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Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
These things stand written so that you may truly believe that the Christ, the Son of God, is Jesus, and so that believing you might have life in His Name.(John 20:31, my translation)
Later, the apostle John would write in his first epistle: “Who was from the beginning, who we have heard, who we have seen with our eyes, who we looked upon and have touched with our hands…and we have seen and we are testifying and we are announcing to you…:” (1 John 1:1–2, my translation). It's not like John is just talking about “seeing Jesus” as in: “Yeah, we lived with Him for three years. We were close to Him. We walked around with Him. But He's gone now.”
That's not what the apostle John is getting at. It's not as if he spun a great tale in his Gospel about the “good 'ol days”, as if he once spent time near someone great. It's not just another good story in a world full of good stories. The apostles had better than that. They saw the eternal Son of God with their own eyes. They touched Him. This was not just a guy who walked the roads of Roman Palestine for thirty–three years and had lots of great things to say and performed some great miracles. They saw and touched the bodily resurrected, glorified, eternal Son of God, the Word of Life made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, crucified, resurrected, ascended. That's who John is telling about in His Gospel and His Epistle. It's that story that stands written for you, so that you might believe and have a life of freedom in Christ now, the gift of eternal life that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died and rose to earn for you.
Yes, John is referring to today's Gospel lesson, one thinks, in the opening of his first epistle. To see Jesus. To touch Him. That's what they got to do on Easter Sunday evening and, then again, the next Sunday, which is today. They saw and touched the perfect, glorified, holy, eternal flesh and blood of the resurrected Jesus. In doing so, they saw and touched what their destiny is as believing Christians, what your destiny is as believing, baptized Christians.
And almost all of them were martyred. They testified, witnessed to the truth of this resurrection not just with mere words, but with their lives. Peter was crucified upside down. Andrew was crucified on an x–shaped cross. James was beheaded. Paul was beheaded. Doubting Thomas no longer doubted but believed and, for this, was stabbed through with a spear by pagans in India. All of them except John, ironically, who certainly was willing to be martyred, whom the Roman emperor attempted to martyr with poison and later with a cauldron of boiling oil, only to see God in His wisdom see him safely unscathed through these attempts to kill him. So, the emperor exiled him to Patmos island.
Christians die to this life in full expectation that their eternal destiny has been assured, promised. Christians know and believe that they have what God truly promises — the free gift of life in Jesus' name. That their baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ will mean that death to this life will be just a portal to eternal life in God's glorious presence. The apostles and martyrs who followed after them knew and believed this. The apostles saw with their own eyes and touched the very holiness of God Himself. They knew that this life is just an exile away from their true home, with Jesus leading them there. So take our life, goods, fame, child, wife — let them all be gone, they said. We have our true home and destiny ahead of us.
But how do you Christians today know and believe this great news? You could rightly say: “Well, that's the story for the apostles. How is that story my story? They lived then. They got to see and touch. This is now. We live in the 21st Century rat race where it's every man and woman for himself and herself. Don't we? And we do not get to see and touch Jesus today, as they did, do we?”
These things — these eyewitness accounts of the apostles — stand written for your sake. Jesus, the Son of God, resurrected in the flesh, breathed the life–giving breath of life and gave over His Holy Spirit to those apostles, putting them in the special office of preaching the resurrection Gospel and forgiving sins on account of Jesus'; blood. Their eyewitness proclamation of Jesus — the Spirit inspired, living and active Word of Christ and His deeds for us — is the foundation of the Church. John and the other apostles witnessed the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Their testimony is God's testimony: Jesus died, and out of his riven side flowed the blood and water and the Holy Spirit that gives life to all of those who have been born of God. You receive this testimony, this gift of life in Christ in the preaching of the Gospel and in the Sacraments. God makes His story your personal story of salvation. God gives you His story, because His is better than your's was.
The dry bones Ezekiel saw are you before your baptism into Christ. You and all were born into the sin and death and despair that is the power of the devil. Every person was dead in sin. The dry bones are also you every time you give in to your sinful flesh. You revert to death and dry bones every time you doubt God's Word to you. You revert every time you despise and decide that you have something better to do than hear the preaching of the Gospel and receive the blessed Sacrament in the Divine Service. You revert every time you give in to the desires of this life, the greed, the lust, the covetousness, the idolatry of money and material goods and the sinful longing for things that God has not seen fit to give you in this life. Every time you are in sin — you are dead to it, you have no living flesh on you — you are dead, dry bones, without hope, unable to save yourselves from your condition.
But Christ comes along and appears on the scene, from heaven to you, meeting you where you are, revealing Himself to you through His apostles and preachers, making you a new creation with His water, His blood, His Spirit. You were dead in your sin, but now you are alive in Christ. He has written and enacted the new creation story. He has risen and conquered sin and death. He breathes His creative breath of new life into you at your baptism, at the preaching of His Gospel in your ear, at the feeding into your mouth of His resurrected, ascended, holy flesh and blood in and under the bread and wine — all means of grace for you which come about at His living, breathing Word of life.
These things stand written so that you may truly believe that the Christ, the Son of God, is Jesus, and so that believing you might have life in His Name.(John 20:31, my translation)
And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?(1 John 5:5, English Standard Version)
The story of Thomas and John and the apostles in the upper room is a story that is meant for you. You can take their word for it, because to do that is to take Christ and His Holy Spirit's word for it. They tell you: “We have seen the Lord.” And just as when they told Thomas that wondrous news, it is not just a dry recounting of history. It was their story of God's saving act for them and always would be, and it was, therefore, Thomas' story of God's saving act for him. Therefore, it is your story of God's saving act for you. And it always is and always will be. You simply receive it by faith in Christ.
Thomas saw. Thomas believed. Blessed are you. You do not, can not, see as Thomas saw, but are nevertheless a flesh and blood, believing new creation who “has the testimony in” you. In other words, this story is your story of faith and salvation in Christ. Indeed, Thomas' testimony tells you the whole story: “My Lord and my God.” This stands written for your benefit — that you may truly believe that the Christ, the Son of God, is that crucified, resurrected man named Jesus. Baptized into His Name — by faith, apprehending His story as your own — you have the gift of eternal life, which is to have peace and pardon from God Himself. That gift, that resurrection story of Jesus, is yours, now, today, in your hearing, and is yours to receive on your tongue, now, at this altar.
“Come,” a hymn invites us as the apostles do:
Come, let us fix our sight on Christ who suffered,
He faced the cross, His sinless life He offered;
He scorned the shame, He died, our death enduring,
our hope securing.
Lord, give us faith to walk where You are sending,
on paths unmarked, eyes blind as to their ending;
not knowing where we go, but that You lead us —
with grace precede us.
You, Jesus, You alone deserve all glory!
Our lives unfold, embraced within Your story;
Past, present, future — You, the same forever —
You fail us never!(Lutheran Service Book #667, stanzas 4–6)
You, O Lord Jesus, are risen indeed. You, Jesus, have bought and won us, enduring our death for us. You, Jesus, send Your Word of life and hope out through Your apostles and pastors to claim us and hold us forever in the palm of Your hand, imparting your eternal, heavenly peace to us. Our lives indeed unfold, embraced within Your story! May our lives always be a lives of firm faith that believe Your Word of life to us, a life of thanksgiving and praise to You! Amen!
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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