Reset

Acts 2:14, 22–32
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3–9
John 20:19–31

Good morning, church. Grace and peace to you in the name of our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is truly a blessing to be with you today. I want to begin by saying how grateful I am to be able to stand in for Pastor Sam Smith during his hour of need. Moments like this remind us that ministry is never just about one person, but about the body of Christ showing up for one another with love, humility, and care. I am also sincerely thankful to my pastor, Pastor Sebrone Johnson of Greater Harvest, for allowing me the opportunity to come and support my friend today. I do not take that lightly, and I am grateful for his trust, leadership, and covering. And I also want to thank my fiancé, Andre, for his support today. Anyone who serves in ministry knows that support matters, and I am deeply grateful for the encouragement and steadiness he gives me. Thank you for welcoming me into this space. It is an honor to worship with you and to share the Word today. I will be referencing all four lectionary texts today: Acts 2:14, 22–32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3–9; and John 20:19–31 as we consider this word from the Lord: Think Reset.

Let us pray.

Risen Christ,

stand among us.

Speak peace to our fears,

clarity to our minds,

and hope to our hearts.

And by the power of your Holy Spirit,

reset in us what has grown weary, guarded, or cold.

Amen.

There are moments in life when the issue is no longer effort. The issue is that something needs to be reset. You know the moment. Your computer freezes. Your phone starts acting strangely. The screen stares back at you with all the enthusiasm of a teenager being asked to do the dishes. You tap it. You close apps. You reopen apps. You press buttons with increasing authority, because apparently many of us believe firmness is a technology strategy. And eventually, with the wisdom born of frustration, you say the ancient and sacred words: “Let me just reset this.” Now a reset is not the same as giving up. A reset is not failure. A reset is not the end. A reset is what happens when something must be interrupted so it can be restored. A reset is what happens when a system can no longer keep going as it has been. A reset is what happens when life as we knew it stops making sense.

And that is where these texts meet us today. Because if we are honest, all of these disciples are living in the aftermath of collapse. Their expectations had crashed. Their certainty had shut down. Their hope had become unresponsive. They had built their understanding of Jesus around triumph, restoration, visible power—and then came the cross. Then came the grave. Then came fear. Then came locked doors. But then came resurrection. And resurrection is God’s holy reset. In John 20, the disciples are behind locked doors “for fear.” Not strategy. Not discernment retreat. Not a prayerful planning session. Fear. Their world had been shattered. The one they loved had died publicly, violently, humiliatingly. Their dreams had not merely been delayed. Their dreams had been buried. And yet Jesus does not enter that room to scold them for being afraid. He does not say, “You should be over this by now.” He does not say, “If you had more faith, those doors would already be open.” He steps into the room they locked, stands in the middle of their anxiety, and says, “Peace be with you.” I love that about Jesus. He does not always wait for us to get ourselves together before he shows up. He steps right into the mess. Right into the confusion. Right into the cluttered living room of our souls.

And he says, “Peace be with you.” That is a reset. Because peace, in this text, is not mere calm. It is not spa music. It is not pretending everything is fine. It is the presence of the risen Christ reordering reality. It is Jesus saying, “I know death had the loudest speech on Friday, but Sunday has the final word.” Some of us know what it means to live behind locked doors.

Maybe not wooden doors with hinges and latches, but emotional doors. Spiritual doors. Doors reinforced by disappointment. Doors deadbolted by betrayal. Doors secured by grief.

Doors locked because the last time we opened our hearts, life walked in and rearranged the furniture. And when you have lived long enough, you learn how to function while locked up.

You can smile while locked up. Work while locked up. Serve while locked up. Sing while locked up. Even preach while locked up. But the text reminds us that the risen Jesus is still able to enter spaces that fear has sealed. That is good news for somebody this morning. 

Because resurrection means your fear is not final. Your wound is not final. Your doubt is not final. Your Friday is not final. 

And yet, if we keep reading, the text gives us Thomas. Lord, bless Thomas. Thomas has gotten such a bad reputation over the years. “Doubting Thomas,” we call him, as if none of us have ever needed a little evidence before rearranging our lives around a miracle. Thomas is the disciple for anybody who has ever said, “I hear what you’re saying, but I need a little more than vibes.” And I appreciate Thomas because he reminds us that doubt is not the opposite of faith. Sometimes doubt is simply wounded faith asking for a place to breathe.

Thomas says, unless I see, unless I touch, I will not believe. And what does Jesus do? He comes back for Thomas. That will preach all by itself. Jesus comes back for the one who missed the first moment. Jesus comes back for the one still struggling. Jesus comes back for the one who cannot force certainty. He does not shame Thomas. He invites him closer. There is something deeply moving about a Savior who is not threatened by our questions. Christ is not insecure. He is risen.

He can handle inquiry. He can handle wrestling. He can handle the places where intellect and ache collide. That matters, because sometimes the church has treated serious questions like spiritual disloyalty. But the gospel does not ask us to become intellectually lazy. It invites us into trust robust enough to face mystery.

Faith is not pretending there are no scars. Faith is seeing the scars and still confessing, “My Lord and my God.” Frederick Buechner said, “The worst isn’t the last thing.” That is not cute church language. That is resurrection theology. The wounds are real. The cross was real. The grief was real. But none of them get the final word. N. T. Wright writes that Easter is the beginning of God’s new creation. That means resurrection is not just a happy ending after tragedy. It is God starting a new world right in the middle of this one. That is exactly what John 20 shows us. Jesus is not merely comforting frightened disciples. He is inaugurating new creation in the middle of their fear. And then he breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” That breath matters. It echoes Genesis, where God breathed life into humanity. Here, the risen Christ is doing new creation work. Resurrection is not just resuscitation. It is re-creation. Jesus is not merely getting the disciples back to where they were before Good Friday. He is making them new. That is what God does in a reset. God does not always restore us to the old version of ourselves. Sometimes God births a wiser, deeper, freer, holier version through what we have survived. Some of us keep asking God to return us to what was. But what if God is saying, “No, beloved. I am taking you into what shall be”? 

Now move with me to Acts 2. Peter stands up and preaches. Do not miss how remarkable that is.

This is the same Peter who denied Jesus. Not once or twice but three times. The same Peter who cracked under pressure. The same Peter who knew what it was to fail publicly. If Peter had a modern church profile, somebody would have said, “Maybe let him sit down for a season.” And yet here he is, standing with clarity and boldness, declaring the risen Christ. Do not miss the reset in Peter. Resurrection did not merely prove that Jesus was alive. It transformed broken disciples into bold witnesses. Peter says that Jesus was crucified, yes, but death could not hold him.

Why? Because God was at work even in what looked like defeat. Peter reaches back to Psalm 16, where David declares: 

“You will not abandon my soul to Hades.” 

“You show me the path of life.” 

And elsewhere in that psalm: 

“I keep the Lord always before me.” 

“My heart is glad, and my soul rejoices.”

“Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” 

This is not denial. This is theological defiance. Psalm 16 does not say life is painless. It says God is present. It does not say trouble never comes. It says trouble does not get custody of your future. It does not say the grave is unreal. It says the grave is not ultimate. And that is where the reset begins: when we stop letting what has happened to us define what is possible for us. Peter says God raised Jesus up because it was impossible for him to be held by death. Impossible. Peter does not say death was intimidating.

He says death was outmatched. Karl Barth described the resurrection as God’s proclamation of victory. And that is exactly what Peter is doing. He is not giving a motivational talk. He is announcing that heaven has already settled the matter. Jesus Christ is risen. And death does not get the final word. 

Now let us listen to 1 Peter 1, because Peter deepens this beautifully. He says we have been given “a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” A living hope. Not a polite hope. Not a fragile hope. Not decorative hope. Not Sunday-only hope that disappears by Monday morning when the emails start rolling in and the coffee has not yet done the work of sanctification. A living hope. Hope with breath in it. Hope with movement in it. Hope that survives bad news, long nights, and unwelcome diagnoses. A living hope is not positive thinking dressed in church clothes. It is resurrection confidence. Peter goes even further and says that though we may suffer various trials, these are refining us, proving the genuineness of faith. 

Now nobody likes that verse at first glance. Let us tell the truth. We all enjoy the part about joy unspeakable. We are less excited about the part where faith is tested by fire. Nobody frames that verse and hangs it in the kitchen next to the fruit bowl.

But it is still true. Because there are some things God does not merely remove; God refines. There are some places where the reset comes not by escape, but by transformation. And this is where mature faith differs from shallow optimism. Shallow optimism says, “If I love God, nothing hard should happen.” Mature faith says, “Even when hard things happen, God is still at work, and because Christ is risen, I am not abandoned.” That is the theological foundation of Christian hope. Not avoidance of suffering. Victory through it. Not denial of pain. Redemption in it. Not exemption from death. Resurrection beyond it. I have seen the need for that kind of reset in both my Human Resources work and my collegiate teaching. In organizational life, there are seasons when everything looks productive on the surface, but underneath the culture is strained.

Meetings still happen. Emails still go out. Everybody is smiling in the Zoom square. But trust is thin, communication is brittle, and morale is quietly unraveling.

And in those moments, surface changes will not fix what is deeper. You do not need cosmetic adjustment. You need truth, clarity, accountability, and renewal. The same is true in teaching. Students often walk into a classroom carrying more than books. They carry hesitation, old assumptions, fear of failure, and uncertainty about whether they belong. And one of the most important things a teacher can do is create room for honest engagement, the kind of room where questions are not treated as weakness, but as part of the path toward understanding. That is why Thomas matters to me. He reminds us that faith is not the absence of questions. Sometimes faith is the courage to bring your questions all the way to Jesus.

And Peter matters too. He reminds us that failure need not be final. And the disciples behind locked doors matter. They remind us that Jesus comes into spaces fear has sealed shut. Don’t you just appreciate how inclusive Jesus is? I remember a season in my own life when everything felt layered at once. Not one problem. A collection. A little fatigue over here. A little disappointment over there. A little unanswered prayer on top. A little “Lord, are we still on speaking terms?” beneath the surface. I was doing what needed to be done, showing up where I needed to show

up, checking the boxes, handling responsibilities, and still feeling internally like the spinning wheel on a frozen laptop. I was spiraling. I was functioning, but not flourishing. And one morning, in all my sanctified frustration, I said, “Lord, I do not need a motivational quote. I need you, I need a reset.”

Not a vacation. Although nice. Not a distraction. A reset. A resetting of my mind. A resetting of my heart. A resetting of what I was trusting. A resetting of the belief that certain things had to fall into place before I could be whole. And what the Lord began to show me was this: I had let my peace become too dependent on outcomes. I had tied my joy to resolution, my hope to visible progress, my steadiness to whether people behaved, responded, apologized, agreed, or changed. And when those things did not move, neither did I. But resurrection teaches us that God’s power is not dependent on ideal conditions. Jesus rose in a world still ruled by Rome. He rose before every enemy was silenced. He rose while some people still doubted. He rose while grief was still fresh. That means your reset does not require perfect circumstances. It requires the presence of the risen Christ. So here is the question the text puts before us: Where do you need a reset? Where has fear locked the door? Where has disappointment frozen your spirit? Where has grief narrowed your vision? Where have you kept going outwardly while inwardly something has stalled? 

Hear the witness of scripture.

From John 20:

“Peace be with you.” 

From Psalm 16:

“You show me the path of life.” 

From Acts 2:

“It was impossible for him to be held by death.” 

From 1 Peter 1:

“He has given us a new birth into a living hope.” 

That is the Christian claim. Not that life is painless. Not that disciples never doubt. Not that good people never grieve. But that in Jesus Christ, death has been defeated, hope has been made living,

and new creation has already begun. So the good news this morning is not that you must fix yourself before Christ comes near. The good news is that Christ comes near precisely where we are afraid, guarded, uncertain, and tired. He still enters locked rooms. He still speaks peace. He still shows scars. He still breathes Spirit. He still turns fear into witness, doubt into confession, and broken disciples into Easter people. 

And that means whatever has stalled in you is not beyond the reach of God. Reset is possible. Not because we are strong enough. Not because we are certain enough. Not because we have everything together. But because Christ is risen. And because Christ is risen, the worst thing is never the last thing. The world will always hand us reasons to be afraid. There will always be locked rooms, fresh griefs, unanswered questions, and powers that act as though death has the final say. But the church does not gather to rehearse despair. The church gathers to announce resurrection. We are here to say that fear is not Lord. The Empire is not Lord. Death is not Lord. Despair is not Lord. Injustice is not Lord. Oppression is not Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord. And because he lives, we will not surrender to cynicism. We will not bow to hopelessness. We will not make peace with systems that diminish human dignity or deny the image of God in any of God’s children. For the risen Christ still stands among his people, still says, “Peace be with you,” and still sends us into the world as witnesses to a hope that refuses to die, a mercy that refuses to quit, and a justice that refuses to be silenced. And maybe that is the reset some of us need today:

to remember who is Lord, to release what fear has been holding, and to rise from this place with hearts made steady by the peace of the living Christ. 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.