Standing Under the Scriptures
April 26, 2009

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

The 9 o’clock and 11 o’clock services are being combined this Sunday, leaving no room for our class. Therefore our next meeting will be on Sunday, May 3 (Easter IV).

In the meantime, here are a few comments on our readings last Sunday. In the first, 1 John 1.1-22, we were impressed with the subtlety with which the writer wove together two pairs of themes in each of which the one contrasted markedly with the other. The first pair couples the eternal and the abstract (“That which was from the beginning…. the word of life”) with the concrete and tangible (“which we have seen with our eyes… and touched with our hands”). From any human standpoint this is impossible, but it has become possible and has taken place in the incarnate Christ, as the writer, whoever he was, in addressing his readers, whoever they were, so deftly brings out.

In the next pair the contrast is, if anything, even more marked. It is between the utter purity of God and his incompatibility with darkness on the one hand and, on the other, the inevitability of human sin: “If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves… “But we can afford to acknowledge our sin even in the face of this contrast. What makes this possible is again Christ, specifically his atoning sacrifice as represented by his blood. Indeed, our failure to acknowledge our sin is even worse than our sin itself. “If we say we have not sinned, we make him [in his work of redemption] a liar, and his word is not in us.” We remarked on how the essence of this point is caught up in Cranmer’s liturgy, essentially our Rite I Eucharist. For in the Confession and also the Prayer of Humble Access we are very forthright about our sinfulness. Yet we know that in our forthrightness we are accepted by God, through his Son’s dying on the cross and rising to life again.

(Note: A class member asked how, by saying we have not sinned, we make him, i.e. God in Christ, a liar. Our discussion was along the lines of the parenthetical insertion above. But I am not sure that we fully resolved the question.)

Our Gospel reading, John 20.19-31, speaks of the Son’s rising to life again and of the empowerment through it of his disciples with the Spirit. We took note of it as John’s equivalent of the Pentecost event, in which the Spirit alighted on the disciples as they were gathered 40 days later. For after speaking his shalom to them, Jesus breathes on them to impart the Spirit. (This may not be quite so strange a procedure as it seems. In Greek as in Hebrew breath and spirit are related words.) It fact it is John’s equivalent as well of the Great Commandment (Matthew 28.19). For even before imparting the Spirit Jesus says to them, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” In effect, as the Father sent Jesus to the disciples, so he sends the disciples (and his followers including us) out into the world, to proclaim his gospel. And from the Spirit which he has imparted to them they take the power to proclaim it. In this power of the Spirit lies also judgment. The sins of those who receive the gospel are forgiven, while the sins of those who reject it are retained. The forgiving and the retention of sins here spoken of are not the doing of the church, at least not directly---and still less of its clergy. Instead those to whom the gospel is addressed judge themselves, by their acceptance or rejection of it.

These words of the risen Christ to his disciples are followed by the account of Thomas, who was absent when Jesus first appeared. When the disciples told him of Jesus’ appearance he asserted his requirement for tangible evidence, it would seem of Jesus’ identity as well as of his resurrection existence. Then Jesus appears again, this time in Thomas’ presence. And he immediately addresses Thomas’ concerns, offering the tangible evidence that Thomas has specified. But Thomas no longer requires this; Jesus’ addressing of him is sufficient, it seems. And he confesses, “My Lord and my God.” In the light of his confession, Jesus does not reprove him for his initial hesitancy. But he does speak of the special blessedness of those who believe without having seen.

The attachment of the Thomas episode to the account of the impartation of the Spirit may seem a little strange. But in the light of the implicit Great Commandment that Jesus has just given, it fits. For it reflects the standpoint of the early Church, for which John was presumably writing. Its members would not have had the opportunity to see or touch Jesus physically. But it was still open to them to believe, and thereby to attain the blessedness of which Jesus spoke. And what applied to them applies also to us.

The last two verses of our reading are the conclusion of John’s Gospel, apart from the epilogue which constitutes chapter 21 (and which gives indications of another hand). The”many other signs in the presence of his disciples” that Jesus did may well have been those recorded in the synoptic Gospels, which in several places John appears to be reflecting. And the purpose of his Gospel is well stated, for us as well as his original readers, in the final verse: “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”

See you Sunday after this.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted