This article was posted on the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS) website by Sara Afshari. OCMS seeks to equip the church in mission through research and scholarship. Sara is from Iran, and holds a PhD in Media, Religion and Culture from the University of Edinburgh, an MTh in World Christianity from Edinburgh, and an MA in Media Communication from the University of Wales. You can read the original post here.
A Reflection on John 20:19–23 in Light of
Contemporary Iran
On Saturday, just before the internet and communication networks were shut down in Iran, my sister called from Yazd, a city in the centre of the country. Her voice was calm. She said not to worry — they had supplies, they would stay home, and they would lock their doors. On the news, political leaders — including Trump and several diaspora figures — were urging people to remain indoors. Yet for many Iranians, “home” has never fully meant safety. By Sunday evening, 1 March, reports indicated that the area where my sister lives had been bombed. Since the communications blackout, I have not heard from her.
That brief phone call has stayed with me. It brought back many memories of locked doors in Iran. It also brought me back to a passage I have read many times before — John 20:19–23. For comfort, prayer, and perhaps clarity, I turned to it again in light of the recent situation.
“On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear… Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.“
John tells us the disciples were gathered behind locked doors because they were afraid. Their fear was not weakness; it was a reasonable response to violence and political uncertainty. The death of Christ had shown them what power could do. Locked doors were an instinct for survival.
The phrase “behind locked doors” remained with me throughout the day and into a sleepless night, especially after hearing the news of Khamenei’s death. It resonates deeply — not only because of the present moment in Iran, but because it describes a long history of struggling to live carefully, cautiously, yet with resistance in Iran. In societies shaped by prolonged authoritarian rule, closing the door is not simply retreat; it is learned wisdom. Private space becomes a fragile shield against surveillance, detention, and violence. And yet, even locked doors do not — and did not — always protect us.
My childhood unfolded in the shadow of prison. Visiting my siblings in prison was part of ordinary life. My brothers were detained for political reasons; imprisonment was the cost of dissent. I remember one visit when my brother was weeping. He had tried to intervene to save a prostitute woman sentenced to execution — requesting to marry her in order to spare her life — but his request arrived too late. “I couldn’t save her,” he told my mother. The system was swift and unforgiving.
Yet even within prison, there were signs of dignity. I remember the handbags and handicrafts prisoners made, which we bought to support them. As a child, I loved those heavy handbags — their stitching, their colours, their weight. Only later did I understand that they were more than objects; they were quiet acts of resistance. Beauty created under constraint.
Our home was never entirely private. At least once a month, we burned books in our backyard tanur — the bread-baking oven — after warnings that the Revolutionary Guard were coming to search the house. A neighbour, both a friend and an informant, would give us a narrow window of time. We burned books to protect ourselves, then slowly bought them again. Buying and burning — concealment and reclamation. Even home was negotiated space, never fully secure.
My journey adds another layer. As a young student leader, I identified as a communist and an atheist. I believed structural injustice required structural change. When I once told my mother that I might be arrested, she said, “If it is for your ideology, I will be proud of you. But if it is for immorality, I won’t forgive you.” That distinction — between conviction and integrity — shaped me deeply. When I later became a Christian, my concern for justice did not disappear; it was reoriented. Faith did not silence political awareness; it deepened its grounding.
As older teenagers, my friend, my brother, and I searched for the unmarked graves of those executed in the early 1980s. We found two beneath a large tree. We sat there in silence or read a poem to them.
These memories shape how I respond to the present geopolitical moment. As a family, we did not support the Iranian regime. My story is marked by resistance to its coercive practices. Yet opposing domestic authoritarianism does not automatically mean embracing foreign intervention. Sovereignty, even when misused by regimes, remains a serious moral concern. The history of the region reminds us that external military action often fractures societies rather than restores them.
When Jesus appears in John 20, Rome has not fallen. The empire remains intact. The disciples remain vulnerable. And the risen Christ shows them the scars in His hands and His side. The scars remain visible. Resurrection does not erase violence; it carries it forward in transformed form.
That detail speaks into our lived experience. I have seen scars caused by interrogation and torture, even more vividly after I became a Christian. I have seen cigarette burns on a friend’s side, leaving small holes in his flesh because of his faith. I have seen another friend’s shoulders damaged simply because he believed in Christ. I have seen my brother’s back torn by lashes. I have also known detention and questioning myself. These are not distant stories; they are part of our shared memory.
John’s narrative resists two temptations. It does not deny fear — the doors remain locked. Nor does it promote retaliation. Instead, Christ speaks peace into a room shaped by fear. This peace is not sentimental calm. It is an invitation to a different way of being present. “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” The disciples are not commissioned to take power, but to embody another kind of power.
Today, responsibility cannot be reduced to a simple alignment — regime or foreign power. It calls for discernment. As part of the Iranian diaspora, I am conscious that those inside the country have endured sustained repression in ways many of us outside have not. Our voices must therefore be careful. Ethical participation means amplifying rather than appropriating.
Perhaps Iran feels like a locked room right now — the rage of war, full of fear, rumour, and unresolved history. Perhaps my own heart feels like that room. The news of war, uncertainty about the regime, the possibility of collapse — all of it presses in. Part of me wonders: could this mean change? Could I return? Another part asks: what will be the cost? Will sovereignty be lost? Will Iran become another fractured country in the Middle East?
When Jesus says, “Peace be with you,” it is not the peace of empire. It is not the peace of silence. It is the peace of wounded hands that did not retaliate.
I am Iranian. I am Christian. I carry scars.
John 20 also speaks of breath. Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Breath recalls creation — a new beginning. It suggests that renewal does not begin with domination but with interior transformation and shared vocation. Applied to Iran, it suggests that lasting change emerges from dignity, accountability, and resistance. It resists the reduction of our future to pure power calculations.
Christ enters the locked room without dismantling the door. He does not rebuke the disciples for their caution. He neither glorifies fear nor demands reckless exposure. He stands among them, shows His scars, and speaks peace.
For me, that reframes this moment. I do not know what has happened to my sister and her family in Yazd. I do not know how Iran’s political future will unfold. Power will shift. Narratives will compete. Nearly five decades of accumulated scars will not disappear overnight.
What remains is a posture shaped by memory and faith – resistance and grace: resistance without cruelty, critique without surrender to empire, hope without romanticising collapse. The inheritance of my childhood — prison corridors, burned books, hidden fugitives, unmarked graves — does not demand vengeance. It calls for moral seriousness and responsibility.
John 20:19–23 does not offer escape from uncertainty. It offers orientation. Peace is spoken into fear, not after fear is gone. Scars are acknowledged, not hidden. Commission follows encounter. The locked room becomes not only a place of confinement, but a place from which vocation begins.
Whether this moment marks an end to the regime — as many quietly hope — or simply another chapter remains unknown. What remains constant is the need to hold sovereignty and hope together, informed by memory and disciplined by a peace that does not come from dominance.
Behind locked doors, the Gospel reminds us, presence is still possible.
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