On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” (John 20.19-29)
Each year on this Second Sunday of Easter, we are told the story of the Risen Lord’s appearance to the disciples on the evening of the first day of the week, in other words, on Easter Sunday. The story also contains a second appearance a week later, allowing Thomas who was absent at the first appearance to see the Risen Lord for himself.
It is unlike the other gospels in too many ways to count. For example, in Matthew’s gospel, the Risen Lord directs Mary Magdalene to tell the disciples to meet him in Galilee. Here he meets them in Jerusalem. In the Lucan texts, the Risen Lord remains on earth for forty days after his resurrection, not only for a few hours as he does here (if we allow, as do almost everyone in the scholarly community that the gospel ends with verse 31, not with the addendum of the appearance at the Sea of Galilee found later in Chapter 21).
Mark in his gospel has the Risen Lord instruct the women to tell the disciples that he will meet them in Galilee, but we are left to wonder if they passed on the word since the original text ends with the cryptic verse, “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Again, this presupposes we accept that the so-called “longer ending” was added at some later point.)
Rather than become embroiled and entangled in the many differences in the various texts, we are better served to look at John’s text on its own, apart from the others, determining in this way exactly what the evangelist hopes to convey to the reader. As we might expect from John, these few verses contain much material and several important messages.
As we parse this scene, hoping to uncover the many layers of meaning, it is important that we first see it as the fulfillment of Jesus’ earlier promise to his disciples as found in Chapter 14 of the gospel, particularly when he tells them, “I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you” (v. 18) and again when he says to them, “You have heard me tell you I am going away and I will come back to you” (v. 28).
So, it is important for the evangelist that he shows the Risen Lord to be good for his promises. Tormented, tortured, and put to death, Jesus nonetheless keeps his word to his band of followers, returning to them from the other side of the tomb. In these concluding verses of his gospel, John wants the reader to know that Jesus’ promise was not an empty one. And it is a promise he makes to all subsequent believers, not just to those early followers. He will not leave us orphans.
Another point that the evangelist makes clear is that the Risen Lord comes to us most especially in our darkest moments. He emphasizes that the disciples were a frightened lot on that Easter evening, their anxiety made clear by the fact that they were hidden behind locked doors. As John writes, “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst.”
Despondent, depressed, and desperate, the disciples barricaded themselves behind locked doors, scared to death that the Jewish leaders would search them out so that they also could be persecuted, prosecuted, and put on a cross the same as Jesus was. Their fear was real and their situation was dire. And it was into this dark space where the disciples were that the Risen Lord stepped, showing them and showing us that he comes to us in our darkest moments, in those times when fear rules our lives.
Regardless of how many doors are locked and how deep the darkness, he finds us because he has made a promise to us, “I will come to you.” And what does he tell the fearful disciples when he stands before them once more, true to his word? He says to them, “Peace be with you.” The word peace that he uses here should be understood in the same way as the Jewish word “shalom,” a word that means far more than a cessation of conflict.
In fact, shalom is a state of wholeness, of well-being, of completeness. When a person of the Jewish faith extends a greeting or a farewell with the word shalom–as they regularly do–he or she is bestowing a blessing upon the recipient, an expression of hope that all will be well in the person’s world, including health, livelihood, and everyday life.
So, the Risen Lord, well aware of the inner and outer turmoil that his followers are experiencing in these dark hours, utters first the word shalom, an assurance that all will be well in their world again regardless of the present circumstances in which they find themselves. He wants to lift their burdens and ease their heavy hearts, restoring them to a sense of inner well-being and calm.
John makes clear that the presence of the Lord does indeed rejuvenate the disciples, telling us that “the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” In that moment, they come to see that they are not alone and, whatever the stresses and distresses of the future, they have the shalom or blessing that the Risen Lord has bestowed upon them.
And how can they be sure of his continued presence well into the future? The evangelist tells us that “he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” For John, this clearly is the gift of the Spirit that we have come to know more familiarly from Luke’s story of Pentecost when the Spirit descended upon the disciples fifty days after Easter.
Rather than using the imagery of tongues of fire and gusts of wind as Luke does, John, in using the notion of breathing on the disciples, recalls the creation of the man in the garden, described to us by the writer of the Book of Genesis in this way, “Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (2.7).
In this act, the Risen Lord initiates a new creation, instilling and infusing into the disciples the ever-present, life-giving Spirit that will bring them the shalom for which they yearn as they navigate through a world too often chaotic, confusing, and conflictual. The Spirit will be the steady hand that rests upon their shoulders and the guiding light that shows them the way through the darkness.
Furthermore, the Spirit will grace them with that peace that Jesus had also promised them beforehand when he assured them, “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name–he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you” (14.25-27).
But it is not enough that the Spirit gives them this gift of shalom in a world of unrest and upheaval. They–his followers–must enter into that same world and bring into it the same promise of new life and new beginnings that Jesus has shown to them. John makes the point clear when he has the Risen Lord state, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
For John, this is much the same missionary mandate that we will find in the other gospels. These followers who have stood with Jesus as he walked the roads of Galilee and who now stand in front of the Risen Lord in that Upper Room in Jerusalem are to enter the world, putting behind them their fears, continuing the mission of Jesus. They are to become to the world what Jesus had been to the world, a light in the darkness, a hope for tomorrow, a healing balm for the wounded.
Wherever they go into the world–and they must enter it without fear and without hesitancy–they are to bring with them the same peace and joy that they have received from the hands of the Risen Lord, in this way becoming witnesses to the fact that he continues to live in the world and, contrary to all logic, does not rest in a tomb outside Jerusalem.
As he now stands before them, offering them a share in the new life that he has received from the Father, so they are to stand before others, affording them a share in that same new life, a life in communion with the Most High God who will not leave us orphaned and alone in the world, but stays with us each step of the way through the gift of the Spirit.
Finally, there is one other message that John would want us to have here at the end of his gospel. It is this. The journey to fullness of faith in the Risen Lord is made up of a thousand footsteps. We have seen the same truth in these disciples who have moved ever so slowly from no faith to partial faith to unconditional faith, and we should accept it as our own reality.
Poor Thomas is too often singled out for his failure to believe, skewered for his unbelief, remembered through the ages for his oath, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” However, a closer reading of the text shows us that when the Risen Lord appeared to the others on Easter evening, one of the first things he did was to show them his hands and his side.
So they have already had the benefit of seeing with their own eyes what Thomas is simply asking to be allowed for himself a week later. He is, in effect, little different from the others. Furthermore, in this second appearance, we should not overlook the fact that once more when Jesus came the doors were still locked.
In other words, the disciples as a whole have not fully embraced the belief in the Risen Lord and in his promises to them. All of them have a ways to go, not just Thomas. And the same can be said of all of us. Faith, like everything else about us humans, is a process of growth, meaning it is both a goal and a gift. On good days, our faith may be strong. On bad days, it may be weak. But every day, we have to remind ourselves that the Risen Lord is good for his word and hopefully that will anchor us even in the times when our faith wobbles.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 