What Now?
Commentary
Last week felt very much like a climax.
In many of our churches, the season of Lent is experienced as weeks of focus and expectation, leading up to Easter Sunday. Starting on Ash Wednesday, perhaps as individuals or perhaps as a church family, we engage in seven weeks of deliberate reflection and spiritual discipline. And last Sunday represented the grand conclusion of that period.
Meanwhile, even if the larger season of Lent is not high-profile in your church, or even if this year’s Lenten season was significantly interrupted, still your people probably experienced Holy Week as full and significant. There is the festivity of Palm Sunday, the drama of Maundy Thursday, and the somber darkness of Good Friday. But it all comes to a joyous climax on Easter Sunday.
Whether just the concentrated intensity of Holy Week or the prolonged focus of Lent, you see, there is a rightful sense of climax on Easter Sunday.
And in most of our churches, I expect that our services did, indeed, feel climactic. The Easter crowds are much larger than on the average Sunday. There is a heightened energy level. We typically enjoy extra efforts by our musicians. And there is a special quality of festivity and celebration.
But now what?
Now it is the Sunday after Easter. In many churches, it is traditionally a low-attendance Sunday. It probably lacks at least much of last week’s festivity and energy. Indeed, this Sunday may feel like something of a letdown after last Sunday.
We do well, therefore, to explore together the passages assigned to us this week. They are all after-Easter passages, you see, and we are after-Easter people. These passages are just right to meet us where we are.
All three passages come from the New Testament. The selections from Acts and 1 Peter reflect the preaching and writing of Peter, respectively. And both of those, of course, come after the Easter Sunday event.
Meanwhile, even though our Gospel lection is still technically from the first Easter Sunday, it is an episode from that evening, plus an episode from the following week. This week’s Gospel selection, therefore, is thus removed from the original discovery of the Empty Tomb that we celebrated last week. This is not a scene of radiant angels but cowering disciples. If this Sunday feels like something of a letdown after last Sunday, surely the look and mood of those first disciples on Easter Sunday evening seem like a letdown, too, in the wake of Christ’s resurrection!
Well, this is the Sunday after Easter, and it is a terrifically important Sunday for us. It is, in a sense, “our Sunday.” For you and I live our lives after Easter. And the truth is that that is not at all an anticlimax. On the contrary, it is a fantastic and joyous place to live! And this Sunday’s assigned Scripture readings will help us to discover the beauty of living after Easter.
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
There is a lovely timelessness about this week’s New Testament lection. One week after Easter Sunday, the lectionary takes us to a portion of Peter’s preaching on the Day of Pentecost. Rightly, the passage proclaims the news of Jesus’ resurrection. But the quality of timelessness is found, it seems to me, in the fact that this passage is not limited to the Day of Pentecost. What Peter preached on that day could just as readily be preached by you and me this Sunday.
It is noteworthy that Peter’s sermon is all about Jesus. Our natural inclination, of course, is to associate the Day of Pentecost with the Holy Spirit. And clearly it was the Spirit that empowered and emboldened the apostles, and it was the Holy Spirit’s activity that drew the attention of the crowd. Yet When Peter had the crowd’s attention, the Holy Spirit was not the heart of his message. He explained the Spirit’s work that they were witnessing, and then turned their attention to “Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God...”
What follows then is a fascinating juxtaposition of what God did and what human beings did. On the one side of the ledger, Jesus was “attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you.” And after Jesus had been crucified, “God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.” Meanwhile, on the other side of the ledger, Jesus was “handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.”
The stark difference between God’s actions and human deeds is reminiscent of the testimony that pulses through John’s Gospel. On the one hand, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16 NASB). Yet, on the other hand, see what the Son experienced in this world that God so loved. “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” (John 1:10-11 NASB). And the Son himself said to his followers, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you” (John 15:18 NASB).
We should also make note of Peter’s use of the Old Testament in his Pentecost preaching. Earlier in his sermon, in a portion that is not included in our assigned passage for this Sunday, Peter uses the Old Testament prophet Joel to explain the phenomenon of the Holy Spirit’s empowerment. Meanwhile, here in our selected passage, Peter makes extensive use of Psalm 16 to illustrate the truth of Jesus’s bodily resurrection.
Those who have studied the preaching of the early church will not be surprised by these Old Testament references. The fact is that the Old Testament was the Scripture the apostles preached when they went out proclaiming the gospel of Christ. I suspect, though, that that fact would be surprising to many American church folks today. Indeed, it would seem counterintuitive to them that the Old Testament should be used to preach the gospel.
My observation as a pastor has been that so many church folks today experience and express a deep bifurcation between the text of the Old Testament and the Christian gospel. But that is entirely contrary to the experience and example of the apostles. They reflected a sense of perfect harmony between the Hebrew Scriptures and the good news about Jesus. Just as surely as Peter, James, John, and Thomas were witnesses to Christ, so too were Moses, David, and Isaiah.
This principle, then, brings the timeless quality of this passage full-circle. On the one hand, it is a particular message that was preached at a very particular time and place to a particular audience. And yet we see that it is a message that reaches forward all the way to our day, and it also reaches back all the way to the ancient texts of the Old Testament. And we are not surprised by the timeless quality of the passage, for it bears witness to the One whose character, will, and very being are timeless!
1 Peter 1:3-9
I wonder how many of us manage to make the first paragraphs of our letters so meaningful and consequential. These first verses of 1 Peter are dense with profound truths. We could call this passage “The Gospel According to Peter,” and we would not be overstating the scope of this pericope.
In many disciplines, a key element in our education is to take a thing apart in order to understand the thing more fully. To see the parts is to understand the whole better. Such is the logic behind the age-old biology class assignment to dissect a frog.
So let the preacher break out the scalpel in the pulpit this week. Let us dissect our assigned passage before the eyes of our people. Let us break down the gospel into its component parts in order to help the people in our pews better understand the whole.
When we disassemble Peter’s paragraph, we discover that the first part of the gospel is the mercy of God. It is “by his great mercy” that his good will is achieved in us. Apart from his mercy, there is no hope, no new birth, no salvation. His mercy is, literally, the starting place for the gospel message.
What follows is not presented chronologically, but it could be re-presented that way in order to help our people understand. The three broad categories, of course, are past, present, and future. In the past, as we have noted, is the saving initiative born of God’s grace. And, though unmentioned in this passage, in the past is also our former spiritual condition -- sin, darkness, and separation from God. This combination -- God’s grace and our condition -- gives rise to the apostle’s statement that “he has given us a new birth.” Finally, the other element of the past explicitly mentioned by Peter is “the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
Meanwhile, when we read Peter’s passage with the labels of “present” and “future” in our minds, we see how the apostle toggles between the two. Our present and our future are inseparable for Peter. Each impacts the other.
In the present, we have been given a new birth into a living hope. But hope, of course, implies the future. And that future is “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.” Yet that reality is not relegated to the future, for in the present it is “kept in heaven for you.”
Meanwhile, in the present, while we hope and wait for what is kept for us in heaven, we “are being protected by the power of God through faith.” But that protection in the present is with a future in mind -- namely, “a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” And with that certain future before us, in the present “you rejoice.”
That rejoicing, meanwhile, is expressly tied to the future hope, not the present circumstance. For in the present, “for a little while you have had to suffer various trials.” Yet even those are filled with future purpose, “so that the genuineness of your faith-- being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire-- may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Finally, we do not see the Lord in the present, but we love him in the present. And we rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy,” for we “are receiving” in the present “the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
It is, you see, all very tightly reasoned for Peter. He moves fluidly back and forth between the present reality and the future reality. And we discover that the Christian lives with an unconventional understanding of present and future. For conventional wisdom, you see, assumes that the future is the effect of the present cause. Yet for the Christian, the impact flows in the opposite direction. It is the future hope, promise, and glory that impact and influence -- indeed, dramatically change -- for us our life in the present.
John 20:19-31
My dad used to say that one of the keys to good preaching is knowing what to leave out. There is too much to be said about any given passage of Scripture to be able to fit it all into a single sermon. Accordingly, the preacher has to be able to identify which things are essential to a given week’s message, and then set aside the rest for another day.
So it is that there is surely too much in this episode from Easter Sunday and the following week to be able to do justice to all of it in a single sermon. Will we, appropriate to the day, focus on the scene that came one week after Easter Sunday? Do we zero in on the issue of believing and doubting, and how our experiences of seeing or proof factor into faith? Or perhaps we deal with the problems of both doubt and fear, for these familiar maladies of the soul seem to characterize the disciples in this episode. Another tantalizing detail presented by this passage is the remaining wounds in Jesus’ resurrected body. Then there is the quite different transmission of the Holy Spirit, followed by the provocative charge given to the apostles regarding sins being forgiven or retained. Near the end comes Thomas’ majestic affirmation of Christ. And then, at the conclusion of the passage, the author offers his important and revealing purpose statement.
So much material in just a few verses! So much to be preached! What shall we leave out?
Personally, I think that the occasion of the Sunday after Easter demands that we focus on the natural flightpath of the passage -- namely, the experience of Thomas. He is notoriously cast as “doubting Thomas” because of this episode, and we will give more thought to that notion below. For the present, however, let us set aside that unfortunate nickname, and observe instead the redemptive movement of the account.
Thomas is arguably the patron saint for the present generation. Ours is a culture of doubt -- or at least skepticism. Ours is an intellectual environment that demands proof. The difference between the spirit of the age and the example of Thomas is in where we go for our proof.
So, for some reason, Thomas was not with the other disciples when Jesus showed himself to them on that first Easter Sunday evening. His absence, by the way, may be a credit to him. The others, we read, “were locked (in a house) for fear of the Jews.” Thomas alone seems to be out and about, while the others are cowering and afraid. Good for him!
In any case, the other disciples all had the opportunity to see the Risen Christ. They heard his voice, they saw his wounds, they felt his breath. And they were naturally overjoyed, then, to report the good news to Thomas when they saw him next. But Thomas did not share their joy because he did not share their certainty. And he did not share their certainty because he had not shared their experience. Make careful note of those connections.
And so, in response to the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, Thomas infamously declares, “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.” And while he is remembered unfavorably for that statement, there is something to be learned from it. Thomas draws an intellectual line that we have blurred in our day.
There is a difference between testimony and experience.
Much of what we are taught in school, for example, is believed based on testimony. I have no personal experience to prove to me that the sun is 93 million miles away, or what the temperature is on Mars, or that Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theatre, or that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. We mostly don’t know these things for ourselves. Instead, we believe what other people tell us.
On the other hand, there are those things that we believe -- even know -- based on personal experience. We have run the numbers or conducted the experiment or visited the place or witnessed the event. We know for ourselves. We know, not because anyone told us, but because we experienced it personally.
The other disciples knew the Risen Christ from experience, and Thomas was insisting on the same for himself. And it is in this regard that both believers and skeptics alike in our day may miss the point. We put the whole burden on testimony, and we may downplay the first-hand knowledge that comes from personal experience.
Thomas’s insistence was not about the other disciples; it was about Jesus. He didn’t require his peers to convince him. He didn’t argue it out with them, each one taking a side in the debate. No, he was bypassing the testimony and insisting on the experience.
Now the fact is that we would be fools if chose not to believe anything based on testimony. We would know comparatively very little if we insisted on knowing only what we had learned for ourselves. There is a place for testimony in many areas of life and knowledge, and testimony is an enormous factor in Christian faith.
That said, the reality of Jesus is a quite different sort of thing from Caesar crossing the Rubicon or Lincoln being shot in Ford’s Theatre. Jesus is not confined to history. As Alfred Ackley sang it, “I serve a risen Savior, he’s in the world today.” (Aflred H. Ackley, “He Lives,” UMH #310). The modern skeptic, therefore, should have the guts to stop bullying believers into convincing him or her, and take the challenge to the Lord himself. Let the skeptics ask the Lord to make himself known to them. If they will not accept our testimony, let them ask for the personal experience.
As for Thomas, he had that experience. It was a week later than everyone else, it seems, but he had it. And when he did, he uttered the highest affirmation of faith to that point in the Gospels story: “My Lord and my God!” People had freely speculated about Jesus being a prophet, an agent of Beelzebul, and the Messiah. But Thomas, known for his doubting, said more than anyone else had up to that point, calling Jesus his Lord and his God.
Application
I wonder if the church is better at anticipating than it is at experiencing.
We devote four full weeks each year to the season of Advent. That is, by design, a season of anticipating. But then, once Christmas Day has passed, I doubt that we and our churches continue to emphasize and celebrate that Christmas event.
Likewise, the season of Lent is meant to be a season of anticipation -- or, perhaps we would say preparation -- with Easter as our destination. In our broader culture, of course, the buildup to Christmas is greater than the buildup to Easter. In the liturgical year by which we in the church live, however, Easter enjoys the longer season of preparation. But, again, once the holiday is past, what emphasis do we place on it?
And so I wonder if the church is better at anticipating than it is at experiencing. If so, I shouldn’t be surprised, for I suspect that is how most individuals are, too. We look forward, we count down, we enjoy a crescendo of excitement. But then the much-anticipated event comes, and when it’s over we are left with just a floor covered by torn and discarded wrapping paper.
Think of the look of the Thanksgiving meal at the pinnacle of its preparation. And then consider the look of that same table once the meal is over. Or consider the look of the Christmas tree as the children first come down the stairs on Christmas morning, and then the look of the room a few hours later. Picture the parade route before the parade and then and after. Envision the Super Bowl venue just before the big game and then after. It’s almost as if the anticipated thing -- whatever it is -- is better before than after.
This Sunday, we have the opportunity to liberate our people from that cycle of disappointment. For the world, after all, is better after Christ came than before. And we -- human beings, you and I -- are better off after Christ was raised than we were before. And so, rather than letting the Sunday after Easter feel like a letdown, let us, as Peter says, “rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy” because of what has happened.
Our common problem, of course, is that so many of the things we anticipate come to an end. We anticipated the big game, but then the final gun sounded, and then the game was over. We looked forward to the Thanksgiving meal, but eventually we are left with just messy plates, dirty napkins, and a picked-over turkey carcass.
Not so with Easter. Last Sunday may have been festive, but it was not climactic. For Easter represents a beginning, not an end. And we are immeasurably blessed to be able to live our lives in the wake of that triumphant beginning.
Alternative Application(s)
John 20:19-31 -- “Missing Thomas
We noted above that Thomas is notoriously cast as “doubting Thomas” because of this episode from John 20. I am convinced, however, that that is an unfair sobriquet. Call him “absent Thomas” perhaps, but not “doubting Thomas.” After all, what really distinguished him from his colleagues was not that they believed without seeing but rather that they saw. And they saw because they were present that Easter Sunday night, while he was not.
Rather than preaching about the problem of doubting, therefore, perhaps we should preach about the problem of missing. It may seem like a self-serving sort of message for the pastor to preach, but it is no small matter. The fact is that Thomas missed an encounter with the Lord precisely because he was not gathered together with the other followers of Jesus.
Perhaps, therefore, the line between faith and doubt should not be drawn along the lines of personality or character, as though Thomas was inferior to the other disciples. And perhaps it should not even trace the boundary between seeing and not seeing, for in the end they all saw. Rather, perhaps the line between believing and not believing is the line between having and not having an encounter with the Risen Christ. And that encounter occurs within the context of the faithful being gathered together.
This message is a tough sell in a culture that has been so sold on the ultimate importance of the individual. Our preoccupation with the individual's rights, the individual’s feelings, the individual’s fulfillment, the individual’s identity has come at the expense of “the group” -- the community, the family, the church. And, ironically, it may also have come at the expense of the individual, who once gained a sense of identity and value and purpose from that larger group.
Scripture is unequivocal in the value that it places on “the group.” We hear early God’s verdict that “it is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18 NASB). We observe how his salvation in the days of Noah is achieved through a family, not merely a righteous individual. And, in the wake of that judgment, the covenant God establishes is with all of creation. Likewise, the covenant established with Abraham anticipates a group, a family, a chosen people. And centuries later, when that people is gathered around Mt. Sinai, God dwells in their midst and establishes a covenant with the group of them.
In the New Testament, Jesus does not call just an individual disciple -- an apprentice, a protégé -- he calls a group, and they follow him together. And we note that he makes substantive promises to them precisely as a group. “If two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst” (Matthew 18:19-20 NASB). And, of course, it was when “they were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1 NASB) that the Holy Spirit came upon them on the Day of Pentecost.
The writer of Hebrews urges the people in his jurisdiction, saying, “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together” (Hebrews 10:25 GNT). We hear that in our context, and we think it is an exhortation for the good of the group. After all, we need more people here, don’t we? But perhaps the truth flows in the opposite direction. Perhaps the exhortation is for the individual. Perhaps it is not that the group needs the individual so much as the individual needs the group. For that is where we encounter the Risen Christ. And Thomas, in the end, is not the patron saint for those who doubt but for those who are absent from the group.
In many of our churches, the season of Lent is experienced as weeks of focus and expectation, leading up to Easter Sunday. Starting on Ash Wednesday, perhaps as individuals or perhaps as a church family, we engage in seven weeks of deliberate reflection and spiritual discipline. And last Sunday represented the grand conclusion of that period.
Meanwhile, even if the larger season of Lent is not high-profile in your church, or even if this year’s Lenten season was significantly interrupted, still your people probably experienced Holy Week as full and significant. There is the festivity of Palm Sunday, the drama of Maundy Thursday, and the somber darkness of Good Friday. But it all comes to a joyous climax on Easter Sunday.
Whether just the concentrated intensity of Holy Week or the prolonged focus of Lent, you see, there is a rightful sense of climax on Easter Sunday.
And in most of our churches, I expect that our services did, indeed, feel climactic. The Easter crowds are much larger than on the average Sunday. There is a heightened energy level. We typically enjoy extra efforts by our musicians. And there is a special quality of festivity and celebration.
But now what?
Now it is the Sunday after Easter. In many churches, it is traditionally a low-attendance Sunday. It probably lacks at least much of last week’s festivity and energy. Indeed, this Sunday may feel like something of a letdown after last Sunday.
We do well, therefore, to explore together the passages assigned to us this week. They are all after-Easter passages, you see, and we are after-Easter people. These passages are just right to meet us where we are.
All three passages come from the New Testament. The selections from Acts and 1 Peter reflect the preaching and writing of Peter, respectively. And both of those, of course, come after the Easter Sunday event.
Meanwhile, even though our Gospel lection is still technically from the first Easter Sunday, it is an episode from that evening, plus an episode from the following week. This week’s Gospel selection, therefore, is thus removed from the original discovery of the Empty Tomb that we celebrated last week. This is not a scene of radiant angels but cowering disciples. If this Sunday feels like something of a letdown after last Sunday, surely the look and mood of those first disciples on Easter Sunday evening seem like a letdown, too, in the wake of Christ’s resurrection!
Well, this is the Sunday after Easter, and it is a terrifically important Sunday for us. It is, in a sense, “our Sunday.” For you and I live our lives after Easter. And the truth is that that is not at all an anticlimax. On the contrary, it is a fantastic and joyous place to live! And this Sunday’s assigned Scripture readings will help us to discover the beauty of living after Easter.
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
There is a lovely timelessness about this week’s New Testament lection. One week after Easter Sunday, the lectionary takes us to a portion of Peter’s preaching on the Day of Pentecost. Rightly, the passage proclaims the news of Jesus’ resurrection. But the quality of timelessness is found, it seems to me, in the fact that this passage is not limited to the Day of Pentecost. What Peter preached on that day could just as readily be preached by you and me this Sunday.
It is noteworthy that Peter’s sermon is all about Jesus. Our natural inclination, of course, is to associate the Day of Pentecost with the Holy Spirit. And clearly it was the Spirit that empowered and emboldened the apostles, and it was the Holy Spirit’s activity that drew the attention of the crowd. Yet When Peter had the crowd’s attention, the Holy Spirit was not the heart of his message. He explained the Spirit’s work that they were witnessing, and then turned their attention to “Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God...”
What follows then is a fascinating juxtaposition of what God did and what human beings did. On the one side of the ledger, Jesus was “attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you.” And after Jesus had been crucified, “God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.” Meanwhile, on the other side of the ledger, Jesus was “handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.”
The stark difference between God’s actions and human deeds is reminiscent of the testimony that pulses through John’s Gospel. On the one hand, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:16 NASB). Yet, on the other hand, see what the Son experienced in this world that God so loved. “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” (John 1:10-11 NASB). And the Son himself said to his followers, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you” (John 15:18 NASB).
We should also make note of Peter’s use of the Old Testament in his Pentecost preaching. Earlier in his sermon, in a portion that is not included in our assigned passage for this Sunday, Peter uses the Old Testament prophet Joel to explain the phenomenon of the Holy Spirit’s empowerment. Meanwhile, here in our selected passage, Peter makes extensive use of Psalm 16 to illustrate the truth of Jesus’s bodily resurrection.
Those who have studied the preaching of the early church will not be surprised by these Old Testament references. The fact is that the Old Testament was the Scripture the apostles preached when they went out proclaiming the gospel of Christ. I suspect, though, that that fact would be surprising to many American church folks today. Indeed, it would seem counterintuitive to them that the Old Testament should be used to preach the gospel.
My observation as a pastor has been that so many church folks today experience and express a deep bifurcation between the text of the Old Testament and the Christian gospel. But that is entirely contrary to the experience and example of the apostles. They reflected a sense of perfect harmony between the Hebrew Scriptures and the good news about Jesus. Just as surely as Peter, James, John, and Thomas were witnesses to Christ, so too were Moses, David, and Isaiah.
This principle, then, brings the timeless quality of this passage full-circle. On the one hand, it is a particular message that was preached at a very particular time and place to a particular audience. And yet we see that it is a message that reaches forward all the way to our day, and it also reaches back all the way to the ancient texts of the Old Testament. And we are not surprised by the timeless quality of the passage, for it bears witness to the One whose character, will, and very being are timeless!
1 Peter 1:3-9
I wonder how many of us manage to make the first paragraphs of our letters so meaningful and consequential. These first verses of 1 Peter are dense with profound truths. We could call this passage “The Gospel According to Peter,” and we would not be overstating the scope of this pericope.
In many disciplines, a key element in our education is to take a thing apart in order to understand the thing more fully. To see the parts is to understand the whole better. Such is the logic behind the age-old biology class assignment to dissect a frog.
So let the preacher break out the scalpel in the pulpit this week. Let us dissect our assigned passage before the eyes of our people. Let us break down the gospel into its component parts in order to help the people in our pews better understand the whole.
When we disassemble Peter’s paragraph, we discover that the first part of the gospel is the mercy of God. It is “by his great mercy” that his good will is achieved in us. Apart from his mercy, there is no hope, no new birth, no salvation. His mercy is, literally, the starting place for the gospel message.
What follows is not presented chronologically, but it could be re-presented that way in order to help our people understand. The three broad categories, of course, are past, present, and future. In the past, as we have noted, is the saving initiative born of God’s grace. And, though unmentioned in this passage, in the past is also our former spiritual condition -- sin, darkness, and separation from God. This combination -- God’s grace and our condition -- gives rise to the apostle’s statement that “he has given us a new birth.” Finally, the other element of the past explicitly mentioned by Peter is “the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
Meanwhile, when we read Peter’s passage with the labels of “present” and “future” in our minds, we see how the apostle toggles between the two. Our present and our future are inseparable for Peter. Each impacts the other.
In the present, we have been given a new birth into a living hope. But hope, of course, implies the future. And that future is “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.” Yet that reality is not relegated to the future, for in the present it is “kept in heaven for you.”
Meanwhile, in the present, while we hope and wait for what is kept for us in heaven, we “are being protected by the power of God through faith.” But that protection in the present is with a future in mind -- namely, “a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” And with that certain future before us, in the present “you rejoice.”
That rejoicing, meanwhile, is expressly tied to the future hope, not the present circumstance. For in the present, “for a little while you have had to suffer various trials.” Yet even those are filled with future purpose, “so that the genuineness of your faith-- being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire-- may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Finally, we do not see the Lord in the present, but we love him in the present. And we rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy,” for we “are receiving” in the present “the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
It is, you see, all very tightly reasoned for Peter. He moves fluidly back and forth between the present reality and the future reality. And we discover that the Christian lives with an unconventional understanding of present and future. For conventional wisdom, you see, assumes that the future is the effect of the present cause. Yet for the Christian, the impact flows in the opposite direction. It is the future hope, promise, and glory that impact and influence -- indeed, dramatically change -- for us our life in the present.
John 20:19-31
My dad used to say that one of the keys to good preaching is knowing what to leave out. There is too much to be said about any given passage of Scripture to be able to fit it all into a single sermon. Accordingly, the preacher has to be able to identify which things are essential to a given week’s message, and then set aside the rest for another day.
So it is that there is surely too much in this episode from Easter Sunday and the following week to be able to do justice to all of it in a single sermon. Will we, appropriate to the day, focus on the scene that came one week after Easter Sunday? Do we zero in on the issue of believing and doubting, and how our experiences of seeing or proof factor into faith? Or perhaps we deal with the problems of both doubt and fear, for these familiar maladies of the soul seem to characterize the disciples in this episode. Another tantalizing detail presented by this passage is the remaining wounds in Jesus’ resurrected body. Then there is the quite different transmission of the Holy Spirit, followed by the provocative charge given to the apostles regarding sins being forgiven or retained. Near the end comes Thomas’ majestic affirmation of Christ. And then, at the conclusion of the passage, the author offers his important and revealing purpose statement.
So much material in just a few verses! So much to be preached! What shall we leave out?
Personally, I think that the occasion of the Sunday after Easter demands that we focus on the natural flightpath of the passage -- namely, the experience of Thomas. He is notoriously cast as “doubting Thomas” because of this episode, and we will give more thought to that notion below. For the present, however, let us set aside that unfortunate nickname, and observe instead the redemptive movement of the account.
Thomas is arguably the patron saint for the present generation. Ours is a culture of doubt -- or at least skepticism. Ours is an intellectual environment that demands proof. The difference between the spirit of the age and the example of Thomas is in where we go for our proof.
So, for some reason, Thomas was not with the other disciples when Jesus showed himself to them on that first Easter Sunday evening. His absence, by the way, may be a credit to him. The others, we read, “were locked (in a house) for fear of the Jews.” Thomas alone seems to be out and about, while the others are cowering and afraid. Good for him!
In any case, the other disciples all had the opportunity to see the Risen Christ. They heard his voice, they saw his wounds, they felt his breath. And they were naturally overjoyed, then, to report the good news to Thomas when they saw him next. But Thomas did not share their joy because he did not share their certainty. And he did not share their certainty because he had not shared their experience. Make careful note of those connections.
And so, in response to the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, Thomas infamously declares, “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.” And while he is remembered unfavorably for that statement, there is something to be learned from it. Thomas draws an intellectual line that we have blurred in our day.
There is a difference between testimony and experience.
Much of what we are taught in school, for example, is believed based on testimony. I have no personal experience to prove to me that the sun is 93 million miles away, or what the temperature is on Mars, or that Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theatre, or that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. We mostly don’t know these things for ourselves. Instead, we believe what other people tell us.
On the other hand, there are those things that we believe -- even know -- based on personal experience. We have run the numbers or conducted the experiment or visited the place or witnessed the event. We know for ourselves. We know, not because anyone told us, but because we experienced it personally.
The other disciples knew the Risen Christ from experience, and Thomas was insisting on the same for himself. And it is in this regard that both believers and skeptics alike in our day may miss the point. We put the whole burden on testimony, and we may downplay the first-hand knowledge that comes from personal experience.
Thomas’s insistence was not about the other disciples; it was about Jesus. He didn’t require his peers to convince him. He didn’t argue it out with them, each one taking a side in the debate. No, he was bypassing the testimony and insisting on the experience.
Now the fact is that we would be fools if chose not to believe anything based on testimony. We would know comparatively very little if we insisted on knowing only what we had learned for ourselves. There is a place for testimony in many areas of life and knowledge, and testimony is an enormous factor in Christian faith.
That said, the reality of Jesus is a quite different sort of thing from Caesar crossing the Rubicon or Lincoln being shot in Ford’s Theatre. Jesus is not confined to history. As Alfred Ackley sang it, “I serve a risen Savior, he’s in the world today.” (Aflred H. Ackley, “He Lives,” UMH #310). The modern skeptic, therefore, should have the guts to stop bullying believers into convincing him or her, and take the challenge to the Lord himself. Let the skeptics ask the Lord to make himself known to them. If they will not accept our testimony, let them ask for the personal experience.
As for Thomas, he had that experience. It was a week later than everyone else, it seems, but he had it. And when he did, he uttered the highest affirmation of faith to that point in the Gospels story: “My Lord and my God!” People had freely speculated about Jesus being a prophet, an agent of Beelzebul, and the Messiah. But Thomas, known for his doubting, said more than anyone else had up to that point, calling Jesus his Lord and his God.
Application
I wonder if the church is better at anticipating than it is at experiencing.
We devote four full weeks each year to the season of Advent. That is, by design, a season of anticipating. But then, once Christmas Day has passed, I doubt that we and our churches continue to emphasize and celebrate that Christmas event.
Likewise, the season of Lent is meant to be a season of anticipation -- or, perhaps we would say preparation -- with Easter as our destination. In our broader culture, of course, the buildup to Christmas is greater than the buildup to Easter. In the liturgical year by which we in the church live, however, Easter enjoys the longer season of preparation. But, again, once the holiday is past, what emphasis do we place on it?
And so I wonder if the church is better at anticipating than it is at experiencing. If so, I shouldn’t be surprised, for I suspect that is how most individuals are, too. We look forward, we count down, we enjoy a crescendo of excitement. But then the much-anticipated event comes, and when it’s over we are left with just a floor covered by torn and discarded wrapping paper.
Think of the look of the Thanksgiving meal at the pinnacle of its preparation. And then consider the look of that same table once the meal is over. Or consider the look of the Christmas tree as the children first come down the stairs on Christmas morning, and then the look of the room a few hours later. Picture the parade route before the parade and then and after. Envision the Super Bowl venue just before the big game and then after. It’s almost as if the anticipated thing -- whatever it is -- is better before than after.
This Sunday, we have the opportunity to liberate our people from that cycle of disappointment. For the world, after all, is better after Christ came than before. And we -- human beings, you and I -- are better off after Christ was raised than we were before. And so, rather than letting the Sunday after Easter feel like a letdown, let us, as Peter says, “rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy” because of what has happened.
Our common problem, of course, is that so many of the things we anticipate come to an end. We anticipated the big game, but then the final gun sounded, and then the game was over. We looked forward to the Thanksgiving meal, but eventually we are left with just messy plates, dirty napkins, and a picked-over turkey carcass.
Not so with Easter. Last Sunday may have been festive, but it was not climactic. For Easter represents a beginning, not an end. And we are immeasurably blessed to be able to live our lives in the wake of that triumphant beginning.
Alternative Application(s)
John 20:19-31 -- “Missing Thomas
We noted above that Thomas is notoriously cast as “doubting Thomas” because of this episode from John 20. I am convinced, however, that that is an unfair sobriquet. Call him “absent Thomas” perhaps, but not “doubting Thomas.” After all, what really distinguished him from his colleagues was not that they believed without seeing but rather that they saw. And they saw because they were present that Easter Sunday night, while he was not.
Rather than preaching about the problem of doubting, therefore, perhaps we should preach about the problem of missing. It may seem like a self-serving sort of message for the pastor to preach, but it is no small matter. The fact is that Thomas missed an encounter with the Lord precisely because he was not gathered together with the other followers of Jesus.
Perhaps, therefore, the line between faith and doubt should not be drawn along the lines of personality or character, as though Thomas was inferior to the other disciples. And perhaps it should not even trace the boundary between seeing and not seeing, for in the end they all saw. Rather, perhaps the line between believing and not believing is the line between having and not having an encounter with the Risen Christ. And that encounter occurs within the context of the faithful being gathered together.
This message is a tough sell in a culture that has been so sold on the ultimate importance of the individual. Our preoccupation with the individual's rights, the individual’s feelings, the individual’s fulfillment, the individual’s identity has come at the expense of “the group” -- the community, the family, the church. And, ironically, it may also have come at the expense of the individual, who once gained a sense of identity and value and purpose from that larger group.
Scripture is unequivocal in the value that it places on “the group.” We hear early God’s verdict that “it is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18 NASB). We observe how his salvation in the days of Noah is achieved through a family, not merely a righteous individual. And, in the wake of that judgment, the covenant God establishes is with all of creation. Likewise, the covenant established with Abraham anticipates a group, a family, a chosen people. And centuries later, when that people is gathered around Mt. Sinai, God dwells in their midst and establishes a covenant with the group of them.
In the New Testament, Jesus does not call just an individual disciple -- an apprentice, a protégé -- he calls a group, and they follow him together. And we note that he makes substantive promises to them precisely as a group. “If two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst” (Matthew 18:19-20 NASB). And, of course, it was when “they were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1 NASB) that the Holy Spirit came upon them on the Day of Pentecost.
The writer of Hebrews urges the people in his jurisdiction, saying, “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together” (Hebrews 10:25 GNT). We hear that in our context, and we think it is an exhortation for the good of the group. After all, we need more people here, don’t we? But perhaps the truth flows in the opposite direction. Perhaps the exhortation is for the individual. Perhaps it is not that the group needs the individual so much as the individual needs the group. For that is where we encounter the Risen Christ. And Thomas, in the end, is not the patron saint for those who doubt but for those who are absent from the group.
