Growing up faith seemed so easy.  It was about saying a “sinner’s prayer,” about “asking Jesus into your heart.”  It was the kind of faith that offered simple answers, but shattered on the rocks of modern complexity.  In John, faith is an organic thing.    For Jesus’ followers, faith is something that grows and develops as we are scraped raw by time and experience.  What starts as a faint mist eventually crescendos into waves of vivid understanding.

This is what happened when Jesus’ followers met the risen Christ.  Confusion precedes confession.  Faith develops as we grow in our understanding of Jesus.  The resurrection especially helps us understand that the gospel is indeed true.  Yes; Jesus is more than a historical figure.  But He’s not less.  For me, the resurrection holds the key to understanding just how much we can trust that the gospel story is true.

A SURPRISE IN THE GARDEN

John 20:11-31   ¹¹ But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb.  ¹² And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.  ¹³ They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”  ¹⁴ Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus.  ¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”  ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).  ¹⁷ Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'”  ¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”–and that he had said these things to her.

First, Mary was an unlikely witness to the resurrection.  In the ancient world, women weren’t considered trustworthy witnesses.  So if John was fabricating this story, why wouldn’t he have invented some more credible witnesses?  Second, the Jewish understanding of resurrection was that it would be all people at the end of time—not one man in the middle.  Stories about the resurrection were unprecedented.  John would simply never make up a story this outlandish.

The resurrection changes the relationship of Jesus to His followers.  Though Mary clings to Jesus, it is not right that she does.  Everything has changed now.  Jesus is returning soon, and His followers have a mission to carry out.

A NEW MISSION

¹⁹ On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”  ²⁰ When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.  ²¹ Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”  ²² And 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 withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

First of all: whoa.  The doors are locked.  How did Jesus get in?  On the one hand, Jesus’ body seems to be recognizable—it even bears the scars of His death. But at the same time, Jesus doesn’t seem limited by the laws of physics.  We have no way of knowing what this resurrected body must have been like, other than it is something radically different than the dust of which we’re currently made.

Jesus gives His followers their mission.  “As the Father has sent me…so I am sending you.”  New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says that a lifetime could be spent meditating on just the words as and so.  In the same, humiliating manner that Jesus was sent to earth, so too are we sent into the world.  When Jesus steps from earth to heaven it is called the incarnation.  So, too, must we exercise an incarnational presence in the world that we inhabit—literally becoming God with skin to a world that would see no God otherwise.

SEEING IS BELIEVING

²⁴ Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, 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 in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

²⁶ Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, 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; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, 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 believed.”

In his defense, the text never uses the phrase “Doubting Thomas.”  Still, Thomas has become the patron saint of skepticism.  I think we should instead recognize him as the patron saint of a faith that seeks understanding.  And in this short exchange, we catch a glimpse of what faith truly means.

I used to feel frustrated by Jesus’ cryptic answer: “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”  To me it always sounded like a convenient way to justify faith in the absence of evidence.  In fact, if you ask the average person, they’d probably define faith as something along the lines of “believing in something you can’t prove.”  In the church world, we’ve come to admire “blind faith,” particularly potent in an age where feeling is believing.

But that simply won’t do.  Of course, relatively few people actually saw the risen Savior.  You won’t find a Youtube clip of Jesus eating broiled fish.  But that doesn’t mean you can’t follow a trail, a chain of evidence to reveal the reality of Jesus and His claims.

You see, Christianity is the only religion that can be proven wrong.  Let me explain.  Every other major religion is based around a founder’s personal experience.  Muhammad had a vision and created the Qur’an.  Joseph Smith was visited by an angel and crafted the book of Mormon.  Siddhartha Gautama achieved inner enlightenment and became the Buddha.   Did these experiences ever really happen?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But I can’t prove to you either way whether Buddha really achieved enlightenment.  It’s subjective.  It’s personal.  The resurrection is entirely different.  A risen body, an empty grave—these things aren’t personal.  They can be proven or disproven in the pages of history.  Imagine I say to you, “My dead uncle appeared to me in a dream, and told me to start a religion.”  You can’t prove to me that my dream wasn’t real.  But if I say instead, “My dead uncle rose from the dead,” that changes everything.  Now, if you want to shut me up, all you need to do is show me my uncle’s remains, still lying in the casket.  If the Romans wanted to silence this early movement of “Christians,” all they needed to do was produce Jesus’ body.  The most shocking thing about Christianity is not that it makes claims that are open to being proven wrong.  The mist shocking thing is that no one ever has.

And yet at the end of it, we recognize that like Thomas, faith is more than merely intellectual agreement.  If we see God up close, it isn’t because we were smart enough to figure Him out; it’s because He cares enough to show us.  And that’s faith.  It is both a gift from God and a response to God.  It is what enables us to join Thomas in exclaiming with wide-eyed wonder: “My Lord and my God!”

JOHN’S EXPLICIT PURPOSE

³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;  ³¹ but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John concludes the main part of his gospel by telling his readers why he wrote.  Every gospel writer had his own unique way of showing how Jesus fit into God’s overarching story.  John was the most unique.  Other writers described history; John reflected on its meaning.  If we follow John’s careful series of clues, we too can see God up close.