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Today's Scripture
John 20.19-31 (NLT)
Jesus Appears to His Disciples
19 That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. 20 As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! 21 Again he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” 22 Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Jesus Appears to Thomas
24 One of the twelve disciples, Thomas (nicknamed the Twin), was not with the others when Jesus came. 25 They told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he replied, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.”
26 Eight days later the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked; but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. “Peace be with you,” he said. 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”
28 “My Lord and my God!” Thomas exclaimed.
29 Then Jesus told him, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.”
Purpose of the Book
30 The disciples saw Jesus do many other miraculous signs in addition to the ones recorded in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him you will have life by the power of his name.
Wisdom Saying
Hell is possible only when one has put oneself totally out of the range of love and forgiveness, human love and forgiveness, when one has rendered oneself incapable of being loved and forgiven in that he or she has actively rejected not so much explicit religious or moral teaching and practice as the love of sincere humanity.
*Ronald Rolheiser. The Holy Longing.
Wisdom Story and Poem
William A. Dunkerley (1852-1941), a Congregationalist, was born in Manchester, England. He wrote under different names. His family name was William Arthur Dunkerley. He had a wholesale grocery company, with branches in England and the United States. Dunkerley wrote for newspapers and magazines as a fictional writer, using the name Julian Ross. John Oxenham, under which he wrote many best-selling stories and poems, is often linked with the hymn "In Christ There Is No East or West."
During WWII two ships were anchored together. Japanese filled one, Americans the other. All were waiting to return to their own country. Suddenly, one person began to sing "In Christ There Is No East or West." From the other ship, another person joined in. Former enemies were soon praising together in song.
In Christ there is no East or West,
In Him no South or North;
But one great fellowship of love
Throughout the whole wide earth.
In Him shall true hearts everywhere
Their high communion find;
His service is the golden cord,
Close binding humankind.
Join hands, then, members of the faith,
Whatever your race may be!
Who serves my Father as His child
Is surely kin to me.
In Christ now meet both East and West,
In Him meet North and South;
All Christly souls are one in Him
Throughout the whole wide earth.
Comments
Thomas saw the risen Christ eight days later than Jesus first appeared to the other ten disciples. One thing remarkable is that Christ did not appear to Thomas until He appeared to the other disciples again. What is a significance of this ~ for, surely, Jesus could have hurried to meet with his disciple Thomas, calming his fears and imparting to him renewed faith? Rather, Christ has Thomas linger in disbelief and anxiety for eight days.
Christ, consistently, from the start of his earthly work to the postresurrection appearances shows that central to his work is forming a spiritual community. This work of community building shows us that Jesus is imparting to us a definition of being a follower of Christ that is communal in nature. Being part of a faith community, gathering around the written Scripture and the Table of Christ, is not an option added to being a Christian, rather, such is part of the very definition of Christian.
The postresurrection appearances of Jesus, along with the whole postresurrection Life of Christ, shows us Jesus freed to build community in ways He could not do while in flesh. We can see how this community building continues in the Acts, where the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ, and this Spirit is all about continuing the Life of Jesus in the Church, the Body of Christ.
We experience Christ and share Christ within and through the Church. That experience is of Christ who faces, now, in all directions and refuses any confining definition of His Body. In the words of the hymn "In Christ There Is No East or West":
All Christly souls are one in Him
Throughout the whole wide earth.
Possibly, the greatest challenge in our pluralistic world is to live prayerfully, even admitting our confusion in the matter, with the tension between two realizations. First, association formally with Christ and the earthly church in no way confirms that a person is Christian, even as the Church cannot be simply assumed to be the church or a church. Second, Christ is free as Christ in Love, even free from the "Christian" boundaries that would seek to impose upon this all-giving, all-demanding Love a definition external to Christ. The significance and extent of this term Christian is implied by one Reality alone~Christ.
Beyond these theological considerations are grave practical implications. However, experiencing the Christ, which is always a Mystery, is as simple as connecting in Love with one person. When we do this, we meet Christ in the other, and the other becomes a sacrament of Grace to us, even as the other meets Christ is us, and that person receives Grace through us.
This is reliant upon our being a Christly person; otherwise, we cut ourselves off from Grace and cease to live as Christian. Christ was and is forming a Christly people, even if He has to do that outside familiar, narrow boundaries professing followers of Christ often seek to confine Grace.
Why do we seek so to confine Christ? We are often more comfortable with a Christ we can understand, define, and keep to ourselves. We like the religious "Christ," the one who faces just our way. And we will continue to build up impressive ideological justification to have Love play only our tune.
I, as a pastor, find that I most experience a sense and conscious communication of Christ through persons I minister to. My personal prayer time finds fulfillment through, especially, ministering to persons in time of need. There, I most sense the Christ in the community being Love-in-Action. The alphabet of Christ is L-O-V-E. Without that, there is no Christian community, anywhere and under any name.
Prayer
Blessed Christ,
Within and Among Us
Make me the Servant of Love ~
of You.
Consecrate all my work
to be for You and
You alone
to share and receive
Grace through all.
Through the relationships
that define me and in which
You have placed me by Grace
shape me into a true
Christly person.
This is all
I want
I need
For in being in others
I find myself close to You.
For too long
I resisted the graces of community
the demands of relationships
now give me such a Grace
to find myself in the joys
and demands of self-sacrifice.
This
I know
Is my only path from Hell
the only way to Heaven
So grace me to walk in and toward
the Light
with You.
Amen.
* * *
For replies and biographical information, and submission to "The Light Shines" daily devotionals ~ a ministry of Christ Community United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL, see next page:
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