John 20:19-31
19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 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 hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."
26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." 27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." 28 Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"
29 Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
Easter is 50 days
Easter is 50 days, 7x7, a weeks of weeks; Seven is the number of perfection in Hebrew numerology. The day of Pentecost is the 50th day of Easter. The prefix "pent" means 50: pentagram, pentagon, etc.
The Day of Resurrection is:
• First day of the week, the day after the Sabbath, therefore, the first day of creation.
• Eighth day of the week = the first day of a new week; therefore, the start of a new creation
Especially Orthodox churches celebrate the seven days from Easter Sunday through Easter Saturday as Bright Week, and consider the entire week a single day, the first day of the new creation.
Some baptismal fonts have eight sides (octagon) and illustrate our baptism into the new creation, our baptism as a new creation into Jesus' death and resurrection.
Every year on the second Sunday of Easter…
we hear John 20:19-31. There are two separate events in this passage; in both of them Jesus comes to his followers through closed doors. The first happens on the evening of the day of Jesus' resurrection; the second a week later. John's gospel doesn't have its own lectionary year, but the gospel reading comes from John every Sunday during the Great Fifty Days.
Jesus bestows the gift of peace, enlivens the disciples with the Holy Spirit, grants them the office of the keys or forgiveness/retention of sin, sends them out, and there's that famous incident about Thomas.
The peace Jesus brings is not what the English language calls irenic peace, or simple absence of conflict. From Jesus we receive the fullness of shalom, a radically grounded, expansive peace that's redemption, integrity, wholeness for all creation. However, (ironically) we get our English irenic from the Greek word the gospel-writer John uses. During the liturgy we extend peace to one another before we approach the Lord's table.
The new creation is not pristine; it carries scars from our old, deadly pasts. Both parts of today's gospel reading shows us Jesus' scars.
Receive the Holy Spirit
John 20:21 "As the Father has sent me, so I send you," is Jesus' second calling-sending of the Apostles. God sends them – and us – in the power of the Holy Spirit. After twice speaking peace on the gathered assembly, Jesus breathes on them (20:22). The only other instance of this Greek word for breathe in the Bible is in a translation of Genesis 2:7 “And God formed the man (a-dam) of dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living being.” Humans carry the breath, spirit, wind (Greek words have the same root) of the divine within themselves.
The gift of the Holy Spirit includes the office of the keys – loosing and binding – forgiving and retaining sin. (20:22-23).
We have both this Easter evening account of the gift of the Spirit and the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:1-21 because John brings us a different worldview from synoptics Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It's interesting that the Holy Spirit is prominent throughout Luke's gospel, yet in Acts Luke still brings us a detailed account of the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Thomas
On Easter evening and on the following week, the doors were locked. The Greek word for closed, locked, shut is the same and means it's hard to get in. Locked gates, hearts, minds, churches? The risen Christ seeks us out and finds us where we are. "Fear of the Jews" probably refers to those who killed Jesus.
Thomas sometimes gets called "doubting," but un-abiding or not abiding is closer to the perspective of John's community that recorded this gospel. In John's gospel, sin is not so much "transgression of or lack of conformity to the law of God" as the Westminster Catechism describes sin, but a lack of abiding in trusting relationship with Jesus. And it's not only relationship and abiding with Jesus, but also with one another.
Thomas doesn't believe in the scandal of the crucifixion! It's not lack of belief in resurrection from the dead. Remember how John brings us Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead for the last story prior to Jesus' trial and execution? Also, gnosticism with its disbelief in the realness of human flesh was making rounds around that time.