JUST THINK, YOU COULD HAVE MISSED THE ENDING….. John 20: 19-31
One of the occupational hazards among fast-paced livers is missed endings.
We can only fit so many things in a day and evening. Sometimes, we can
only stay so long at a party, a meeting, even perhaps at a church service.
And, as we come and go, we catch bits and pieces of conversations and
communications, sometimes missing the ending. I don’t know how
many TV movies I started and never finished because there was something
else that had to be done. Sometimes I really wish I could savor a good
ending! John the Evangelist understands such a concern well. And he makes
a special effort to provide an ending we won’t forget. Last Sunday
our Gospel lesson was the story of the resurrection. Trumpets, kettle
drums and descant choirs lifted our faith to its annual zenith as we
sang, “Christ the Lord is risen today!” How does one top
that? Surely that question was in John’s mind as he put the finishing
touches on his Gospel in today’s lesson. What he shares as an ending
is quite unexpected, totally surprising. And I’m so glad you’re
here to hear it because, this being “Low Sunday,” when Easter
Christians may not be present because there still singing “Alleluia,” there
was a chance that you might have missed the ending.
Easter Christians hid behind locked doors
The first surprise that John shares in his conclusion is that after the bombastic
news of the resurrection, the disciples were hiding in a house with the doors
locked! What a disappointment for us who just finished proclaiming our heart’s
Easter confidence! Shouldn’t the story have ended with the disciples
running all over the city shouting “He is Risen!” Perhaps that’s
how we would have written the ending. Of course, the disciples had “considerations.” Some
had said it’s all idle gossip (Matthew suggests this.). Perhaps, some
worried, having executed Jesus, the disciples could be next. Discretion is
the better part of valor. It’s best to think twice before venturing
out on dangerous water. When you think about it, however, was this so surprising
a reaction? How bold are we to tangle with the authorities when issues of
consequence are at stake? How easy is it for us to take a stand on issues
of peace and justice in the national arena or on ethical issues in the office
or neighborhood association? What kind of trouble might it cause us? Aren’t
these the questions we must also ask? The disciples were afraid, John tells
us bluntly, and we have to admit, after having sung our hearts out last Sunday
that we might also have been.
Such a choice, however, John tells us, is unacceptable to Jesus. He
tells the disciples to move on out. His Father sent him to take a stand,
which he did, Jesus says, and now he’s sending them out to do the
same thing. Jesus tells them that living in fear is unacceptable. They
are to let faith take charge of their lives. How important for us to
hear that! We are afraid of many things in these times. I read with interest
the little polls AOL regularly takes of its users. How afraid are you
of SARS? How afraid are you of terrorist activity? How afraid are you
of the U.S. failing in Iraq or the Middle East? We know that fear is
rampant among people in the U.S. because the stores ran out of duct tape
when the Office of Homeland Security encouraged people to begin stocking
up on it in order to secure their homes from terrorist’s use of
chemical warfare! Yet such anxiety is out of place for Easter Christians.
Jesus would say that we need to unlock the doors of our anxious minds
and ask what it means to believe that “Christ
is risen!” I’m so glad that you were to here to catch this
piece of John’s ending.
Easter Christians saw a crucified Jesus
The next surprise that John tells us in his conclusion is that the disciples
were confronted not with a majestic, regal presence, but with a body that
had nail holes in the hands and side! What an embarrassment! Couldn’t
that have been covered up? One might have thought that John would have avoided
making reference to this nasty business of crucifixion reserved for the lowliest
criminals. It’s like having to raise the question again as to whether
this was a mission gone wrong. John wants to make it very clear to us who
have just exulted in the resurrection triumph that the vulnerable Jesus is
the only one with whom we humans can identify. We who know sorrow and burdens
and pain have a Savior who knows all about it. We who are at times deprived
of status or possessions or friends have a Savior who has “been there,
done that.” It is crucial for us to see the cross in Jesus or we have
no bond between us. He it is who is our confidante and healer. He is the
one who carried our burdens into death, being “pierced for our transgression… crushed
for our iniquities.” (Is. 53: 5) Without a suffering Jesus, through
whose “wounds we are healed,” we have no opportunity to claim
the Easter victory over death and fear.
John has to remind us of this in his conclusion or we end up with superficial
and trivial faith. Therefore, he even repeats what Jesus says as he greets
his dumbfounded disciples. He says Shalom in this climactic moment. Shalom,
of course, can mean a number of things. It can mean simply a kind of psychological “peace.” It
can also have a spiritual sense referring to reconciliation with God. However,
here its most basic meaning gives the full sense of Jesus’ intent. It
is simply a greeting like “Hello” or “Guten Tag,” but
in Semitic parlance it expresses a concern for the whole person. It means “Be
well.” The German “Wie geht es Ihnen?” or the Texan “You
doing all right?”--although in the form of a question-- approaches Shalom’s
meaning more than a narrow definition like “peace.” As was traditional
with this greeting, Jesus expresses his concern for the physical, psychological
and spiritual welfare of the disciples. He the wounded Healer affirms them
in all of their humanness and vulnerability. We claim this extravagant kindness
as we today “share the peace” with one another in the Communion
Service. It is our way of sharing with our neighbor the vulnerable Jesus with
nail holes who lives victoriously within us making us bold to reach out to
others in their need. I’m so glad that you were here to hear this part
of John’s ending.
Easter Christians question the truth of the resurrection
The third, and to many of us, most stunning surprise John shares in his conclusion
is that after the amazing resurrection one of the disciple ridiculed it.
At first glance, we might think that this is the story that John should have
swept under the carpet. Not only, according to John, had Mary of Magdala,
Peter and some other disciples discovered the empty tomb, but Jesus had appeared
to the gathered disciples on Sunday! Still Thomas found it incredulous. He
wanted to see for himself. John holds back nothing in his ending as he lets
us know that even in the earliest church there were doubts about the essentials
of the faith. And while we might wonder how Thomas, who had experienced so
much with Jesus, could have been so double-minded, we know that’s how
it is with us too. Doubts set in at the very moments when we are on top of
things, at the pinnacle of faith-filled exuberance. Let’s say we are
head over heals in love and believe without doubt that God has brought us
together-- and then an accident or disease takes the loved one from us and
we know for sure there is no God! Let’s say we are at the top of our
career and thank God daily for our blessings—and then the economy fails
and we lose everything and now are convinced God is dead! Doubt and faith
dance together as cousins in the fragile business of life. No sooner do we
know that we have “caught faith like a disease,” as did Sarah
Miles in Graham Greene’s End of the Affair, when “considerations” allow
doubt to squelche even the boldest faith of an Easter Christian.
Yet this is ultimately the challenge that John sets before us throughout
his entire Gospel. The challenge is to understand that life’s biggest
problem, sin, is not so much individual acts of disobedience or petty
immoralities as it is failing to see in the vulnerable, wounded Jesus
the very love through which God claims us forever. Jesus mission is ultimately
to invite this vision. To see Jesus is to see God at work reconciling
estranged people through this complicated and difficult business of dying,
rising and living for real-- and forever. This is why John lets us hear
Thomas’s amazing faith statement, the most profound in all the
Scriptures: “My Lord and my God!”
It was a huge leap of faith from “not until I see him for myself” to “My
Lord and my God.” Yet this is the potential for all of us, John
wants to say, as the offer of faith and unbelief is set before us and
we come face to face with Jesus. We simply cannot have missed this moment,
this ending.
Easter Christians see deeper because there are signs along the way
John’s final thoughts in his surprising conclusion to his Gospel are
the most profound. He tells his readers that there are many things which could
be told and we’re not going to hear about them, but that enough signs
have been strewn on the path to help us come face to face with this Jesus so
that “we can have life in his name.” It’s a lovely thought,
considering that John has been quite skeptical about signs in this Gospel (John
4:48) Yet John would tell us that signs can be problematic when you merely
stare with bovine simplicity at them, getting caught up in the “what” and “how.” Signs,
as our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters could tell us, point to something
else. If we don’t get to their meaning or reason, we miss the point.
If we merely see the giant billboards along life’s highways and remember
nothing but their colors, we did not really see. If we learned something about
persons and places and contexts from smaller signs, however, we may have understood
the reason for our trip.
An interesting young American film director with an Indian heritage,
M. Night Shymalan, has two stunning films to his credit, “The Sixth
Sense” and “Signs.” The latter is the story about a
very successful and popular Episcopal priest (played by Mel Gibson) who
loses his faith in God because his wife is killed in a terrible car accident.
He resigns from the priesthood and with his brother raises his two children
in a house in rural Pennsylvania. Huge Signs begin to appear in the form
of “crop circles.” Ultimately people are convinced that these
are created by aliens who are invading the earth. Panic claims the world.
The little family boards itself up in its house for fear of what may
happen. (Sounds an awful lot like the disciples locked away in Jerusalem.)
While the science fiction dimension may seem preposterous to some of
us, the story has its resolution as Gibson tries to save his asthmatic
son remembering little signs which have been shared with him along the
way—all of which lead him to believe that things (even his wife’s
death) don’t happen without purpose and meaning. In the little
signs he finds help and direction and conviction, a personal affirmation
which restores his faith and leads him back into the priesthood. It’s
an interesting exploration into doubt and faith with a few science fiction
themes thrown in to make it contemporary.
Now, please don’t be angry that I told you the ending if you
haven’t seen the movie yet, because I took my cue from the Evangelist.
He did the same thing in his Gospel with the story of Jesus. He could
have left us on the mountaintop last Sunday with our resurrection confidence
wondering what might come next. I suspect he knew, however, that that
confidence had to have a context or it might become superficial bravado.
So he surprised us with some reversals in giving us his ending:
He let us know that the first Easter Christians were often cowards--
until Jesus lifted their fears and gave them the Spirit needed to fulfill
his mission.
He let us see the tawdry glory of nail holes in a vulnerable Jesus even
after the resurrection-- without whom we would forever warble “Halleluiahs” without
meaning.
He brought us face to face on Easter Sunday with a first-class Doubter—to
let us know that anyone, including ourselves, can come from such a place
to the point of exulting “My Lord and my God.”
He let us know that we weren’t going to be told everything we’d
like to know about life and our future —but there are enough signs
left in the Gospel stories and in the lives of faithful Christians to
give us all the faith and hope we would need for the journey.
And such things he told us because he wanted us to see deeper, because
he knew we need closure. He knew that life goes on—people can’t
sit for long breathlessly celebrating on mountaintops. John’s ending
does just that. It takes us into our homes, our family lives, our work
week, and our times along with ourselves. He provides an ending which
is a real beginning for us. And just think, this being “Low Sunday,” when
the Easter Christians often don’t return, you could have missed
it…
Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus
Concordia University at Austin
E-Mail: dzersen@aol.com
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