JUST THINK, YOU COULD HAVE MISSED THE ENDING….. John 20: 19-31

One of the occupational hazards among fast-paced livers is missed endings. We can only fit so many things in a day and evening. Sometimes, we can only stay so long at a party, a meeting, even perhaps at a church service. And, as we come and go, we catch bits and pieces of conversations and communications, sometimes missing the ending. I don’t know how many TV movies I started and never finished because there was something else that had to be done. Sometimes I really wish I could savor a good ending! John the Evangelist understands such a concern well. And he makes a special effort to provide an ending we won’t forget. Last Sunday our Gospel lesson was the story of the resurrection. Trumpets, kettle drums and descant choirs lifted our faith to its annual zenith as we sang, “Christ the Lord is risen today!” How does one top that? Surely that question was in John’s mind as he put the finishing touches on his Gospel in today’s lesson. What he shares as an ending is quite unexpected, totally surprising. And I’m so glad you’re here to hear it because, this being “Low Sunday,” when Easter Christians may not be present because there still singing “Alleluia,” there was a chance that you might have missed the ending.

Easter Christians hid behind locked doors
The first surprise that John shares in his conclusion is that after the bombastic news of the resurrection, the disciples were hiding in a house with the doors locked! What a disappointment for us who just finished proclaiming our heart’s Easter confidence! Shouldn’t the story have ended with the disciples running all over the city shouting “He is Risen!” Perhaps that’s how we would have written the ending. Of course, the disciples had “considerations.” Some had said it’s all idle gossip (Matthew suggests this.). Perhaps, some worried, having executed Jesus, the disciples could be next. Discretion is the better part of valor. It’s best to think twice before venturing out on dangerous water. When you think about it, however, was this so surprising a reaction? How bold are we to tangle with the authorities when issues of consequence are at stake? How easy is it for us to take a stand on issues of peace and justice in the national arena or on ethical issues in the office or neighborhood association? What kind of trouble might it cause us? Aren’t these the questions we must also ask? The disciples were afraid, John tells us bluntly, and we have to admit, after having sung our hearts out last Sunday that we might also have been.

Such a choice, however, John tells us, is unacceptable to Jesus. He tells the disciples to move on out. His Father sent him to take a stand, which he did, Jesus says, and now he’s sending them out to do the same thing. Jesus tells them that living in fear is unacceptable. They are to let faith take charge of their lives. How important for us to hear that! We are afraid of many things in these times. I read with interest the little polls AOL regularly takes of its users. How afraid are you of SARS? How afraid are you of terrorist activity? How afraid are you of the U.S. failing in Iraq or the Middle East? We know that fear is rampant among people in the U.S. because the stores ran out of duct tape when the Office of Homeland Security encouraged people to begin stocking up on it in order to secure their homes from terrorist’s use of chemical warfare! Yet such anxiety is out of place for Easter Christians. Jesus would say that we need to unlock the doors of our anxious minds and ask what it means to believe that “Christ is risen!” I’m so glad that you were to here to catch this piece of John’s ending.

Easter Christians saw a crucified Jesus
The next surprise that John tells us in his conclusion is that the disciples were confronted not with a majestic, regal presence, but with a body that had nail holes in the hands and side! What an embarrassment! Couldn’t that have been covered up? One might have thought that John would have avoided making reference to this nasty business of crucifixion reserved for the lowliest criminals. It’s like having to raise the question again as to whether this was a mission gone wrong. John wants to make it very clear to us who have just exulted in the resurrection triumph that the vulnerable Jesus is the only one with whom we humans can identify. We who know sorrow and burdens and pain have a Savior who knows all about it. We who are at times deprived of status or possessions or friends have a Savior who has “been there, done that.” It is crucial for us to see the cross in Jesus or we have no bond between us. He it is who is our confidante and healer. He is the one who carried our burdens into death, being “pierced for our transgression… crushed for our iniquities.” (Is. 53: 5) Without a suffering Jesus, through whose “wounds we are healed,” we have no opportunity to claim the Easter victory over death and fear.

John has to remind us of this in his conclusion or we end up with superficial and trivial faith. Therefore, he even repeats what Jesus says as he greets his dumbfounded disciples. He says Shalom in this climactic moment. Shalom, of course, can mean a number of things. It can mean simply a kind of psychological “peace.” It can also have a spiritual sense referring to reconciliation with God. However, here its most basic meaning gives the full sense of Jesus’ intent. It is simply a greeting like “Hello” or “Guten Tag,” but in Semitic parlance it expresses a concern for the whole person. It means “Be well.” The German “Wie geht es Ihnen?” or the Texan “You doing all right?”--although in the form of a question-- approaches Shalom’s meaning more than a narrow definition like “peace.” As was traditional with this greeting, Jesus expresses his concern for the physical, psychological and spiritual welfare of the disciples. He the wounded Healer affirms them in all of their humanness and vulnerability. We claim this extravagant kindness as we today “share the peace” with one another in the Communion Service. It is our way of sharing with our neighbor the vulnerable Jesus with nail holes who lives victoriously within us making us bold to reach out to others in their need. I’m so glad that you were here to hear this part of John’s ending.

Easter Christians question the truth of the resurrection
The third, and to many of us, most stunning surprise John shares in his conclusion is that after the amazing resurrection one of the disciple ridiculed it. At first glance, we might think that this is the story that John should have swept under the carpet. Not only, according to John, had Mary of Magdala, Peter and some other disciples discovered the empty tomb, but Jesus had appeared to the gathered disciples on Sunday! Still Thomas found it incredulous. He wanted to see for himself. John holds back nothing in his ending as he lets us know that even in the earliest church there were doubts about the essentials of the faith. And while we might wonder how Thomas, who had experienced so much with Jesus, could have been so double-minded, we know that’s how it is with us too. Doubts set in at the very moments when we are on top of things, at the pinnacle of faith-filled exuberance. Let’s say we are head over heals in love and believe without doubt that God has brought us together-- and then an accident or disease takes the loved one from us and we know for sure there is no God! Let’s say we are at the top of our career and thank God daily for our blessings—and then the economy fails and we lose everything and now are convinced God is dead! Doubt and faith dance together as cousins in the fragile business of life. No sooner do we know that we have “caught faith like a disease,” as did Sarah Miles in Graham Greene’s End of the Affair, when “considerations” allow doubt to squelche even the boldest faith of an Easter Christian.

Yet this is ultimately the challenge that John sets before us throughout his entire Gospel. The challenge is to understand that life’s biggest problem, sin, is not so much individual acts of disobedience or petty immoralities as it is failing to see in the vulnerable, wounded Jesus the very love through which God claims us forever. Jesus mission is ultimately to invite this vision. To see Jesus is to see God at work reconciling estranged people through this complicated and difficult business of dying, rising and living for real-- and forever. This is why John lets us hear Thomas’s amazing faith statement, the most profound in all the Scriptures: “My Lord and my God!”
It was a huge leap of faith from “not until I see him for myself” to “My Lord and my God.” Yet this is the potential for all of us, John wants to say, as the offer of faith and unbelief is set before us and we come face to face with Jesus. We simply cannot have missed this moment, this ending.

Easter Christians see deeper because there are signs along the way
John’s final thoughts in his surprising conclusion to his Gospel are the most profound. He tells his readers that there are many things which could be told and we’re not going to hear about them, but that enough signs have been strewn on the path to help us come face to face with this Jesus so that “we can have life in his name.” It’s a lovely thought, considering that John has been quite skeptical about signs in this Gospel (John 4:48) Yet John would tell us that signs can be problematic when you merely stare with bovine simplicity at them, getting caught up in the “what” and “how.” Signs, as our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters could tell us, point to something else. If we don’t get to their meaning or reason, we miss the point. If we merely see the giant billboards along life’s highways and remember nothing but their colors, we did not really see. If we learned something about persons and places and contexts from smaller signs, however, we may have understood the reason for our trip.

An interesting young American film director with an Indian heritage, M. Night Shymalan, has two stunning films to his credit, “The Sixth Sense” and “Signs.” The latter is the story about a very successful and popular Episcopal priest (played by Mel Gibson) who loses his faith in God because his wife is killed in a terrible car accident. He resigns from the priesthood and with his brother raises his two children in a house in rural Pennsylvania. Huge Signs begin to appear in the form of “crop circles.” Ultimately people are convinced that these are created by aliens who are invading the earth. Panic claims the world. The little family boards itself up in its house for fear of what may happen. (Sounds an awful lot like the disciples locked away in Jerusalem.) While the science fiction dimension may seem preposterous to some of us, the story has its resolution as Gibson tries to save his asthmatic son remembering little signs which have been shared with him along the way—all of which lead him to believe that things (even his wife’s death) don’t happen without purpose and meaning. In the little signs he finds help and direction and conviction, a personal affirmation which restores his faith and leads him back into the priesthood. It’s an interesting exploration into doubt and faith with a few science fiction themes thrown in to make it contemporary.

Now, please don’t be angry that I told you the ending if you haven’t seen the movie yet, because I took my cue from the Evangelist. He did the same thing in his Gospel with the story of Jesus. He could have left us on the mountaintop last Sunday with our resurrection confidence wondering what might come next. I suspect he knew, however, that that confidence had to have a context or it might become superficial bravado. So he surprised us with some reversals in giving us his ending:

He let us know that the first Easter Christians were often cowards-- until Jesus lifted their fears and gave them the Spirit needed to fulfill his mission.

He let us see the tawdry glory of nail holes in a vulnerable Jesus even after the resurrection-- without whom we would forever warble “Halleluiahs” without meaning.

He brought us face to face on Easter Sunday with a first-class Doubter—to let us know that anyone, including ourselves, can come from such a place to the point of exulting “My Lord and my God.”

He let us know that we weren’t going to be told everything we’d like to know about life and our future —but there are enough signs left in the Gospel stories and in the lives of faithful Christians to give us all the faith and hope we would need for the journey.

And such things he told us because he wanted us to see deeper, because he knew we need closure. He knew that life goes on—people can’t sit for long breathlessly celebrating on mountaintops. John’s ending does just that. It takes us into our homes, our family lives, our work week, and our times along with ourselves. He provides an ending which is a real beginning for us. And just think, this being “Low Sunday,” when the Easter Christians often don’t return, you could have missed it…

Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus
Concordia University at Austin
E-Mail: dzersen@aol.com