John 20:1-31: Seeing And Believing

(1) Sermon Script

Introduction: We Are All Gonna Die!

Welcome to church, hope you are well, you are going to die.

What sort of a message is that? It’s a true one. Unless Jesus comes back, I am going to die, and you are going to die.

I remember the first time I realized I was going to die. I was 10 years old. I was lying in the bath. And I was looking at my body, my arms and my legs. And as I looked at my arms, I realized that one day, they would be eaten by worms. I was going to die. It was a tragedy. And I started crying, there in the bath. And I traced out my life. Maybe in 1990 I will be 20. And then in the year 2000, I will be 30. I might have kids then. 2010, I will be 40. 2020 I will be 50. 2030 I will be 60. 2040 I will be 70. 2050 I will be 80. I won’t live much longer than that. Then I will be dead. And I cried.

That is the right reaction, because death is not just a part of life. Death is an obscenity on the face of God’s world.

I consoled myself with the fact that it’s a long way off. But it didn’t stop me crying.

And of course, for some people, it isn’t a long way off. Walk around a cemetery. Read the headstone of the mum and bub who lie together. Read about the 20 year olds and 30 year olds, as well as the 70 year olds and 80 year olds. And it’s not just people in previous generations. I’ve done a funeral for a 14 year old boy and a 25 year old girl.

Welcome to church, hope you are well, unless Jesus comes back real soon, you are all going to die.

Our secular atheistic society can’t handle death. In the face of death, it’s got nothing. 50,000 secular social workers and counsellors can’t do anything or say anything. Oh, of course, it will rubbish faith in Jesus Christ. ‘We came from monkeys! There aren’t any miracles. People don’t rise from the dead. Death is the way of the world. Make the most of your life, stay fit, enjoy yourself. Freeze your head, if you have the money.’

But still, we’re going to die.

Some people look for life after death. They hope there are ghosts. When I was a parish minister, so called spiritists asked me for permission to do investigations in the parish cemeteries. Clairvoyants and mediums and spirit channellers have become mainstream. I have a relative in this line of work. Pick up women’s magazines, turn to the back, and you’ll find pages and pages of people who offer to contact the dead for you. ‘Let me ease the pain of your grief, I can contact your dead loved one for you, to give you a message of comfort from beyond. Maybe I can call up their ghost.’

Jesus came to earth to do something about death. He didn’t sit there limp and forlorn, doing reflective listening and saying ‘Now, how do you feel about that’. He didn’t say, ‘Now let me just get a ghost on the line.’ He decided to enter into our experience of death, and defeat death from within. He allows death to gobble him up, and then with mighty power smashes through death, leaving death shattered on the floor.

We saw in chapter 11 of the Gospel of John that Jesus said of himself, ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies, and the one who lives and believes in me will never die’ (John 11:25-26). And he gave a proof: the resurrection of Lazarus. Jesus defeated death from the outside. He stood outside the tomb and called Lazarus out.

In chapter 20 of the Gospel of John, we are going to see Jesus go through death himself. We are going to see Jesus defeat death from the inside, from inside the tomb. He will allow death to swallow him up, and then destroy death from the inside out.

Mary Magdalene Early On Sunday Morning (vv. 1-2)

Of course, all this is hard to believe. For most of us, seeing is believing. After all, we don’t want to be the niave, gullible dolt that gets taken in.

Mary is no different. Three times in chapter 20, Mary says she believes that Jesus was taken by grave robbers (John 20:2, 13, 15). So much for gullible and niave Christians, who are superstitious and know no better! It is a prejudice against the people of old that we modern people have. Of course in the olden days people would believe anything! But not Mary. Far from believing that Jesus was resurrected, Mary is convinced that Jesus’ body has been stolen, and that was even after she saw Jesus raise her brother, Lazarus.

Peter And John Early On Sunday Morning (vv. 2-10)

We read of Peter and John rushing to the tomb. All they find are the grave clothes, lying rolled up or folded neatly. Grave robbers would hardly leave things so neat. And what would they rob? Jesus died with nothing. We read in verse 8 that John sees the empty grave clothes and believes. But his belief is of a weaker sort. John believed because he had seen the evidence of the grave clothes left there. But he didn’t believe because of the Old Testament Scriptures. He didn’t yet get it that 700 years before, the Prophet Isaiah had said that the Suffering Servant must rise. Isaiah 53:11-12:

After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53:11-12 NIV)

So the disciple John’s faith at this stage is less than what it should be. For John, seeing is still believing. But John doesn’t believe because God in the Old Testament said it would happen this way. He believes not on the basis of God’s predictive prophecy, but on the basis of the empty tomb.

Mary Magdalene, A Little Later On Sunday Morning (vv. 11-18)

But Mary Magdalene gets a better piece of evidence than John, at this stage. John believes because of the empty grave clothes. But Mary gets Jesus himself. Of course, she still believes the body of Jesus has been stolen. She asks the angels where the body is. She even asks Jesus where his body is. And then the risen Jesus shows her himself. Earlier Jesus had said, ‘My sheep listen to my voice’ (John 10:5, 27-28). And Mary knows Jesus’ voice.

In our egalitarian, post-sexual revolution society, which has had a female Queen, a female Governor-General, and a female Prime Minister, we don’t blink at Mary being the first witness of the resurrection. But in first-century Jewish culture, the testimony of a woman was not as strong as that of a man. So here is another piece of evidence that John’s account is genuine and not made up. Jesus first appeared to a female disciple.

Later, Jesus invited Thomas to touch him. So when Jesus says, ‘don’t hold on to me’ or ‘don’t touch me’, I don’t think it is a statement about the impropriety of touching the risen Jesus’ body. Rather, Mary is not to cling to Jesus, she is not to hang on to him and to not let him go. Mary had lost Jesus twice: first, in him dying, and second, she had lost his body. Now Jesus stands before her, very much alive. Understandably, Mary didn’t want to lose him a third time. But Jesus doesn’t want Mary to cling on to him. ‘Do not hold on to me’ probably means ‘stop clinging to me’ or ‘You must let me go now’.

For Jesus’ relationship with all his followers, with all his loved ones, is about to change. From now on, Mary will have a new relationship with her risen Lord, mediated by the Holy Spirit. There is something more important than Mary having and holding Jesus and not letting him go. Mary must let Jesus go back to the Father, which is better by far. Jesus will not dwell in the flesh with Mary Magdalene, nor with any of his disciples, this side of the new creation. He will dwell with us and in us by his Spirit. But Jesus, in the flesh, must move on. The Spirit must take Jesus’ place on earth.

The Ten On Sunday Evening, And Thomas’ Unbelief (vv. 19-23)

That evening, the first Easter Sunday, the risen Jesus returns. And we learn that, just as burial clothes cannot constrict the risen Christ’s movements, neither can locked doors. Jesus ‘drops in’ on them, so to speak. He miraculously appears, to show the disciples his hands and side.

And in this chapter, three times he wishes his disciples ‘peace’. And while Jesus also said, ‘I did not come to bring peace but a sword’, Jesus indeed brings peace, and wishes us peace, and is our peace. For even if along our journey we only have snatches of peace amidst trouble and toil, ultimately Jesus Christ comes to bring us peace. Jesus’ life, his death, and his resurrection, ultimately brings us peace with God and with each other, even if there are small skirmishes to fight along the way. Since we have been justified by faith, let us take the peace with God that we have (Rom 5:1). He is our peace, who has made the two one, and brought down the wall of the law (Eph 2:14). And Jesus sends out the disciples on the same mission of peace. Verses 21 to 23:

As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." (John 20:21-23 NIV)

By breathing on them, Jesus anticipates the day of Pentecost. At Pentecost, the risen Jesus Christ will send the Holy Spirit on the disciples. Just as at the Last Supper, Jesus symbolically acted out what was to come, his death for sins, so here, Jesus symbolically acts out what is to come, his sending of the Spirit.

Key to peace is sending out the disciples with the message of forgiveness. They now have the news of forgiveness, in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Jesus gives that to the disciples. And because it is a gift to the disciples, it is also a gift to us, the church. In the gospel preaching church, there is the forgiveness of sins.

Only God can forgive sins, it is true. Moreover, it is Jesus who paid for sins. So it is Jesus who can forgive sins. But the risen Jesus has given his disciples the gospel of forgiveness. So our actions here and now on earth in preaching the gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are real. We really do bring the forgiveness of sins when we tell of Jesus’ death and of faith in him.

We do not play church or God when we proclaim forgiveness and retention of sins. Wherever there is faith in Christ Jesus, there is forgiveness. Wherever Jesus is Lord, sins are loosed. God remembers sins no more. And likewise, whenever Jesus and his lordship, his death, and his resurrection are spurned, there is no forgiveness. Sins are retained.

But someone might say, Jesus says, ‘do not judge and you won’t be judged’. (Matt 7:7). So how can you a mere man, forgive sins? How can the church, fallible, human and sinful, bring forgiveness?

But Jesus also sends his disciples, and by extension, us, to bring forgiveness and retention of sins to the world. It is not as if we hold this power apart from the gospel. We exercise this power through the gospel, the simple message that King Jesus died for sins and rose again as Lord, and that anyone believing in him will be saved.

As John has already said, John 3:16-18:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. (NIV)

The one who believes in Christ as saviour and Lord is saved and is not condemned. The one who does not believe in Christ stands condemned already. God’s wrath remains on him. And we simply add our voice to the voice of the gospel when we say that ‘whoever does not believe in Jesus the Son of God will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him’ (John 3:36). We forgive people’s sins when we say that the one who believes has his sins forgiven, in accordance with God’s promise. And we retain people’s sins when we say that the one who will not believe in Christ is not forgiven, but is still in their sins. We exercise the power of loosing and binding sins through preaching this gospel and asking people to believe it.

The Eleven Including Thomas, A Week Later (vv. 24-28)

We mustn’t think that the disciples were gullible fools. We’ve already seen that Mary Magdalene thrice said that she thought the body had been stolen. It was only seeing that was believing for her.

Likewise is Thomas Didymus, the twin. He wants some hard evidence. He is a skeptic. He wants to poke and prod before he believes. He must see for himself, before he gets caught up in a fool’s errand.

Isn’t it good to know that someone’s asking the hard questions? Isn’t it good that someone at least has a standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt? That’s Thomas.

Well, he has to wait a week. But doubting Thomas is going to get all the proof he asks for. Jesus turns up for show and tell a week later. He offers his scars to Thomas. He invites Thomas to thrust his fingers and hands in the divits that the Roman soldiers have left. Jesus is no ghost, though he can pass through locked doors. He is the first of a new race of human. He is the first resurrected human, whose body still has traces of his past earthly life, but is renewed and transformed. And likewise will be our resurrection bodies. Our resurrection bodies will have traces of our journey to heaven, but our scars like his will be transformed in glory.

And so Thomas confesses in chapter 20 verse 28, ‘My Lord and My God’. And John’s Gospel has come full circle. John’s first verse introduces us to the Word who was with God, and was God, and who became flesh. He is God the one and only Son, who was at the Father’s side, but has now made the Father known. And now, at the end, Thomas comes to the same conclusion. Jesus is both Lord and God.

Maybe you’re a cynic, like Thomas’. Well, you can do a Thomas. You can move from cynicism to confession. You can move from unbelief to belief. And later church history tells us that Thomas’ belief was not without effect. The church in India even today traces its existence back to the ministry of Thomas, who moved from doubt to belief. The ‘Mar Thoma’ church, or ‘Saint Thomas’ church, traces it’s history back to Saint Thomas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar_Thoma_Syrian_Church.

And there are a number of these Christians in fellowship with the Anglican churches in Sydney. We believe, therefore we speak. Thomas believed, therefore, he sailed to India in AD 52 and spoke the gospel, and the Mar Thoma church was planted.

For the risen Jesus thought of not just those who stood before him when he appeared after that first Easter Day. The risen Jesus thought of all who would believe in Christ through them. Jesus thought of us, as he stood there clothed in his new resurrection body. And John, as he writes his Gospel, is thinking of us.

First, Jesus looks past Thomas, and peers down the coming centuries and millennia, and says this. Verse 29:

Then Jesus told him [Thomas], "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (NIV)

Sometimes we wonder, if only I could have seen Jesus, and touched his hands and side, I would be blessed with faith. But here Jesus is saying, we are more blessed. We are more blessed than St Thomas. We are more blessed who have not seen, and yet believed. You can be more blessed than Thomas, if you believe. As Paul says: ‘If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved’ (Romans 10:9 NIV).

Us, Here And Now, the More Blessed (vv. 20:30-31)

In fact, that is why John has taken the trouble to write his Gospel. He tells us why. John chapter 20 verses 30 and 31:

Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (NIV)

John wants us to do one better than Mary. John wants us to one better than Thomas. Indeed, John wants us to go one better than he himself.

Mary heard the voice of her Lord. Thomas touched his hand and side. John saw the empty grave clothes.

But you and I have the Scriptures. We have the Old and New Testament. For us, we don’t get to see and believe. We don’t get to touch and hold, to poke and prod, and to hang on to Jesus. We have to see with the eye of faith. We have to believe on the basis of others seeing and saying.

And Jesus says we are more blessed. You can be more blessed than Mary, Thomas and John, simply by believing that Jesus is risen and reigning on high. ‘On the third day he rose again, in accordance with the Scriptures’ is what we say in the Apostles’ Creed. You believe that, you are more blessed than Peter and James and John and Mary and Andrew and Thomas. And you will have eternal life with them.

Conclusion

Welcome to church, hope you are well, you are still dying. Unless Jesus comes back first, your body will either be decomposed or return to the dirt from whence it came. 50,000 social workers with their reflective listening, 10 pages of clairvoyants and mediums in women’s magazines, or freezing your head won’t change that. And it won’t solve it either.

And death is still an obscenity on the face of God’s earth. Death made Jesus cry. Death made Jesus die.

But there is good news. Jesus is risen. Death is not the end. Jesus is the first of a new humanity, who conquers death, and gives us the victory.

Why not take a gamble on this? Honestly, what have you got to lose? You and I are dying anyway, and nothing in our modern world in all its vanity and pride and inflated claims is going to stop this. To follow Jesus, you have to give up a life that you have to give up anyway. Why not beat death, and give up your life now, of your own volition. Give your life to Jesus, and not to the death which will take your life by force anyway. Jump before you are pushed. Jesus promises eternal life. He promises resurrection from the dead. Take Jesus and the resurrection life he offers. Welcome to church, hope you are well, we are still going to die, but Jesus is alive, and he is the resurrection and the life, and whoever believes in him will live even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in him will never die.

Let’s pray.

(2) English Translation

My Translation

20:1Now early on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb while it was still dark and saw that the stone was removed from the tomb. 20:2So she quickly went to Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved and said to them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and I do not know where they have put him.” 20:3So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. 20:4Now the two were running, and the other disciple ran faster than Peter and came to the tomb first, 20:5and bending down, he saw the strips of linen lying there, but he did not go in. 20:6Then Simon Peter also came, following after him, and he went into the tomb, and saw the strips of lining lying there, 20:7and the face cloth which was on his head, not lying with the strips of linen, but folded up by itself. 20:8So then the other disciple who came to the tomb first also entered and saw and believed. 20:9For they had not yet understood the Scripture that he must rise from the dead. 20:10Then the disciples went away again to their homes.

20:11Now Mary stood outside the entrance to the tomb crying. Then while she was crying, she bent down into the tomb, 20:12and saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been laid, one at the head and one at the feet. 20:13And the angels said to her, “Woman, why are you crying?” She said to them, “they have taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him.” 20:14After she said these things, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there—although she did not know that it was Jesus. 20:15Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?” And she, thinking that he was the gardener, said to him, “Lord, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will take him back.” 20:16Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned around and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni” (which means ‘teacher’). 20:17Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet gone up to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, “I am going up to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.”

20:18Mary Magdalene went and reported to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”, and that he had said these things to her.

20:19Then it was evening on that day, the first of the week, and the doors where the disciples were staying were shut for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood in their midsts and said to them, “Peace be with you”. 20:20And having said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced, because they had seen the Lord. 20:21So Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. Just as the Father sent me, I am also sending you.” 20:22And having said this, he breathed and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 20:23If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven them. If you retain anyone’s sins, they are retained.

20:24Now Thomas, one of the twelve, who was called ‘twin’, was not with them when Jesus came. 20:25So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and thrust my finger into the mark of the nails, and thrust my hands into his side, I will never believe.”

20:26And after eight days the disciples were again inside, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came and stood in their midsts, though the doors had been shut, and said, “Peace be with you.” 20:27Then he said to Thomas, “bring your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and thrust it into my side, and don’t be unbelieving but believing.” 20:28Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and My God.” 20:29Jesus said to him, “Do you believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and believe.”

20:30So Jesus also did many other signs in the sight of his disciples which are not written in this book. 20:31But these are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you have life in his name.

(3) Exegetical Notes

The view that John 20:22 was not a real receipt of the Holy Spirit but was a symbolic or parabolic breathing only as a ‘sign’, ‘in escrow’, proleptically pointing forward to a later gift of the Spirit at Pentecost was condemned and anathematized in AD 553 at the Fifth Ecumenical Council. Theodore of Mopsuestia had apparently taught that “when after the resurrection the Lord breathed upon his disciples, saying, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ he did not really give them the Holy Spirit, but that he breathed upon them only as a sign” (NPNF2 Vol 14:315. See https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xii.vii.html). This view the council anathematized.

James M Hamilton Jr points out that a number of modern evangelical expositors effectively argue for Theodore of Mopsuestia’s position. Hamilton himself argues that the Spirit was given in verse 22 in a real though different way in the meeting in the locked room on the day of the resurrection, when compared to the event at Pentecost in Acts 2: James M Hamilton Jr, God’s Indwelling Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Old & New Testament (B&H Academic: Nashville, 2006) 94-99.

Hamilton’s position points us in the right direction when he says:

“Baptisms in the Spirit, fillings with the Spirit, and indwelling by the Spirit are three distinct manifestation of the eschatological gift of the Spirit. The disciples received the gift of the indwelling Spirit on the day of the resurrection in John 20:22 when Jesus breathed on them and told them to receive the Spirit. Fifty days later at Pentecost they were baptized with the Holy Spirit which was a public attestation that this messianic community had God’s approval. The disciples were then periodically “filled” with the Spirit, whereby they were empowered to proclaim God’s word with authority (Hamilton, 2006: 99).

Indeed, John the Evangelist also gives indication that the Holy Spirit has been active in various ways in the lives and ministries of the disciples even prior to this point—see John 14:17, where Jesus says that the disciples “know him [the Spirit], because he remains with you and will be in you. Some good early witnesses read ‘is in you’ rather than ‘will be in you’.