19th April 2009 St. John & St. Stephen Holy Communion
Sunday after Easter Acts 4: 23 - 31 John 20:19 - end
When I came to prepare this sermon and read over the passage I realised that I’ve probably always misunderstood some of the verses in it. (this could become my standard sermon opening sentence.)
It’s likely that our gospel reading is where John originally meant to finish his book. It is the proper conclusion to everything that has gone before. The actual final chapter reads like an afterword.
And in the last two verses he tells us why he wrote the gospel and what it’s for and it’s in the very last verse
where I noticed the point I’d been missing.
Before the penny dropped if you’d asked about it I would have said that John’s main purpose for his gospel was evangelistic; he wrote so people would become christians. And of course he did want that, it is part of it, but what I hadn’t noticed was who he was writing for - But 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. Who is the ‘you’ here? you may believe, you may have life in his name - who is the ‘you’? I am, you are, we are, John’s readers, the church. John is saying this gospel is for the outsider but it is for us who are already committed to Him as well.
So what does John give us here.
First of all what does he show us about Jesus the Messiah? Both on Easter day and a week later when Jesus comes into the house the first thing He does is give the people there His peace. Jesus their friend and companion as they travelled the country had been good news for them then; this is even more true of Jesus resurrected. When He brings them peace it’s more than just a greeting, It’s more than just freedom from fear and worry. It’s something richer. The peace He brings them is the assurance of right relationship, of things being ordered right, of harmony with the Father. He brings this not just as their friend, but as God’s Messiah.
When he greets them then in the locked room Jesus shows the disciples his hands and his side. Thomas isn’t there and doesn’t believe his friends but a week later it’s his turn, he looks and of course the wounds are still there, Jesus still has the marks of crucifixion. What does this mean about the Messiah, the Son of God? The very least is that when He rose He did not leave His humanity behind. The incarnation is not God temporarily inhabiting a human form, but God who was fully human on earth taking that full humanity through resurrection and out the other side of it. Jesus is still as human as we are. One of our great sources of hope and strength.
Touchingly it’s Thomas seeing the very tangible marks of Jesus humanity who first acknowledges His divinity. ‘My Lord and my God!’
John tells us too of the continuation of Jesus mission. He came so that the Father would be glorified, so that we can see what God is really like. Now the mission has been expanded and passed on to us. As He showed the Father to the world so we are to show Him too and to that end he breathes His Spirit into us.
What does John want us to know about Jesus?
He wants us to know that he comes to bring us peace. Though he was crucified, He is still our friend. He is risen but he still carries the wounds of the crucifixion. He is no less human than He ever was. His mission is still to show us what God is really like and now we are to be part of that mission.
The other part of the verse is ‘through believing you may have life in His name.
I don’t know what the phrase ‘Life in Jesus name’ conjures up for you but for me...
I expect all of us get times when we are particularly aware of our shortcomings, failures, wrongdoing, sin. Not long after I became a Christian when I was feeling generally incapable I remember thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler if I could really give myself over to God properly so that He could eliminate all the grubby, gritty, shoddily put together bits so they weren’t there any more. He could overwhelm all those bits that pulled me away from Him. Surely that must be what he wants so that is what I prayed.
It wasn’t a very successful prayer - I wasn’t suddenly translated onto a new higher, holier more spiritual plane, but I think I did understand why I didn’t get what I’d asked for. What I had been asking God for was to take away the need for effort on my part and even to the need for faith - if he overwhelmed me how could I doubt Him.
So however many years ago that was mu understanding of ‘having life in his name’ was God taking me over and allowing me to slide out of responsibility. What I eventually understood was this wasn’t a plan He was interested in. He didn’t want to give me a soft option because he wanted to work with me, the whole package and not just the edited highlights.
But images can hang on and despite knowing this what the phrase ‘life in his name’ brings to my mind can still be pretty artificial - my idea of having ‘life in Jesus name’ often leaves the real fallible me out of the picture.
So I’m grateful for John’s picture of Thomas in this passage - and through the gospel - and of Peter in the next chapter. Thomas and Peter are probably the two disciples we know best. Their personalities seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum - Peter only opening his mouth to change feet, Thomas’s glass not only being half empty but having a crack in it, but what is unquestionable for both of them is that they loved and believed in Jesus - Peter enough to get out of the boat and walk across the water towards Him, Thomas enough to follow Him to Bethany even though he thought that there was a good chance it would be simply to share His death.
The one thing I think I got right about life in Christ’s name is that though it stretches into eternity it begins now. And what we see in the stories of Peter and Thomas are people discovering what it means to live in Christ’s name now. And what we find is that we don’t need to be artificially sanitised before we begin. Thomas still has the characteristic and recurring faults he had throughout the gospel - they are part of the whole package of Thomas that Jesus loves and welcomes.
When we see him here he has just had a tough week Put yourself in his place - for the last seven days your closest friends have all been saying that they have seen Jesus, whom you know to have been executed - you have seen no evidence of it. You might have been very excited and hopeful when they first told you, but nothing seems to have happened - seven days would have seemed a very long time to be hearing your friends saying something that was surely impossible. Thomas seems to have been someone who found hope so unsettling that he almost preferred a despair he could depend on and a week on he’s had enough v.25.
On a couple of occasions earlier in the gospel Thomas lacked confidence in what Jesus was saying or doing but he was with Jesus he managed to put his naturally morbid tendencies on hold and trust him. And so it is here as well. Jesus comes to him and Thomas who is not unwilling to believe - he just finds it difficult - Thomas together with Jesus can see and say something the others hadn’t yet got to - ‘My Lord and my God.’
What does John want us to know about life in Jesus name? It’s about the life we live now, it’s a life that the true us is called to, and crucially it’s a life lived in the presence of the Spirit.
Jesus breaths on the disciples and gives them the Holy Spirit not to overwhelm them but to accompany them. What we see of Thomas shows him learning to live in a way which is both true to him and true to Christ. That’s the life we are offered. The great commission given to us, the great responsibility laid on us only makes sense in the context of our relationship with God. We can only fulfil our tasks together with Him.
Jesus breathes his Spirit into us and the result for us is the peace he had promised. With that peace we are enabled to perform the extraordinary task he has given us. We are to pronounce, in God’s name and by his Spirit, the message of forgiveness to all who believe in Jesus.
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