Transcript
I want to express to you, Ron, and also to Jack, my own really deep appreciation for
the hospitality that, as always, the sense of graciousness and gentleness and love that
you feel here in Princeton from people like Jack and now Ron and David Crawford, Dr. McCord.
There's just a, and the faculty, it's just a wonderful feeling here, and I have felt
it this week very much, and I thank God for it.
It's a part of the nourishment that I know all of us have had here this week.
And I want to thank you, as mentors during this week, you have been an inspiration to me
in the studies that I've been trying to lead you in.
It's a beautiful thing to have a community of scholars, a community of pastors, preachers,
and spouses, people who are involved in the church to be like iron sharpening iron experience.
I had, for instance, a wonderful kind of help yesterday in the text that I did the
exposition on yesterday.
One of you afterward came up and posed another alternative from the eldest to the youngest,
leaving at the stoning incident of the woman caught in adultery, and I was quite intrigued
and helped by a whole new way of looking at that that runs in a different direction than
I was interpreting it.
As you remember yesterday, I interpreted from the eldest to the youngest, it perhaps
sets a sign of the fact that these stood around were older, were more willing to recognize
their own ambiguity and their own weaknesses, not that older people always have that gift,
but sometimes they do.
And they are able to sense, perhaps, their own simplest, and the younger hung around
longer, less able, perhaps, to sense their own frailty.
And I had taken the text along that tack, and one of you came up afterward and said, well,
now you don't want to be too hard on the young, though, and it may well be that that is
a luxurious interpretation, of course, and I want to be lean, and not luxurious in my
own interpretation, so I appreciated his corrective.
He says, that may be a luxurious interpretation.
It may simply be that the younger waited for the signal of the older, and that's another
interpretation of that.
It just shows you how you need the help, and so it could be just the reverse of the interpretation
line that I took.
That the younger being more wanting to defer, not being the sense of the infallibility
like those youth delegates of the World Council of Judges, in the eyes of my Roman Catholic
friend that was at Uppsala, but where they looked like they were infallible.
But it may be just the other way around for this group of young zealots stood by that incident.
It may be that they were watching the older leaders of the community for their signal,
and so it just could be that that's all John means it, from the elder to the younger
they left, the young waited for the older to give the older leaders of the community to
give the signal.
So, you see, that's one of the exciting things about biblical interpretation, and especially
when you dare to do expositional preaching, you often get that kind of feedback that helps
you to refine your next edition of your commentary.
Now I know why Karl Barth wrote nine editions to his Roman brief, and he devoted 11 years
of his life to Romans.
He preached on it in his church at Safenwil until he got tired of Romans, and also of
Karl Barth.
But it was an amazing achievement that, no, it was seven, seven editions he produced of
the Roman brief over a period of 11 years, and I'm sure one of the reasons he produced
so many editions is that he had people come up to him after lectures and say now can we
refine that point a little more.
Today we want to continue our journey through the Gospel of John, and then again I want
to select one passage for our exposition in more detail.
What I'm calling that section, the Feast of Tabernacle's Discourse, which contains some
of the most important teaching in the Gospel of John, I sort of draw it to a close in the
10th chapter, though you'll notice in the 10th chapter, the 22nd verse, John introduces
another Feast, the Feast of Hanukkah, Feast of Dedication, so he trails from the one
into the other.
The Feast of Tabernacles would be in October, and then in verse 22 of chapter 10, he moves
right over to the Feast of Dedication of the Winter Feast.
And that 10th chapter, which we're not able to do an exposition on today, is a very key
kind of convergence chapter in the book of John, great section that should be done a serious
exposition, because all the threads and the themes tend to converge in that 10th chapter
were again the "I ams" now reach a kind of crescendo.
Then in the 11th chapter, as I said the other day, now we're in Judah, and this is all now
solid Judean ministry, no more trips to Galilee.
In the 11th chapter, we discovered Jesus went back out to Jordan, and then he hears
of the illness of Lazarus.
And the only John tells us of the Lazarus incident, the death of Lazarus and the raising
of Lazarus.
This is very important, as you'll see in a few moments, but in this encounter with Lazarus
and his family, we run into Mary and Martha, and we owe a debt to John again from a narrator
standpoint that if it were not for John, if you're
a thought of the fact, if you only had Matthew, Mark and Luke to go on, and especially Luke
who takes a lot of attention to Martha, you would only think of Martha as a cranky woman
scolding her sister Mary, because if you look at the Matthew Mark and Luke accounts,
that's all you know about Martha.
Martha is toiling herself with the housework and not attending to larger issues.
That's the way it looks.
That God for the Johannine account who shows Martha in the strength of herself as a
theologian.
She's the one who goes out to meet Jesus.
She's the one who expresses her faith, the resurrection.
She's the one who is at center stage in this Lazarus incident.
And so Martha now comes through in a whole new light again, thanks to John.
John has done this with lots of the characters of the New Testament.
A lot of the disciples, especially some of the lesser known disciples, if it were not for
John, we would have no insight into them at all.
If you read Raymond Brown's commentary and also mine, you will discover that there is
a hypothesis been presented by several scholars that perhaps Judas of Iscariot was the brother
of Lazarus.
Now, I'll let you sleuth that out yourself, quite an interesting and intriguing possibility.
That Judas Iscariot comes from, he's the only one from the south and that may be an interesting
connection that helps us to better understand Judas' scolding of the point of the expensive
nard ointment incident that occurs also.
I'll leave all that for you just to sleuth out for yourself.
It's just a hypothesis, but it does have a lot of little pieces of the puzzle do come together
if you take that hypothesis.
All right, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, then we come to the entry into Jerusalem
according to John, Palm Sunday.
And once again, it's John who tells us that they use palm fronds.
You would not know that from Matthew, Mark and Luke.
That's why we call it Palm Sunday because of John's evidence.
That in itself is interesting.
That as Jesus entered the city, the people would use palm fronds to honor him.
They would cry out hosanna, which literally means Lord help us.
They would cry out Messianic formula and Messianic statements to Christ.
What's interesting about the palm frond is that that is the symbol on the crest of Judas
Maccabees.
And it helps us to appreciate that when Jesus came in on Palm Sunday, the people saw him
in the light of the Judas Maccabees event, the cleansing of the temple.
And that also gives credence to the fact that the first time Christ came to Jerusalem,
he had indeed cleansed the temple.
And they remembered that.
And so now he comes again, almost in the spirit and the people are thinking of that of
that Judas Maccabees event in 156 BC.
Also we owe to John another important link.
You realize that if you read Matthew, Mark and Luke and you are an audience critic or a sociological
critic of the text, you cannot figure out why such a large crowd gathers for the entry
of Jesus into Jerusalem.
Have you ever thought about that when you've done synoptic studies?
The synoptic studies do not prepare you.
It's not plausible to understand, just like I said earlier, it's not plausible to understand
how Jesus at Galilee, according to Matthew, Mark and Luke, should just come up to the disciples,
Peter, James and John, as they follow me and they just simply follow him.
That's almost spooky.
It's like Ben-Hur, that sort of a Hollywood approach to disciple and his master.
But after you read John, you realize that Peter, James and John Andrew had met Jesus down
at Jordan.
They had already met him.
They were disciples of John the Baptist.
They knew a lot about him.
And so when he comes to Galilee and says, follow me, they know him already.
They have fought it through.
Now the same thing with Palm Sunday, you read Matthew, Mark and Luke, and you tell me,
why do a great crowd of people, huge crowds of people come out to meet Jesus?
It doesn't make sense.
According to Matthew, Mark and Luke, he's never even been there before.
Why are they coming out?
John tells us because of the rumor concerning Lazarus.
And because of previous visits to Jerusalem, and perhaps because of all the rumors circulating
because of the cleansing of the temple before, remember that's what Judas Maccabees did.
He cleansed the temple.
And that's what a really zealous Jewish person would hope for.
And so we get now an insight in the 12th chapter, John said, in fact, John says flat out
that the crowds built on Palm Sunday because of the rumors concerning the raising of Lazarus
from the dead.
All right, now we come into Holy Week.
The Holy Week portrayal by John is, again, different than Matthew, Mark and Luke.
It's, again, more interior, more intensive.
Whereas Matthew, Mark and Luke are very highly event-oriented in those, in Holy
Week events.
John is more ideologically oriented.
He's more teaching-oriented, didactically-oriented.
And we now come to chapter 12, or rather at the end of the 12th, 13, 14, 15, 16, and then
the high priestess, prayer, 17, what we call the Thursday night discourse.
Again, a terribly intensive interior part of the teaching of Christ.
We're not going to be able to do any expositions in that section, but it is a tremendously
important section.
Because it is so didactic and so filled with long teaching stretches, a lot of interpreters,
19th century and 20th century, and even current interpreters of John said, well, obviously
that's just stuff John makes up.
He couldn't remember those speeches, Jesus gave.
But don't sell short the first century person's ability to remember speeches.
They were living in an oral period in which you learn how to remember things very, very
well with a lot of accuracy.
So I don't find that persuasive arguing at all against these long narrative passages.
According to John, on that Thursday night discourse, Jesus did a great deal of teaching.
I'm not assuming that all of it occurred on Thursday night, but it appears in this text
in that frame of reference.
On 13th, we now, chapter 13, all that teaching, I am the way, a lot of the 'I Am's come together,
a lot of the teaching about the future hope, teaching about the Holy Spirit and the ministry
of the Holy Comforter all coming together in those passages.
Starting with the high priestly prayer, chapter 17, and then the arrest, chapter 18.
Once again, in the arrest and the trial of Jesus Christ, John plays the role of corrector.
He makes, in my opinion, some definite corrections of points that might be confusing from Matthew
Mark Luke account.
One more example to me that John is fully aware of the Matthew Mark and Luke, perhaps
Q document sources that the early church was circulating.
And for instance, John, I'm not going to be able to point up all of these, but let's
just make a couple of observations.
John makes a very, goes to great pains to do some things that are not made clear in the
other accounts.
One, he makes it clear that Jesus was taken in his arrest first to the house of Annas.
And by the way, he is very accurate in his portrayal here.
Annas, though he had been deposed as high priest, and his son-in-law, Caiaphas, had been made
high priest, the wily Caiaphas, who would be able to last it out to 37 AD, very, very good
bureaucrat and politician.
But his father-in-law, Annas, if you read closely first century like Josephus and others,
we discover that though Annas had been deposed, he was the real power.
He was the power behind Caiaphas.
And he had his own palace, and Caiaphas had his palace.
And so John wants us to know that the trial first took place, notice verse 12, chapter
18.
So the band of soldiers or captains, officers of the Jews, seized Jesus, bound him, first
they led him to Annas.
For he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year.
And it was Caiaphas who had given counsel to the Jews that it was expedient that one
man should die for the nation.
Okay, so John is very clear on that.
Also John's gospel is the one that gives us the insight into how Peter came into the
inner court.
And John makes himself a part of the whole picture, saying that he, John, was a new, the
person that kept the gate, and that's how Peter got in.
So we get even a little more insight, a little more human insight into Peter and the agony
of that hour in Peter's life.
Then comes the chapter 19 and the encounter of our Lord with the pilot, Pontius Pilate.
And the trial of Christ and then the crucifixion.
Because of time we cannot go into the note up, note all the, again, distinctive marks that
John has.
But as you know, John's treatment of the death of our Lord is so spare and simple in
the way he uses very few words, there's no sense of overload, no sense of emotional overload
in the way John portrays it, very simple, very direct, very moving.
Again, he does not repeat the other writers.
Instead, you can see John consciously seems to be wanting to put in pieces of evidence
and pieces of information that the other writers do not have.
And that's why John's account is so important in the narrative of the death of our Lord.
One comment I do want to make though is that John goes to great pains to assert the fact
that Christ really died.
Now if you were a form critic, you would say why that special care that John goes to make
the point clear that Jesus really died.
Well, of course, for the time John wrote his gospel, if you take my line of reasoning
around 70 AD, we know that there's a proto-Gnostic or what might be called pre-Gnostic, proto-Gnostic
movements are already at work and he, remember, lives in Ephesus.
He's aware of this proto-Gnostic development which finds it repugnant to think that any
kind of deity would die.
And so there's already the beginnings of what's going to later be Gnostic teaching that Christ
did not die.
He only appeared to die.
But John wants to make it clear he died.
And you'll see that that will help to explain that why John presses in so hard and gives
the double witness, I swear, this is true, he says, that I know he died.
And then, of course, the burial is portrayed by John.
And then, chapter 20, the resurrection of Christ.
Once again, the resurrection narrative of John's is different than anybody else's
resurrection narrative.
Once again, it's more interior.
It's more singularly oriented, Mary Magdalene and her incredible encounter with Jesus at
the tomb, thinking him to be the gardener.
It's a very moving account and written again in the typical Johannes style.
Then, of course, the encounter with the disciples, then another little periscope, a section
here in this text that is nowhere else in the gospels, the encounter with Thomas.
And then, the book ends at the end of the 31st verse of chapter 20 in some ways.
The book seems to be drawn to a close by John.
You'll notice the RSV gives you another white line after verse 31 of chapter 20.
And then chapter 21, the epilogue.
I see no reason whatsoever to omit the epilogue from the Johannine account.
It's written in Johannine language.
And I think you should take it, just like you take the sort of P.S. that Paul puts in
his letters.
You notice how Paul's letter to the Philippians, he stops the letter about three times and
then zooms off the airport again and says, oh, finally, you know, he starts saying finally
brethren in chapter 2 or 3 of the book of Philippians and then zooms off the airport again
and thinks of something else he wants to say.
He would not pass Dr. McLeod's homiletics course because he keeps zooming off with another
point to make.
Well, John evidently it does the same thing.
He has closed his book off in a way with verse 31.
Notice, these things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son
of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.
And then an intimate account terribly intense, very personal and epilogue about John and
Peter, the disciples at Galilee, back to Galilee, and their final, again, an account that
appears nowhere else in the gospel records, in which Jesus says to Thomas to Peter, do
you love me?
Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Feed my sheep, feed my sheep, feed my sheep.
And once again, that priceless little interchange between Peter, Jesus, John.
And again, where our Lord says to Peter, don't you worry about John, you follow me.
And in a sense to John, don't you worry about Peter, you follow me.
Each of you follow me.
It's a very personal, very intimate, final note, and then notice John feels now repentant
from having ended his book prematurely before.
He's not so sure that he might have another epilogue, so notice how he ends chapter 21.
But there are so many other things that Jesus did were every one of them to be written.
I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that could be written.
And I think now you see he's a little less sure of his endings because he thinks I might
write another epilogue next week when I think of one more incident that I should put in,
but he finally decides to cut the book off.
No amen, no benediction or anything, he just cuts it off by saying, you know, there's
so many other things we could write, but we must stop somewhere.
Like Luther ended most of his sermons, I love this.
Well that's enough for today.
And I think I end a lot of my sermons that way too.
It's not a bad way to end the sermon.
That's enough for today.
There's a lot more that could be said, let's stop.
And that's the way he ends his gospel.
Okay, I want to do an interior exposition now on one scene in the resurrection narratives
of Christ.
And that is the Thomas the Twin scene.
So now jump back to chapter 20 of John.
And let's take a look at that one scene and have an attempt to study one passage in depth.
As I said a few moments ago, we owe a debt to John because John makes many of the apostles
come to life that we would not really know about apart from John.
As I said a moment ago, Martha.
Gee, Martha is just a cranky woman in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
But by the time you meet her in John, Martha is a formidable, wonderful person.
When you get through the Johannite account, the Lazarus account, you say, I wish I could
know Martha.
You get through Luke's account, you say, I'm sure hope I don't ever meet up with Martha.
But you get through with John, I'd love to talk to Martha.
That's the way John does with a lot of Andrew.
You would know nothing about Andrew if it were not for John.
Philip, even the obscure Philip, even insights into Judas, and of course Peter.
And there's a little rivalry between John and Peter.
So that makes even all the more the tender, John's helping us to really understand Peter.
And of course, though he never mentions himself by name, we get Insights into John.
Now we get an insight into another character where as far as the other gospels are concerned,
we would know nothing of this man called Thomas the Twin, Didymus.
Everybody is nicknamed in the Apostolic band, and his nickname is the twin.
I think that's about the least attractive nickname I can think of except for Andrew's.
And that is Andrew's nickname was he was called Simon Peter's brother.
I think that's a worse nickname.
Because I grew up with that, all my childhood I had a brother who was six-foot-five,
and I'm not.
Oh, yeah, that's another bad nickname, is that young guy named James the Less.
I don't like that nickname either.
That means James the Short One, evidently other James was the big one.
So everybody had a nickname, and the worst, of course, is Andrew, poor Andrews, Simon
Peter's brother.
Mine was always Lou Palmer's brother growing up.
But this one's not such a good nickname either, it's Thomas the Twin.
In other words, just somebody else exactly like you can't even be distinctive.
Anyway, Thomas is called the twin.
Maybe there is another person in the apostolic band who is his brother.
We don't know.
Or maybe he looked like somebody else.
Who knows why this nickname was given to him.
But if it were not for John's gospel, we'd know nothing about Thomas, really.
And now we know something about him from an amazing account.
Okay, let's take a look at it.
In chapter 20, John tells us that there are three major resurrection accounts that he wants
to portray.
None of the other writers have them.
First, Mary Magdalene.
John is very interested in women.
His portrayal of women is, as I point out, is much more in depth than the other gospels.
So the Mary Magdalene account, very moving.
Of course, Peter and John going to the tomb, then the disciples as a whole group.
Let's just see that scene.
Verse 19, on the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut
where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came stood among them and said, peace
be with you.
Okay, the encounter with the disciples.
That is very similar to the Matthew, Mark, Luke accounts.
And now, verse 24.
Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the twin, was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord.
But he said to them, unless I see in his hands the print of the nails and place my finger
in the mark of the nails and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.
And now you know why Thomas in the history of the church has been called doubting Thomas.
He is the doubter.
I want to make a few comments about the nature of this doubt before we proceed with the accounts.
So that we are all together in knowing what the text is really saying.
Notice that Thomas is not doubting Christ.
He is doubting the witness to Christ.
He says, I will not believe unless I see the nail print in his hands and put my finger
in the mark of the nails and place my hand in his side.
And of course, he is paying reference to the fact of the death of Christ.
Now let us be sure we understand the nature of this doubt because we can really miss
this text and miss the point of this text if we do not.
Thomas is doubting the witness of the disciples to the victory of Christ.
That is what he is doubting.
He is not doubting the existence of Christ.
He is not doubting the death of Christ.
In fact, Thomas says, I was with that man for three years.
I love that man.
I saw him die.
In fact, he goes into detail.
I saw him die with the nails through his hands and the spear in his side.
I will believe that man, but I will take my chance on nothing else.
That is the doubt.
Notice what he is doubting.
In other words, maybe the disciples have seen an angel.
And all for centuries people believe in angels.
The doctrine of angelology is highly defined, highly refined doctrine among Jews.
And so maybe they have seen an angel, angel from God himself, Gabriel, who has come down
and said, cheer up, everything is going to be all right, Christ is going to be okay.
Thomas says, I will not believe in that.
Or maybe they have seen an apparition or a spirit or a ghost and for centuries people
believe in ghosts.
Thomas says, I won't believe in that.
It is not good enough for me.
Or maybe in the sheer fatigue and the disappointment of having there, oh, you remember the last
line in Johann Sebastian Bach's corral, the Passion of Christ, Matthew where he has that
awe-Golgotha, unhappy-Golgotha, who will the world's redeemer be now that Christ has
died?
And here the disciples crushed having their redeemer died, having this one they had all these
hopes for Israel, for their own lives.
Now snuffed out in this petty, trivial collection of conspiracy and Roman power and then brutality
and all of that, now all crushed, snuffed out and they're frightened and they're scared
and they're lonely and they haven't slept for three days.
But now they're in fatigue and when people are in fatigue, sometimes they have hallucinations
and maybe that's what they had on Easter morning was a hallucination.
And Thomas says, that's not good enough for me.
Okay, let me put what Thomas is saying in theological language.
Thomas is saying this, he is saying that for me, the Jesus of history and the Christ of
faith must be the same person.
He's a Barthian.
Barth said, word and work, inseparable.
That's the famous Barthian quotation.
His pupil, Bonhoeffer, put it, act and being must be united.
He wrote his doctoral dissertation on that.
And Thomas said it first, he said, if I can put my finger in the nail scar, if I can
be convinced that the man who died on the cross, if that man's alive, then I'll believe.
But I'll take my chance on nothing else, no angels, no ghosts, no apparitions and no
dreams that are now being actualized in some sort of fantasy that maybe the discipleships
will try to project down to the centuries of the power of the spirit of good over the
spirit of evil.
He says, I'm not going to build my life on that.
No, for Thomas, the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith must for him be the same person.
No separation.
All right.
Now how are such central questions as this?
How is such a central doubt as this resolved?
Well, let's take a look at the text.
The first way it's resolved is that Thomas sets out a criteria as best he can of what
he needs to know.
And by the way, if I can make a passport comment to you about young people in your church
or older people who are doubters, I advise you to do this.
I do it with people who are doubters.
I try to get him to do it, Thomas does.
Tell me what you need to know.
Instead of immediately jumping in and trying to answer what you think are people's doubts,
get a person to verbalize their doubt and what it is they need to know.
Notice that Thomas does it.
Unless I can put my finger in the nail scar in the hand in the side, I can't believe.
See, he sets out a criteria.
He sets out a plan.
He sets out a question.
And he says, I need to know this.
This is what I've got to know.
And I find that sometimes very helpful with a person who's doubting, who's in a period
of doubt in their life.
And remember, doubt, like Tennyson said, honest doubt, it has more faith than it usually
than most of the faith of the creeds.
So don't be so frightened of doubt.
Because Thomas has got a lot of faith here.
Notice, he does believe in Christ.
He believes that Christ died.
He just has to be sure that he's alive.
That's fair enough.
What do you need to know?
What is it you need to know, Thomas?
That's the first thing he does.
Now if you'll permit me, I'm going to try not to be luxurious and it's interpretation.
It's going to be very lean.
And let me make an interpretation on the next three words or next sentence.
Back to the text, 26.
After he gives his criteria, after he says what he needs to know, then notice this next
sentence.
Eight days later, the disciples were again in the house and Thomas was with them.
Can you permit me one more interpretive comment?
This doubts, but Thomas stays with the disciples for eight terrible days.
Terrible days.
The disciples are singing, you asked me how I know he lives.
He lives within my heart.
And they're having these choruses and they're praising God and they're having sharing times
and praying and Thomas is sitting there, I don't know.
Do you know what a wet blanket, a person like that isn't a youth retreat or on your
session, always back there scratching his head a little bit, I sure hope it's true.
I mean it just, what a damper on all the choruses and prayer times.
And yet, eight days later, as rough as it is, though Thomas cannot accept the witness
of the disciples, mind you, that's the doubt.
He still stays with the disciples.
And I have said to doubters, look at, stay with the church, hang in with the people who
do have faith, don't walk away from the people who have faith when you have doubts.
And Thomas does, for eight days, he stays with the disciples.
And I admire him and I admire the fact that he, according to the way the text proceeds,
he stays with the disciples even though he has doubts.
And he doesn't do it at the expense of his integrity.
He doesn't say, oh, you know what they're saying, isn't it wonderful that little or lives
in Thomas?
Oh yes, isn't it wonderful?
But he doesn't believe it.
No, he doesn't say that.
He keeps his doubts, he keeps his integrity.
He does not adopt the disciples' faith in order to please them.
He sets out the questions he needs to know and then he stays in the fellowship.
And I think it's a really wonderful thing when a person who is a doubter can do that.
Now if I'm going to hand that bouquet out to Thomas for staying with the disciples, I
think it's about time we hand out a bouquet of the disciples.
Because if it's rough for Thomas to stay with them who have faith, it's rough for the disciples
to hang in with Thomas.
They are certainly not Marxists, I'll tell you that.
You know one of the basic principles in Marxist and Leninist thought is that you must purge
the group of those who are not true believers.
You must get rid of Arthur Kessler's darkness at noon.
You see that that's one of the key points in Lenin's theory of leadership training and
of the building of the community.
You must get rid of the doubter.
You must get rid of the revisionist.
You know that the revisionist is the number one bad no-no term for a Marxist society.
You must get rid of the counter-revolutionary because they're against the masses.
You cannot have any doubters in the cell.
And I think it's a tribute to the disciples that they're so sure of their own discovery
of Christ's victory that they can endure the doubter.
I honestly think that sometimes one of the marks of how sure you are of your faith is
how well you can endure the person who doesn't believe in what you believe.
How you relate to them.
Can you endure Thomas in the midst of the fellowship for eight days even though he can't believe?
Without putting pressure on him evidently they don't keep going, I want Thomas to change
your mind.
Be with us now.
Nope.
Evidently they keep their faith, they keep their integrity.
Thomas keeps his integrity, eight rather unpleasant days perhaps.
I know these kinds of people are rough to be around.
But they stay in with Thomas.
If Thomas stays with the disciples, the disciples stay with him.
And can I give you a beautiful little P.S. to this?
I think it's moving that in chapter 21 when Peter was faced with his doubt.
And that's what chapter 21's all about.
Look at the way that chapter starts.
After this Jesus revealed himself again in the disciples of the Sea of Tiberias.
He revealed himself in this way, Simon Peter, Thomas called the twin, Nathaniel of Cana
a Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two of the disciples were together, Thomas, Peter
says, I'm going fishing.
And then they said, we're going with you.
What's Peter going fishing for?
He's supposed to start the church.
You know why he's going fishing?
Because he's in deep despair.
Christ is one of the victory, but Peter betrayed him.
So he says, he fell as I got to go fishing.
It's a good thing to do when you're in despair.
Do something you like.
And these guys won't let Peter go off by himself.
They say, we're going with you.
We're going to hang in with him.
Okay?
They learned it from Thomas.
He hangs in with the disciples and they hang in with him.
Right now comes the resolution.
And the resolution is so remarkable in how little it says.
I'm intrigued by the resolution.
In the Thomas evidently doesn't get, he doesn't fulfill his criteria.
We have no record of him putting his hand in touching the side of Christ.
We have no record of him actually putting his hand in the nail scar.
Instead notice what happens.
Eight days later the disciples were again in the house, Thomas was with them, the doors
were shut.
Jesus came, stood among them and said, peace be with you.
And then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands, put out your hand and
place it in my side.
Do not be faithless but believing.
Thomas answered him and here we get now the greatest confession of faith in the whole
gospel of John, perhaps in the whole New Testament.
My Lord and my God.
And then Jesus said to him, and I interpret this next sentence in a kind of simple indicative
sense.
I don't see it so much as a review as a simple indicative, it's a statement of fact.
Jesus said, have you believed because you've seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and you have believed.
Okay.
Somehow our Lord resolved Thomas's doubts at a very deep level his doubt was resolved.
And John does not give us any, you might say, particular insight into what it was for
Thomas.
It's just that Christ meets Thomas.
There is a theophany here.
Thomas is assured, so the ministry of the Holy Spirit is all about to assure us that Christ
is our Lord.
And somehow Thomas is assured he doesn't need the criteria he thought he needed.
I find that's true of most people who set out criteria.
Like you know, have you ever seen somebody set out a criteria what they need to know before
they can marry somebody?
And they come and tell you they're just about to get married and you wonder about all
that criteria they set out.
No, when the real thing is there, it's, it resolves in.
And the proof of the resolution is that Thomas says, my Lord, my God, and he has faith.
And then our Lord makes a simple statement.
He says, you know, Thomas, you believe now because you see, blessed are those who will
not see, but will believe.
And I want to take that and again, give an interpretive comment about that.
I believe that Thomas's doubt is our gain.
And I'll tell you why.
I'm grateful for the doubt of Thomas.
For myself now is a 20th century Christian because we know now that at least one person,
now follow me closely here, brothers and sisters, I think this is the most important sentence
of my whole sermon today.
We know that at least one person in the first century demanded that the Jesus of history
and the Christ of faith must be the same person.
And Thomas is the one we owe that debt to.
Thomas would not settle for an apparition.
He would not settle for theoretical faith.
He would not settle for ideology.
He would not settle for mysticism.
All these things were current in his age.
He would not settle for an elaborate elevated doctrine of angels.
He insisted that the Jesus of Nazareth who suffered and who died.
If that man is alive, if that man has won the victory over death, then I'll believe.
And now we have a historical faith.
We have a faith that's rooted in the word that became flesh, not papier-mâché.
Not that Jesus in a story, as John Updike says in his great poem, Seven Stands at Easter,
the tomb that Jesus was buried in is the same tomb that we're buried in, not papier-mâché.
It's a real rock that closes the real light of day.
And his body regathered and re-knit after the resurrection is a real body.
Let's be embarrassed by the miracle of Easter.
It's not in the befuddled eyes of the disciples, some sort of hallucination that they worship.
It's the fact that Jesus Christ conquered death.
And as he really died, and let's not say he only appeared to die, he really died.
His identification with us is total.
As now I'll give you a great quotation from Karl Barth.
What we have in the resurrection in the death of Christ is total help for total need.
It's not partial help, it's not imaginary help, it's not spiritual help, it's total help.
As we really die, he really dies.
As we really suffer, he really suffered.
And his victory over death is real, therefore our victory over death is real.
Now what are the implications of all this for us today?
You know what it means?
It means that from now on, we cannot have a theoretical faith, an ideology, a mysticism.
All of these have been the watch words of spiritualistic religion, but now they've all been ruled out.
It also means that we're not the gospel, but the gospel is extra-nosed to use Luther's phrase.
It's outside of ourselves, it has its own objectivity, its own truth.
What does this mean?
It means that the resurrection of Jesus Christ has changed everything.
The Jesus of history, the Christ of faith, the same person.
And think of all the implications of it, it means that this earth has meaning, our lives have meaning.
Now we have a basis for ethics.
Instead of the little stick-on stickers that you get in the ethics that are spiritualistic ethics,
now we have a real ethics because Christ really conquered death and he really is identified
with our actual existence.
And now we have a basis so that as he, word and work were united, so our Christian faith
must be word and work united.
And there's the biblical basis for ethics.
That's why you can see what Barth and also Bultmann are getting at when they say that
our ethics is an eschatological ethic.
It's an ethic that comes from the end toward us that we see this world has meaning because
Christ died and he conquered death.
And that's why we don't despair, but that's why we care about things like racism, we care
about things like poverty, and we care about the world that we're in.
There's the basis of our doctrine of ecology and everything.
This whole created order is to be fulfilled because Christ conquered death.
And the Jesus of history who suffered is the Jesus Christ of history who is the Christ
of our faith.
Word and word united.
We got it from Thomas.
And Thomas's doubt is our game because one person we know insisted that the Jesus who
went by the pool of Bethesda and told that man to get up, the Jesus who died on the cross
is the Christ who conquered death.
Now I've got a quotation for you to end my study.
I just cannot do a study without quoting either C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton.
And I'm going to quote G.K. Chesterton for my final quotation.
In his remarkable book, The Everlasting Man, which I highly command, he wrote in 1925,
it's his account of the life of Christ and also our life.
He divides it into two parts.
First part is a story about us, second part is a story about Christ.
At the end of that, he tells about the resurrection of Christ, the death and resurrection of Christ,
and listens to G.K. Chesterton, the novelist, detective story writer, and sort of clever,
rather wild Christian, listens to Chesterton as he says at the end.
He says, I have not minimized the scale of the miracle as some of our milder theologians
think it wise to do.
Rather, have I deliberately dwelt on that incredible interruption as a blow that broke
the very backbone of history?
And then, Chesterton goes on, I have great sympathy with the monotheists, those in Islam
and in Judaism, to whom this seems a blasphemy, a blasphemy that might shake the world.
And now listen to this last line from Chesterton, but it did not shake the world.
It steadied the world.
Amen.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for this chance to be together for these four studies.
We thank you that Jesus Christ, the Jesus of history, is the Christ of faith.
We thank you even for the doubts of Thomas, our brother, that he helped us to settle
that question.
Now Lord, help us, as brothers and sisters, as pastors, help us to spell out the implications
of the resurrection of Jesus Christ to our generation.
Give us a hope based on that fact.
And then encourage our ministries, help us to hang in with people who are doubters.
And when we have our own doubts, Lord, help us to hang in with the people who have faith.
In Christ's name we pray.
Amen.
The Committee and the Institute, a word of thanks for the clear teaching of the Gospel
of John.
Secondly, I think we've all discovered, maybe not as well as you do, that this is what
we also can do in our parishes, and I think that's so important.
And finally, you've showed us that Bible study never ends without asking the discipleship
question.
It's been very personal, and it helps us as we serve others.
Thank you.