perhaps for anything.

            To reach these men and women Jesus walked through the barriers they had put up to protect themselves ( locked doors ) and He comes to us walking through our flimsy security ( in the context of eternity ) - be it in life policies, investments, put on smiles, those fake answers of " fine " and " isn't God good " and He speaks peace. He met the disciples in this place, opened up a new future for them and gave them His commission. So it is with the same hope and expectation that He comes to us - remember those fearful men went on in every case to willingly lay down their very lives for Him, reaching whole regions with the Good News. It is the same Holy Spirit He gives to us and trusts us too with that same commission His Father had given Him.

            There is no shame in honesty before Jesus, in confessing to Him what we actually feel and believe, the unanswered prayer,the pain of bereavement and loss, the betrayal of feelings and trust and whatever else our experience has or has not brought . We look to Him to come in even as we worship Him now to bridge that gap and change us to follow Him in unashamed obedience and love, reaching out to the lost and dying fellow citizens of Medway. I am sure many of us have had those Palm Sunday experiences at conferences ( we have even had such events in Medway over the years) where it was all worship and great fun and yet that joy did not last, perhaps our parents did not believe in Jesus, work was like being on another planet and around us we see sickness, death and misery and the success of evil men. Can we now be honest with Him and allow that peace to enter our very soul afresh and arise to pray, to love and serve our neighbourhoods? It begins with honesty - the rest, as we read on in the very next book ( Acts ) is history!