Psalm 150; John 20:19-31
Please join me in prayer: Living God, help us so to hear your holy Word that we may truly understand; that, understanding, we may believe, and, believing, we may follow in all faithfulness and obedience, seeking your honor and glory in all that we do; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Grace to you and peace as we gather again for worship.
But why are we gathering again for worship? What brings you to this place, week after week? Don’t answer so quickly, or so assuredly. You may think you know, but let’s spend some time here.
Today’s Gospel lesson has two separate events, a week apart, that pull together the Great Commission we get in Matthew plus the birth of the church we take from Acts.
The scene opens on Easter evening. We’re told the disciples are gathered behind locked doors because they fear the authorities. Sometime earlier in the day, Mary Magdalene had brought the news that she had seen the Lord. Instead of celebrating, though, they are cowering. Recall that other accounts of Easter day explicitly say Mary is not believed. That’s not said in John, but we can certainly infer it from the disciples’ actions.
Suddenly, in the midst of their fear and cowering, Jesus appears.
“Peace be with you,” he says. I doubt anyone automatically responded, “and also with you.” You get the feeling there was stunned silence, as he says nothing more before showing them his hands and his side. It’s as if he knew they would not believe their initial vision, so he had to add proof on top of proof.
Then they rejoiced. AFTER Mary had told them she had seen Jesus, AFTER they had seen Jesus, AFTER they had seen the wounds. THEN they rejoiced. Not a very faithful bunch, were they?
“Peace be with you,” Jesus says again, adding this time: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
“When he had said this,” John writes, “he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ ”
And the church is born. This is Pentecost in the Gospel of John. The church is born on Easter Day in this telling, not 50 days later.
There is much we could unpack from these few words, but let’s not stop just yet.
In the following days, Thomas – who for some reason we’re not given was not with the disciples on Easter evening – joins with the group and is told the news.
“We have seen the Lord,” the disciples tell him.
But, just as Mary Magdalene said, “I have seen the Lord,” and the disciples didn’t believe her, so the disciples say, “we have seen the Lord,” and Thomas doesn’t believe them.
“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.”
Now, move forward to a week later when the disciples are again in the same house, again behind closed doors. But this time, Thomas is there.
Once again, Jesus appears and says, “Peace be with you.” Without another word, he turns to Thomas, saying, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”
We don’t know whether Thomas actually reached out and touched Jesus, but we do know that he believed. “My Lord and my God!” It’s one of the earliest confessions in the Bible.
Through the years, we’ve been pretty hard on Thomas, labeling him “Doubting Thomas” and somehow implying that he should have known better. But the fact is, Thomas acted no differently than do the other disciples and no differently than you or me.
The lesson to be learned here is not about Thomas, and it is not about the disciples, and it is not about how they come to believe – well maybe it is a little bit of the latter.
They come to believe not because of any action of their own; they come to believe because of the action of Jesus Christ.
Mary says, “I have seen the Lord.” The disciples ignore her testimony.
And so the Lord appears.
The disciples say, “We have seen the Lord.” Thomas ignores their testimony, and what’s more lays out what it will take for him to believe.
And so the Lord appears, and does exactly what Thomas says will be necessary for him to believe.
In neither case does Jesus chastise or complain that these people – who were the closest to him – doubt his resurrection. He just gives them the evidence they need to believe.
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There’s something you will come to learn about me, if you don’t know it all ready. You see, I’m Presbyterian to the core, born and raised in the Presbyterian church. I buy into the way we do things – both in church government and in our theology – hook, line and sinker. Frankly, I have to confess that even though I’ll say other views and approaches may have validity, I’m not sure I really believe it.
My Presbyterian view of the world, especially of faith and mission, is to me so clear and basic that it’s hard to acknowledge other views. But I’m working on it; my stubbornness and pride are some of the faults to which I regularly confess and for which I seek forgiveness.
So, having confessed that, I want to help you see things the way I do because, to me, Presbyterian views of faith – the whys and so whats – are freeing and assuring.
And as one charged with helping lead this congregation and this presbytery and this denomination, I feel some responsibility for helping us all understands what it means to BE Presbyterian. Frankly, one of my concerns for our denomination is that our leaders haven’t done a particularly good job over the years of talking about the particularities of Presbyterianism and as a result we have lost some, maybe even most, of the special gifts we bring to the faith.
As children of the Protestant Reformation, particularly that branch led by John Calvin and John Knox and known generally as Reformed with a capital R, we Presbyterians have had a particular way of thinking about how belief is formed and how we are saved.
Although it has changed somewhat over the years from Calvin’s original doctrine of “double predestination,” the theme of election undergirds our particular view of faith.
Listen to the The Scots Confession, for example, adopted in 1560 and one of the 11 documents in our Book of Confessions:
“That same eternal God and Father, who by grace alone chose us in his Son Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world was laid, …” [1]
And from The Second Helvitic Confession, written a year later:
“GOD HAS ELECTED US OUT OF GRACE. From eternity God has freely, and of his mere grace, without any respect to men, predestinated or elected the saints whom he wills to save in Christ, according to the saying of the apostle, “God chose us in him before the foundation of the world” And again: “Who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not in virtue of our works but in virtue of his own purpose and the grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus ages ago, and now has manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus”
“WE ARE ELECTED OR PREDESTINATED IN CHRIST. Therefore, although not on account of any merit of ours, God has elected us, not directly, but in Christ, and on account of Christ, in order that those who are now ingrafted into Christ by faith might also be elected.”[2]
And this:
“FAITH IS THE GIFT OF GOD. But this faith is a pure gift of God which God alone of his grace gives to his elect according to his measure when, to whom and to the degree he wills. And he does this by the Holy Spirit by means of the preaching of the Gospel and steadfast prayer.”[3]
And from The Westminster Confession of Faith¸ written a century later, some selections:
“The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts …” [4]
“This faith is different in degrees, weak or strong; may be often and many ways assailed and weakened, but gets the victory; growing up in many to the attainment of a full assurance through Christ, who is both the author and finisher of our faith.”[5]
and this:
“This perseverance of the saints depends, not upon their own free-will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election, flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father; upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ; the abiding of the Spirit and of the seed of God within them; and the nature of the covenant of grace; from all which ariseth also the certainty and infallibility thereof.”[6]
You get the picture, I’m sure. Faith is given to us and it’s all God’s doing.
Now you may think you have some say in this, but that would be an illusion. As The Westminster Confession says, “The elect are enabled to believe.”
If we were to get to decide, we would be as powerful as God. Consider this over-simplified and probably sacrilegious illustration. It would be as if the question of where we’ll spend eternity is up for a vote with Satan getting one vote and God getting one vote and us getting one vote. We get the tie-breaker, then, and are equal with God.
That’s not an idea any of us would subscribe to.
So how is it then that you or I come to accept this thing called Christianity?
How is it that we believe anything that is intangible? It’s easy to believe the tangible stuff. We have two apples here, we take two apples there, and we have four apples. No question about it.
But why do you or I believe that God exists, or that Christ was raised from the dead and that He has died for our sins and that we are saved?
This belief is assaulted daily. In the mid-1960s, there was a book called The Passover Plot by Hugh J. Schonfield, which purported to lay out how Jesus and a few close disciples hatched a plot to make it appear he had been resurrected. The book made a compelling case.
So, if you wanted to look at hard evidence to decide whether or not to believe, here was something you could plug into your thought process and consider.
It wasn’t the first attempt to present a cogent argument that the claims of resurrection were false, and it wasn’t the last. As you no doubt heard, just within the last few months, James Cameron of Titanic fame claims to have discovered the bones of Jesus.
If that were true, of course, we’d be wasting our time here each Sunday. But Cameron’s claims generated a big ho-hum and dismissal.
Still, there’s plenty of “evidence” out there that our faith is an illusion.
But, in spite of that so-called evidence, we still believe.
Why? Because God has given us faith. It’s really as simple, and as complicated, as that.
This has all sorts of ramifications, but primarily, it means that we can quit worrying about what is in store for us after death, and get on with living here.
We can understand the Ten Commandments, for example, for what they are, not fear them for what they are not.
What are they not? They are not a roadmap to heaven, a kind of litmus test for how we must live if we hope to avoid damnation.
What are they? They are our response to grace. Because God has saved us, therefore we should respond by following these laws.
If we approach our lives in that way, as a thankful response to what has been done for us through the death and resurrection of Christ, then our whole tone and approach change.
No more do we judge others, no more do we threaten them with condemnation if they don’t behave as we think they should, no more do we live out of fear, but live instead out of love.
If you love someone, you naturally want to please them and not to disappoint them, so you listen to what they say.
And what Jesus says, immediately after breathing the Holy Spirit on the disciples in that locked room, is: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Lamar Williamson Jr., in a commentary on John, notes that when understood in the entire context of the gospel, this sentence stands as a description of what life in the Christian community should be. It’s not, in other words, a gift of power, but a description of life.
“If members of the community forgive one another their sins,” Williamson says, “those sins are forgiven and the community is living from and in the spirit of Jesus; but if members of the community harbor grudges and resentment towards other members who have sinned against them, then those sins remain to spoil the bond of unity, and the spirit of Jesus is no longer resident in the community.”[7]
And if the “spirit of Jesus is no longer resident,” it becomes much more difficult to follow his other commands, commands such as: “Feed my sheep,” or “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” or “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Do I still have questions about faith? Yes, many. Questions such as: Why do some believe and some not? Does God refuse to give faith to some, thereby condemning them to everlasting death? How are we to understand those passages in the Bible, such as Matthew 25, which seem to declare that our behavior will determine our fate?
Those kinds of questions can lead to doubts. Even if they are somewhat different that the kind of doubt Thomas had, but they are doubts that nevertheless can weaken faith.
But there’s nothing wrong with doubt. As Williamson says, “Jesus was not shocked by Thomas’s doubts and does not scold us for ours.”[8]
And even the Westminster Confession acknowledges that: “This faith is different in degrees, weak or strong; may be often and many ways assailed and weakened, but gets the victory…”
I’m reminded of one of my favorite verses in the Bible, Mark 9:24. A father comes to Jesus and asks if he’ll come heal his son of convulsions. Jesus answers that all things can be done for those who believe.
The father then cries out, “I believe; help my unbelief.” It’s probably a prayer we all have prayed at some time, and it’s a good one. And we can be assured that Jesus answers it, just as he heals the father’s son.
So a week after Easter, we see the disciples unbelief turned into belief, and we along with them can turn to praise and thanksgiving for what has been done for us.
We are left free to respond to this saving grace. Even the Psalmist knows this and the 150th Psalm, although written long before Jesus came to Earth, is the quintessential song of praise:
1 Praise the LORD!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty firmament!
2 Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his surpassing greatness!
3 Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
4 Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
5 Praise him with clanging cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
6 Let everything that breathes praise the LORD!
Praise the LORD!
After praising, we get to work, telling others of this grace and so they can respond, along with Thomas, “my Lord and my God.”
To God alone be the glory, amen.
Please join me in prayer: Good and gracious God, for your gift of faith, we thank you; for your gift of life, we thank you; for your going where we cannot go, we thank you; for calling us to be an Easter people, we thank you. In Christ’s name, amen.
[1] The Scots Confession, Chapter VIII, The Book of Confessions, © 1996, The Office of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
[2] The Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter X, The Book of Confessions, © 1996, The Office of The General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
[3] Ibid, Chapter 16.
[4] The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XVI, The Book of Confessions, © 1996, The Office of The General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid, Chapter XIX.
[7] Preaching the Gospel of John, Lamar Williamson Jr., © 2004, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, Page 283.
[8]Ibid.
