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, \u201cPeace be with you.\u201d\u00a0 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.\u00a0 Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.\u00a0 Jesus said to them again, \u201cPeace be with you.\u00a0 As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.\u201d\u00a0 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, \u201cReceive the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came.\u00a0 So the other disciples told him, \u201cWe have seen the Lord.\u201d\u00a0 But he said do them, \u201cUnless 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them.\u00a0 Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, \u201cPeace be with you.\u201d\u00a0 Then he said to Thomas, \u201cPut your finger here, and see my hands, and put out your hand, and place it in my side.\u00a0 Do not disbelieve, but believe.\u201d\u00a0 Thomas answered him, \u201cMy Lord and my God!\u201d\u00a0 Jesus said to him, \u201cHave you believed because you have seen me?\u00a0 Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 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.<\/p>\n
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.<\/p>\n
Used by permission.\u00a0 All rights reserved.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n TODAY<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are times when one\u2019s entire awareness of what is real is seriously challenged by seemingly un<\/u><\/strong>real happenings.\u00a0 At such times that which is to be trusted or what is to be at best seriously questioned hangs in the balance because everything that seemed only a short time before to be stable, firmly established, unshakably in place, had suddenly been turned upside down and inside out, shown to be far less fixed than one had earlier imagined by such a turn of events.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The truth of this lies in the shambles that are scattered around the whole world in our day.\u00a0 Only six months ago everything seemed to be of a reasonably stable state of affairs. \u00a0\u00a0A rumble here or a growl there took place on a regular basis, to be sure, but by and large nothing of a serious sort was imagined that might upend the solidity of life.\u00a0 Such things were the material of comic books or science fiction, but they didn\u2019t approach the stuff of the reality as it was being lived and experienced at the time.\u00a0 Most fears were focused on \u201cbig things\u201d that could agitate the constancy of life such as a threat of war or a socialistic, communistic \u201ctakeover of government.\u201d\u00a0 But such \u201cbig things\u201d seemed even at worst a very distant possibility.\u00a0 Life was moving along quite nicely, thank you.\u00a0 Thoughts that a tiny, unseen by the everyday eye indiscernible \u201csomething\u201d could much less would turn everything upside down was very far from people\u2019s minds.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But that was six months ago \u2013 and today those tiny, unseen by the everyday eye, indiscernible \u201csomethings\u201d have exterminated yesterday\u2019s certainties and left our world with an impossible-to-ascertain kind of future.\u00a0 Even assuming we will come out of this afflicted pestilence in some way and at some time or another, all the tomorrows that will follow it shall most certainly be of a different sort from those days that were experienced prior to this scourge.\u00a0 And to think that all this change started from some distant lab in a far southwestern part of China!\u00a0 Nobody there and then dreamed of the world-wide affliction that would issue from a small lab hardly discernible in the world that is now on its knees!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The world will look<\/u><\/strong> different.\u00a0 The world will be experienced<\/u><\/strong> differently.\u00a0 The future will be of an uncertain<\/u><\/strong> sort from this time on for a considerable period of time.\u00a0 Everything that once seemed so rock-bottom sure will be shaken<\/u><\/strong> to its core, traumatized<\/u><\/strong> in the extreme!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For\u00a0 how long?\u00a0 Who knows?\u00a0 This we do know, however . . . the external appearances of the world will remain much the same on a continuing basis while the effects<\/u><\/strong> of the virus will change whatever takes place from this time on in radically new and developing ways \u2013 most of which are not immediately clear.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n THEN<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Perhaps through this lens of today\u2019s upheaval one can get something of \u00a0a handle on what was beginning to take place more than two centuries ago on this, the second week after Jesus was raised from the dead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Jesus died on the cross, everything was as it was supposed to be.\u00a0 When a person was crucified he died.\u00a0 His corpse was put into a grave.\u00a0 That was the way it had always been, and that was the way it turned out to be then:<\/strong>\u00a0 Jesus died on the cross.\u00a0 His corpse was hurriedly prepared for burial and put into a grave.\u00a0 The only difference was that a guard was posted at the entrance of the burial cave because there were a few who suspected the possibility that friends, wanting to steal his body for any number of reasons, commendable or contemptible though they might be, might pull some deceptive trick that would cause his death to be considered a hoax, a ruse of some kind to serve their own purposes.\u00a0 Thus the special precaution of a guarded tomb.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was what happened thereafter<\/u><\/strong> that turned the \u201creal world\u201d upside down, however.\u00a0 The one who had been put into the grave as dead kept showing up over and over again as a live person.\u00a0 His \u201cgrave\u201d showed no signs of robbery, however, nor did his constant reappearances suggest any fraudulence.\u00a0 Such things just ought not to be, however \u2013 at least not in the \u201creal world\u201d of that or any other time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some women, however, spread word about visiting his tomb and finding it empty, populated instead by messengers proclaiming him risen from the dead.\u00a0 Those close to him before his death claimed to have seen him alive and well that same evening \u2013 even though one of them expressed grave reservations as to what the others were claiming to have seen.\u00a0 He, too, however, was dumbfounded when that crucified man also appeared to him with incontestable proof that he was the same man who had been crucified.\u00a0 \u00a0Other men said they had encountered him while they were walking along \u2013 and even said that he had sat at table with them.\u00a0 Such reports multiplied and magnified in broader and broader circles.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The man had blown apart the world in which he had lived, died, and . . . . and what?\u00a0 Been buried, that\u2019s what!\u00a0 But he wouldn\u2019t \/ didn\u2019t stay<\/u> buried!\u00a0 He was seen and heard again with the same body, the same voice, even the same kind of instructive, commanding words concerning what should happen in times to come.\u00a0 In short, his appearances and words had been reported and expressed in a variety of ways that this \u201cimpossible\u201d had happened \u2013 and before long it was made known throughout the then-known Roman world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So something<\/u> had to change concerning what was \u201creal\u201d in the world in which this happened.\u00a0 If he who had died was not yet nor any longer dead, what was there to say about living and dying?\u00a0 The man who had died was \u201cchanged,\u201d to be sure, for he kept unexpectedly appearing in places that had been securely guarded and locked.\u00a0 But the \u201cchange\u201d was not for him<\/u> to explain.\u00a0 It was for those themselves who experienced this \u201cchanged man\u201d to change the way they had understood him before all this took place . . .<\/strong> changed in a way that forced them to recognize the presence of the \u201cchanged one\u201d in and for and through all that they said and did thereafter! \u00a0\u00a0And if he was \u201cchanged,\u201d so was everything<\/u> within which he had lived, was living, and . . .<\/strong> and what? \u00a0What was happening to the world that they had known to be so sure and secure only three days and longer ago?\u00a0 Not only everything within which he had lived, but everything everywhere was no longer to be trusted, for the certainties tied to dying no longer held sway at anyplace or anytime!!!\u00a0 A change in everything<\/u> had begun in that far-off empty grave and spread across the whole of time and place known to humankind.\u00a0 All the old \u201crealities\u201d were shaken to their core and a \u201cnew norm\u201d had begun to settle in across the face of the earth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was THEY<\/u><\/strong>, then, who were changed by him whose \u201cchanged appearance\u201d altered the way they understood all the issues of life and death.\u00a0 Rather soon thereafter \u2013 and very quickly, for that matter \u2013 they found that their own lives were to be changed into new and astonishing fashions, lifestyles, reasons-for-living, ways of understanding life, even ways of relating to other people much less to even speak about God!!!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n They had little awareness of all that immediately, to be sure, for it was simply too much to take in all at once.\u00a0 But one thing was clear . . . nothing could ever be the same again!<\/u>\u00a0 And in the immediately following times, as they began to sort all this out under the guiding influence of the Holy Spirit, they realized that the whole world with everything and everyone in it could never be the same as it had been before this man revised it all by means of his death and resurrection.\u00a0 It is hard to grasp what a world-wide and history-laden re-working of \u201creality\u201d took place from that one single empty grave, announced as the former<\/u> grave of one single man by a couple messengers.\u00a0 In a little over a month he \u201cdisappeared\u201d from the scene in ways that made it plain that his disappearance never meant his departure from the world!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n THAT \u201cTHEN\u201d USHERED IN A NEW \u201cNOW\u201d \u2013 AND A NEW \u201cYET TO COME\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Can you not see the similarity between that which happened \u201cthen\u201d and the world within which we live in our \u201cnow\u201d \u2013 and, of course, the dissimilarities also?\u00a0 For that matter, is it not possible to catch at least a small view of a distant<\/u> \u201cfuture\u201d also through these comparisons?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The questions loom large and many today as legislators and managers, businesses and governments, everyday people and people of considerable influence try to figure out and \u201creassemble\u201d the \u201cnewly revised realities\u201d with which we must live in the post-coronal days yet to come.\u00a0 They speak of a \u201cNEW<\/u><\/strong> normal,\u201d an innovative standard for living in a \u201cnew world\u201d of sorts, a fresh look at how to put all the pieces together again into a new form of \u201creality\u201d since the \u201cold realities\u201d no longer apply.\u00a0 It is acknowledged that nothing will ever be the same again, given the devastation within which we live as the virus dictates all future actions, businesses, social lives, governmental decisions, and on and on and on.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well, yes, things will<\/u><\/strong> still look the same, for the externals will not change.\u00a0 But how to live with and among those same things in the new way that must inevitably emerge from the wreckage that is still falling around us will be very, very different in ways we cannot fully imagine as we transition from what once was a \u201cfirm normalcy\u201d to a \u201cnew, adjusted, altered reality\u201d of tomorrow.\u00a0How does one live with all the old appearances in ways adjusted to this new form of life?\u00a0 That is our social question of the day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was precisely that question and problem that confronted those whose understanding of \u201creality\u201d had been jarred so severely by the appearance of \u201clife in the face of death,\u201d \u201clife in the midst of death,\u201d \u201clife larger than death,\u201d \u201clife defying death.\u201d\u00a0 Life as it had been lived before the Resurrected One had broken the bonds of death was simply no longer acceptable for that had been a life bounded by and tightly tied to death.\u00a0 But Jesus had consistently insisted that a person had to \u201cdie to one\u2019s self\u201d in order to make room for the \u201clife that was fully and truly life.\u201d\u00a0 What he had said then became visibly present in sight and demonstration and expression of the \u201clife beyond death,\u201d \u201clife lived in spite of death,\u201d \u201clife in defiance of death,\u201d a \u201clife that will not perish\u201d embodied<\/u> by the one who had ushered in the way to the \u201cnew<\/u> life\u201d and now beckoned those to whom he spoke, as he had spoken to them when they had first met him, to \u201cCome.\u00a0 Follow me.\u201d\u00a0 He whose own life had been lived, ended, and raised again \u201cin order that the world might be saved through him\u201d \u00a0John 3:14-17 \u00a0had become the full and total personification of LIFE<\/strong> itself!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A NEW UNDERSTANDING AND A NEW LIFE<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n But they would have to understand that to \u201cfollow him\u201d meant first and above all to \u201cfollow him to the cross\u201d where the key to the resurrected life was being fashioned.\u00a0 People would have to stand with him in his battle against sin and death or else they would have to succumb to the powers of sin and death.\u00a0 Only if they were willing to follow him in that way would they be brought into the full realization that only the dead can be raised again!\u00a0 Anyone unwilling to die with him cannot be raised with him.\u00a0 It is only out of death that resurrection can take place!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But life in the turned-upside-down world of the resurrection could not then and cannot to this day remain the same kind of life that had shaped the lives of \u2013 and still shapes the life of \u2013 any and all whose \u201creality\u201d remains one of merely \u201cexisting in the mold of this world.\u201d\u00a0 When the \u201creality\u201d of death giving way to life;<\/strong> the grave being emptied of its terror;<\/strong> a Risen One living and claiming his own in their baptism;<\/strong> the King of Kings seated at the head of the banquet table of his body and blood \u2013 when one\u2019s \u201creality\u201d is based on and depends upon things such as those, life looks<\/u> very different, feels<\/u> very different, lives<\/u> and moves<\/u> in a very different way, and exists in all its parts<\/u> as a member of the resurrected body of Christ.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As members of the body of Christ, therefore, my friends, let your lives be seen and read as books that \u201care written so that others may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing they may have life in his name.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It is a marvelous book, brothers and sisters in Christ \u2013 this book in which are written the names of all who have subscribed to the one who signs, seals and delivers that book of Life to the Father.\u00a0 May your names be among those written in that book.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hubert Beck<\/p>\n An ordained but retired servant of the Church<\/p>\n hbeck@austin.rr.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Now and Then, Then and Now | Second Sunday of Easter – April 19, 2020 | Sermon on John 20:19-31 | by Hubert Beck | 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 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