P&F Lectionary Commentary: 2 Easter 04/15/2007

Lectionary Commentary

Acts 5:27-32
Psalm 118:14-29
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31

Acts 5:27-32
Peter’s defense before the council is one of several “set speeches” in Acts, in which Luke provides editorial summaries of the early Christian kerygma. This speech is shorter than most (compare, eg, Peter’s preaching to the household of Cornelius in last week’s readings), reflecting perhaps the “courtroom drama” of the scene: Peter speaks here only of Jesus’ Resurrection and exaltation. Especially interesting here is the sense that Peter and John are compelled to preach about Jesus: although the council gave them orders not to preach, they must “obey God rather than any human authority.” They are compelled to preach because they are witnesses of Jesus’ death and Resurrection, as they are to the testimony that Jesus is now exalted as leader, savior, and forgiver of sins. And they do not bear this witness alone: the Holy Spirit is also a witness, Peter says, and testifies with them when they preach. Their work of witness, therefore, is not solely a human effort, but is an action where human acting and divine acting act together to achieve divine ends. Preaching is a panentheistic event, where the Spirit is in the preaching and the preaching is in the Spirit. As we will see in the Thomas episode in today’s Gospel, the kind of believing witnessed to in the preaching of Peter and John is both a statement about and an encounter with the Spirit of the Risen Christ.

Psalm 118:14-29
The psalm appointed today is another selection from Psalm 118, also used on Easter morning, with the same reference to “the stone which the builders rejected” becoming “the chief cornerstone.” The next verse—“This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes”—is a link to the theme of witnessing in the other readings. The revelation of New Life occurs in the coming-together of divine action and human interpretation.

Revelation 1:4-8
The middle readings in the Year C cycle for Easter season are all taken from the Apocalypse of John. This opening section introduces the seven “letters” from the seer to the churches in seven communities in Asia Minor. John sends the churches greetings from God, from the “seven spirits” in attendance on God’s throne, and from the Risen Jesus, “the faithful witness.” Here again we are invited to understand “witnessing” in a panentheistic way: Jesus bore witness to what he received from God; John the Seer, along with other church leaders and Christians, “a kingdom of priests serving his God,” now bear witness to what they have received from Jesus. John’s witness is faithful because it is included in and energized by the Risen Jesus’ witness from heaven. John’s vision thus takes its place alongside Peter’s preaching and Thomas’s week-late encounter with Jesus as an example of believing that is both a human effort and a divine gift.

John 20:19-31
This section of John’s Gospel follows immediately upon the passage read on Easter Day; but because we read the two passages in church a week apart from each other, we-the-congregation might not see the immediate connection. The stories of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in the locked room and of Jesus’ appearance to Thomas, are, however, part and parcel of the small steps of discovery, the gradual revelation of Resurrection, begun in the first 18 verses of John’s account of the Easter event. After Mary Magdalene has found the stone removed from the tomb; after Peter and the other disciple find the tomb empty; after Mary sees angels who ask her why she’s weeping; after Mary sees the Risen Jesus himself and is directed by him to tell the disciples; then, later that same evening, the disciples have gathered in the house and locked the doors from fear, when Jesus stands among them and reveals himself to them all. Unlike the Synoptics, John does not make a point of saying that the male disciples did not believe Mary’s report of seeing Jesus; we can instead suppose that, as Peter and the other disciple had seen the tomb empty, they were likely to believe Mary, and so were waiting with some expectation—and perhaps some anxiety as well—to see if the Risen Jesus would appear to them. When Jesus does come to them, he carries to the next logical step the themes of his earlier encounter with Mary. Where he had earlier told Mary not to hold him, he now shows the disciples his hands and his side. Where he had earlier sent Mary to tell the disciples about his ascending to God, he now sends the disciples out, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to carry on his ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation in the world. The episode in the locked house is thus the culmination and conclusion of the Easter revelation: by small steps of discovery, the disciples have been brought from the opening of the tomb to the opening of themselves as witnesses to the reality of Jesus’ Resurrection.

But with the Thomas episode, the story of Resurrection bursts the narrative frame, as it were, and leaps outward from the disciples, the original believers, to encompass all believers. Thomas is portrayed as having been separated from the other disciples on Easter evening; he has not seen the Risen Jesus, and announces that he cannot believe unless he also sees. When the Risen Jesus appears once more in the locked house, he singles out Thomas from the rest, and invites Thomas to measure his doubt against his experience; now that Thomas can experience the Risen One for himself, he becomes the first of the disciples to worship Jesus as his God. Jesus accepts his belief; but he adds to that the further promise “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Thomas functions here as a sort of bridge character: not an original eyewitness of the Resurrection on Easter Day, but an eyewitness nonetheless, and one whose witness draws forth the promise of even greater blessing for those who witness through faith above and beyond the sight of their eyes. The Thomas episode thus reaches beyond the narrative frame of the first disciples and the first Easter, intimating the possibility of the experience of Resurrection for all who believe, in all times and places, not only the first eyewitnesses. This breaking of the narrative frame is echoed in the final verses of the passage—quite probably originally the final verses of the gospel—where the narrator addresses the reader directly: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

Thus the story of Resurrection, begun when the stone is removed from the tomb, is not complete until it is echoed and reechoed in the lives of believers. What the Thomas episode makes clear is that “belief,” in the particular sense John uses it in this gospel, is not simple credulity, nor is it accepting something as true, against all appearances, just because some authority declares it to be true. “Belief” in John’s sense always includes some element of experience, some direct encounter with the One in whom the believer believes. For post-Thomas Christians, our encounter with the Risen One comes in and through the community of disciples who carry on Jesus’ ministry in Jesus’ name and by Jesus’ Spirit, rather than by the sight of the eyes and the touch of the hand. Yet our encounter with the Risen One is no less genuine for having been mediated through the believing community—as indeed Thomas’s encounter was mediated—and the blessing we receive in believing is no less than the Peace conferred upon the disciples by Jesus on Easter evening. As the community reenacts in its life the divine ideals first embodied in Jesus, so its members witness and believe in the reality of Jesus’ ongoing and eternal life, so its members continue to “have life in his name.”

Paul S. Nancarrow is rector of St. George's Episcopal Church in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. and canon theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota. He is a co-author of The Call of the Spirit: Process Spirituality in a Relational World.

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