Readings
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Following Easter we read from the book of Acts which not only tells of the rise of the early church but also the first reaction to the resurrection by the followers of Jesus. To fit the Christian year we skip the details of the Pentecost episode and begin with Peter’s Sermon immediately after the arrival of the Holy Spirit.
The major thrust of the sermon argues that Jesus fulfils prophesy in Hebrew Scripture which is a feature of the Christian testaments. William Barclay suggests that ‘to believe in the possibility of prophecy is to believe that God is in control and that God is working out the divine purpose’.[1]
What would certainly seem to be true is that the gospel writers looked to find meaning in the life of Jesus through their sacred text and expressed that meaning to their readers through proof texts and allusion. As the Emmaus Road episode illustrates that may also reflect the way the followers of Jesus found meaning in what they had experienced of Jesus. Their heart burned within them as they shared the scripture along the way.
Hear what the spirit is saying to the Church.
Thanks be to God.
John 20:19-31
This is a private transfer of the Holy Spirit which makes a wonderful counterclaim to those Christians who demand proof of our commitment to Christ through a public ‘Pentecostal’ experience of the Holy Spirit.
This episode connects with the first chapter of John’s Gospel where John the Baptist says he saw the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus. As John baptises with water, the reader is told, Jesus will baptise with the Holy Spirit. Now in the locked room the spirit sequence is completed. The Holy Spirit came from God into Jesus at his baptism; the risen Christ is therefore able to pass that Spirit on to the disciples.
Thomas’ doubt in no way inhibits his apostolic mission because there is strong archaeological and mythic evidence that Thomas established a church in India long before the European church was established and even predating the writing of the Gospels.
This is the Gospel of Christ.
Praise to Christ the word.
Sermon
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.[2]
That was a quote from Eric Hoffer I came across some time ago. Eric Hoffer was born on the 25th of July 1902 and died on the 21st of May 1983. He was an American moral and social philosopher, the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983.
A fuller quotation is that ‘Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power but absolute power is corrupt only in the hands of the absolutely faithful.
As Hoffer explained:
There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutions—to cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
We have plenty of examples in today’s world of corruption created from absolute faith from both religious faith and faith in some secular ideology or person. Faith in oneself can also be corruptible if we exclude the rights of others from our objectives in life. Our mind quickly goes to the suicide bomber or the terrorists, mass shootings or maybe someone who launches the military might of the United States against Iran becase his image of the saviour of the free world is waning. Atrocities committed by people whose religious and political ideologies combined in a fanatical hate of the ‘other’. Such perpetrators often hold an extreme certainty in life after death that minimises the value of the life they were born into.
However, we must not submit to the temptation to blame such corruption on ‘other’ faiths. To find an obvious ‘Christian’ example we only need to go as far Auckland and the extreme views of Destiny Church. Furthermore, Florida has a statute that allows for the death penalty for child sexual abuse that does not result in death. Of course, they are in America and therefore ‘other’ as far as we are concerned but in today’s world such views are only a mouse click away. Furthermore, I shudder when I think of the occupation of Parliament Grounds and the people who wanted to hang the Prime Minister and murder her daughter.
When extreme views from any part of the world are readily available to influence people whose faith is absolute then doubt becomes extremely important in the maintenance of an incorruptible faith.
The disciples in today’s Gospel reading were on the verge of launching an astounding new faith into a multi faith world. They were in a locked room for fear of those whose religious and political understanding had led them to crucify Jesus as someone who challenged their absolute certainty. Those in authority regarded Jesus and his disciples as nonconforming ‘other’ and for the sake of what they saw as their divinely ordained authority Jesus had to be eliminated. The disciples had good reason to believe that the purifying zeal of those with absolute faith in their authority and religious understanding would also seek out and persecute Jesus’ followers.
But it was into that fear filled locked room that the Risen Christ mysteriously arrived. The arrival was filled with mystery because not only was the room locked but they were able to see Jesus’ wounds. At the second appearance Thomas was even invited to put his fingers into the nail holes and place his hand into the wound in Jesus’ side.
The Risen Christ was both real and spiritual and perhaps Thomas was invited to be the pathologist that identified the corps. Or perhaps the room contained the memory of all that Jesus was, right to the dreadful end. Perhaps Thomas was the one who expressed that memory in all of them as alive as Christ’s presence within those first apostles.
The focus of this passage is quite rightly on the resurrection appearance of Christ and the commissioning of the disciples as apostles. Jesus greeted these disciples with the words ‘Peace be with you.’(John 20:19) Jesus’ activities had been suppressed violently by those in authority but Jesus Advocates a counter mission of peace.
Once the identification was complete Jesus commissioned his disciples by first repeating the blessing of peace and then he ‘Breathed on them and said ‘receive the holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them, if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”’ (John 20:22, 23).
The mystery of the locked room commissioned those disciples as apostles. The Risen Christ and all that he had been was in that room and they committed themselves to act as Christ in their world. That is the meaning of the term apostle, someone who acts on behalf of another.
Over the centuries those who have been corrupted by the certainty of the apostolic authority to retain sins have sadly taken that as an excuse to punish and exclude people on behalf of God.
However, we should understand the words of the Risen Christ as a warning to his apostles rather than a command to make hate videos or burn witches.
Whatever ‘sin’ might mean in our world this reading tells us that if we as apostles in our time don’t forgive people their ‘sins,’ then guilt will rob them of their full fulfilment of life and deny them the peace that Christ has passet to us to pass onto to others.
In coming to grips with all this mystery and ambiguity the presence of Thomas is vital in reminding us to doubt and examine the evidence. Certainty leads to corruption and doubt and questioning opens the truth to us.
More importantly doubt opens truth in a way that we can understand and make real in our own lives.
Hindsight tells us that the resurrection was real in some way for those first disciples. They were ordinary working people from Galilee who are now better known than the great leaders of their time and place. In fact in our time people like Augustus, Caiaphas, Pilot and Herod are only known beyond the realms of specialised historical scholarship because they are mentioned in the Gospels.
Although the authors of the Gospels are undoubtedly pseudonyms the Gospels have only been written because the original disciples had some sort of mystic experience beyond the time they spent with Jesus.
An experience, or more likely a series of experiences, that convinced them that when they were together, even in a locked room, out on the lake fishing or discussing scripture along the way and sharing a meal with a stranger, Christ was with them in a very real way.
These experiences were not the sort of beaming in arrivals we might expect in an episode of Doctor Who although today’s reading comes close to beaming down into a locked room. But even without Thomas in the first appearance there was doubt and the Risen Christ had to establish his identity by showing the wounds in his hands and his side. Furthermore, if we read from the beginning of Chapter twenty we find that the disciples had a warning that a resurrection appearance was possible.
Mary discovered the tomb empty then Peter and another disciple came back to the tomb with her and entered the tomb and saw the evidence that Jesus had been in the tomb but had gone. The two disciples returned to the others but Mary stayed by the tomb and met the Risen Christ. She initially did not recognise him but after he had spoken to her she went and told the other disciples.
Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples. ‘I have seen the Lord’ and she told them that he had said these things to her. (John 20:18) So, when Jesus arrived in the locked room the disciples already had Mary’s testimony that such a meeting was possible.
All these resurrection appearances involve affirming the identity of the Risen Christ and all testimony by others such as Mary needed to be backed up by personal experience. Thomas is the one that spells out that questioning procedure for John’s readers.
‘So the other disciples told him, ‘we have seen the Lord’. But he said to them, unless I see the mark of the nails in his hand, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ (John 20: 25)
Thomas makes clear the doubt that all the disciples, both female and male, have and encourages us to ask our own questions. The Gospels do not ask us to have absolute faith because Eric Hoffer was absolutely right. ‘Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power’.[3] Furthermore a person who has absolute faith is easily tempted to seek absolute power over others which is the exact opposite of the divine realm Jesus sought to bring into being.
The gospels encourage us to consider their testimony and seek out our own experience of the Risen Christ. Certainly, we will need faith but a questioning faith that will both protect us from possible corruption and guide us to a spiritual encounter that is meaningful for us.
It is as our doubts are faced that we will grow a reasoned and considered faith that brings us into the presence of the Christ we have grown to know.
It is in a reasoned and considered faith that we will feel the empowering Holy Spirit breathed into us as we too become Apostles of the Risen Christ.
[1] William Barclay The Daily Study Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, (Edinburgh: St Andrews Press:1976 ),pp., 22-23.
[2] Eric Hoffer in The Press (Christchurch: The Press, April 19 2014), p.B5.
[3] Eric Hoffer in The Press (Christchurch: The Press, April 19 2014), p.B5.