With God's Help

I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. (Isaiah 50.6-7)

How did Christianity morph from a collection of oddballs and misfits into the communion of conformity we know today? As we read the Gospels and Acts, we must wonder if we’d be all that happy to see the Apostles in our sanctuaries, let alone trust them to lead us. Can we imagine Peter, the leather-skinned fisherman, stepping into our pulpits? What about Paul, whose infamous “thorn in the flesh” urges him to overcompensate by showing off how smart he is? Would we attend his Bible class? Let’s not forget the Early Church’s far-flung membership. When we survey the rolls peppered through the Epistles, we find slaves and masters, couples and singles, widows and kids, people of all shades and expressions, every social strata, and a spectrum of personal histories that would give today’s most progressive faith community pause.

Of course, we understand why early Christians prize diversity. They belong to Jesus, Who founded His ministry on the radically inclusive doctrine of God’s unconditional love. But we also have to factor in the prophetic tradition Jesus comes from, where eccentrics and outcasts excel. Start with Moses, a Jew raised as Egyptian royalty, a murderer on the lam who worries about his stammer and works all kinds of miracles with a stick. You’ve got David, an adulterer and terrible father, who uses poetry as a therapeutic tool. Elijah’s a manic-depressive, and his student, Elisha, wanders the land in a raggedy coat Elijah tossed to him while being flown into heaven on a celestial chariot. And we can’t forget Isaiah, who walks around naked and shoeless for three years to indicate Israel’s enemies will be stripped of power. Finally, there’s John the Baptist. He sets up shop in the wilderness, survives on honey and wild locusts, wears a hairy shirt, and spends most of his time splashing around in the Jordan River.

With roots dug deep in this wild and crazy tradition, it’s no surprise that Jesus pays no attention to His followers’ idiosyncrasies and sketchy pasts. He looks beyond their quirks and shortcomings to see their potential. Yes, He does this because, as God Incarnate, He loves them without reservation. But He’s also doing something that we, in an age of Christian homogeneity, miss. He’s assembling a prophetic community, a far different thing than starting a religion or organizing a congregation.

So how do the first Christians look and act? They’re all over the map, literally and figuratively. Unlike today, when many Christians gauge who’s in and who’s out by appearance and behavior, in the first century both criteria were useless. Indeed, judgments based on surface observations were highly suspect. The only way to identify a true Christian was by prophetic witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Early Church’s connection to prophesy—i.e., the articulated mind and will of God—is so solid that first-century believers scour the Hebrew Bible to confirm Jesus’s legitimacy. His birth and death narratives are shaped to reflect Messianic clues strung across the texts. This is why Jesus’s statements from the cross echo Psalm 22 and the details of His torture and crucifixion mirror Isaiah. In the coming days, we’ll hear these passages and nod along, thinking, this is what the prophets said and this is how it went. But something gets lost when we limit the Hebrew texts’ meaning and import to Jesus alone. And that something is us.

The suffering and rejection the ancients describe are, in many ways, as universal to every believer as they are specific to Jesus. When we open Isaiah 50—which figures prominently in many Passion liturgies—and read, “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting,” we can’t forget the prophet isn’t just talking about Jesus. He’s talking about himself, and he’s also talking about us. Gratefully, neither Isaiah (as far as we know) nor we actually experience the physical pain and humiliation he poeticizes. Yet we all know what it’s like to feel powerless, as conveyed in the image of giving our backs to those who strike us. We know how it feels to be stripped of self-worth, which, for Jewish men like Isaiah and Jesus, occurs when their beards are ripped from their faces.

The violation in these images is so hideous we have to ask why someone would do such things. Those who go to such lengths clearly have big problems with whomever they assault. It’s obvious that fear stirs up their anger since they have to be more afraid of the person they attack than penalties for their abuse. So what gives rise to such fear and hatred? Well, let’s see. You have Jesus, the Gatherer of oddballs and misfits. Then there’s Isaiah, the naked wanderer. And how do we fit into this pattern? By not fitting into conformist patterns and disrupting norms. Whether in the world or the Church—which, over the centuries, has grown dangerously at ease with adopting the world’s ways—we represent something other than normal.

How dare LGBT Christians expect faith communities to welcome and embrace them. How dare women honor their callings to ministry and ask to be respected on par with their male counterparts. How dare the poor and undereducated and abused and politically radical enter our congregations and expect to be treated as equals. How dare anyone insist prophetic witness to Christ’s life, death, and resurrection qualifies her/him for acceptance. All Christians are supposed to look, talk, and behave alike. Anything that doesn’t meet acceptable standards is something to fear. And anything that makes people afraid must be eradicated and stripped of value.

That kind of logic may work for country clubs, social orders, and political parties. But it bears not one glimmer of resemblance to the Church’s beginnings and its prophetic roots. Christian communities that genuinely heed their prophetic calling should be visibly, culturally, and spiritually diverse. Their commitment to Christ’s gospel of radical inclusion should be tested. And we who’ve been relegated to the margins are ordained to challenge the Church’s faithfulness to God’s will.

Not even Jesus could accomplish this without divine help. Nor could Isaiah. And neither can we. That’s why Isaiah’s prophecy doesn’t end with the backlash against nonconformity. “The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame,” he writes. As we enter Holy Week and witness the agony Jesus endured to remain faithful to God’s will, we must accept the same calling for our lives. We will not be disgraced. We will set our faces like flints, looking at the challenge before us without a moment’s hesitation, knowing we will not be put to shame. We can’t do this great work we’ve been given on our own. But thanks be to God, we have God’s help.

This coming week, as we stand before the cross, let us not only weep for the horrific suffering our Savior endured. Let us weep for what’s been lost by reducing the Church purchased with His blood to an insiders-only club. Let us commit our lives to reviving the Early Church’s vision of what a truly prophetic, radically inclusive faith community can be.

Born into Diversity

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability… And at this sound the crowd was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. (Acts 2.4,6)

D&I

Not long ago I joined a group of HIV specialists for a diversity and inclusion (D&I) workshop. A group of actors played out a typical meeting scenario, where colleagues felt at ease with one another while discussing business. We were asked to listen closely for “unconscious” signals of inequities and assumptions based on gender, orientation, ethnicity, etc. Some were glaringly inappropriate. But most were extremely subtle and many seemed unintentional. “What we say matters,” the session facilitator told us. “And if we truly want to foster a diverse, inclusive environment, we need to use language that respects differences.” We all nodded in agreement—that’s the perennial moral in D&I training. Yet this session’s emphasis on unconscious breeches left us uneasy. Is never offending possible if one doesn’t always realize his/her language gives offense? As we wrestled with this idea, the gentleman next to me sighed, “Sometimes I think this stuff asks too much. As hard as you try, you can’t get it 100% right.”

Which brings us to Pentecost and why commemorating this major event—often called the “birth of the Church”—is so essential. While the gift of the Holy Spirit is, without question, the greatest miracle ever bestowed on the Body of Christ, it comes in such a way as to remove all doubt that God intends the Church to be a radically diverse and inclusive community. That is the second Pentecostal miracle, and it’s one we should celebrate to the full. When we revisit the extraordinary goings-on in Acts 2.1-21, we see more than fulfillment of Jesus’s promise to provide a Comforter to care for His followers. We witness a definitive declaration that forever throws open the doors of the Church to all people. In a gust of violent wind and fiery flashes, the Holy Spirit blows away every thought of exclusion and burns up any presumption that this great gift belongs to a select few. And how does the Spirit manifest this miracle? It uses language—unconscious language that speaks to everyone, believer and non-believer alike.

Above Their Limitations

Before we get to how this happens, suppose we glance around the Upper Room to see who’s there. We find a group of regular folks with no social or political agenda. We’d be hard-pressed to label them “progressives,” as they have no voice in their culture and what we’ve observed of them in the Gospels reveals decidedly shallow understanding of the world’s ways. What’s more, they’re surrounded by uncertainty. Their Leader has vanished into thin air. His recent execution puts them on the wrong side of history, leaving them vulnerable to persecution and potential death. Once again, they’re behind closed doors, just as they were after the crucifixion, waiting for something—who knows what, exactly—to offer them guidance. They’re afraid. And since fear is the root of bigotry and suspicion, we can safely say the 120 who faithfully anticipate the Holy Spirit’s descent are a diversity train wreck waiting to happen. The barriers discouraging acceptance of outsiders are seemingly insurmountable and if they’re to realize Jesus’s command to reach the entire world, they’ll have to rise above their limitations. So the first thing the Spirit changes is their language.

“All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability,” Acts 2.4 reports. This phenomenon—glossolalia, or “speaking in tongues”—becomes the Church’s calling card. Verses 6-8 tell us, “At this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?’” Verse 11 lists 15 different nationalities that are present and hear the Upper Room believers “speaking about God’s deeds of power.” And we should be very clear here. This is not ecstatic gibberish or personal “prayer languages” that the crowd hears. It’s a linguistic miracle that simultaneously confesses and verifies the Holy Spirit’s presence in the disciples’ faith community. It employs transformed speech to tear down cultural walls and overcome every fear that prohibits inclusion. Now the apostolic commission is achievable just as Christ said it would be: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1.8) Not only does the Spirit equip Christ’s followers to walk the walk; it empowers them to talk the talk.

Welcoming Witness

In no uncertain terms, Pentecost confirms that the Church is born into diversity. The Holy Spirit’s manifest presence in the Body of Christ erases all borders and rejects any possible excuse for religious rejection. It enjoins us to abandon all conscious reasoning for exclusion so we may speak God’s power to “the ends of the earth.” It makes a welcoming witness available to every believer—a spiritual language that resonates with people of every creed and kind. It is our Mother Tongue and when we revert to insular, exclusionary dialects, we make a mockery of this amazing communication skill that God has entrusted to us.

Pentecost unites us in a language of love that transforms how we view others and what we say to them. It’s the antidote to “unconscious” signals that defeat diversity and inclusion, as it, too, should be unconscious. It should come so naturally to us that we embrace everyone we meet without reservation. “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13.1. And in Luke 6.45 Jesus says, “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” The inexplicable clamor that ushers in the Holy Spirit isn’t what Pentecost is about. Pentecost is proof of what happens when we yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit’s enabling power to express God’s all-inclusive, unconditional love to everyone who will listen.

When the astounded foreigners ask, “What does this mean?” (v12) Peter explains that it’s the fulfillment of God’s promise to “pour out My Spirit upon all flesh.” (v17; emphasis added) And he wraps up his explanation by telling those who’ve gathered to find out what’s going on: “The promise is for you, your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls.” (v39) All flesh… you, your children… all who are far away… everyone. Sure sounds like radical D&I to me.

The second miracle of Pentecost is manifest when the Holy Spirit transforms the disciples’ speech so that diversity and inclusion barriers fall at the moment of the Church’s birth.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/05/26/born-into-diversity/

Our Place in This World

I am not asking You to take them out of the world, but I ask You to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. (John 17.15-17)

Where Does This Leave Us?

Sunday marks one of those strange partings, when liturgical congregations split according to which lectionary they follow—standard or revised. Some of us will focus on the Ascension (Acts 1.1-11; Luke 24.44-53), while others contemplate Jesus’s parting prayer for His disciples (John 17.6-19). And while each passage’s nuances will invite varying observations, I believe both lead to one question that the disciples surely wrestle with: “Where does this leave us?” For all practical purposes, Jesus has become their world and with Him gone, they have no idea where and how they fit. Once they absorb the blow of this sudden—though not unanticipated—goodbye, they must recalibrate their place in this world. It will be no easy task.

Approximating how the disciples feel is key to navigating these passages. Since none of us has experienced anything remotely like either event, we might compare them to the end of a concert. We’ve just spent an extended period of time in the presence of an artist whose words and music found us where we were, spoke to us in very real and meaningful ways, and challenged us to see ourselves differently. From the first note, the concert has steadily built to its climax—the most beloved song in the artist’s repertoire—followed by an encore that extends her/his stay. We’re grateful beyond measure for these extra few minutes, even though they’re filled with poignant awareness that all of this will end soon. The artist says goodnight, exits the stage, and the house lights come up. Our eyes remind us the outside world awaits us. It’s a hard thing, accepting it’s time to move on. But the artist is gone. Our time with him/her is passed. High-flown emotions are dissipating, replaced by implacable, workaday realities.

More than “Goodbye—we’ll meet again” is going on here. The disciples who overhear Jesus pray on their behalf and see Him ascend into Heaven have internalized His teachings. Every word He said is stamped in memory, not as text, but as spoken. As they relive their time with Jesus, they hear His voice—the tone, phrasing, and cadence of His actual speech. They associate certain statements with events that bring back all the emotions and personal significance. It’s every bit like the way that we tie songs and conversations to major moments in our lives. The disciples have relied on Jesus’s voice to enlighten, comfort, and guide them. His physical presence and the music of His speech have rooted their beings. Now Jesus is being taken from them. The silence must be crushing. More than that, their sudden sense of disconnectedness surely terrifies them. Where does this leave us?

Not Easy

Turning to Jesus’s prayer  in John 17, it’s all too evident that the Lord recognizes how jarring His departure will be. “Now I am no longer in the world,” He prays to God. “But they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, protect them in Your name that You have given Me, so that they may be one, as We are one. While I was with them, I protected them... I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost [i.e., Judas Iscariot].” (v11-12) The concern that Jesus expresses is overwhelming. He’s keenly aware of how dependent the disciples are on Him. As He prays, He’s mindful of all the instances when their faithfulness to Him placed them in jeopardy—times when standing with Jesus exposed them to hostility and ridicule. “I protected them… I guarded them,” He reminds God. Yet, at the same time, Jesus is no fool. He knows that He’s leaving the disciples in a dicey spot and they’ll need God’s protection once He’s gone.

As David Lose points out in “The Other Lord’s Prayer,” Jesus knows that things haven’t been easy for the disciples. “The world has hated them because they do not belong to the world,” He says. His acknowledgment primes us to expect He’ll beseech God to fix things in their favor, to lighten their load—especially in the coming days, when dealing with His absence will be plenty to handle, let alone coping with His (and now their) enemies. But Jesus doesn’t ask God to lighten the disciples’ load. “What does He pray for?” Lose writes. “Not that it will be easy. He knows it won’t. This world is captive to a spirit alien to God’s spirit. It is animated by a sense of scarcity instead of abundance, fear instead of courage, and selfishness instead of sacrificial love…. So Jesus doesn’t pray that it will be easy, but rather that God will support the disciples amid their challenges and that they will be one in fellowship with each other and with Jesus and [God] through the Spirit.” Returning to our concert analogy, Jesus is all too aware He’s filled the disciples’ hearts and minds with unpopular music that puts them at odds with the world’s same old gimme-gimme song. Before He leaves, He’s going to charge them with singing His new song with all they’ve got. It’s a song the world most definitely does not want to hear.

One

Sunday’s reading stops short of the truly revelatory moment in all of this. In verses 20-21, Jesus expands His prayer, saying, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one.” Here Jesus confesses two amazing articles of faith. As He looks ahead, He sees you and me. He recognizes us as people who will sing His new song. He trusts we will be there. Furthermore, He believes that the disciples will withstand the hardships of their world to teach His new song to those of us who’ve not heard it first-hand. Finally, He prays that we “may all be one.”

Thus we find our place in this world—not as lonely outcasts sentenced to the fringes of society, or as dissonant voices in a culture that doesn’t like our music. We are called to be a harmonious, united band of believers whose song of love and hope magnifies Christ’s presence beyond our borders. After the Ascension, two angels appear beside Jesus’s followers and ask, “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, Who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him go into heaven.” (Acts 1.11) Jesus may have left the stage. The house lights may have come up. But the concert is not over. While we await Christ’s reappearance, our place in this world is out in the world—not hanging around, staring up at the stage, and wondering when Jesus will return. Christ has given us a new song to give the world. It’s not “Won’t You Stay Just a Little Bit Longer”. Not “Just You and I”. It’s “Takin’ It to the Streets”.

Jesus may have left the stage, but the concert’s not over. While we await His reappearance, we take His new song of love and hope to the world.


Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/05/19/our-place-in-this-world/. 

What We Are

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. (1 John 3.1)

Immersive

Scripture can sometimes provoke a stray thought of such force that we hurry to put it away—not aside, but as far from us as we can send it, because it shows us something that changes how we see everything. Sunday’s New Testament reading, 1 John 3.1-7, triggered one of these thoughts. The shock came in the first three verses: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when He [Jesus Christ] is revealed, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is. And all who have this hope in Him purify themselves, just as He is pure.”

It’s obvious John isn’t writing to Sunday Christians—religious hangers-on and casual traditionalists. He’s speaking to people who’ve undergone total transformation, believers who’ve allowed faith in Christ to redefine their entire existence. They’ve experienced baptism in its truest sense, not only as a symbolic rite that identifies them as Jesus’s followers, but in a spiritually immersive manner that saturates their very lives. Their encounter with God’s love made manifest in Christ leads them to call themselves “children of God,” which they believe themselves to be—even though they’re not sure what it all means.

The lifestyle John describes is, in every way, unnatural. It’s a life founded on familial ties and resemblance to the Creator, a life unhampered by biological inevitabilities, worldly success drives, and survival mandates. Ageing, illness, security, death, and every other concern that naturally points to a hard stop are merely commas and semicolons to John’s readers. Something beyond present life calls to them—the hope in a day when the life they’re given and life they choose will come together and the truth of their faith-lighted existence will be irrevocably self-evident. As I pondered the ferocity of such faith, I wondered what it would look like today. The answer hit me with such a blow I may never recover.

Above the Mundane

Were we to live out John’s unnatural lifestyle to the fullest, many (probably most) would think we joined a cult. We’d been seen as radical extremists besotted by a starry-eyed Dreamer. If that were so, the modern version of Holy Week events we just revisited would be cast in inflammatory headlines: 

CULT STAGES PARADE IN JERUSALEM

CULT LEADER SMASHES UP TEMPLE 

ALLEGED “CHRIST” SEIZED

DEATH SENTENCE FOR HEAD OF CULT

CORPSE OF CULT LEADER MISSING—FOLLOWERS CLAIM HE’S ALIVE 

Somewhere in the flurry of the weeklong news cycle, cult “experts” would connect the dots: “Hardcore disciples of Jesus distance themselves from ordinary life by identifying as ‘children of God.’ They say God’s love for them is so great it literally alters them. They invest all their hope in their Leader’s supposed ability to release them from fear and death. So while their reality testing is very low, their faith in Christ’s promises lifts them above the mundane. And that’s why they’re dangerous.”

Because of God’s love, we can confidently say we’re God’s children. But John won’t leave it there. “And that’s what we are,” he stresses, adding that the reason why others don’t recognize us as children of God is because they don’t know Christ. Thus, being viewed as “different”—whether favorably or not—is in itself confirmation of the transformative power of God’s unconditional love; it is the sign that we do, in fact, belong to God. And we should own everything that’s different about us with the same intensity we observe in cult members who subscribe to the most outlandish philosophies and ideas imaginable. Nothing ever hatched by human minds can possibly compare to the outrageous truth of Christ’s gospel. No human cult leader has, or ever will, equal Jesus’s audacity to preach selfless love of God and others. No ordinary man or woman has, or ever will, promise new life and dare to do as Jesus did: demonstrably make good on the promise. Our faith not only secures our identity as children of God. It lifts us above the mundane and makes us dangerous.

Life Now Lived in God

Belief in Jesus testifies to blatant defiance of conventional wisdom and natural order. Jesus explicitly says this in Sunday’s Gospel (Luke 24.36-48): “’These are My words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about Me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’” (v44-48; emphasis added)

What we witness in Jesus is what we hope for in us—the revelation of something bigger, richer, and purer than anything found in this world’s ways: the fulfillment of divine promise. Greater love. Truer honesty. Higher justice. Deeper commitment. Freer forgiveness. Wider acceptance. Eternal life that surpasses life hereafter to become life now lived in God, given by God, understood and pursued as a reflection of God. We witness all of this in Jesus, the perfect Child, and we follow His example as children of God. That’s why we’re dangerous. Living as God’s children, we devote our lives to hope that constantly pushes us over the line, that ignores manmade boundaries and definitions, that abides by principles and customs of what the Hebrews writer called “a building not made by hands.” (11.9)

We inhabit a divine state of becoming, of steadily growing into our resemblance to Christ. In 1 John 3.7 we read, “Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as He is righteous.” We do what’s right because we’ve witnessed what’s right in Jesus. It’s what we do, regardless how others may view us, what they may say about us, and whether or not they ever acknowledge, accept, or believe us. What love God has given us that we should be called God’s children. If ever a scripture cried for an exclamation point, this one does. That we should be called God’s children!

And that’s what we are!

 Faith in Christ’s promises lifts us above the mundane.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/04/21/what-we-are/.

Signs of Life

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. (John 20.30-31)

Under the Radar

The Resurrection hands Jesus’s followers a great big problem that gets even bigger 40 days later, when He vanishes into the heavens. They’re charged with spreading the Gospel—the Good News of God’s kingdom—and the disciples quickly discern that Jesus’s story is a major part of that larger story. For the Good News to stick, it needs to have been delivered by Divine Messenger, the Messiah, God Made Flesh. And the critical proof point that Jesus is God rests in the Resurrection. The disciples have no doubt that Jesus arose from the dead. They saw Him and spoke with Him after He left the tomb. Indeed, the main event in Sunday’s Gospel (John 20.19-31) explains how Jesus allowed Thomas to touch His transformed body to convince him that He’s alive. Yet it appears not many outside Jesus’s close-knit circle encounter Him as the Risen Christ. He appears to two unnamed disciples on the Emmaus Road. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul asserts that Jesus was seen by a group of 500, although it isn’t reported in the Gospels. As far as we can tell, Jesus pretty much stays under the radar.

If we were among Jesus’s first disciples tasked with spreading the Good News, declaring His resurrection would be a tough row to hoe. We’d be hard-pressed to respond to comments and ridicule about Jesus’s whereabouts after leaving the tomb. “So where was He, what was He doing, if nobody but a handful of you saw Him? You’d think He’d make at least one token appearance at the Temple, just to set the record straight. This is a lot of baloney.” How would we answer that?

Fortunately, the disciples’ message is so compelling that many believe their word that Jesus arose from the dead. And that’s all the more amazing when we recall that Jesus leaves the world with nothing but His followers’ witness to substantiate He was ever here. First-generation believers have no grave, no relics, no writings, no children—no artifacts of any kind—they can point to as hard evidence Jesus even existed. Yet to this day, all but a very few question that He lived among us, teaching us how to live and presenting a principled Gospel that opens the door to a life in God. How can that be?

Thomas

John offers a fascinating clue when he closes Chapter 20 with this observation: “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.” (v30-31) Jesus leaves a legacy of signs that He was with us—signs that He stamps in the faith of His followers, who did see and speak with the Risen Christ. And the reason John singles out Thomas’s experience may very well be because it’s the most dramatic of the “many other signs” Jesus leaves.

Thomas, who misses Jesus’s first post-resurrection visit with the disciples, wants to be sure Jesus is alive. Although his insistence on touching Jesus’s wounds has labeled him a doubter, I’m not convinced Thomas questions the Resurrection as much as he distrusts his colleagues’ report. It’s only been 10 days since Jesus’s prediction of His death, resurrection, and ascension troubled Thomas. In John 14, during the Last Supper, Jesus frames what’s about to happen as a departure, return, and second departure. “I’m going away,” Jesus says, “but I’ll come back and show you how to go where I’m headed. And you know the way to the place where I’m going.” (v3-4) But Thomas isn’t content with Jesus’s hazy terminology. He speaks up: “Lord, we don’t know where You’re going. How can we know the way?” Jesus puts Thomas at ease, reassuring him, “I am the way.”

In light of this exchange, it makes perfect sense for Thomas to wait until He meets Christ for himself to believe Jesus is alive. He won’t be led down a garden path. He won’t risk the possibility the other disciples have mistaken someone else for Jesus. He requests a sign. When Jesus grants his request—revealing Himself to Thomas, as the Christ, the Way—something extraordinary transpires within the disciple. He believes. “My Lord and my God!” Thomas exclaims. (John 20.28) And in that exclamation an even greater thing occurs. Thomas’s faith transforms him into a sign of life. The Risen Christ becomes his reason to live.

A Belief So Strong

John says he records selected signs of Jesus’s resurrection so that we may come to believe that Jesus is “the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in His name.” In a later letter, he revisits this idea when he writes, “This life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us—we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us.” (1 John 1.2-3) In both texts, John stresses our role in Jesus’s ongoing story. We are signs of life.

The absence of hard proof that Jesus arose from the dead—indeed, that Jesus ever existed—is our invitation to believe. Our faith must transcend hearsay evidence. It must grow out of a real encounter with Christ that allays all doubts about Him. It’s a belief so strong that it can’t be shaken, even as it shakes us to our core and causes us to exclaim, “My Lord and my God!” It’s the confidence one gospel songwriter condensed into the powerful declaration, “I know Him for myself.” That faith transforms us from reasonable doubters into triumphant signs of life. We become walking, talking evidence of Christ’s Resurrection—living witnesses to a life that conquers death in all of its forms.

In her Resurrection sermon last Sunday, our pastor quoted Clarence Jordan, an influential New Testament scholar whose words have stuck with me all week. He wrote: “The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of His transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that Jesus lives is not a vacant grave, but a Spirit-filled fellowship—not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away Church.” Jesus left no paper trail, made no major post-Resurrection appearances, and vanished without a trace of His earthly existence because it was unnecessary. Instead, He left a self-perpetuating legacy of signs stamped in our faith. You are a sign. I am a sign. Everyone who believes is a sign. We are all signs of life.

 Jesus left no hard proof of His resurrection—indeed, no paper trail or artifacts at all to confirm His existence—because it was unnecessary. Proof that He lives is stamped in our faith. We are walking, talking signs of life.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/04/15/signs-of-life/.