I See Jesus by Faith

 April 24 2022

John 20:19-31

As many of you know, I have been taking classes through Mount Vernon University as a requirement for my ordination. Let me just say that going to school was much more fun in my twenties than when I’m sixty. One thing that all of my classes have in common is that there is always a lot of reading. There is usually not just one textbook but more than likely three books that have to be bought and gone through. Usually, I have no trouble with the required reading. I enjoy learning about church history and theology but I did have some issues with one of the books that we were to study for the course which covered preaching. That book, entitled “When God is Silent” was written by Barbara Brown Taylor, was as the title suggests, about the aspect of God being silent, of God being hidden. To say that I struggled with this book is an understatement. It didn’t help either that we had to write a paper about what we thought about the text. I mean, how do you tactfully state that you considered this book to be a strange and disagreeable piece of work so as to not offend the teacher who wanted you to read it and cause him to give you a less than desirable grade. Looking back on the assignment, I can now see that what did not help is that I have been preaching from the gospel of John while I was reading this book. You see, John’s whole story is saturated with this God who speaks, a God who is not hidden but rather revealed, a God who by his very nature is in John’s terms known as the Word. Do you see how disorienting it might be to go from reading the gospel of John to reading a book whose whole premise is that we have to contend with a God who is silent?

So, yes, I agree with John that our God is a speaking God. He is a God who is known as being the Word, the Word who took on flesh, the Word who spoke through the life of the one named Jesus. Jesus is the one who came speaking of heavenly things, speaking of the truth, this undeniable reality of heaven which has invaded earth in a dramatic way, a way which could not be ignored. The disciples who followed Jesus discovered that he was the one who had the words of eternal life; who else could they go after to hear such words?

Jesus spoke of eternal life because eternal life is his life. He had come to earth from the realm of heaven, entering time from the experience of eternity. Jesus came speaking the words of his Heavenly Father, heaven rescuing a sin captured world through words. It is these words, this truth, that Jesus taught, this is what would set people free. This freedom would come about when the word of truth spoken by Jesus was heard and obeyed. In that moment, the Holy Spirit, the presence and power of heaven would take hold of the one who believed and in that moment, a person could go from being a slave to sin to being a child of heaven. This is the amazing power of the truth of Jesus. 

As we come to the scenes of the days after the resurrection as recorded in John’s gospel, we cannot understand the importance of what John has given to us without relying upon the importance of the words of Jesus. John’s account of the resurrection was written so that we might know that the new creation has at last broken into the old, that the one who walked out of that empty tomb was Jesus, the new Adam. Mary, who had met him there in the dewy darkness of that first morning, was unable to recognize him calling him instead, “the gardener”. This though, was still the correct assessment of who Jesus is, the new Adam who has been raised to fulfill what the first Adam had failed to do. In the second chapter of Genesis, God instructs the first Adam to tend and to keep, to guard, the garden that God has created him to live in. Yet, it is not too long until we find that this first Adam has not guarded the garden at all. Into the garden has come a snake, speaking words contrary to the word of God. Hearing these words, the garden is divided, humanity is severed from God, Adam is estranged from Eve; destruction has come through a voice.

Through the voice of Jesus, the new Adam, the garden will be at last, guarded over. The lies of Satan will no longer hold sway over the hearts of people. The grace of God, his holy love shown to us through what Jesus has done for us upon the cross has ended the dominion of Satan’s darkness. Jesus, the judge of all has stood under the judgment of all, standing in our place, the place that was ours because of our obedience to the lies of Satan. Satan ruled over us by instilling in us fear, anxiety and worry. Jesus, through taking on our judgment has removed our fear of judgment through his love for us. Now, the ruler of this world has been cast out because the perfect love of God has cast out our fear. Faith at last has come. The Greek word that is used by Paul to speak of the faith that we have been given by Jesus is a word that means to be under the authority of what one has heard. Thus when we hear Jesus we must not only acknowledge his voice but his words must create in us a response of action.

Yet, even as this is very much the truth of the resurrection of Jesus, what we find is that, here, a week after Jesus has risen from the dead, his disciples are cowering behind locked doors. They know that if the authorities came and crucified Jesus then they most assuredly will come for them. So, they lock things up and hunker down, waiting for the dreaded pounding on the door. No knock ever comes, though. No, there in the silence, Jesus came. He stood there among them, and simply said, “Peace to you”. Knowing the last prayer that Jesus spoke in their presence, the disciples would have remembered that Jesus, their high priest, spoke over them the blessing of Aaron, the first high priest. Jesus was indeed the Lord who had blessed them by demonstrating his great love for them, he had kept them, guarded over them, he had been gracious unto them inviting them to rejoice in his presence and now as they beheld him as his face shone with the glory of the resurrection, Jesus grants them, peace. In the Hebrew thought, peace is more than just the absence of conflict but rather this peace, which is also known as shalom, is about integrity, wholeness and flourishing. In other words, shalom is the original goodness of God’s creation, before the division, estrangement and destruction that Satan brought about. Though their world, and our world does not appear to be experiencing this peace, what we do know is that it is Jesus who is this new creation, he is our shalom.

Now, what we know about Aaron blessing the people of God, telling them of God’s blessing, that he is a God who keeps them, that he is a God whose face shines upon them and is gracious unto them, a God in whose presence is peace, all of this was given so that the people of God might have the name of God placed upon them as they turned from their worship in the tabernacle and headed back home. They were to be those who carried the very reputation of God with them as they went so that those they met might know that their God is a God of steadfast love, mercy, grace and faithfulness. So, it is no surprise then, that after Jesus displayed his wounds to his disciples and once again pronounced his peace upon them, Jesus announces that they as his disciples were being sent out into the world. No more hiding behind closed doors, no more waiting for trouble to find them, no more acting as if the resurrection had never happened. Just as the people of Israel had a mission to fulfill, that they were to not take the name of God that they bore in a trivial manner as if the reputation of God was some insignificant matter, so too the disciples were being sent out with the reputation of God on the line. Yet, they did not have to go out and uphold the name of God all under their own strength and power. No, here again it is God who wills and works in us to do his good pleasure. Jesus breathed on his disciples with holy breath. The wording here is the same as in the creation story when God first took some mud and molded and shaped it just so.Then we are told that God breathed breath into his creation and suddenly, God’s creation stood looking back at him. So, here again we find that as the first Adam became a living being the second Adam, Jesus, became a life-giving Spirit. As the first Adam was of the dust, so the second Adam was the man of heaven so that we might bear the image of the man of heaven. As John describes Jesus in the first chapter of his gospel, Jesus the only Son of the Father was full of grace and truth. Grace and truth is the very name of God, his unchanging nature and this name, this grace and truth are what fill us when the Holy Spirit flows into us, blowing over us and into us with the very air of heaven. In the fifth chapter of Romans we are told that it is the Holy Spirit which pours the love of God into us. When we know that it is God’s love which has taken hold of us then we can hear the certainty of Paul when he says at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans, that he is absolutely confident that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, not height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul is speaking to the very faithfulness of the God who loves us and has filled us with his love. So, now that the Holy Spirit has poured the love of heaven into our hearts, we are transformed into people whose lives speak of a God of steadfast love and faithfulness that the world experiences as grace, the welcome and favor of God and truth, the undeniable reality of the realm of heaven, from where every good and perfect gift comes from the Father.

Now, when we understand the work that the Holy Spirit does within us, then we may be a little confused when Jesus tells his disciples that they were to receive the Holy Spirit and when they do, then if they forgive the sins of any, they would be forgiven them. If they withheld forgiveness, then forgiveness would be withheld from that person. When we hear this, what is most important to hear is that we are to receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is what tempers us from thinking of those who hear these words of Jesus from becoming gatekeepers deciding that, yup, your sins are forgiven, but no, your sins, way to bad, you’re out. No, what we are to remember is just what Jesus taught about the Holy Spirit on the night he was betrayed. Jesus promised his disciples that he would ask the Father and the Father would send another one who would walk alongside them and speak to them, the Spirit of truth. This Spirit, Jesus promised, would come in the name of Jesus, in the same character that Jesus had,  and this Spirit would teach the disciples all about Jesus and bring to their remembrance all that Jesus had said to them. It is easy to hear that what Jesus knows will be of utmost importance is that his disciples will always have the assurance that his words will be ever with them, spoken to them through the very Spirit of truth.

Now, Jesus also told his disciples that not only would the Spirit witness to them about him, the Spirit would also be the one to prove the world wrong concerning three thing:sin, righteousness and judgment. The Holy Spirit will convince the world of their sin because they do not believe in Jesus. The Holy Spirit will convince the world concerning righteousness because Jesus has ascended to the Father and the world sees him no more. The Holy Spirit will convince the world of judgment because the ruler of this world has been judged. The first situation, of whether to believe in the words of Jesus hinges on two questions. The first question is this: are the words of Jesus the right words to believe? The answer to that question is yes, they are the right words to trust in because Jesus has ascended. Jesus was able to ascend to the Father because he is righteous.Because Jesus has ascended, the Holy Spirit has been given to us. How do we know the Holy Spirit has been given to us, one might ask? The answer is that we know the Spirit has been given because now the perfect love of God has been poured into the hearts of those who trust in Jesus. So, this resolves the question as to whether or not that believing in Jesus is the right thing to do. The second question is this: are we able to believe what Jesus speaks to us? The answer is that, yes, we are able to trust in what Jesus has said to us because Jesus has taken our judgment upon himself when he died upon the cross. Now, we no longer have any fear of judgment, no fear of punishment, so that we can be confident of our status on judgment day. So, again it is the perfect love of God which is the power which has taken our fear and has replaced it with faith. Do you see how, once again, we find the Holy Spirit has placed the name of God, his love and his faithfulness upon us through the power of the love of heaven? All of this then leads us to answer the first question which is do we believe in Jesus? The Holy Spirit has convinced us that believing in what Jesus says is the right way to live and we can now have faith to believe because the perfect love given to us by the Holy Spirit convinces us that we have nothing to fear on judgment day. So, yes there is no reason that keeps anyone from believing in Jesus. In other words, if a person has experienced what is meant by the forgiveness of their sins, they will believe in Jesus. When a person understands that Jesus has created a future for them where they now know that what he says is the right way to live and has created in their hearts a faith with which to believe in his words and they go forth and live according to what Jesus has spoken, this is the true meaning of forgiveness. But if they refuse to believe, refusing to accept the righteousness of Jesus, and if they are afraid that believing in what Jesus teaches will be too difficult for them, then all that can be said is that their sin has surely seized a hold of their life. You see, the love of God is the light of the world and through this love Jesus has for us he has made a way for all of us to come and live in the light. As Jesus teaches us in the third chapter of John, this is the judgment, the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come into the light, lest his works be exposed. You see, those who hate the light, those who love the darkness, these are those who refuse to hear and obey the words of Jesus. They are the ones that the disciples of Jesus are called to tell them that their sin has seized a hold of their hearts. The followers of Jesus are not judging these who refuse to believe; their judgment, as Jesus states, is that they have loved living in the dark, living in apathy and hatred and fear. Even so, this judgment does not have to become a permanent event unless the time to choose the future Jesus holds out for them has passed. This is why, we, as the followers of Jesus, we are to proclaim the truth. To those who know that the words Jesus speaks are the right way to live and know that the love of Jesus has made their faith a reality, it can be said, that truly their sins are forgiven. To those who refuse to accept that the words of Jesus are the right way of living, instead choosing to live life driven by fear, they must know that sin has seized ahold of them, yet even so, it is not too late to come and experience the joy of walking in the light. This is what is meant by stating that we are to speak the truth in love.

We see how this plays out in the life of Thomas. Thomas missed the first visit of Jesus, so he told his friends that unless he saw first hand the wounds of the crucified, he would never believe. Here, we see how Thomas was lost in his unbelief yet his friends did not kick him to the curb but instead stuck by him, trusting that Jesus would answer their prayers. Once again, Jesus came. Once again, Jesus proclaimed, peace. Jesus pleaded with Thomas to believe. Thomas at once believed, the first to confess that Jesus was his Lord and his God. Jesus is still speaking. His words come on the wind of the Holy Spirit. Do you hear them? Do you believe them? Do you live by them? To the honor and glory of God! Amen!