Jesus Creates Faith –– 2nd Sunday of Easter, Year A –– 23 April 2017

GOSPEL READING: John 20:19-31

The church in Jerusalem in Acts 2. . . looks like few of our churches: people relinquished the privilege (or right) of private property and held all property in common. Koinonia, which we often translate as fellowship, literally means joint sharing, to commingle or merge. This is rendered in 1 Corinthians 10:16 in many translations as participation. . . [in the body of Christ]. We may choose to be partners in the glorified Lord, but what about the crucified Christ? We may choose eternal blessings, but are we willing to surrender earthly blessings?

The reading from John's gospel brings this theme of choice to a head. The disciples were bunkered up, waiting for the leaders who crucified Jesus to pursue them. Jesus breaks into their fear and offers them peace, not a temporary claim but an eternal shalom. Sensing their uncertainty, he offers evidence of his resurrection and in so doing offers validation of his authority to offer such peace. Jesus immediately follows by giving them the Holy Spirit and the authority to shepherd the church that attends it.

The confidence of Jesus' offer is again contrasted by the doubts of the disciples, this time voiced by Thomas, to which Jesus once again responds by offering evidence of his resurrection. . . .

Will we believe in light of the inconvenience, unpopularity and cost? Choices like these are watersheds in our lives, leading in very different directions. –– Todd E. Johnson

FIRST READING: Acts 2:14a, 22-32

Peter makes it clear that the death and resurrection of Jesus is the hinge upon which the human story turns. He summarizes essential elements of Christian proclamation: Jesus' ministry was by the power of God; Jesus was put to death by crucifixion; God raised Jesus from the dead. Peter asserts that these events were part of God's plan for salvation.

Peter then quotes again at length from scripture, reading a portion of Psalm 16 as though the psalmist's words were spoken by Jesus to express his confidence that God would rescue him from death. Peter explains that because the psalmist, King David, was a prophet, it was given to him to foresee Jesus' resurrection and to understand it properly as Jesus' exaltation and enthronement as Messiah. The language of the psalm expresses the central Easter message that God did not abandon Jesus in death. Peter identifies himself and the rest of the apostles as witnesses to God's power over death and God's faithfulness to Jesus. –– Aaron Couch

EPISTLE READING: 1 Peter 1:3-9

With exalted language, the author praises God for God's great work of salvation in Jesus and calls on believers to rejoice, even through times of trial, because of the power and goodness of God's gift. There is an already-but-not-yet tension within the passage. The inheritance God gives to believers is being kept for them in heaven, ready to be revealed in the last time. Yet it is also true that by faith, believers are receiving salvation in the present time. –– Aaron Couch

Aaron Couch is a co-pastor of First Immanuel Lutheran Church in Portland, Oregon.

Todd E. Johnson is associate professor of worship, theology, and the arts at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Homily Service 41, no. 2 (2007): 113-121.

Jesus Creates Faith – 3 April 2016 – Second Sunday of Easter

Some of us were raised in an atmosphere that said to doubt was tantamount to being pagan. Nineteenth-century theologian and scientist Henry Drummond made a distinction between a doubter and an unbeliever, which I find helpful: a doubter is a person who searches for God with a thousand questions; while an unbeliever is apathetic to God. – Sarah Webb Phillips

This Sunday is so universally given to showing us our likeness to Thomas, that the first reading and epistle might best stand as harmony for the main song of John's Gospel rather than serving as focal texts.

John 20:19-31

The theme of this periscope, so often associated with Thomas, is not doubt—but, rather, faith. Faith in the risen Christ comes to each believer in his or her own way. And, quite honestly, it rarely, if ever, springs forth full-grown in any disciple without a measure of struggle.

Notice that on the evening of “that day”—the first Easter Sunday, the day of the resurrection revelation—the disciples are gathered behind locked doors “for fear of the Jews.” Old habits and inhibitions to our faith die quite hard, even in the face of the astonishingly good news that Jesus is alive!

Jesus appears miraculously in the midst of the fearful followers, a sign that is consistent with John's gospel and its concern to demonstrate the power of God present in the life of Jesus. Christ's message is peace; he seeks to put them at ease, to calm their doubts and soothe their jangled nerves. He speaks the words of blessing twice (“Peace be with you”). Sometimes, we just don't get it the first time!

Notice that, before Thomas ever enters the scene and makes his special request, Christ shows them his hands and side. Again, we have often cast aspersion on poor Thomas for refusing to believe without a visible sign. Yet, here is Jesus, making himself known in a very tangible way to disciples in need of some flesh-and-blood reassurance. . . .

Some time later, when the disciples attempt to persuade Thomas, who missed the meeting with Jesus, of these things, he utters his bold assertion: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hand … I will not believe!” On the next Sunday evening, Thomas gets his wish. The Lord appears again, with the same blessing (“Peace be with you”) and heads straight for Thomas. Immediately, he offers the headstrong disciple the very proof he desires; intently, Christ brings Thomas to face the crux of his personal dilemma of faith.

Evidently, Thomas never needs to touch the nail-prints in Jesus’ hands. Instead, he kneels and proclaims, “My Lord and my God!” Seeing is enough for Thomas; his crisis is resolved. Yet Jesus speaks to all those who would come after Thomas, even to those of us who hear the story yet again today.

The real blessing—which is the peace of Christ—is found by those who neither see with their eyes nor touch with their hands, but who still find a way to believe. Still, and always, the risen Christ comes to us behind the locked doors and in the doubt-filled crisis moments of our lives. His sure word to us: “You don't have to doubt; you can believe.” – John P. Fairless

Acts 5:27-32

The apostles, serving as the witnesses, will not be intimidated by the preaching police. They are our exemplars, the siblings who nudge us into proclamations right along with them, although in our own venues and in our own ways. Since we are not all street preachers like Peter, it may help listeners to hear the many ways people of faith make our own interpretation and understandings known.  

Revelation 1:4-8

John’s writing names all the people in the churches to whom he sends his vision “priests serving… God…” All of Jesus’ followers constitute “a dominion,” a realm ruled by the one who brings peace. Some of Jesus’ followers write visions (we might just as well call it poetry or hymn lyrics); others teach children how to do math or tie shoes. In the great range of ways we each contribute to the peacefulness of Earth, we are witnesses. Preach that!

We do not do our witnessing in perfect faith, but in knowledge that Thomas’s proclamation was the truth, and we share it––even on the days when we are in doubt.

Sara Webb Phillips is a United Methodist minister serving North Springs UMC in Sandy Springs, Georgia.

John P. Fairless is senior minister of the First Baptist Church of Gainesville, Florida.

Homily Service 40, no. 5 (2007): 55-66.

Thomas – 12 April 2015 – Second Sunday of Easter

When a gifted former student of mine in worship and preaching, Pastor Mark Rigg––now serving a Lutheran (ELCA) church in Pennsylvania––preached this Gospel text one spring, he turned our attention away from Thomas’s inability to believe and toward noticing that Thomas receives faith from the Risen One. The story is told in such a way that Christ appears already knowing Thomas’s announcement that he wants to see and feel the marks of Jesus’ suffering.

Jesus invites Thomas into exactly what Thomas needs.

The visceral nature of this faith-creation is one way we can come to think of the meal of bread and wine. It is as if, in the meal of Jesus’ body and blood, we become Thomas, again and again being given what we, perhaps, did not even know we needed.

Fritz West’s approach to the story of Jesus and Thomas (in Homily Service 2006) extends the image by connecting it with other narratives in our tradition.

John 20:19-31

How do persons come to believe? Through the gift of the Holy Spirit. John 20:19–31 fulfills promises concerning the Holy Spirit that Jesus made in the Farewell Discourses (John 14:15–31). The two passages may be read in parallel. Above all, the promise of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16, 26) is fulfilled in its bestowal (John 20:22). This makes of the church a new creation, for the verb to breathe echoes God’s breathing life into the first human (Genesis 2:7).

Further, the Holy Spirit brings gifts: peace (John 20:21, 26; cf. 14:27), sight (John 20:24–29; cf. 14:17), and presence (John 20:19–29; cf. 14:18). This last is Jesus’ gift to Thomas, who asks for his presence and receives it—graphically.

What about us, who have no opportunity to see Jesus in the flesh with our very own eyes? How can we believe? This passage assures us that Jesus will give us what we need. Thomas did not believe because he had the opportunity to stick his intact finger in Jesus’ open wound, but because Jesus gave him what he needed to believe, a pattern found throughout John’s gospel (John 4:1–26; 5:1–9; 9:35–38; 11:1–44). Thomas’ declaration of faith “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28) shows that he truly saw the Father in the Son (John 14:7).

Jesus gives us what we need to believe as well: the witness of the disciples on the wings of the Spirit. In another tie with creation, the disciples’ testimony moves beyond the word of an eyewitness to become the Word of God. In breathing the Holy Spirit into the disciples, Jesus empowered the church to witness to him as he had witnessed to the Father. As his revelation gave sight to believers, so can their testimony. – Fritz West

Acts 4:32-35

“To each according to need,” central to communist ideology, is also here in the Acts account of  how the followers of the risen one first lived together. Those with property sold it, “laid it at the apostles’ feet…” and distributed it.

Instead of merely handing out charity to the poorest, they invited everyone to own everything together, share everything, and no one, as a consequence, was poor any longer. “There was not a needy person among them.”

This is an image of church that ought to utterly scare us who live in the competitive, individualistic, economy-worshipping First World. Share?!!! Everything?!!! What would that be like?

To believe so strongly in the resurrection that all trust is thrown into reliance on God’s Spirit moving in the community is an unbelievable prospect. As G. K. Chesterton is known to have said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult, and left untried.”

1 John 1:1––2:2

“…[I]f we walk in the light as God is in the light, we have communion with one another…”

Let the preaching on this day offer countless possibilities for surprise and delight that could come to us were we, in our homes and churches, to follow in the ways of our ancestors, to ask for the faith we long to have. This might be a Sunday for dreaming about impossible answers to intractable problems––like poverty. Faith in a resurrected truth can lead to . . . What?!

Fritz West is pastor of St. John's United Church of Christ, Fountain City, Wisconsin, and liturgical writer and author of Scripture and Memory: the Ecumenical Hermeneutic of the Three-Year Lectionary (The Liturgical Press, 1997).

Homily Service 39, no. 5 (2006): 46-55.