Study Format:
1. What did you hear Jesus offering to you? To us? To the world?
2. What kind of resistance to Jesus did you hear?
3. What will you have to learn to resist or renounce in order to receive what Jesus is offering?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The story of the appearance by Jesus to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus seeks to address the same question addressed by the appearance to Thomas in the Gospel of John: How can later believers come to faith in the risen Christ without the opportunity to see Jesus? Luke’s response through this story is that experience transcends seeing. The disciples saw Jesus, but did not recognize him until they experienced him in the breaking of the bread.
• Almost like an episode of the TV show 24, Luke contains the entirety of the resurrected Jesus’ time before ascension into one single day.
• V. 16, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” The passive voice could be suggesting that God prevented them from recognizing him. What is ironic is they are discussing what happened to Jesus when Jesus came to them. The verb translated “to recognize” or “to perceive” (epiginosko) appears often in Luke’s Gospel (1:4, “so you that you may know the truth…”, also 1:22; 5:22; 7:37; 23:7). This is balanced by the same word in v. 31, where “their eyes were opened, and they recognized him”).
• Who the two disciples were is never made clear, though we know one of them is named Cleopas (v. 18). Probably the two were among the extended group of Jesus’ followers in Jerusalem. Naming the disciple adds credibility to the story. In classical irony, Cleopas asked Jesus “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know…”, but Jesus is of course the only one who fully knows the meaning of the events.
• In response to Jesus’ brief question (v. 19, “What things?” in Greek, poia), Cleopas launched into a six verse (112 Greek words) recap of Jesus life, ministry, and crucifixion. Jesus “the Nazarene” (usually translated “of Nazareth”) was “a man, a prophet might in work and word” – a prophet, but greater than the prophets, as was a theme in Luke 7. Cleopas places the blame of the crucifixion squarely on the “chief priests and leaders” (v. 20), even though, strictly speaking, the Romans did the crucifying. In v. 21 “we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” Luke echoes Isaiah 41:14b, “I will help you, says the Lord; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel,” and Isaiah 43:14a, “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.” The idea of redemption was also echoed at the beginning of Luke, at the birth of John the Baptist, Zechariah prophesied that the Lord God of Israel had “looked favorably on his people and redeemed them” (1:68). Simeon has spent his life “looking forward to the consolation of Israel” (2:25), and Anna was a witness “to all who were looking for the redemption of Israel” (2:38). The reference to “the third day” (v. 21) is another level of irony. Any Christian reader knows the meaning of the third day, but Cleopas saw it as just further proof of his loss of hope.
• In v. 25 Jesus began the process of revealing himself to the disciples, starting first with how he had been revealed in scripture. A reoccurring phrase in Luke’s Gospel is “it was necessary.” As it was necessary for Jesus to be about his Father’s business (2:49), to free the crippled woman (13:16), to stay with Zacchaeus (19:5), to go to Jerusalem (13:330, and to suffer and die (9:22; 17:25), it was necessary that the scriptures be fulfilled (24:27).
• In v. 28, Jesus “walked ahead as if he were going on.” This gesture has many layers. Partially, it may have been a gesture of social deference. Hospitality was highly valued in Ancient Near East society, a host was obligated to provide it, and a guest was obligated to refuse it until the host vigorously protested (see Gen 19:2-3).
Theologically, Jesus demonstrated that he never forced himself upon others, but faith is to be a spontaneous, voluntary response to God’s grace. Thematically, it fits with Jesus’ constant motion throughout Luke’s Gospel, a motion that will continue into Acts where the gospel of Jesus will spread “to the ends of the earth.”
• Jesus accepted the disciples’ urging to stay with them, modeling the lesson he’d given his disciples to “Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provided” (10:7).
• The liturgical language of breaking bread in v. 30 does not necessarily mean the Eucharist was shared. What it does imply is that every meal has the potential to be sacred occasion of fellowship and table sharing. It also implies that that church experiences the continuing presence of the risen Lord whenever it gathers around the Lord’s table in the breaking of the bread. It is a way to encounter and experience Christ, without Christ’s physical presence, as was discussed in the first bullet point.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Doubt: A Sermon on John 20:19-31
“When it was evening, on that day, the first day of the week…” That day when the ground shook as an angel of the Lord rolled away the stone blocking the tomb, that day when the guards shook, and became like dead men, that day when the women went quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and went to tell the disciples that he has been raised. “When it was evening, on that day, the first day of the week, [pause] the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked, for fear of the Jews.”
Today, the second Sunday of this seven week season of Easter, is traditionally called Low Sunday. Now the joke is it’s called Low Sunday because, in contrast to the huge crowds on Easter, attendance is low on this Sunday. But that’s actually not the reason. And our attendance is pretty good today, so that wouldn’t make sense anyway. It’s called Low Sunday, because unlike the pomp and circumstance of the high liturgy of the First Sunday of Easter, this morning, this Second Sunday of Easter like the rest of the Sundays in this Easter season, feel less like Easter and more like normal church. And it can feel like a bit of a let down. Without the pizzazz of the big holiday, without the trumpets, the lilies, the big hymns and the bold words, we may wonder if resurrection really happened, or if we just got swept away last week by the show of it all.
The disciples were certainly wondering that. In the morning there’d been a lot of excitement, when the women came with the miraculous news that the stone was rolled away and Jesus was not there. But it was evening now, and things always look a little less hopeful in the evening, a little more unclear. And the disciples might have been wondering if they’d gotten swept away in the excitement of it all. So they found themselves locked away, in fear.
Before we go any further, there’s one thing we need to break down here. The text says the doors were locked, “for fear of the Jews.” But that doesn’t make any sense, because remember, these guys are all Jewish, Jesus was Jewish. So it can’t be a blanket statement “Jews” that the disciples were afraid of. The word here in Greek is iudeon, Judean, a regional identity rather than a religious one. But even that is not quite there. Think from a power perspective, who has power here, who has the kind of power to create the kind of fear the disciples were experiencing? It was not your run-of-the-mill Judean citizens. The disciples had just watched their leader and teacher be put to death in the manner of a Roman political prisoner to preserve the power of Rome and those who’s authority came through Rome. If the disciples were locked away for fear of the Jews, it was because power has an insidious ability to pit us against one another, to distract us so we cannot see the real source of control, the real force of which we ought to be afraid.
So the disciples were behind locked doors in fear, when Jesus came and stood among them. I love the way John writes that, with so little fanfare, as if there was absolutely nothing extraordinary about Jesus showing up inside the locked doors. For some reason, in my imagination the disciples are always standing shoulder to shoulder like in a football huddle, when suddenly someone says, like, “hey guys, why are we whispering,” and they look up, and it’s Jesus. As an aside, you know that line about how Jesus is knocking on the door of your heart and all you have to do is let him in. I always get a bit of a chuckle when I hear someone say that, because clearly this passage is proof that Jesus doesn’t have the best manners when it comes to waiting politely outside until someone gets around to opening the door for him. If Jesus feels like there are folk on the other side of the door that need some peace, he’s not above just letting himself right on in. In fact, not even letting himself in, just showing up inside, forget the door.
So Jesus came and stood among the disciples and said, “Peace be with you.” Peace be with you is a standard greeting, like hello, or good morning, but it’s more than that. Back in John 14, when Jesus was giving some last promises to the disciples on the night before his crucifixion, he’d said to them, “peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.” So now he was back, fulfilling the promise he’d made to them, that he would give them his peace. This, incidentally, is also what we do on Sundays when we share the peace with one another. Yes, we are greeting each other, like hello or good morning, but we are also giving peace to one another, we are giving each other a measure of the same peace which Jesus gave to us on the evening of his resurrection.
After Jesus said Peace be with you, he showed him his hands and his side. And then, after seeing the proof of his resurrection, then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
But Thomas, who, for reasons that are never made clear, was called the twin, was not with the rest of the disciples when Jesus appeared to them. A mistake which forever got him labeled “Doubting Thomas.” Which I think is a wrong label for a whole host of reasons. First off, because Thomas didn’t ask for anything more than the other disciples had received. When Jesus came among the disciples in the locked room, he showed them his hands and his side, and it was only after seeing that, that the text tells us “the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” Thomas didn’t demand some special sign of wonder, he simply requested no more and no less than what the others had received, to see the wounds of the crucified Lord.
But my biggest gripe with the label Doubting Thomas is this. Where the word doubt is in verse twenty-seven, “Do not doubt but believe.” That’s a bad translation. In Greek, the second word is pistos, which is belief, that part’s right, but the first word is apistos, which is unbelief. What Jesus said was “do not be unbelieving, but be believing.” It may seem like a subtle difference, but belief is not the opposite of doubt; the opposite of doubt is certainty. I’m going to say that again, because it’s important. Belief is not the opposite of doubt; the opposite of doubt is certainty. You can believe, and you can doubt your belief, you can wonder if there really is anything there. In the same vein, you can not believe, and you can doubt your unbelief, you can wonder if there might be more than you know. If you are certain, on the other hand, there is no space for wonder in certainty, no room to grow, no opportunity to be moved. Jesus cautioned Thomas not against doubt, but against certainty, against the conviction that the kingdom of God could be limited by what he personally could see and touch.
Jesus warned Thomas, but he also opened his hands to him, showed him his side. Jesus met Thomas where he was at, showed up behind the locked doors of Thomas’ conviction, and like Jesus had done with so many others throughout the course of his ministry, led Thomas from conviction to doubt to belief. And Thomas, without, it should be noted, ever reaching out and touching Jesus, despite insisting his belief would require that, but merely seeing the offering Jesus was making, gave the fullest confession of faith to be found in the New Testament, “My Lord and My God.” Thomas let go of his certainty, and Thomas believed.
And this, verses thirty and thirty-one inform us, is the purpose of this Gospel. This Gospel was written so that we, like Thomas, may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, and that by believing we may have life. But even in that statement, the Gospel leaves just a little bit of wiggle room, a little space for wonder, for doubt, for growth. See the Greek is ambiguous in that phrase “come to believe.” It may be come, or it may be “continue to believe.” The Gospel may have been written to bring us to faith, or to move us along the road of faith. And truth be told, as a good Lutheran, I think the answer to the “come to believe” / “continue to believe” question is yes. I think the Gospel, and really the whole of scripture, in all it’s beautiful and messy complexity is an invitation to, like Thomas, find just enough proof to marvel in the unprovable, to be moved from the framework we thought we needed, to be moved from certainty, and to move into the uncertain wonder of belief. Because for every High Sunday there is a corresponding Low. For every moment of hope, there is a period of fear. For every rush of promise, there is a time when the promise seems unkeepable. And conviction is too inflexible for such times. And so, instead of conviction, Jesus invites us into the openness of wonder, and meets us with open hands, to give us as much as we need to get us there. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Today, the second Sunday of this seven week season of Easter, is traditionally called Low Sunday. Now the joke is it’s called Low Sunday because, in contrast to the huge crowds on Easter, attendance is low on this Sunday. But that’s actually not the reason. And our attendance is pretty good today, so that wouldn’t make sense anyway. It’s called Low Sunday, because unlike the pomp and circumstance of the high liturgy of the First Sunday of Easter, this morning, this Second Sunday of Easter like the rest of the Sundays in this Easter season, feel less like Easter and more like normal church. And it can feel like a bit of a let down. Without the pizzazz of the big holiday, without the trumpets, the lilies, the big hymns and the bold words, we may wonder if resurrection really happened, or if we just got swept away last week by the show of it all.
The disciples were certainly wondering that. In the morning there’d been a lot of excitement, when the women came with the miraculous news that the stone was rolled away and Jesus was not there. But it was evening now, and things always look a little less hopeful in the evening, a little more unclear. And the disciples might have been wondering if they’d gotten swept away in the excitement of it all. So they found themselves locked away, in fear.
Before we go any further, there’s one thing we need to break down here. The text says the doors were locked, “for fear of the Jews.” But that doesn’t make any sense, because remember, these guys are all Jewish, Jesus was Jewish. So it can’t be a blanket statement “Jews” that the disciples were afraid of. The word here in Greek is iudeon, Judean, a regional identity rather than a religious one. But even that is not quite there. Think from a power perspective, who has power here, who has the kind of power to create the kind of fear the disciples were experiencing? It was not your run-of-the-mill Judean citizens. The disciples had just watched their leader and teacher be put to death in the manner of a Roman political prisoner to preserve the power of Rome and those who’s authority came through Rome. If the disciples were locked away for fear of the Jews, it was because power has an insidious ability to pit us against one another, to distract us so we cannot see the real source of control, the real force of which we ought to be afraid.
So the disciples were behind locked doors in fear, when Jesus came and stood among them. I love the way John writes that, with so little fanfare, as if there was absolutely nothing extraordinary about Jesus showing up inside the locked doors. For some reason, in my imagination the disciples are always standing shoulder to shoulder like in a football huddle, when suddenly someone says, like, “hey guys, why are we whispering,” and they look up, and it’s Jesus. As an aside, you know that line about how Jesus is knocking on the door of your heart and all you have to do is let him in. I always get a bit of a chuckle when I hear someone say that, because clearly this passage is proof that Jesus doesn’t have the best manners when it comes to waiting politely outside until someone gets around to opening the door for him. If Jesus feels like there are folk on the other side of the door that need some peace, he’s not above just letting himself right on in. In fact, not even letting himself in, just showing up inside, forget the door.
So Jesus came and stood among the disciples and said, “Peace be with you.” Peace be with you is a standard greeting, like hello, or good morning, but it’s more than that. Back in John 14, when Jesus was giving some last promises to the disciples on the night before his crucifixion, he’d said to them, “peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.” So now he was back, fulfilling the promise he’d made to them, that he would give them his peace. This, incidentally, is also what we do on Sundays when we share the peace with one another. Yes, we are greeting each other, like hello or good morning, but we are also giving peace to one another, we are giving each other a measure of the same peace which Jesus gave to us on the evening of his resurrection.
After Jesus said Peace be with you, he showed him his hands and his side. And then, after seeing the proof of his resurrection, then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
But Thomas, who, for reasons that are never made clear, was called the twin, was not with the rest of the disciples when Jesus appeared to them. A mistake which forever got him labeled “Doubting Thomas.” Which I think is a wrong label for a whole host of reasons. First off, because Thomas didn’t ask for anything more than the other disciples had received. When Jesus came among the disciples in the locked room, he showed them his hands and his side, and it was only after seeing that, that the text tells us “the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” Thomas didn’t demand some special sign of wonder, he simply requested no more and no less than what the others had received, to see the wounds of the crucified Lord.
But my biggest gripe with the label Doubting Thomas is this. Where the word doubt is in verse twenty-seven, “Do not doubt but believe.” That’s a bad translation. In Greek, the second word is pistos, which is belief, that part’s right, but the first word is apistos, which is unbelief. What Jesus said was “do not be unbelieving, but be believing.” It may seem like a subtle difference, but belief is not the opposite of doubt; the opposite of doubt is certainty. I’m going to say that again, because it’s important. Belief is not the opposite of doubt; the opposite of doubt is certainty. You can believe, and you can doubt your belief, you can wonder if there really is anything there. In the same vein, you can not believe, and you can doubt your unbelief, you can wonder if there might be more than you know. If you are certain, on the other hand, there is no space for wonder in certainty, no room to grow, no opportunity to be moved. Jesus cautioned Thomas not against doubt, but against certainty, against the conviction that the kingdom of God could be limited by what he personally could see and touch.
Jesus warned Thomas, but he also opened his hands to him, showed him his side. Jesus met Thomas where he was at, showed up behind the locked doors of Thomas’ conviction, and like Jesus had done with so many others throughout the course of his ministry, led Thomas from conviction to doubt to belief. And Thomas, without, it should be noted, ever reaching out and touching Jesus, despite insisting his belief would require that, but merely seeing the offering Jesus was making, gave the fullest confession of faith to be found in the New Testament, “My Lord and My God.” Thomas let go of his certainty, and Thomas believed.
And this, verses thirty and thirty-one inform us, is the purpose of this Gospel. This Gospel was written so that we, like Thomas, may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, and that by believing we may have life. But even in that statement, the Gospel leaves just a little bit of wiggle room, a little space for wonder, for doubt, for growth. See the Greek is ambiguous in that phrase “come to believe.” It may be come, or it may be “continue to believe.” The Gospel may have been written to bring us to faith, or to move us along the road of faith. And truth be told, as a good Lutheran, I think the answer to the “come to believe” / “continue to believe” question is yes. I think the Gospel, and really the whole of scripture, in all it’s beautiful and messy complexity is an invitation to, like Thomas, find just enough proof to marvel in the unprovable, to be moved from the framework we thought we needed, to be moved from certainty, and to move into the uncertain wonder of belief. Because for every High Sunday there is a corresponding Low. For every moment of hope, there is a period of fear. For every rush of promise, there is a time when the promise seems unkeepable. And conviction is too inflexible for such times. And so, instead of conviction, Jesus invites us into the openness of wonder, and meets us with open hands, to give us as much as we need to get us there. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Conversation Points for John 20:19-31
Study Format:
1. What did you hear Jesus offering to you? To us? To the world?
2. What kind of resistance to Jesus did you hear?
3. What will you have to learn to resist or renounce in order to receive what Jesus is offering?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• In v. 19, the gathered group is referred to as “the disciples” (mathetai). Unlike the synoptic Gospels closed notion of “the Twelve” (the Eleven, at this point, the Twelve minus Judas), John’s Gospel has a much more open-ended concept of discipleship. This gathering probably includes Jesus’ core group, but there is no reason to limit it to them. The writer uses the disciples as a stand-in for the faith community in general, not an indicator of apostolic leadership.
• V. 19 also links this resurrection appearance of Jesus with the previous one of Mary in the garden, by starting “When it was evening on that day.” This cues us in to while the disciples have heard Mary’s report, they have not comprehended the meaning of her words.
• The doors were locked “for fear of the Jews.” Always important to remember that Jesus and all the disciples are Jewish, so it is not a blanket “the Jews” the disciples feared. In the context of the story, there were certainly plenty of people the disciples were afraid of, the Roman occupiers, Pilate, or the Jewish leadership who collaborated with Rome for Jesus’ crucifixion. In the context of the audience for whom the Gospel was written, the writer of John’s Gospel wanted to help his community see in the disciples their own experience of conflict with the local Jewish authorities.
• In v. 19, Jesus’ initial greeting, “Peace be with you,” has two meanings. First, this is a traditional greeting of the time (cf. Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:3; Gal 1:3). It also fulfills Jesus’ promise to his disciples during the Farewell Discourse, to give them his peace (14:27a, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”)
• In v. 20, Jesus showed the disciples the marks of his crucifixion in his hands and his side. The resurrected Jesus is still the crucified one.
• The disciples’ joy (v. 20b, “Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord”) is a fulfillment of another of Jesus’ promises in the Farewell Discourse (16:20, 22, “Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will mourn and have pain, but your pain will turn into joy…So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”)
• In v. 22, when Jesus breathed on the disciples, the word for breath, emphysao is only found here and nowhere else in the New Testament. In Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures (like the ones John’s community would have read) emphysao is the word used in Genesis when God breathed over the waters at creation and in Ezekiel when God breathed life into dry bones. Jesus breathing on them is a sign of the new life they now have through the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit as the breath that sustains life.
• V. 23 about forgiving and retaining sins is both complex to interpret and uses unusual language for the Fourth Gospel. This is the only usage of the verbs “to forgive” (aphiemi) and “to retain” (krateo). Theories on the origin and purpose of this verse abounds. What is important to remember is that the disciples in John’s Gospel are not a fixed group of twelve who become the apostolic leadership of the church. Rather the disciples are a stand-in for the whole Christian community. So this is not a directive for the role of clergy in forgiving and retaining sins, but forgiveness of sins is to be the work of the whole community. This communal work comes from the gift of the Holy Spirit and the command by Jesus that we are sent as he was sent by the Father. Also, in John’s Gospel, sin is not a moral or behavioral problem, like it is in the synoptic Gospels, rather sin is a theological failing. Sin in John’s Gospel is not doing or saying the wrong thing, sin is being blind to the revelation of God in Jesus (cf. John 9 and the man born blind, the Pharisees thought the sin in the story was Jesus healing on the Sabbath, but Jesus revealed that the true sin was the Pharisees not recognizing the healing of the man born blind as a revelation of God). So the work the community is being sent out to do is to continue revealing God to the world.
• In v. 24-29, Thomas acts as a parallel of the disciples’ earlier experience. Just as Mary said, “I have seen the Lord,” the disciples said, “We have seen the Lord.” Thomas asked for the same thing Jesus had given the other disciples when he “showed them his hands and his side” (v. 20).
• The word “doubt” is always associated with this story, but it’s really a bad translation. V. 27b “do not doubt but believe.” The words here are apistos and pistos, the opposite of the same word. So a better translation is “Do not be unbelieving but be believing.” Doubt, skepticism, is not the opposite of belief, unbelief is the opposite of belief. The disciples doubted until Jesus showed them his hands and his side.
• Jesus met the demands Thomas set for belief (“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.”) There is no mention of Thomas actually reaching out and physically touching Jesus. The move for Thomas from unbelief to belief was not touching Jesus, but Jesus offering himself to Thomas. Jesus’ response to Thomas (“Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”) has been read by some scholars as shaming Thomas, but that doesn’t make sense. Jesus was giving Thomas what he needed for faith, as Jesus had done so many other times in the Gospel (4:10-26, conversation with the woman at the well; 5:6-9, healing the sick man at the pool of Beth-zatha; 9:35-38, talking to the man born blind after the Pharisees drove the man out; 11:1-42, Martha and Mary after the death of their brother).
• “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (v. 29) is about expanding the community of believers beyond those who were physically present to see Jesus. In John’s Gospel seeing has been the first step to believing (cf. 1:46b “Philip said to [Nathanael], ‘Come and see.’”). This is a promise to future generations that “seeing” Jesus is not restricted to physical sight (cf. John 9, where the man born blind “saw” and the seeing Pharisees could not “see”).
• The point of how belief comes to later generations is drilled in further in v. 30-31. V. 31 “that you may come to believe” (or “continue to believe” in the NIV translation. Manuscripts are divided if pisteuo is in the aorist subjunctive “come to believe” or the present subjunctive “continue to believe”). The Gospel is a document for the purpose of revealing Jesus which brings and sustains belief.
Why we call the Second Sunday of Easter “Low Sunday”
It is NOT because attendance is low on the Sunday after Easter (in fact, at Trinity we had a lot of people traveling on Easter this year, so our attendance may well be higher this Sunday than it was on Easter). It is called Low Sunday to distinguish it from the pomp and circumstance of Easter Sunday, sometimes called High Sunday. Another theory is it adopted from Close Sunday, marking the close of Easter week. Low Sunday is the end of what is called the Octave of Easter, the eight day period running from Easter Sunday through the following Sunday. In the ancient church, and still in some very traditional Catholic congregations, people baptized at the Easter Vigil would wear white robes on Easter (High Sunday) and then would wear them for the last time on Low Sunday, before taking them off and joining the congregation. Another theory is the term Low Sunday derived from Laud Sunday, laud being the Latin word for “praise.” So, there you go, Low Sunday, having nothing to do with attendance.
Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. What did you hear Jesus offering to you? To us? To the world?
2. What kind of resistance to Jesus did you hear?
3. What will you have to learn to resist or renounce in order to receive what Jesus is offering?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• In v. 19, the gathered group is referred to as “the disciples” (mathetai). Unlike the synoptic Gospels closed notion of “the Twelve” (the Eleven, at this point, the Twelve minus Judas), John’s Gospel has a much more open-ended concept of discipleship. This gathering probably includes Jesus’ core group, but there is no reason to limit it to them. The writer uses the disciples as a stand-in for the faith community in general, not an indicator of apostolic leadership.
• V. 19 also links this resurrection appearance of Jesus with the previous one of Mary in the garden, by starting “When it was evening on that day.” This cues us in to while the disciples have heard Mary’s report, they have not comprehended the meaning of her words.
• The doors were locked “for fear of the Jews.” Always important to remember that Jesus and all the disciples are Jewish, so it is not a blanket “the Jews” the disciples feared. In the context of the story, there were certainly plenty of people the disciples were afraid of, the Roman occupiers, Pilate, or the Jewish leadership who collaborated with Rome for Jesus’ crucifixion. In the context of the audience for whom the Gospel was written, the writer of John’s Gospel wanted to help his community see in the disciples their own experience of conflict with the local Jewish authorities.
• In v. 19, Jesus’ initial greeting, “Peace be with you,” has two meanings. First, this is a traditional greeting of the time (cf. Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:3; Gal 1:3). It also fulfills Jesus’ promise to his disciples during the Farewell Discourse, to give them his peace (14:27a, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”)
• In v. 20, Jesus showed the disciples the marks of his crucifixion in his hands and his side. The resurrected Jesus is still the crucified one.
• The disciples’ joy (v. 20b, “Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord”) is a fulfillment of another of Jesus’ promises in the Farewell Discourse (16:20, 22, “Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will mourn and have pain, but your pain will turn into joy…So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”)
• In v. 22, when Jesus breathed on the disciples, the word for breath, emphysao is only found here and nowhere else in the New Testament. In Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures (like the ones John’s community would have read) emphysao is the word used in Genesis when God breathed over the waters at creation and in Ezekiel when God breathed life into dry bones. Jesus breathing on them is a sign of the new life they now have through the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit as the breath that sustains life.
• V. 23 about forgiving and retaining sins is both complex to interpret and uses unusual language for the Fourth Gospel. This is the only usage of the verbs “to forgive” (aphiemi) and “to retain” (krateo). Theories on the origin and purpose of this verse abounds. What is important to remember is that the disciples in John’s Gospel are not a fixed group of twelve who become the apostolic leadership of the church. Rather the disciples are a stand-in for the whole Christian community. So this is not a directive for the role of clergy in forgiving and retaining sins, but forgiveness of sins is to be the work of the whole community. This communal work comes from the gift of the Holy Spirit and the command by Jesus that we are sent as he was sent by the Father. Also, in John’s Gospel, sin is not a moral or behavioral problem, like it is in the synoptic Gospels, rather sin is a theological failing. Sin in John’s Gospel is not doing or saying the wrong thing, sin is being blind to the revelation of God in Jesus (cf. John 9 and the man born blind, the Pharisees thought the sin in the story was Jesus healing on the Sabbath, but Jesus revealed that the true sin was the Pharisees not recognizing the healing of the man born blind as a revelation of God). So the work the community is being sent out to do is to continue revealing God to the world.
• In v. 24-29, Thomas acts as a parallel of the disciples’ earlier experience. Just as Mary said, “I have seen the Lord,” the disciples said, “We have seen the Lord.” Thomas asked for the same thing Jesus had given the other disciples when he “showed them his hands and his side” (v. 20).
• The word “doubt” is always associated with this story, but it’s really a bad translation. V. 27b “do not doubt but believe.” The words here are apistos and pistos, the opposite of the same word. So a better translation is “Do not be unbelieving but be believing.” Doubt, skepticism, is not the opposite of belief, unbelief is the opposite of belief. The disciples doubted until Jesus showed them his hands and his side.
• Jesus met the demands Thomas set for belief (“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.”) There is no mention of Thomas actually reaching out and physically touching Jesus. The move for Thomas from unbelief to belief was not touching Jesus, but Jesus offering himself to Thomas. Jesus’ response to Thomas (“Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”) has been read by some scholars as shaming Thomas, but that doesn’t make sense. Jesus was giving Thomas what he needed for faith, as Jesus had done so many other times in the Gospel (4:10-26, conversation with the woman at the well; 5:6-9, healing the sick man at the pool of Beth-zatha; 9:35-38, talking to the man born blind after the Pharisees drove the man out; 11:1-42, Martha and Mary after the death of their brother).
• “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (v. 29) is about expanding the community of believers beyond those who were physically present to see Jesus. In John’s Gospel seeing has been the first step to believing (cf. 1:46b “Philip said to [Nathanael], ‘Come and see.’”). This is a promise to future generations that “seeing” Jesus is not restricted to physical sight (cf. John 9, where the man born blind “saw” and the seeing Pharisees could not “see”).
• The point of how belief comes to later generations is drilled in further in v. 30-31. V. 31 “that you may come to believe” (or “continue to believe” in the NIV translation. Manuscripts are divided if pisteuo is in the aorist subjunctive “come to believe” or the present subjunctive “continue to believe”). The Gospel is a document for the purpose of revealing Jesus which brings and sustains belief.
Why we call the Second Sunday of Easter “Low Sunday”
It is NOT because attendance is low on the Sunday after Easter (in fact, at Trinity we had a lot of people traveling on Easter this year, so our attendance may well be higher this Sunday than it was on Easter). It is called Low Sunday to distinguish it from the pomp and circumstance of Easter Sunday, sometimes called High Sunday. Another theory is it adopted from Close Sunday, marking the close of Easter week. Low Sunday is the end of what is called the Octave of Easter, the eight day period running from Easter Sunday through the following Sunday. In the ancient church, and still in some very traditional Catholic congregations, people baptized at the Easter Vigil would wear white robes on Easter (High Sunday) and then would wear them for the last time on Low Sunday, before taking them off and joining the congregation. Another theory is the term Low Sunday derived from Laud Sunday, laud being the Latin word for “praise.” So, there you go, Low Sunday, having nothing to do with attendance.
Works Sourced:
O’Day, Gail. “The Gospel of John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Monday, April 17, 2017
Where in the World is Jesus, the Crucified One or How I Didn't Become a Geologist: A Sermon on Matthew 28:1-10
I learned something new this week as I was preparing to preach on the resurrection account from Matthew. It was something I’d never noticed before, in many times of hearing and reading and studying resurrection accounts in preparation to preach on various Easter Sundays. All four Gospels have accounts of the resurrection, all tell of women coming, the tomb being empty, and an angel commanding them to go and tell. But each account is different. And Matthew is the only Gospel to mention an earthquake.
Maybe it came from growing up in California, but I’ve always had an interest in plate tectonics, the movement of the earth surface that causes such events as earthquakes and volcanoes. I even briefly considered a career as a geologist, until my father informed me I should go into something more practical. So instead I became a pastor. Which I don’t think is quite what my father had in mind, but anyway…
In seminary I had the opportunity to travel to Iceland, a small island in the middle of the north Atlantic. Fulfilling a lifelong dream of mine since I first heard about it on an early version of Where In the World is Carmen San Diego. Plate tectonics and Carmen San Diego, this trip was my two favorite childhood fascinations in one. Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the dividing line where the North American and Eurasian plates are slowing moving apart from each other, at the rate of about one inch per year. This movement makes Iceland alive with geologic activity. Earthquakes and volcanoes are normal occurrences, most electricity is geothermal, and there are no water heaters, water is simply pumped out of the ground already hot. While in Iceland, we went to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. As I stood in a trench with one foot on the North American plate and the other on the Eurasian, I looked around at the strange, moon-like landscape strewn with lava rock and I was filled with this profound sense of wonder. I thought, the ground under my feet is brand new. In this place God is literally still creating the world.
The next morning, we woke up to the news that four thousand miles away from us on another island, the movement of that same North American plate that had caused me such wonder the day before had spawned an earthquake. The 2010 Haiti earthquake left over one hundred thousand people dead and millions more displaced. Thousands are still without homes today, over seven years later. That’s the thing about geology, about our natural world. It is filled with both beauty and terror, equal parts awful and awesome, capable of both creation and destruction.
I wonder if this is why when the writer of Matthew remembered there being an earthquake on the morning of the resurrection. I wonder if the surprise at seeing the stone rolled away by an angel of the Lord, the empty tomb, and the appearance of Jesus filled him with such hope and terror, such fear and awe, such worship and doubt, that in his memory the very ground beneath his feet shook during the events of that fateful morning.
And resurrection, in Matthew’s defense, is pretty shocking. It disrupts the natural order of things. We are born, we live, and then we die. And that is it, the end. There is no coming back from that. There are people who have had near death experiences, who have been dead and then returned back from the dead. But a near death experience is not resurrection, because the person comes back, like pushing rewind, the thing that had happened is undone. But with resurrection, death remained even after life returned. “Do not be afraid,” the angel of the Lord said, “you are looking for Jesus, the crucified one. He is not here, for he has been raised.” The risen Jesus is still the crucified one. Resurrection is not like pushing rewind, because death is not reversed in resurrection, death is triumphed over. When you push rewind, you have to eventually go forward again, but because resurrection is forward and death has happened, the sting of death is gone. In resurrection, both joy and despair, both loss and hope, both destruction and creation are now contained in the body of our divine-human savior.
It is a lot to take in, this miracle we claim, that the crucified one is now raised. That death is destroyed, life is restored, the covenants of love are renewed, and that we now live in the long-promised majesty of the glory of the kingdom of God. Especially as we look around a world today that seems very far from such hope. A world filled with violence and despair and brokenness. And reminders of that brokenness are closer now than ever, many of us carry in our pockets devices which can tell us in seconds just how broken and painful and scary is this planet of ours. But here’s the thing, while our access to news is faster now, the news itself is really not all that different then it was in the time of Jesus. The disciples too lived in a world filled with terror and fear and brokenness. The death of Jesus meant the triumph of Rome, the continued dominion of an empire built on a foundation of oppression, violence, despair, and destruction. The disciples did not have to look far to see that while Jesus may have been resurrected, death still held a powerful sway. So it is no wonder that when they followed the direction of the women and went to Galilee to meet him, “when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.” What Matthew is telling us is that doubt is not antithetical to resurrection faith, but doubt in fact is a healthy response to living in a world where Christ has died and been resurrected, and has not yet come. Doubt is the fuel that keeps us from complacency, that helps us live in to the commission Jesus gave the disciples, to go and be about his work in the world, remembering that he is with us always, until the end of the age, until that day when, as Paul wrote in Colossians, we are revealed with him in glory.
There are differences in the resurrection accounts, but there are also similarities. One major similarity is none of the Gospel writers describe the actual resurrection event itself. In all of the accounts the stone is rolled away, or rolls away in front of them, and when they peer inside the tomb is already empty, Jesus is already gone. This is because resurrection faith is not something we can see and understand, it is bigger than our understanding. Resurrection faith can only be experienced. We come to resurrection faith not by witnessing resurrection, but by experiencing the resurrected Christ. Resurrection cannot be glimpsed in the moment of its happening, it can only be understood looking back at what we thought was the thing we could never survive and realizing that there was life after the brink after all. Resurrection does not mean that the worst thing that can happen will not happen; it means that there will be life on the other side of that worst thing. It is this persistent promise that because the crucified one is also the resurrected Christ, hope is stronger than despair, joy is more powerful than fear, and life always conquers death. When we walk through the crucifixion parts of life, the frightening diagnosis, the financial hardship, the addiction, the depression, the crippling grief, we cannot see resurrection as it is happening. It is only on the other side, when we can look back and say, that happened, and yet, that we realize resurrection has happened to us as well.
And so, this morning, I invite you to let the ground move under your feet, and also not to think too hard about it. Smell the lilies, rejoice in the trumpets, sing along with the music. Lean in to the sights and the sounds and the traditions of this holy day. Because Christ is risen. Resurrection has happened. And there is always a next thing. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Maybe it came from growing up in California, but I’ve always had an interest in plate tectonics, the movement of the earth surface that causes such events as earthquakes and volcanoes. I even briefly considered a career as a geologist, until my father informed me I should go into something more practical. So instead I became a pastor. Which I don’t think is quite what my father had in mind, but anyway…
In seminary I had the opportunity to travel to Iceland, a small island in the middle of the north Atlantic. Fulfilling a lifelong dream of mine since I first heard about it on an early version of Where In the World is Carmen San Diego. Plate tectonics and Carmen San Diego, this trip was my two favorite childhood fascinations in one. Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the dividing line where the North American and Eurasian plates are slowing moving apart from each other, at the rate of about one inch per year. This movement makes Iceland alive with geologic activity. Earthquakes and volcanoes are normal occurrences, most electricity is geothermal, and there are no water heaters, water is simply pumped out of the ground already hot. While in Iceland, we went to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. As I stood in a trench with one foot on the North American plate and the other on the Eurasian, I looked around at the strange, moon-like landscape strewn with lava rock and I was filled with this profound sense of wonder. I thought, the ground under my feet is brand new. In this place God is literally still creating the world.
The next morning, we woke up to the news that four thousand miles away from us on another island, the movement of that same North American plate that had caused me such wonder the day before had spawned an earthquake. The 2010 Haiti earthquake left over one hundred thousand people dead and millions more displaced. Thousands are still without homes today, over seven years later. That’s the thing about geology, about our natural world. It is filled with both beauty and terror, equal parts awful and awesome, capable of both creation and destruction.
I wonder if this is why when the writer of Matthew remembered there being an earthquake on the morning of the resurrection. I wonder if the surprise at seeing the stone rolled away by an angel of the Lord, the empty tomb, and the appearance of Jesus filled him with such hope and terror, such fear and awe, such worship and doubt, that in his memory the very ground beneath his feet shook during the events of that fateful morning.
And resurrection, in Matthew’s defense, is pretty shocking. It disrupts the natural order of things. We are born, we live, and then we die. And that is it, the end. There is no coming back from that. There are people who have had near death experiences, who have been dead and then returned back from the dead. But a near death experience is not resurrection, because the person comes back, like pushing rewind, the thing that had happened is undone. But with resurrection, death remained even after life returned. “Do not be afraid,” the angel of the Lord said, “you are looking for Jesus, the crucified one. He is not here, for he has been raised.” The risen Jesus is still the crucified one. Resurrection is not like pushing rewind, because death is not reversed in resurrection, death is triumphed over. When you push rewind, you have to eventually go forward again, but because resurrection is forward and death has happened, the sting of death is gone. In resurrection, both joy and despair, both loss and hope, both destruction and creation are now contained in the body of our divine-human savior.
It is a lot to take in, this miracle we claim, that the crucified one is now raised. That death is destroyed, life is restored, the covenants of love are renewed, and that we now live in the long-promised majesty of the glory of the kingdom of God. Especially as we look around a world today that seems very far from such hope. A world filled with violence and despair and brokenness. And reminders of that brokenness are closer now than ever, many of us carry in our pockets devices which can tell us in seconds just how broken and painful and scary is this planet of ours. But here’s the thing, while our access to news is faster now, the news itself is really not all that different then it was in the time of Jesus. The disciples too lived in a world filled with terror and fear and brokenness. The death of Jesus meant the triumph of Rome, the continued dominion of an empire built on a foundation of oppression, violence, despair, and destruction. The disciples did not have to look far to see that while Jesus may have been resurrected, death still held a powerful sway. So it is no wonder that when they followed the direction of the women and went to Galilee to meet him, “when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.” What Matthew is telling us is that doubt is not antithetical to resurrection faith, but doubt in fact is a healthy response to living in a world where Christ has died and been resurrected, and has not yet come. Doubt is the fuel that keeps us from complacency, that helps us live in to the commission Jesus gave the disciples, to go and be about his work in the world, remembering that he is with us always, until the end of the age, until that day when, as Paul wrote in Colossians, we are revealed with him in glory.
There are differences in the resurrection accounts, but there are also similarities. One major similarity is none of the Gospel writers describe the actual resurrection event itself. In all of the accounts the stone is rolled away, or rolls away in front of them, and when they peer inside the tomb is already empty, Jesus is already gone. This is because resurrection faith is not something we can see and understand, it is bigger than our understanding. Resurrection faith can only be experienced. We come to resurrection faith not by witnessing resurrection, but by experiencing the resurrected Christ. Resurrection cannot be glimpsed in the moment of its happening, it can only be understood looking back at what we thought was the thing we could never survive and realizing that there was life after the brink after all. Resurrection does not mean that the worst thing that can happen will not happen; it means that there will be life on the other side of that worst thing. It is this persistent promise that because the crucified one is also the resurrected Christ, hope is stronger than despair, joy is more powerful than fear, and life always conquers death. When we walk through the crucifixion parts of life, the frightening diagnosis, the financial hardship, the addiction, the depression, the crippling grief, we cannot see resurrection as it is happening. It is only on the other side, when we can look back and say, that happened, and yet, that we realize resurrection has happened to us as well.
And so, this morning, I invite you to let the ground move under your feet, and also not to think too hard about it. Smell the lilies, rejoice in the trumpets, sing along with the music. Lean in to the sights and the sounds and the traditions of this holy day. Because Christ is risen. Resurrection has happened. And there is always a next thing. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Conversation Points for Matthew 28:1-10
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• We’ve talked often about how the Gospels are eye-witness accounts, and eye-witnesses often remember events differently. Such is the case in the resurrection of Jesus, a story which is told in all four Gospels with several subtle differences. Similar to all of the accounts, the event takes place at the dawn on the day after the Jewish Sabbath, or what we know as Sunday. In all four accounts, the first to arrive at Jesus’ tomb was women. Either Mary Magdalene (John), Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (Matthew), or those two and some others. In all four there was a stone rolled away (either before they arrived, John and Luke, or while they were there Matthew and Mark). And in all four, the body of Jesus was not there. Some ways that Matthew may differ from your memory: in Matthew, the women do not go to anoint Jesus body, because it was already anointed and the guard posted would have prevented them anyway. Instead they went to continue their vigil (in this it is similar to John). They did not wonder who would roll away the stone (that line is from Mark), because they didn’t intend to enter the tomb.
• V. 5 refers to Jesus as “the crucified one” (NRSV translates to “who was crucified”). “The crucified one” is a perfect participle, which in Greek grammar indicates a completed event with on-going significance. What this means is even now that he is risen, he remains “the crucified one,” that event still has meaning. Resurrection was not an undoing of the events of the crucifixion; it was an on-going effect of the completed crucifixion event.
• The Angel of the Lord instructed the women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee to see the risen Jesus. This is more about theology than geography. In Matthew, “Galilee of the Gentiles” is the appropriate setting for the disciples to receive the Great Commission, sending them out to “make disciples of all nations.”
Some important emphases of the resurrection event in Matthew, according to Dr. Boring
1. The resurrection is an eschatological event (eschatological or eschatology is a fancy theology word that you should know, mainly because Pastor Kjersten tries to use it a lot and then has to translate, so it would be easier on her if she just taught you what it means. Eschatology is from the Greek eschaton meaning last things or last days and logos meaning word, so translated “words about the last days.” Basically, eschatology is part of theology that talks about the ultimate destiny of humanity). So, what is meant by the resurrection as an eschatological event is that it is not simply a thing that happened to Jesus; rather it is the ultimate decisive event for human history. Resurrection faith is not simply about believing that something happened to Jesus, that the tomb was empty or that his body came back to life. The soldiers and the chief priests in Matthew 28:11-15 knew that Jesus had come back to life, but it did not change them, so they did not have resurrection faith.
2. The resurrection itself is not described. The mystery of what happened and how is not worth speculating on, but is worth testifying to.
3. Resurrection faith is not the same as historical accuracy. We do not need to harmonize the competing narratives, for each account gives some aspect of Easter faith.
4. The resurrection is not the happy ending to an almost tragic story (see the bullet point about the perfect participle in Greek). Rather, the whole of Matthew’s Gospel should be read through the lens of this event. None of the rest of it matters without this ending.
5. Resurrection is not a final miracle by Jesus; it is the act of God for Jesus. In death, Jesus was as powerless as any human.
6. Resurrection faith is not based on evidence, it comes from encountering the resurrected Jesus (28:8-10), hearing testimony from those who saw the resurrected Jesus (28:10, 16), and by his continued presence among his disciples (28:20). Our resurrection faith comes from the testimony of those who saw Jesus (scripture) and Jesus’ own continued presence among us (for example, in the sacraments and in the gathered community).
7. Resurrection faith is about worship, not analysis. Even then, doubt is not excluded, but is a part of faith (28:17, “and they [the disciples] worshiped him [Jesus], but some doubted.”)
8. Resurrection faith is not simply faith in the empty tomb. It is possible to believe Jesus rose from the dead and still not have resurrection faith. Similarly, the whole of the New Testament proclaims resurrection faith, but only the Gospels have the story of the empty tomb.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• We’ve talked often about how the Gospels are eye-witness accounts, and eye-witnesses often remember events differently. Such is the case in the resurrection of Jesus, a story which is told in all four Gospels with several subtle differences. Similar to all of the accounts, the event takes place at the dawn on the day after the Jewish Sabbath, or what we know as Sunday. In all four accounts, the first to arrive at Jesus’ tomb was women. Either Mary Magdalene (John), Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (Matthew), or those two and some others. In all four there was a stone rolled away (either before they arrived, John and Luke, or while they were there Matthew and Mark). And in all four, the body of Jesus was not there. Some ways that Matthew may differ from your memory: in Matthew, the women do not go to anoint Jesus body, because it was already anointed and the guard posted would have prevented them anyway. Instead they went to continue their vigil (in this it is similar to John). They did not wonder who would roll away the stone (that line is from Mark), because they didn’t intend to enter the tomb.
• V. 5 refers to Jesus as “the crucified one” (NRSV translates to “who was crucified”). “The crucified one” is a perfect participle, which in Greek grammar indicates a completed event with on-going significance. What this means is even now that he is risen, he remains “the crucified one,” that event still has meaning. Resurrection was not an undoing of the events of the crucifixion; it was an on-going effect of the completed crucifixion event.
• The Angel of the Lord instructed the women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee to see the risen Jesus. This is more about theology than geography. In Matthew, “Galilee of the Gentiles” is the appropriate setting for the disciples to receive the Great Commission, sending them out to “make disciples of all nations.”
Some important emphases of the resurrection event in Matthew, according to Dr. Boring
1. The resurrection is an eschatological event (eschatological or eschatology is a fancy theology word that you should know, mainly because Pastor Kjersten tries to use it a lot and then has to translate, so it would be easier on her if she just taught you what it means. Eschatology is from the Greek eschaton meaning last things or last days and logos meaning word, so translated “words about the last days.” Basically, eschatology is part of theology that talks about the ultimate destiny of humanity). So, what is meant by the resurrection as an eschatological event is that it is not simply a thing that happened to Jesus; rather it is the ultimate decisive event for human history. Resurrection faith is not simply about believing that something happened to Jesus, that the tomb was empty or that his body came back to life. The soldiers and the chief priests in Matthew 28:11-15 knew that Jesus had come back to life, but it did not change them, so they did not have resurrection faith.
2. The resurrection itself is not described. The mystery of what happened and how is not worth speculating on, but is worth testifying to.
3. Resurrection faith is not the same as historical accuracy. We do not need to harmonize the competing narratives, for each account gives some aspect of Easter faith.
4. The resurrection is not the happy ending to an almost tragic story (see the bullet point about the perfect participle in Greek). Rather, the whole of Matthew’s Gospel should be read through the lens of this event. None of the rest of it matters without this ending.
5. Resurrection is not a final miracle by Jesus; it is the act of God for Jesus. In death, Jesus was as powerless as any human.
6. Resurrection faith is not based on evidence, it comes from encountering the resurrected Jesus (28:8-10), hearing testimony from those who saw the resurrected Jesus (28:10, 16), and by his continued presence among his disciples (28:20). Our resurrection faith comes from the testimony of those who saw Jesus (scripture) and Jesus’ own continued presence among us (for example, in the sacraments and in the gathered community).
7. Resurrection faith is about worship, not analysis. Even then, doubt is not excluded, but is a part of faith (28:17, “and they [the disciples] worshiped him [Jesus], but some doubted.”)
8. Resurrection faith is not simply faith in the empty tomb. It is possible to believe Jesus rose from the dead and still not have resurrection faith. Similarly, the whole of the New Testament proclaims resurrection faith, but only the Gospels have the story of the empty tomb.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Thursday, April 6, 2017
Conversation Points for Matthew 21:1-11
Study Format:
1. What did you hear Jesus offering to you? To us? To the world?
2. What kind of resistance to Jesus did you hear?
3. What will you have to learn to resist or renounce in order to receive what Jesus is offering?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• One of the differences between John’s account of Jesus’ ministry and Matthew’s is in Matthew, this triumphal entry marks the very first time Jesus is in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is first mentioned in Matthew as joining with King Herod at being troubled at the birth of Jesus (2:3), but after escaping to Egypt and making his way to Galilee, Jesus never went further south than the Jordan River until now.
• The traditional phrase of “triumphal entry” can only be used in the ironic sense, to point out the ways in which Jesus’ kingship differs from the traditional sense of the word. “Triumphal entries” into the city were common under the Roman occupation, as Rome would use them to draw attention to their military power and might, welcoming in returning military or political leaders. Since we know Pilate was also in town at this time, some scholars have even posited that Jesus’ entry happened at the same time as Pilate was entering. While Pilate paraded through the streets on a stallion with all the power of Rome to greet him, Jesus entered on a donkey and a colt, attended upon by the poor with nothing to wave but branches cut from trees and their own cloaks, a concrete display of two very different styles of leadership.
• One of the themes of Matthew is Jesus as the fulfillment of scripture. Matthew frequently cites Old Testament passages as proof of Jesus’ identity. This causes a couple of differences to how Matthew presents this story opposed to other Gospel accounts. For this event, Matthew draws on the prophet Zechariah. Matthew set the story at the Mount of Olives, connecting it to Zechariah’s vision of the end of days. The scripture quoted in Matthew 21:5 is from Zechariah 9:9. It features poetic parallelism, a trait common in Hebrew poetry, where a thing is said once, and then repeated in more detail (“on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey”). Matthew had to have been familiar with this style of poetry, but his attention to detail leads him to leave both animals in, leading to the rather humorous scene where Jesus appears to be riding into Jerusalem astride two animals.
• The shouts of “Hosanna” come from Psalm 118:25-26 (“Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord”). Hosanna was originally a prayer (“save us, we beseech you”), but by the first century had become a common, festive shout, sort of like a religious “hurrah.”
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. What did you hear Jesus offering to you? To us? To the world?
2. What kind of resistance to Jesus did you hear?
3. What will you have to learn to resist or renounce in order to receive what Jesus is offering?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• One of the differences between John’s account of Jesus’ ministry and Matthew’s is in Matthew, this triumphal entry marks the very first time Jesus is in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is first mentioned in Matthew as joining with King Herod at being troubled at the birth of Jesus (2:3), but after escaping to Egypt and making his way to Galilee, Jesus never went further south than the Jordan River until now.
• The traditional phrase of “triumphal entry” can only be used in the ironic sense, to point out the ways in which Jesus’ kingship differs from the traditional sense of the word. “Triumphal entries” into the city were common under the Roman occupation, as Rome would use them to draw attention to their military power and might, welcoming in returning military or political leaders. Since we know Pilate was also in town at this time, some scholars have even posited that Jesus’ entry happened at the same time as Pilate was entering. While Pilate paraded through the streets on a stallion with all the power of Rome to greet him, Jesus entered on a donkey and a colt, attended upon by the poor with nothing to wave but branches cut from trees and their own cloaks, a concrete display of two very different styles of leadership.
• One of the themes of Matthew is Jesus as the fulfillment of scripture. Matthew frequently cites Old Testament passages as proof of Jesus’ identity. This causes a couple of differences to how Matthew presents this story opposed to other Gospel accounts. For this event, Matthew draws on the prophet Zechariah. Matthew set the story at the Mount of Olives, connecting it to Zechariah’s vision of the end of days. The scripture quoted in Matthew 21:5 is from Zechariah 9:9. It features poetic parallelism, a trait common in Hebrew poetry, where a thing is said once, and then repeated in more detail (“on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey”). Matthew had to have been familiar with this style of poetry, but his attention to detail leads him to leave both animals in, leading to the rather humorous scene where Jesus appears to be riding into Jerusalem astride two animals.
• The shouts of “Hosanna” come from Psalm 118:25-26 (“Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord”). Hosanna was originally a prayer (“save us, we beseech you”), but by the first century had become a common, festive shout, sort of like a religious “hurrah.”
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Monday, April 3, 2017
God's Eternal "Yes, And..." or What Tina Fey Taught Me About Pastoral Leadership: A Sermon on John 11:1-45
I have joked with some seriousness that the two books that have been most influential in my pastoral leadership are Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service by the Disney Institute and Bossypants by Tina Fey. Both books, in case you’re interested, are on the shelf in my office. Be Our Guest is a deep dive into Disney’s model of customer service. It’s a very practical how-to guide for evaluating customer experience.
Bossypants, on the other hand, is Tina Fey’s hilarious, and sometimes crude, memoir of being a woman in the male dominated field of sketch comedy. I love it because Tina Fey is hilarious and I secretly think she, Amy Poehler, and I, could be best friends. But why I think it is a great book for pastoral leadership is because she includes a section on the rules of improvisation that I find brilliant. The central theme of the guide is the concept of “Yes, and…” The premise is whatever idea your partner presents, agree with it and add something. Her argument is if someone opens an improv scene by pointing their finger at you and saying, “I have a gun,” and you say, “no, that’s not a gun, that’s your finger,” you’ve killed the scene. So agree. Yes, we all know it’s not really a gun, but that’s the magic of theater, none of this is real, so go with it. But more than that, if someone points their finger at you and says, “I have a gun,” and you respond, “yep,” you’ve dragged the scene to a standstill. It is not enough to just agree, you also have to add something. So if someone says, “I’ve got a gun,” and you say, “The gun I gave you at Christmas? You jerk!” Then we’ve got something.
Now, Fey goes on to say that of course, in real life we cannot always just agree blindly on everything. But the point of the “Yes, and…” principle is to start from a place of open-mindedness. So I started thinking about this and wondered if the real-life corollary to “Yes, and…” is “No, but…” We disagree, but by offering another alternative we can keep the conversation going in a way that a straight up no cannot do. So in the finger gun example, if the scene starts, “I’ve got a gun,” and you respond, “no, oh my gosh, stay very still, that’s the rare and very dangerous Venomous Chameleon Gun Snake, who tricks its prey by camouflaging itself as a hand gun,” you’ve disagreed, and we still have a scene, we still have the opportunity for interaction.
The final rule is for improv is “There are no mistakes.” Fey’s example is if she opens a scene with what she clearly thinks is a policeman riding a bicycle, and her partner thinks she is a hamster in a hamster wheel, now she’s a hamster in a hamster wheel. She’s not going to stop to explain she’s really a policeman on a bicycle. “Who knows,” she wrote. “Maybe I’ll end up being a police hamster who’s been put on ‘hamster wheel’ duty because I’m ‘too much of a loose cannon’ in the field. In improv there are no mistakes, only beautiful happy accidents.”
I got to thinking about Fey’s improv rules this week because once again in our Gospel text this morning the presenting issue of the story, the death and raising of Lazarus, seems almost secondary to the bulk of the narrative, a series of conversations between Jesus and others. Jesus engaging with and drawing people into conversation has been an ongoing theme in our Gospel readings throughout all of this Lenten season. And I started to wonder if Jesus was maybe using these same rules of improv that Fey outlined.
Think about it. Nicodemus came at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who came from God.” To which Jesus responded, “Yes, and…” “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Or the woman at the well. “Why would you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria.” Jesus responded, “Yes, and…” “If you knew who was saying to you give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” Or the man born blind. The disciples asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind. Jesus replied, “No, but…” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him.” Each time Jesus engaged someone in conversation, he found ways to move the conversation along to a deeper level, bringing forth a larger truth than the surface level dialogue about identity, life, or the nature of sin. And each time, the person who was transformed by Jesus was the person who was able to change along with Jesus’ challenges, who could let go of the simplicity of the yes/no dichotomy and move to a more complex understanding of what Jesus was offering.
We see this even more clearly in this story of the raising of Lazarus. The scene opened with the sisters sending a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” Jesus countered, “yes, and…” “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” So Jesus stayed, and it appeared he was wrong, as Lazarus, in fact, died.
Then, he decided to go to Judea and the disciples’ were like, um, that’s not so much a good idea, as, if you remember, they were trying to stone you. Counter Jesus, “Yes, and…” “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble…” Yes, they want to stone me, and we should go anyway, because “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going to wake him up.” The disciples’ respond with a simple no, “Lord, if he’s asleep, he’ll be alright.” Jesus expanded, “No, but….” “Lazarus is dead… let us go to him.” Finally, Thomas was willing to agree, willing to be moved to “Yes, and…” albeit, in a pretty resigned way. “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Not a super eager agreement, sure, but enough to move the scene along, enough to get them all to Judea.
When they arrived in Judea and were met by Martha, we saw a similar conversation play out. Martha started with a fact, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus agreed, “Yes, and…” “Your brother will rise again.” Martha tried to halt action with a straight up yes, “I know that he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day.” But Jesus would not be deterred, “Yes, and…” “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will never die. Do you believe this?” And through his persistence, Martha was moved: “Yes Lord, [and] I believe.”
And Lazarus was raised from the dead. And many who had seen what Jesus did believed in him. And we ended the reading there, but verse forty-six goes on to say, “But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done.” The miracle of the raising of Lazarus ends up being the turning point in the Gospel of John. We read this story on the last Sunday of Lent, because it is the event that signifies the beginning of the end for Jesus. From this point on it is just a steady march to the cross, as the Pharisees begin to look for ways to kill Jesus.
Which is, if you think about it, the greatest “Yes, and…” of all. The “yes, and…” that makes the gospels more than just a historical report of an interesting man who lived and died long ago, but the Gospel, the Good News that changed and changes the world. Because yes, Jesus was put to death on a cross. Yes, he died a criminal’s death and was buried. Yes, all this is true. And none of that was the end, because And he rose again. On Good Friday, we will hear Jesus himself utter the words, “It is finished.” And then three days later, when the disciples reach the tomb they’ll find the stone rolled away, and a new story begun.
What we see in this story, and in the overarching story of scripture, is that God’s interaction with us is always “yes, and…” Yes, God made creation and called it good, and God made people, and called them very good. Yes, you are slaves under Pharaoh, and I will lead you to a land of milk and honey. Yes, Jesus died, and he rose again. Yes, you are dead in sin and cannot redeem yourself, and as we heard Paul say in Romans, “the Spirit…who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies.” That’s not to say that God does not sometimes say no, but God always follows no up with an addition. No, you may not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but I will continue to be with you. No, if you continue to live in ways that are unjust, you will be conquered by the Babylonians, but even in exile I will be with you and I will redeem you. “No, you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption.” God’s dance of relationship with us is like improv, never leaving the scene where it’s at but always adding to it, drawing us more fully into connection, bringing us along to places we never thought we would be and in ways we couldn’t imagine we’d get there.
And because God’s relationship with us is “yes, and…”, because God is always drawing us into new and richer and fuller places with this gentle, persistent coaxing, we are free to have such persistence and grace and hope with each other. The nature of relationship is cruciform, the up/down axis is God relating to us in this hopeful expanding way, so that we then can relate side to side with each other. Just think about how this approach might change our relationships, change the world, if we approached each other not as a yes or no, right or wrong, one way or another, but as a possibility to be engaged with and to learn from.
God’s response to us is always yes, and, is always to urge us to more. So don’t be afraid to take the risk, try something new, and live into the relationship. Thanks be to God, in whom there is always more. Amen.
Now, Fey goes on to say that of course, in real life we cannot always just agree blindly on everything. But the point of the “Yes, and…” principle is to start from a place of open-mindedness. So I started thinking about this and wondered if the real-life corollary to “Yes, and…” is “No, but…” We disagree, but by offering another alternative we can keep the conversation going in a way that a straight up no cannot do. So in the finger gun example, if the scene starts, “I’ve got a gun,” and you respond, “no, oh my gosh, stay very still, that’s the rare and very dangerous Venomous Chameleon Gun Snake, who tricks its prey by camouflaging itself as a hand gun,” you’ve disagreed, and we still have a scene, we still have the opportunity for interaction.
The final rule is for improv is “There are no mistakes.” Fey’s example is if she opens a scene with what she clearly thinks is a policeman riding a bicycle, and her partner thinks she is a hamster in a hamster wheel, now she’s a hamster in a hamster wheel. She’s not going to stop to explain she’s really a policeman on a bicycle. “Who knows,” she wrote. “Maybe I’ll end up being a police hamster who’s been put on ‘hamster wheel’ duty because I’m ‘too much of a loose cannon’ in the field. In improv there are no mistakes, only beautiful happy accidents.”
I got to thinking about Fey’s improv rules this week because once again in our Gospel text this morning the presenting issue of the story, the death and raising of Lazarus, seems almost secondary to the bulk of the narrative, a series of conversations between Jesus and others. Jesus engaging with and drawing people into conversation has been an ongoing theme in our Gospel readings throughout all of this Lenten season. And I started to wonder if Jesus was maybe using these same rules of improv that Fey outlined.
Think about it. Nicodemus came at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who came from God.” To which Jesus responded, “Yes, and…” “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Or the woman at the well. “Why would you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria.” Jesus responded, “Yes, and…” “If you knew who was saying to you give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” Or the man born blind. The disciples asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind. Jesus replied, “No, but…” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him.” Each time Jesus engaged someone in conversation, he found ways to move the conversation along to a deeper level, bringing forth a larger truth than the surface level dialogue about identity, life, or the nature of sin. And each time, the person who was transformed by Jesus was the person who was able to change along with Jesus’ challenges, who could let go of the simplicity of the yes/no dichotomy and move to a more complex understanding of what Jesus was offering.
We see this even more clearly in this story of the raising of Lazarus. The scene opened with the sisters sending a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” Jesus countered, “yes, and…” “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” So Jesus stayed, and it appeared he was wrong, as Lazarus, in fact, died.
Then, he decided to go to Judea and the disciples’ were like, um, that’s not so much a good idea, as, if you remember, they were trying to stone you. Counter Jesus, “Yes, and…” “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble…” Yes, they want to stone me, and we should go anyway, because “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going to wake him up.” The disciples’ respond with a simple no, “Lord, if he’s asleep, he’ll be alright.” Jesus expanded, “No, but….” “Lazarus is dead… let us go to him.” Finally, Thomas was willing to agree, willing to be moved to “Yes, and…” albeit, in a pretty resigned way. “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Not a super eager agreement, sure, but enough to move the scene along, enough to get them all to Judea.
When they arrived in Judea and were met by Martha, we saw a similar conversation play out. Martha started with a fact, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus agreed, “Yes, and…” “Your brother will rise again.” Martha tried to halt action with a straight up yes, “I know that he will rise again at the resurrection on the last day.” But Jesus would not be deterred, “Yes, and…” “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will never die. Do you believe this?” And through his persistence, Martha was moved: “Yes Lord, [and] I believe.”
And Lazarus was raised from the dead. And many who had seen what Jesus did believed in him. And we ended the reading there, but verse forty-six goes on to say, “But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done.” The miracle of the raising of Lazarus ends up being the turning point in the Gospel of John. We read this story on the last Sunday of Lent, because it is the event that signifies the beginning of the end for Jesus. From this point on it is just a steady march to the cross, as the Pharisees begin to look for ways to kill Jesus.
Which is, if you think about it, the greatest “Yes, and…” of all. The “yes, and…” that makes the gospels more than just a historical report of an interesting man who lived and died long ago, but the Gospel, the Good News that changed and changes the world. Because yes, Jesus was put to death on a cross. Yes, he died a criminal’s death and was buried. Yes, all this is true. And none of that was the end, because And he rose again. On Good Friday, we will hear Jesus himself utter the words, “It is finished.” And then three days later, when the disciples reach the tomb they’ll find the stone rolled away, and a new story begun.
What we see in this story, and in the overarching story of scripture, is that God’s interaction with us is always “yes, and…” Yes, God made creation and called it good, and God made people, and called them very good. Yes, you are slaves under Pharaoh, and I will lead you to a land of milk and honey. Yes, Jesus died, and he rose again. Yes, you are dead in sin and cannot redeem yourself, and as we heard Paul say in Romans, “the Spirit…who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies.” That’s not to say that God does not sometimes say no, but God always follows no up with an addition. No, you may not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but I will continue to be with you. No, if you continue to live in ways that are unjust, you will be conquered by the Babylonians, but even in exile I will be with you and I will redeem you. “No, you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption.” God’s dance of relationship with us is like improv, never leaving the scene where it’s at but always adding to it, drawing us more fully into connection, bringing us along to places we never thought we would be and in ways we couldn’t imagine we’d get there.
And because God’s relationship with us is “yes, and…”, because God is always drawing us into new and richer and fuller places with this gentle, persistent coaxing, we are free to have such persistence and grace and hope with each other. The nature of relationship is cruciform, the up/down axis is God relating to us in this hopeful expanding way, so that we then can relate side to side with each other. Just think about how this approach might change our relationships, change the world, if we approached each other not as a yes or no, right or wrong, one way or another, but as a possibility to be engaged with and to learn from.
God’s response to us is always yes, and, is always to urge us to more. So don’t be afraid to take the risk, try something new, and live into the relationship. Thanks be to God, in whom there is always more. Amen.
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