And the Word Was Made Written Text and Retained the Memory of Christ Among Us

2 Easter Sunday        April 27, 2014 

Acts 2:14a,22-32          Psalm 16

1 Peter 1:3-9  John 20:19-31              

Lectionary Link 

   When we read the Bible, it is quite easy for us to remain in childlike naiveté in fascination with the story.  We are so fascinated with the story because stories have an artistic magic to create the seeming literal reconstruction of an actual historical event.

  But in our naiveté, we sometimes miss the teaching purpose of the story by the writers who were writing many years after the purported events of the story.

  The Doubting Thomas story is a case in point.  We think that this all about the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus and the specific details of this appearance are not found in the other Gospels which were written earlier than the Gospel of John.  If we read carefully this passage as well as the entire Gospel of John, we find that this passage is more about the status and practice of the faith community six or seven decades after Jesus walked on this year.

  What is the issue in the doubting Thomas story?  Did the eyewitnesses to Jesus have a more valid faith experience than those who believe in Jesus but did not have an eyewitness experience?

  The Doubting Thomas story has two significant punchlines for which the story is used as a set up.   The first punchline is found in the words of Jesus: “Thomas you are blessed because you saw me and believe; but blessed are those who do not see me and still believe.”  Do you understand how the writer is using the Doubting Thomas story to affirm the validity of the belief and faith of the people in the community who did not walk and talk with Jesus?

  The second significant punchline of the Doubting Thomas story is the self-pronouncement of the writer about the writer’s own writing: “These things are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ.”  The members of the community of the writer of John’s Gospel did not see Jesus, they did not walk or talk with him, but by reading words about Jesus they can arrive at the very conditions of faith and belief.  And these conditions of faith and belief are as valid as or even more valid than a person like Thomas who demanded literal empirical evidence.  Thomas in fact is presented as one who is inferior in faith when contrasted with those who believe and who did not see Jesus.

  So, we can see how the story of the Gospel is crafted to represent the conditions in the church some six or seven decades after Jesus.

  These things are written….the written word attains new status as being the vehicle for belief.  This is an incredible insight from John’s Gospel because John’s Gospel is all about the word.  John’s Gospel begins with, “In the Beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.  And the Word became Flesh and dwelled with us.”   You see the second person of the Trinity is called the Word but that Word became very limited in the historical person of Jesus, but in the resurrection of Jesus, the risen Christ is once again identified with the profound Word which is the very basis for all human consciousness which accounts for how human experience is created much differently from all other sentient and non-sentient life.

  John’s Gospel is essentially about the profound history of Word as an embracing general concept of our understanding of all of created differentiation of everything in life; but it is also about the limitation of Word into the person of Jesus who became a model and exemplar of how you and I should live our worded lives.

  The writer of John's Gospel states that what is humanly understood as actually having existence is created by the word. Indeed this is true.  You and I literally are steeped in words; in our naiveté we think that we are actually seeing each other here and now, but in fact we are seeing versions of each other as we are filtered by the invisible screen of language which is the mental habit of being human.  We see and know each other through the habits of language; we see and know our world through the habits of language.

  The writer of John’s Gospel wrote to educate us in the very practice of Word.  This writer does not even use the word miracle for the fantastic acts of Jesus; John’s Gospel uses the word sign.  Sign is a conglomeration of words.  Sign is a constellation of events to point to another meaning.  The healing of the blind, walking on water, multiplication of loaves and all of the seeming miraculous events are actually signs to teach us about meaning of the life of Jesus. The words are meant to teach us what it means to be born of the Spirit to be able to see our lives in a completely different way.   We, literalists, love our stories, we like to stay at the level of the story and not move on to the educational sign and purpose of the story.

  John’s Gospel is about the Word in all of its varied manifestations.  Words comprise the Jesus stories to teach the readers to know Jesus and to come to have faith in the risen Christ.  The writer of the Gospel of John uses the disciples as examples of students of faith being delivered from literalism about the words of Jesus to arrive at the profound teaching purpose, namely, knowing that one has entered an entirely new paradigm of existence in this transformational kingdom of God.  And this transformational kingdom of God is a parallel universe of faith that we can live in now.  It is heaven on earth;  it is a place where Christ went before us to prepare for us.

  The writer of John understood Jesus to say to his disciples, “My words are spirit and they are life.”  Probably spirit is most easily understood as having an equivalence with the particular way in which our words form and shape our lives and our self-understanding.  The writer of John’s Gospel understood that nothing can get closer to us than our words.  When we receive words and as they penetrate the deepest part of memory and our worded beings, we know that we are being created, formed, made, developed. We are so comprised by words that even our bodies become body language.  The movements, acts and gestures of the body are guided by the purposes of word.  Our body language at a profound level is called our morals and our ethics.

  The writer of John knew that words are spirit and they are life.  Words make up how we can live in a new paradigm, a new heaven on earth as we express what it means to be born from above.

  The writer of John did not write just to entertain us with clever stories about the doubting Thomas; the writer of John wrote to inform us that our lives are always, already being formed by the habits of word.  We cannot escape words.  When we could not fully choose our word environments, we received the scripts of our lives some of which we continue to live out even now.  We live now trying to interdict and change some of the scripts of our lives which sometimes seem to be based upon fear and anxiety and bias and smallness of mind.

  The Gospel of John wrote that the Word was made Flesh in Jesus.  In the Doubting Thomas Story, the writer is essentially saying, “The Word became text; this written text, these spirit-words of Jesus in writing.”  The writer of John wrote the Gospel so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God.  And if Jesus the Christ, the Son of God in us now as the Risen Christ as the fullness of God’s Word, then we can know that we always have a future.  

  In the most practical sense of the word, the risen Christ for me now means, Phil, surpassing himself in excellence in a future state.  The risen Christ for you now is the hope of you, surpassing yourself in excellence in a future state.  And that is a very believable and accessible word about the Risen Christ for you and me.  Let us be thankful for the incredible insights about Word which the writer of John gives us to help us to believe, and let us be delivered from our literalness about the story and be born into the wealth of meaning found in the Risen Christ as the Word from the beginning of human consciousness. Let us be thankful that the Word was made flesh in Jesus in a very special way.  Let us be thankful that the word was made text in the Gospel of John to retain the memory of Christ.  Let us thank God that the Gospel of John gives us words to know that the Word of God can still become flesh in you and me.  Amen.