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Thought for the Week 11 April – 2nd Sunday of Easter
And
so we reach the end of the original Gospel of John and we have come full
circle. Original end because chapter 21 was a later add on, written either by
John or someone else. Verse 31 of our reading i.e. the last verse, rounds off
the gospel in a complete way and John considers that he has done what he set
out to do, to show, prove that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.
Remember the last words of Thomas ----- “My Lord and my God.” Why
full circle? Do you remember the opening of John’s gospel? “In the beginning
was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Jesus Christ
was God incarnate, acknowledged at the beginning and confirmed at the end. So
the disciples, presumably in fear for their lives, locked themselves in a
room. Mary Magdalene had told them that Jesus was alive because she had seen
him and spoken with him. We are not told whether or not she was believed.
Luke tells us that what the disciples were told by, in that version by Mary Magdalene
and the other women, seemed like nonsense. Clearly, though, the disciples
were afraid, and although in our reading it talks of the Jews, we can guess
this means the authorities. It can be assumed that they were afraid from the
moment Jesus was arrested, for they all seem to have disappeared very quickly
after that event, Peter even denying his Lord three times before the public
and the Roman soldiers, and his reinstatement doesn’t come until the add-on
chapter 21. The
disciples, apart from being afraid, must have been very confused. They had
followed this man around for the best part of three years, they had been
taught by him, they had seen him
as the long-awaited Messiah of whom the prophets had spoken, and they had
even declared Jesus to be the Son of God, the King of Israel. Now he had been
arrested, tried, convicted and hung on a cross as a common criminal, with
real criminals either side of him. What were they to make of it all? They
wondered what had happened, but next in John’s account is that Jesus appears
before them in the locked, secure room. This is the risen Jesus, the
resurrected Jesus for there can be no doubt about that, he has the marks of
the crucifixion on his body. And yet he is able to enter a locked room and
appear as if a ghost, which is exactly how Luke describes the appearance. This
is no ghost, for he could be touched, was able to eat and yet was able to
pass through doors and appear without apparently walking or physically moving
to get where he appears. This is the risen Jesus, this was the Jesus in whom
heaven and earth met at his resurrection, this was the Jesus in his
resurrected body and living in two worlds ------- God’s world and the earthly
world. This was the Jesus of the new Exodus, something the Jews should have recognized
and understood but didn’t, something Jesus spent his ministry preparing the
Jews for but they ignored it, something Jesus spent his ministry preparing
himself and his followers for but his followers failed to comprehend. Should
they have understood what was happening, what had happened? It’s
true that for some time the Jews had been waiting for the Messiah, the
prophets had been anticipating his arrival on the scene for a long time. Then
there was nothing ---- nothing since Malachi or Joel, whichever is your
preference ---- since about the 6th century BC. In the intervening period,
the Jewish nation had been made subject to a variety of powers from the
Persians through the Greeks, a vicious oppressive period of the Hasmoneans,
and then the Romans. Not unnaturally, the Messiah was anticipated to lift the
yoke of subjection to foreign powers from the Jewish back. As a consequence,
he was seen by the Jewish people in terms of an earthly leader, powerful,
kingly, with an ability to led the people against the now Roman oppressor. Of
course, this was not what they got --- instead this man Jesus seemed the very
opposite to all anticipations. Love your enemy, go the extra mile, give him
your coat as well, he who would be first will be last, if you want to lead
then you must be the servant of all. This
was not the message the Jews wanted to hear after all their years of
patience, of waiting. Then to cap it all, on several occasions Jesus
announced that he would be arrested, beaten, condemned to death and would
rise on the third day. Well Messiahs don’t get arrested, don’t get beaten and
put to death, do they? ----- and what’s all this rising on the third
day?------ very strange! Especially since the Jews themselves were split
about the hereafter. The Sadducees didn’t believe in an afterlife; the
Pharisees did, and believed that all God’s righteous would rise on the last
day as a body of the elect. That one man should die and be raised to life
again with the rest of the world carrying on as before was just not in their
understanding. Not
surprisingly, the majority of the Jews were not impressed with this alleged
Messiah. Even the disciples, when all that Jesus had predicted about himself
came true, were perplexed. Peter on the first Easter morning went to the tomb
found it empty and I quote “….. he went away wondering to himself what had
happened.”. We can assume the other
disciples were no different from Peter, they must have all wondered what had
happened. Given
this background, it does seem to me that poor old Thomas has over the years
been somewhat misjudged, misaligned and misunderstood even. You see in our
reading from John’s gospel he says, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands
and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will
not believe it.” That Jesus was alive, the other disciples had seen him the
week before, and had told Thomas. Well, Peter didn’t believe it at first when
he found the empty grave but had not seen the risen Lord ---he went away
wondering what had happened, not saying, «Oh, the Lord has risen just as
he said he would» ; we can’t imagine the other disciples would have reacted
any differently. They, according to our reading, were only overjoyed when
they saw and recognized the Lord. In Luke, they were startled and frightened,
thinking they were seeing a ghost --- not the risen Lord. He showed them his hands and feet, and yet
they still didn’t believe it. In
Mark, the situation is worse. Jesus rebukes the disciples for their lack of
faith and their stubborn refusal to believe in the risen Lord. Mathew doesn’t
have so much detail but does state that “some doubted.” So
was Thomas any different? ----- It seems to me, no. Thomas when he saw the
wounds, recognized Jesus without doing what he threatened, he didn’t put his
hands in the wounds but instead said «My
Lord and my God». Once
Jesus had shown himself to his followers, Thomas included, it was incredible
but easy because there he was, in person as it were, to prove the
resurrection, to prove that death had been defeated. Not only was there the
personal appearance, but they were able also to look back on all he had said
and done --- then the jigsaw pieces fell into place. But
what about us? ---- What about those who come after Jesus’ ascension into
heaven? Well
of course, and unlike the disciples living through the events, we have the
canon of scripture to look at, to study, we have those contemporary writings
not included in the scriptures, and we are able to dispassionately reach our
own conclusions. But Jesus has tremendous words of hope for those that follow
on behind and accept him as their Saviour, for those that believe in the
risen Lord. “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those
who have not seen and believed.” We
are the post-resurrection people of God. Our baptism is a symbolic occasion
when we go down into the waters of baptism and die with Christ to rise out of
the waters as resurrected beings with him. There is a Spanish proverb that
says, “All things in this world are nothing, unless they have reference to
the next.” Heaven and earth meet in us, for Jesus lives in us and our bodies
are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. Christ’s Spirit lives in us. The
obligation upon us is therefore to live the lives expected of the resurrected
people of God. We are in this world but not of this world, we are of God’s
world and as such we are exalted to be holy as God is Holy. But the
difficulty for us is the difficulty that Paul struggles with in his letter to
the Romans at Chapter 7: “for what I
want to do I do not do, and what I hate I do.” “For I have the desire to do
what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want
to do; no, the evil I do not want to do I keep on doing.” He ends with a
feeling that I am sure all of us experience daily, if not hourly, “What a
wretched man I am!” Then he asks himself the question, “Who will rescue me
from this body of death?” and answers
the question with the only answer there can be, “Thanks be to God, ---- through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Tom
Wright, the Bishop of Durham, in his book, Simply Christian, writes, “God has
raised Jesus from the dead and has thereby declared in a single powerful
action that Jesus really has launched the long-awaited Kingdom, and his death
was the moment when, and the means by which, the evil of the world was
defeated at last.” If
that is right, and I believe it succinctly puts the argument for the
consequences of the death and resurrection of Jesus, then this is something
we need to be telling the world about. God’s Kingdom is in the here and now; it’s
not the perfection that awaits us after death when by grace and through the
death and resurrection we shall be with God in the fullest meaning of those
words, but it’s the beginning. Mel
Fancy: Reader, Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude To return to main Thought for the Week page, click X at top right to close this window. |