May 8, 2016 John 20:18-31
Imagine how startled the disciples must have been. The leader they had followed for three years had been brutally executed. In the fear that they might be next, they were meeting behind locked doors late in the day. Whatever hope they had taken from the report of Mary Magdalene (v. 18) might have been fading. She spoke of a risen Jesus in the morning, but now the day was ending (v. 19), and they had seen nothing of Him. Maybe Mary was mistaken; women witnesses were not generally accepted anyway. One suggestion in our group discussion went back to the words she had reported from Jesus, “Go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father….’” (v. 17, present tense). Maybe Mary was right, and He had risen from the dead, and they had missed Him. Maybe He had already gone back to heaven.
And there He is, standing in front of them! Walk into a room you think is empty and you suddenly realize someone is there (a friend or your spouse). You experience a sudden shock. That might be a hint of what the dejected disciples felt. Another comment in our discussion reminded us of an earlier reaction of the disciples. Seeing a figure coming to their boat across the open water, they feared a ghost (Matthew 14:26; Mark 6:49). No wonder (as our group observed) the first words of Jesus to them were, “Peace to you” (v. 19) or in Hebrew or Aramaic, “Shalom.” If you have been the friend or spouse who unintentionally startled someone, your first reaction is often to comfort and reassure them. That was Jesus’ first response as well. He wanted them to recover from their initial alarm.
The first thing He did was to show them the evidence of His death (v. 20). We briefly pondered whether or not the disciples could recognize Him. Mary had not known Him at first (v. 14), nor did two other followers even after walking and talking with Him for quite some time (Luke 24:13). What His resurrected body looked like and how it was different (if it was) is not part of John’s storytelling. As often happens in Scripture, some tantalizing detail we would like to know is omitted. Trusting that the Spirit-inspired text tells us what we need to know, we didn’t dwell on that question.
What the text is clear about is more important in Bible study. His wounded hands and pierced side showed them what He wanted them to know. It really was Him. Who else would have the marks of a crucifixion? He was not a ghost, since he clearly had a body (although walls and locked doors were not obstacles). He had died (the Romans made sure of that, John 19:32), and He was standing before them in the flesh. He had not ascended to heaven, at least not yet. They may not have understood everything, but they understood enough to respond with joy (v. 20).
Perhaps their response was so vigorous that once more Jesus wanted to focus their attention by saying “Peace to you” (v. 21a). As much as He must have appreciated their joy (cf. John 15:11, 16:24; 17:13), He wanted them to hear His next words carefully: “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you” (v. 21). A key thread running throughout the Gospel according to John is the mission of Jesus sent by the Father, mentioned over forty times. That theme takes on a whole new dimension when Jesus “passes the baton” (as one of our group described it). The same mission is to be continued by His followers. The mission is exactly the same, “just as” (kathos, καθὼς) the Father sent the Son, the Son sends His followers. Understanding the mission of Jesus that John has been describing for twenty chapters is important for us to understand our mission.
Another suggestion from our group offered an interesting connection to a puzzling statement from the previous passage. When Mary finally recognized Jesus (John 20:16), the words of Jesus to her are not what we might expect: “Stop clinging to Me” (NASB) or “Do not hold on to me” (NIV) or even “Don’t touch me” (TLB). What was Jesus telling Mary? Was there some mystical issue about not touching His resurrected body? Our group noted that later (v. 27) Jesus invited Thomas to freely touch Him. Trying to consider every detail of the text, our group wondered about the rest of Jesus’ statement to Mary: “I have not yet ascended to the Father” (v. 17b). Could something have happened, such as a brief return to heaven? Would that have made a difference in His “touchability” for Thomas? John records nothing about that, so we did not pursue that speculation. One member of the discussion had a much more plausible explanation, especially when we saw the instructions Jesus gave to the disciples about their mission. Perhaps the Lord was saying, “Don’t linger here with Me. Hurry on to tell My brethren that I am soon to leave. It is time to transfer the Father’s mission to them.” That passion for His Father’s mission affected His response to Mary and later His response to the disciples.
Jesus continued the instruction about His mission that was now their mission. “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (v. 22). Not letting any question go unasked, our group wondered: Did He just exhale? Did He go to each disciple individually? What did that scene look like? While not sure exactly what Jesus did, we agreed that He performed some visible action that symbolized the Spirit. After He said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” John reports – nothing. No mention is made of any visible sign. The text doesn’t even say if anything happened to the disciples’ hearts. What did this scene have to do with Pentecost a few weeks later?
Jesus seems to be telling the disciples, the newly designated carriers of the Father’s mission, to be ready for the Holy Spirit, to be expectant in their anticipation. He had told them that the Spirit would only come after His departure (John 16:7), sent by the Father (John 14:26). Perhaps His act of breathing on them was a memorable image to help them look forward to that event. Whatever the physical act meant, the point was clear. The mission of the Father was to be carried out in the ministry of the soon-to-come Holy Spirit. That part of Jesus’ instruction might relate to another possible interpretation of His words to Mary. “Don’t hold on to Me” might be taken as “Don’t continue to depend on my physical presence.” As He prepared to return to the Father, His followers needed to adjust their thinking. He had been with them for three years. They could talk with Him, listen to His teaching, and watch Him interact with others. But now He was leaving. Part of being ready for the Holy Spirit was the adjustment of learning to depend on and listen to the Holy Spirit. Continuing to depend on the incarnate presence of Jesus would not serve them after the Ascension. Their focus had to shift to following the less visible but more far-reaching presence of the Holy Spirit. That shift would expand the mission of the Father across the world.
The mission Jesus described has another significant quality. The Son passes the mission of the Father by the agency of the Holy Spirit. The baptismal formula Jesus gave in Matthew 28:19 describes the disciple-making process, “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Likewise in our current passage, the mission of the Father is inseparably connected to the work of the Holy Spirit. “The ministry we have entered is the ministry of Jesus Christ, the Son, to the Father, through the Holy Spirit, for the sake of the church and the world.”[1]
Jesus has described the authority of the mission, the Father, and the primary agent of the mission, the Holy Spirit. Finally He describes the substance of the mission: the forgiveness of sins (v. 23). Once again we find ourselves discussing a verse that challenges our thinking, especially as Protestants. As one member commented, “This is a tough verse!” Forgiving sins and retaining sins (or holding onto, krateo, κρατεω) is somehow in the hands of the disciples. Those with a Roman Catholic background would recognize the idea of a priest absolving a penitent after confession. Is that what Jesus is describing? He made a statement that sounds similar in Matthew 18:18, using different terminology (“binding” and “loosing”). In that context, He is teaching about sin within the church: confronting sin and restoring the sinner. The extreme result is to remove the unrepentant offender from the fellowship. Instead of an individual priestly function, the instruction in John 20 may also be more about the community of Christians. Both verbs are plural: If you all forgive…if you all retain. As in the case of Matthew 18 the responsibility belongs to the community of believers, the church, not just a particular member who is a clergyman. Whatever Jesus meant by forgiving and retaining sins, the unmistakable substance of the mission of the Father is forgiveness: redemption and reconciliation and recovery of the shared communion between the creatures and their Triune Creator.
And then there is Thomas. Absent when Jesus first appeared to the others, he apparently didn’t believe his fellow disciples any more than he believed Mary. When they told him (virtually quoting Mary’s original report), “We have seen the Lord!” (v. 26), that was not good enough for him. Seeing was not to be believing. The proof would be in the touching, actually feeling for himself the horrible marks in Jesus’ body. (We speculated about the nature of the marks: scars, open wounds, something else? Once again an intriguing question unanswerable from the text.) Regardless of his brash words, Thomas, like the other disciples, needed only to see the risen Christ. Jesus invited Thomas to explore His wounds all he wanted. His response is at least as enthusiastic as the other disciples a week earlier: “My Lord and my God” (v. 28).
Thomas shows us a couple of things about doubt. He was skeptical, not cynical. He wanted evidence, but he responded when the evidence was there. A cynic often asks for evidence or proof, but when confronted with reasonable confirmation, insists on more. The cynic wants to argue, the skeptic wants to know. Thomas wanted to know if the rumor about Jesus was true. When he saw it was true, he responded enthusiastically. Jesus affirmed even the doubt. Rather than rebuking Thomas, He encouraged his evidence gathering, “Reach here with your finger” (v. 27). Those who don’t have the opportunity to touch or even to see are blessed in their belief (v. 29). Other examples can be found in the Gospels when Jesus recognized questioners as cynics who were not genuinely looking for truth. His response to them was less than inviting.
This passage describes such a pinnacle in the story John is telling that he leaves the story briefly to make sure his readers recognize its significance. This isn’t the whole story (v. 30, since even all the world couldn’t hold enough books for it all, John 21:25). However, John is clear in the reason he has recorded the story in the way he has: “That you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name” (v.31). John has a definite agenda. He is already on the mission of the Father that Jesus had passed to the disciples. He wants his story to communicate at least those three crucial points:
- The story is about Jesus, a historical figure, not just a legend or a symbol.
- The story is about the Christ, the Messiah, the “one anointed” for a particular mission with the authority to carry out that mission.
- The story is about the Son of God, the eternal Word, “begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father,”[2] the second Person of the Godhead.
[1] Stephan Seamands, Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2005), 9-10; emphasis in the original.