Case Studies for our Era of Anxiety - 9. Peter - John 21:15-19

Hi guys!

Today I am still 'convalescing' so the 'DIY Sunday Service Kit takes on a shorter and simpler format this week.

You will find here an introductory worship aid in a setting of Psalm 46 ... a Psalm for troubled times ... from Shane & Shane. 

This setting dates from 2015 but could easily have been written with this week's news in mind.

I'd like to invite you to listen to it thoughtfully and then let it inspire and motivate your prayers, before clicking on the following links in turn.

If you opt for the Audio podcast on Buzzsprout or the StudioCam version on YouTube, please be aware that there's a concluding contemporary Psalm after the sermon 'Transcript'.

Thanks for your patience. I hope normal service will be resumed next week!

(Fans of the Word for the Week video will find it at the end.)

(Why not now pause and take a moment to pray?)

 

BIBLE PASSAGE

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+21%3A15-25&version=NIV

 AUDIO

STUDIOCAM

TRANSCRIPT 👇

•        Introduction

What is your personal ‘self-assessment’?

Seriously.

How do you see yourself, identify yourself … define your identity?

I mean … who ARE you?

We’re looking today at how the Lord holds out hope for people committed to a path of self-destruction because they have a horribly twisted idea of their identity and ... intent on self-preservation and self-validation … are living a self-wrecking delusion.

And if you are sure that can’t be you … would you hold that thought for a minute?

I’m going to suggest there’s something you may not quite have realised before going on in John 21:15-19 … and facing up to that was the absolute liberation of Simon Peter.

         •        1. The MAGNITUDE of the problem

Peter had loud and proud INSISTED on the night before Christ’s betrayal that while others might betray Jesus he was never going to do such a thing as that.

Not even if it meant prison and death for him (see John 13:37, Matthew 26:33-35).

But reading through the Gospels’ accounts of what happened next, we see that THREE times after the Lord’s arrest Peter had the chance to identify with Jesus, but when it really mattered Peter denied his Lord three times.

Every time.

You could possibly excuse a momentary lapse, but there was not ONE momentary lapse.

There were a persistent three.

And the last time Peter seems to have called down curses upon himself to support his denial (Mark 14:71).

He was trying to prove he was NOT Christ’s disciple, to avoid being arrested and imprisoned alongside His Lord.

Please bear in mind that Peter lived in what we call a ‘shame culture’.

In such a culture patronage leads to loyalty EVERY TIME … and a failure in loyalty is an unforgivable social sin … it strikes at the foundations and bedrock of any such society.

The scale of Peter’s failure here is truly enormous.

Even in our society, abandoning someone to whom you owe everything to die just in order to save your own skin is a matter of unbearable shame.

Can there POSSIBLY be a way back from there for Peter?

Well there is and we’re coming to that.

But first we need to notice the way that Jesus wasn’t content to probe Peter’s outward actions on that terrible night.

Jesus is probing the flaw at the bottom of Peter’s character that led to all this stuff happening.

         •        2. The (Soul) trouble with Peter

We know the Lord was sorting out a problem at the heart of Peter in these verses … but what WAS it that He was sorting out?

For decades I’ve heard it preached as if the issue was that Peter didn’t love Jesus enough.

Really?

Is ‘you don’t love me enough’ the sort of message we hear Jesus putting out to His disciples anywhere else in Scripture? 

As if we’re to work harder at loving Jesus to have Him love us?

Do you REALY think that’s what the Bible is about?

‘Try harder to love Jesus’ as the way of salvation?

Jesus has just given His life on the Cross because the ‘try harder Gospel’ is a busted flush!

No.

What’s going here is that Jesus is putting His finger on Peter’s problem, which is not that Peter isn’t trying hard enough to love Jesus, but that Peter is pre-occupied with the idea he’s better than the ‘others’ who don’t love Jesus enough.

And if I’m right about this, we may have been wrong about what’s going on here with Peter for quite a while.

What actually IS the soul trouble with Peter?

            •          The connection with Cain

If we are going grasp what Jesus doe as He three times challenges Peter about His love for his Lord, we really do have to confront not just the magnitude but the deep dye of the failure in Peter’s character.

It goes as deep as Peter’s understanding of his very self.

It looks as if Peter’s problem was what the theologian Miroslav Volf calls ‘a false identity’.

Volf take us back to the story of Cain and Abel to illustrate what he is saying.

Volf asks why Cain slew his younger brother Abel.

Volf says that Cain’s identity was constructed in relation or in comparison to Abel, and Cain seems to have got his self-worth from being better than his brother.

So why (asks Volf) did Cain want to kill his younger brother?

Cain (says Volf) got his sense of self-worth from being better than his brother.

So when Abel began to rise above him, Cain had to deny that reality because Cain’s self-worth was fully dependent on the certainty that he (Cain) was totally better than Abel!

Cain had to either radically re-adjust the view he had of who he was, or alternatively just annihilate Abel.

Volf is pretty clear that the murder of Abel by Cain was not born of a purely violent urge, but rather it was the result of the cold logic of “a perverted self in order to maintain  its own false identity.”

Peter, then, in his turn is doing something simply as human as what Cain did.

Like Cain, Peter’s identity was BASED on the assumption of his superiority to his fellow disciples.

Peter told Jesus that while others fell away he (Peter) would not because he, Peter, was the most passionate and faithful of all.

So, Mark 14:27-30 says 

““You will all fall away,” Jesus told them, “for it is written:

 

“‘I will strike the shepherd,

    and the sheep will be scattered.’

28 But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.”

 

29 Peter declared, “Even if all fall away, I will not.”

 

30 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times.””

Like Cain, it therefore appears, Peter’s identity was based on the assumption of his superiority to his fellow disciples.

Peter explicitly tells Jesus that he was the keenest and most committed of ALL the disciples.

Can you see this: Peter is NOT basing his identity on Jesus’s love for Peter, but on Peter’s love for Jesus.

            •          The consequences of connecting with Cain

Like Cain, Peter seems to have based his own identity on his superiority to his fellow disciples.

Peter told Jesus that HE was the most faithful, passionate disciple of them all.

Let’s be clear what’s going on here:

Peter was NOT basing his identity … his idea of himself … on Jesus’s great love for him.

Peter was basing his identity on his (Peter’s) own great love for Jesus.

Keller (p. 100) has this great quote:

“That meant that while Jesus was Peter’s teacher, Peter was being his own Saviour.”

Keller goes on to point out that any identity based on our superior performance over others will lead to at least these two results: fragility and hostility.

            •           Fragility

Peter is connecting with Cain and the first thing that makes him is FRAGILE …

How does THAT figure out?

Why fragile?

Keller puts the situation in pretty stark terms:

“While Jesus was Peter’s teacher, Peter was being his own saviour”.

Peter has no sense of his danger … in spite of being warned of this in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

He just screens it out … because if you base your whole idea of your self on some characteristic and then it is convincingly challenged, then all you’ve based yourself on is GONE and there’s none of you left!

            •           Hostility

I don’t know if this puzzle you quite the way it puzzles me but I do find it odd that when they feel their faith is being questioned or even opposed from one quarter or another they get angry.

Why is that?

Jesus doesn’t do that!

I don’t know why any particular individual responds like that, but I do know this:

If you get your identity from being the most devoted follower of Jesus … unlike all these other half-hearted, lukewarm or wicked other people … you are going to feel bound to become angry or even violent when someone opposes your Lord.

Your self-conscious commitment and keenness commands it!

You know, when the Lord was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, only Peter amongst the disciples did anything violent about it … and Jesus stepped in to put Peter back in his box pretty smartly.

You see, there was Peter claiming to be the most devoted, committed or whatever follower of Jesus, and holding so firmly to that idea of his own identity drove Peter to do the very opposite of what it was Jesus wanted and was determinedly doing … grabbing a sword and cutting off someone’s ear is a stark contrast with the Lord’s “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing”!

Cain and Peter both … in their individual ways … experience the shaking of their dearly held but actually false identity.

Rather than change it and give their identity a different foundation, they lashed out at the people who were endangering it.

As He restores Peter, what the Lord does is to re-focus and re-direct Peter’s identity.

         •        3. The Road to Restoration

            •          Jesus came to Peter

Jesus came to Peter, not Peter to Jesus … at first.

It was because of Jesus that Jesus came to the one who had denied Him in His hour of greatest personal crisis.

It was NOT because of anything exceptional in Peter.

In fact, it wasn’t because of anything in Peter, exceptional or not.

It was because JESUS chose to that Jesus appeared a third time to the disciples here, and addressed the needs not of Jesus but of Peter

Jesus came and brought Peter to a fire (John 21:9).

It was around a fire that Peter three times denied his Lord (Luke 22:54-62).

Then Jesus asked Peter THREE TIMES whether Peter loved Him.

Three times.

The same number of times Peter had the chance to show loyalty to Jesus at the High Priest’s house on that infamous night.

The same number as the number of Peter’s previous denials of Jesus.

How does Peter respond to the question asked about the roots of Peter’s pride: (basically) ‘tell me Peter do you love me?’

            •          But Jesus made Peter painfully retrace his steps

Peter had built his self-worth on being more committed and faithful to Jesus than all the others, so Jesus asks Peter ‘do you love me more than these to probe the roots of Peter’s pride in the light of the three denials Peter had uttered leading up to cock-crow on the day of the crucifixion.

Three times Jesus asked, and three times Peter had to walk back through the failure to show commitment to Christ at the point when the chips were REALLY down.

Three times “do you love me more than these?”

And ALL with the other disciples walking along kicking up the sand on the very same beach.

The key issue is going to be how Peter responds.

            •          Peter’s responses

The thing that says most is the responses that would have been open to Peter in this situation that Peter choses NOT to make in this challenging situation.

            •           No excuses

Firstly, Peter shows no hint of defensiveness or blame-shifting.

No excuses.

There is not a hint of ‘well yes I failed you, but you have to understand I was … (fill in the blanks)’

None of that at all.

No excuses.

            •           No ‘balancing’ pleas in mitigation

There’s no hint here either of Peter reciting other occasions when he HAD been exceptionally committed and faithful to Jesus.

Human beings do have a tendency to do that sort of thing when they’re found wanting.

There’s NONE of that in this case with Peter.

That would have been a simple return to the old false identity!

            •           No wallowing in wretchedness

But thirdly there’s no wallowing in wretchedness, banging on about how unworthy he is, as if by doing so he could earn some sort of atonement for his failures.

None of these three things, excuses, balancing pleas in mitigation come out of Peter in response to Jesus taking Peter back to walk through his failure.

It’s all, ‘Lord, I DO love you’ stuff, to put not too fine a point on it.

Peter KNOWS he denied the Lord three times when the chips were really down.

But Peter still insists he wants to love his Lord and to be committed to that loving relationship with his Lord, Jesus.

What Jesus is forging out of the hot material of Peter’s soul is what you can only describe as hearty, true repentance.

            •           True repentance

No excuses.

No pleas in mitigation.

No wallowing in wretchedness as if to atone for his faults by extreme expressions of contrition.

Just turning back to where he needs to be: ‘Lord, I DO love you.’

Peter is showing here what Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 7:9-10

“… you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. 

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret …”

Worldly sorrow, by way of contrast, is a form of self-pity … sorrow at being caught out, sorrow for the consequences.

It’s about damage you’ve sustained to your self-image and is not based on being justified by grace through faith alone but on being justified by your own morality and supposed good works.

Godly sorrow - and true repentance - is sorry for the sin itself and how it has wronged and grieved the One Who is your Creator and your Redeemer.

In self-centred sorrow you never come to hate the sin itself but only the consequences … so when the consequences fade the sin come steaming back!

Again, Keller writes: “True repentance is fuelled by grief for hurting the One we love, and that intensified love of Christ make the sin appear hateful, and so it begins to lose its power over you.”

(Keller, p.103)

Peter repents and returns to where he ought to be in his heart.

And the response Jesus makes is to re-direct Peter’s identity, and with it his privilege.

         •        The Lord’s new direction for Peter’s identity

Peter has seen himself as being the ‘super-disciple’.

Paul spaces elsewhere, correctively, about those who claimed to be ‘super apostle’ … do you remember?

But now each time Jesus asks Peter if Peter loves Jesus, the Lord responds to Peter’s correct answer with the commission to ‘feed my sheep’.

Now, a lot of ink gets spilt about the way this commission is expressed … feed ‘my lambs’, then ‘my sheep’ and again ‘my sheep’.

Well, OK, maybe.

But the point all along has been about Peter’s identity, Peter’s conception of what that identity IS, his self-image.

Jesus is NOT giving Peter a horse and a commission in the cavalry.

He’s giving Peter a bucket and telling him to go and feed the sheep.

Keller says this means Peter is being called to leadership.

I’d say not.

He is being called to feed the sheep.

I am highly suspicious of all this talk of aspiring to be a leader.

As Christians in ministry we serve another Who leads, and don’t going pointing to ourselves or make a huge deal of asking and aspiring to be people the ordinary folks down in the ranks should look up to and follow.

That’s the OPPOSITE of what we’ve been learning from Jesus dealing with Peter to address that man’s self-image!

Where Keller doe undoubtedly get it right is when he goes on to say:

A Christian identity is based ultimately on a realisation of the magnitude of God’s unchanging love for us.”

         •        Conclusion

It is odd, given the fragility and changeability of human life, and given human impotence and inability to change the things which matter to us that the default mode of the human spirit seems wedded to the idea that it is strength that connects you to God.

The Gospel says, on the other hand, that it is weakness.

The contemporary psychology of overreacting explains that people overreact to protect themselves against threats

It is an ‘over-strong response’ that arises from a sense of weakness or being threatened.

It’s an interesting piece of psychology in our current context.

I’ve certainly found in pastoral practice that what people who come flying at you often need the most a first is reassurance!

Peter is learning here that being the big strong tough committed man is really not a place to plant your own self-image.

Loving Jesus means re-orientating your view of yourself to be a servant and feeder (not a great big ‘leader’) of your Saviour’s sheep.

And there’s hope in Easter, Christ’s atoning death and resurrection, for the person who maybe WANTS to be a big shot, but who learns what’s needed is to trust in Jesus and become a servant feeding His sheep.

It’s only to the extent we see ourselves as weak, that He makes us big and strong.

And our self-image, our fundamental assessment of ourselves, MUST be established on that foundation.

But let’s be clear on this, the God of Cross and Resurrection, speaks hope to people like Peter who have so far in love got this wrong … and brings us back by the self-same gracious way that He visited the beach that day and brought back the future great sheep-feeder we know as Peter.

"Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. 

Amen."

I'm not off work nor in bed any more, just running at about half speed - so please feel free to get in touch using the email address:

        HoWChaplain@gmail.com 

or on the usual phone number.

Now here's the Word for the Week video ... give it a go!

Case Studies for our Era of Anxiety - Thomas - John 20 vv 24-29

AUDIO

VIDEO

                  •        Introduction

You may remember that the premise for our short series ‘Hope for an Era of Anxiety’ is that …

in spite of our technical sophistication, our medical advances and our high-powered scientific and academic capabilities, we do somehow seem to live in an age characterised by anxiety.

And I suspect that has been taking root from uncomfortable uncertainty.

According to Dan W. Grupe and Jack B. Nitschke in Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2013 July; 14(7): 488–501:

“Uncertainty diminishes how efficiently and effectively we can prepare for the future, and thus contributes to anxiety … 

Comprehensive information about the probability, timing, and nature of a future negative event promotes more efficient allocation of these resources, but such information is rarely available owing to the inherent uncertainty of the future.”

As we’ve noted from the beginning of this series, people can’t survive long without hope.

It is after all hope that keeps us going through both our present painful experiences AND our anticipatory fear of what the future may hold for us.

And in our communication of the Gospel (that is, of the Good News Jesus brings to our Era of Anxiety) I fear we may have soft-pedalled this important element of hope.

In my work for y GRWP as a Rural Chaplain, I come across a lot of folks who would admit they could do with a bit of hope.

People are LOOKING for it, though not always necessarily in all the right places!

Today we’re going to do a quick case study on Thomas the twin and ask how hope can dawn for a person crippled by the loss of hope.

And in doing so we’ll be asking the question: what is it that moves a person from disappointment, disillusionment, and anxiety to hope … how DOES a person who is short on positive thoughts come to a position of hope by becoming a Christian?

How does a person come to make the change?

         •        1. The Psychology of a Doubter

Let’s examine the anatomy of Thomas’s unbelief.

We’re looking at John 20:24-29:

“Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

 

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

 

26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

 

28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

 

29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

That’s a really rapid shift.

What brought it about?

What’s going on in that man’s head?

Well, to be perfectly honest, the Gospels haven’t really got a lot to tell us about Thomas.

In John 11:16 when the disciples are a bit wary of following Jesus in the direction of Jerusalem … where they feared for Jesus’s safety … it was Thomas who loyally if rather negatively persuaded them:

“Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Now, Thomas (Aramaic) and Didymus (Greek) both mean twin.

I don’t know any more about his family relationships than that, but it seems safe to say Thomas might have been a twin! 

How he got on with his sibling we don’t know, but he certainly had a fairly grim but nonetheless definite loyalty to Jesus.

Then we read in John 14:15 that after Jesus has been trying to prepare His disciples for His departure … talking about His Father having a house that Jesus was going to in order to prepare a place there for His disciples too … Thomas simply didn’t seem to get it.

We can reckon Thomas was not expecting to be an eye-witness to the Resurrection!

He was headed for a shock, which makes sense of the first thing we need to notice about the incident we are looking at in John 20:24-29 today.

Notice first please that in the first instance, Thomas was …

            •          Absent when Jesus turned up

At first, when Jesus went and appeared to His disciples, Thomas was nowhere around.

That says a lot.

“Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.”

He wasn’t there to see this momentous event that the Lord had spent a lot of effort trying to prepare them for.

I find that surprising, but the books tend to suggest that I shouldn’t.

Milne, in his ‘Message of John’ p. 302 suggests that “the death of Jesus was such an overwhelming reality that he must get alone to try to come to terms with it. So, when Jesus comes to the disciple on Easter evening, Thomas is not there.”

I suppose that makes sense of the situation … and I’m just expecting Thomas to have stuck around there with the Twelve simply because I know how the story’s going to end.

But whatever the case, the fact is that the same Thomas who had shown such great loyalty when he wanted to stick with Jesus on the journey up to Jerusalem, was far from wanting to stick with the disciples after the traumatic events of the crucifixion.

The powers in the Land had crucified the Lord, he thought the game was up and no doubt expected that together in a huddle, if once caught, was going to be a risky place to be.

But then another window opens into Thomas’s psychology … 

            •          Reluctant to believe the other disciples’ testimony

“… the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

I suppose they MEANT that to be an encouragement for their possibly slightly pessimistic, and now no doubt rather downcast companion.

Did you notice the other disciples were so blown away by seeing the Risen Jesus that they take no pains at all to meet Thomas where he was down in the dumps but trumpeted the cheerful truth in his downcast ear.

If he was of a pessimistic disposition (‘let’s go up with him that we may also die with him’ does to my mind suggest a pessimistic disposition) and if he is in a downcast frame of mind after the crucifixion, then the blurted message ‘we have seen the Lord’ might be almost guaranteed to be heard as something else … something more like ‘Jesus came, but you missed the party, ya loser!’

Do you see what I mean?

Thomas’s anxiety at the situation and discouragement with events isn’t going to be helped at all by that!

He immediately starts …

            •          Laying down conditions for faith

Rather than accepting his friends’ testimony to their joyful experience, then, Thomas laid down conditions for coming to believe.

This is typically blunt and straightforward … given what we’ve heard already from Thomas:

“But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

John 20:25b

It’s pretty clear Thomas was well up to speed with the Crucifixion.

He knows what went on and it was lethal.

No-one could have received the wounds Thomas is describing and lived.

It wasn’t happening!

So IF Thomas could see and actually touch a LIVING body that had received wounds like those, then THAT would show that he was neither dealing with an impostor nor a ‘ghost’.

A living person carrying those tangible wounds whilst looking and sounding like His (familiar) Jesus, was pretty likely to be the real resurrected Jesus … but the slightly pessimistic, traumatised and downcast Thomas was NOT going to believe any of this otherwise.

Or was he?

We’ll get to that but just for a moment let’s stop and bring this Thomas into our contemporary experience.

            •          Encountering our contemporary Thomas

Now, I’m not the only person to suggest this, but there are clear parallels between the psychology and behaviours of Thomas and our contemporary anxious and (strictly) hope-less skeptics.

Of all the facts of our faith that give comfort and hope to our Age of Anxiety, the resurrection is the great big humdinger!

And here’s Thomas doubting and depressing himself over that one.

But look … please notice this … many people in the world all round us doubt the resurrection (as Keller puts it) “on the basis of temperament as much as reason.”

‘Hope in Times of Fear’, p. 92.

Thomas certainly seems to be the type of person who ‘goes with his gut’ rather than just rationalising things through … but still defends his position behind a wall of after-the-event reasoning.

Now, rural people tend in my experience to be more transparent with the reasons they use to reject the facts of the faith than people who have done much with university and who live in towns.

But actually, my experience of people who have done a lot with university and who live in towns tends to make me think that this sort of behaviour … deciding for non-rational reasons then rationalising it afterwards … is a human rather than a university-acquired trait.

PEOPLE tend to be sceptical about the facts of the faith (as Tim Keller puts it) “on the basis of temperament as much as reason”.

I’d want to go further.

I’d want to say that behind the most intellectual arguments against the facts of the faith (and the life-giving hope of the resurrection is a MAJOR one of those facts) there often lies a matter of temperament that drives the passion of the intellectual debate.

And it’s often the protection of cherished sin that’s been fixed deep down in the personality that drives the expression of that temperament and disposition.

That will have MASSIVE implications for how we commend faith to unbelieving people, because if THAT’s the case we may find intellectual apologetics alone is NOT going to change a THING!

HOWEVER, we will probably still have to open ears a bit at the start when people object that ‘dead people simply CAN’T come back to life’.

Thomas, in common with many Jewish people of his day, would have expected a general resurrection at the End of the Age (like Martha in John 11:24 ““I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”)

But NOW?

Here and NOW?

Thomas clearly needed some in-depth teaching to correct his understanding of individual eschatology … as we may well be tempted to think of people in our day.

Interestingly he DIDN’T get any of that from the Lord.

The Lord took a very different tack, but we’ll come to that.

There may be one more shared feature between Thomas and our contemporary sceptics.

There may well also be a heart-felt fear of disappointment … a sort of longing for this to be true but not daring to think it might be, because the pain of disappointment if hope were to be confounded is simply too painful to contemplate.

It’s the voice that says: ‘Don’t get my hopes up, it would be too painful’.

And you and I too might be no stranger to the sorts of things that from the little we learn of him in Scripture we suspect may also have been real issues for Thomas:

·       A worldview that says it can’t happen.

·       A temperament that predisposes to scepticism, or even cynicism.

·       A heart fearful of disappointment, hardly daring to think that this could possibly be true.

… and all that ranged against the clear eye-witness testimony of close and trusted friends of long standing.

So in summary, the strange thing begins to seem to be NOT that Thomas came to faith but that he hadn’t already on the basis of the friends’ testimony … and yet we can find ways to explain that NOT based on the evidence available to him but on the basis of his pre-conceived ideas, personal temperament and disposition and then his fear.

Those are things we NEED to address in our personal evangelism, building hope in the folks who inhabit our strange era of anxiety.

         •        2. The journey from doubt to faith

Funnily enough Thomas’s journey from doubt to faith contains none of our accustomed ‘historical evidence for the Resurrection’!

But the path he took from deepest doubt ended up in clearest faith … perhaps the clearest profession of faith in the New Testament:

John 20:28 “Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!””

Wow!

It’s an amazing turn around, which surely gives amazing hope!

That’s a pretty big journey and it SEEMS to be completed pretty quickly.

In fact it is so striking that some consider this to be the climax of the Gospel of John.

The arch-doubter find crystal clear commitment born of faith in the Lord’s physical resurrection.

How did THAT happen?

It happened in just about three significant steps …

            •          a) Thomas received apostolic testimony

First of all, Thomas HEARD and then Thomas ACCEPTED the testimony of the Apostles, in this case they said v. 25 “We have seen the Lord!”

Indeed they did, and indeed they had.

The significant change is that by v. 28 Thomas has renounced publicly his earlier hostile response to that suggestion.

Now that Thomas has seen and heard from the Lord, there was no possibility Thomas was going to need first to get really ‘hands-on’ with Jesus.

Jesus invited that, but there’s no hint that Thomas paused to check the nail holes before confessing - proclaiming - his faith in Jesus.

Look: Thomas put his faith in Jesus having ABANDONED his own previous pre-conditions.

He MET Jesus … and hope dawned over the cynic’s previous scepticism.

How do you DO that?

You read the eye-witness testimony to Jesus, Who still speaks faith to doubt through the pages of His Word.

I mean, if you NEED to you could read Richard Bauckham’s ‘Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: the Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony’

He proves that the gospels don’t bear the tell-tale signs of fictional storytelling but of eyewitness accounts.

OK.

Thomas had the same eyewitnesses telling him that Jesus had been raised that we have … the Gospels-writing apostolic team.

But secondly, he quickly came to see that Jesus did not merely rise from the dead but rose from the dead for HIM, instigating the response we read in v. 28:

 

            •          b) Thomas made the Good News Personal

“My Lord and my God” 

For those who do this stuff:

ὁ κύριος μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου

Now … to my mind that sounds pretty emphatic.

‘Lord of mine, GOD of mine’ … which sounds like it should be a song by City Alight or something. Maybe we can suggest it to them!

Can you see what’s happened here?

This is not ‘the Lord’

This is ‘MY Lord’.

This is not ‘the God’ … crucially, crucially this is ‘MY God’ that springs from Thomas’s lips.

What swung it for him?

When Jesus apaeared that second time to the disciples, who Thomas had now given sufficient credibility to be WITH them the next time the Lord joined them in their private meeting place, He turned directly to the doubter and invited Thomas directly to put his hand in the wound sites and check him out.

And IMMEDIATELY Thomas made his confessions of faith, on the Lordship and deity of Christ.

Where did that suddenly and decisively come from?

Leon Morris suggests what swung it for Thomas was not the wounds but the words of the Saviour.

What the Lord said to Thomas showed He was well aware of the things Thomas had said when the Lord wasn’t visibly present … which must mean that He HAD been there present but totally unseen.

He’d been as committed to being with Thomas whether seen or unseen!

Christ had committed Himself to walk with Thomas.

Hearing his refusal to believe his friend without tangible proof for himself.

Seeing the cynicism and ANXIETY in Thomas heart.

And yet Jesus STILL came to Thomas as requested … and ‘requested’ none too graciously, at that!

Jesus might as well have voiced what was going on like this:

He might have said 

‘I know all about your doubts, your fears, your broken promises and all your flaws.

I have seen right into the deepest pit of your soul.

But I still love you, you anxious and miserable thing, and LOOK … knowing and seeing all of that I’m still here for you, and I’m doubling back when you don’t deserve it so you can WALK with me!’

You can take this or leave it as you wish but Keller suggests:

“He originally wanted to see the wounds as evidence of Jesus’s power. Now he saw them for what they really were - evidence of Jesus’s love, His sacrificial love for Him.’

Keller p. 93

Interestingly, Jesus has one more little thing to put to posterity …

            •          c) The blessing of not having seen but believed

There is BLESSING in believing without having seen all that Thomas was privileged to believe.

Hopelessness and anxiety breed scepticism.

They often don’t DARE to believe what they’d possibly quite LIKE to.

Now, as a ‘missionary’, if you like, to rural people who are often non-literate (which means they they don’t read much, not that they CANNOT read) and who may well think profoundly but often don’t decide on the basis of analytical thought, I tend to the belief that our concentration as UK Evangelicals in the last fifty years is good but not as universally helpful as you might think.

It can unintentionally de-emphasise the way, the process, by which many Biblical characters came to faith.

As a simple miracle the resurrection is spectacular and the evidence we have for it is formidable.

I am convinced by the evidence for Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead, and I see that as the climax of the way we were provided with the potential for salvation … the means of the defeat of our two most anxiety-inducing and greatest enemies: sin and death.

But it is as the means of the restoration of my personal relationship with the all-seeing, all-knowing, even me-loving God that the restoration starts to happen in my life as the sent Spirit brings me to the Christ Who gives me hope and help … and even the wholeness born of holiness.

We’re trying to say that once Thomas saw and heard Jesus all his preconditions for faith … to touch his wounds and so on … fell instantly aside because what Jesus said showed He knew EXACTLY what a failure Thomas had been and loved Thomas and wanted to reach out to him anyway.

And yet … better to not have seen all Thomas had seen and exercised greater faith in God and trust in the eye-witness testimony, because seeing is NOT always believing, the Lord delights in the believing which to that person counts as seeing.

         •        Conclusion

There is HOPE in our Era and in our experience of circumstantial anxiety.

It lies not in relished and in nurtured scepticism and cynicism … for many of us THAT is what we turn FROM to Christ.

If you are the theological type ‘repentance’ is the word we use for this thing here, and cynicism and scepticism might be what we need to repent of to come to Him.

We don’t need the same experience Thomas had.

But we DO need to make the same discovery Thomas made, and personalise that trust in Christ and His resurrection which revolutionised Thomas … sending him out we understand to take the Good News he’d learned about Christ to the sub-continent of India, giving His life with joy and purpose to making the living Lord known.