Come To Believe

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Easter 2C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

John 20:19-31

“¹⁹When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²²When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” ²⁴But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

²⁶A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” ²⁸Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” ²⁹Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” ³⁰Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

Periodically, it is helpful to step back from the details of the Gospel narratives and look at the broader picture of what the writers were trying to accomplish.  That’s what the four people on the front of our bulletin this morning symbolize:  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, … they COULD be otherwise known as ‘John and the Gospelaires’ – singing their latest hit “He Arose” (see?  They’re even doing the hand motions … I thought I’d have a little fun with the cover this morning … hope that’s not too irreverent! (Although that second one from the right DOES kind of look like a woman, though, doesn’t she? … who knows … it WAS common practice to write under the name of the person or master or teacher you followed in the first century … and even into the second and third centuries).

But it is important to keep a broader perspective as we DO study the texts and explore the ramifications of what they meant to the early church and what they mean to us today.     

Today’s story is all too familiar.  It’s where the term ‘Doubting Thomas’ originated.  It’s where we direct those who place conditions on their belief for factual proof in order TO believe for the word that Jesus has for them – namely: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

That word – that blessing of those who believe in spite of not having seen, which, as the years went by, quickly became the majority of the followers of The Way – of Jesus Christ – is a word that speaks now to every single person who hears the Gospel, or sees it lived out in some way.  It covers the totality of those who today consider themselves to be followers of Christ. 

I was listening to a lecture this week, a professor at Duke Divinity School, who had actually taken his sessions during Holy Week and was running through the varying accounts of the passion of Christ.  With two of the Gospels, Mark and John, he summarized their messages in this way:  They are both passion narratives with a lengthy introduction.  In other words, the sum total of the Gospels of Mark and of John – the focus and ultimate purpose, is to relate the story of Christ’s last week of life – in the Gospel of John it is actually more like half the Gospel is the prelude to the last twenty-four HOURS of Jesus’ life, the second half – in terms of volume of text – occupies those last 24 hours of Jesus’ life. 

To be intellectually and spiritually honest, we have to ask ourselves the question that follows that statement:  Why did the Gospel writers spend so much time on the passion narrative? 

Here’s the thing:  the disciples lived with Jesus for a MINIMUM of three years – that’s 156 weeks, give or take … and when they or their followers sat down to finally record that story of what it all meant, they spent an inordinate amount of time on 1/156^th of the total time they spent together.  What does that tell us about how the disciples ended up viewing the end of Jesus’ life? 

It would seem to be somewhat important, wouldn’t you agree? 

The question has to be faced because it has bearing on how we view the rest of Jesus’ ministry – the weeks, months, and years prior to his last week of life.      

The narratives vary.  That is, I believe, a function of the individuals who wrote them and the communities to whom they were writing.  Matthew seems to have been writing to a community that had a strong sense of it’s Jewish identity, but which had had a falling out with the larger Jewish community from which it came – those who did NOT understand or believe that Jesus was the Messiah.  Luke was writing to a gentile community and focused on Jesus’ interactions with the gentiles throughout the course of his public ministry.  Mark seems to have been writing to a community – a church – a group of believers – who were struggling with the issue of why the Messiah – the promised one of God – had to suffer in order to fulfill scripture.  And John was writing long after all the others were gone, close to the end of his life, if not AT the end – there’s some indication that the final verses of John’s Gospel were written by a disciple of his following his death – in response to doubts that arose when Jesus had not returned prior to John’s death.  The focus of John’s Gospel is much more theological than historical – not that the synoptics – the other three Gospels – are NOT theological in their content – they ARE – but the degree to which John is blatantly making statements about who Jesus was, who he said he was, and who he was perceived to be by the disciples and his other followers to be is exponentially greater than in the other three narratives.  It comes clear in this key phrase that Thomas utters in his encounter with the risen Christ: 

“My Lord and my God!”    

And the writer of John all but spells out the reason the story was written down at all just two verses later: 

³¹But these [signs Jesus did] are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

That is the bottom line for John.  It is the whole reason for the Gospel to have been put down on paper – or papyrus, as the case may be, maybe vellum.  The point is, the writer has spent his life telling this story, explaining it, coming to terms in his own mind with who Jesus was, and realizing that he was getting close to his final days, he, like the other Gospel writers before him, decided to put down in writing what he’d been teaching and living for all these decades:  The story of Jesus’ time on earth. 

His reason for spending so much time on those last few days of Jesus’ life is the same reason that we are faced with this morning.  What do we do with the rest of his life in light of the record we have of his last days?  What sort of weight do we put on the claims of the Gospel writers in light of how THEY lived THEIR lives after Jesus’ resurrection?   

It bears repeating, revisiting, restating, and reemphasizing:  the most compelling argument for the resurrection of Christ is in comparing the lives of his disciples and followers before and after his crucifixion and resurrection.   

I think it is safe to say that Jesus taught an ethic of life that was exemplary.  He lived it as well.  His call to obedience, to sacrifice, to self-giving love is so counter-cultural in any given context that it easily falls into the category of ‘revolutionary’ when compared to the general expectations of the world as we see it and know it to be. 

Jesus’ call to forgiveness and redemption and the sharing that the disciples lived out after his death presented a model of living in community that most establishment religions would wrestle with trying to explain in the light of their self-sustaining interests throughout history. 

But however revolutionary, however dynamic and charismatic a teacher he was, his teachings may have remained with us as a footnote to history POSSIBLY, but most likely they would have faded INTO history HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR radically transformed lives that KEPT HAPPENING long after his disciples were off the scene and long gone.

What do we have that might explain that … persistence of impact? 

We have Jesus’ promise of continuing presence through the Holy Spirit.  We have the promise of his return, we have the commission received to BE HIS BODY on earth until he returns.  So we live in that promise, in that hope, and in that task to which he has called us.  

And all that has brought us to the point of coming to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the chosen one of God.  Thanks be to God!

Let’s pray.