10th June 2011

John 20:18-23 – Jesus Appears to His Disciples.

• “Supernatural vs Spectacular”
• Jesus missed a great opportunity here for a good joke.
• He suddenly appears to the disciples who have locked themselves away for fear of those who had Jesus crucified.
• He says to them “peace with you”
• I’d have said ‘boo!’
• Jesus, however, a bit more mature than me, combines the extra-ordinary with the ordinary.
• Sometimes we love the spectacular but Jesus operated in the supernatural.
• Jesus was mystical in many ways but never spooky.
• God does move in mysterious ways and in Jesus’ case it was never to attract attention to Himself or put on a show as so many leaders often do.
• He uses the most normal common greeting of the day to make an extraordinary event ordinary.
• Why?
• Because His emphasis was on what would happen next not on the event.
• Similar to yesterday – he does not want people to hang onto the moment but to grasp the job in hand.
• He then breathes on them and speaks one of the most contested sayings in scripture.
• “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
• I was so disappointed today. None of my commentary books would comment on this difficult saying. In fact I took 13 books off my shelf and 12 of them refused to even acknowledge the statement!
• It is as though Jesus had said “boo!” to them and they didn’t know what to do.
• The only theologian who would take a pop at the subject is not a follower of Jesus and doesn’t have a grip on the Jewish context as well as he thinks.
• But he did manage to link the phrase with binding and loosening. In other words with the job Jesus had been preparing His disciples for. The role of helping build and shape this new community of believers according to His teaching.
• There are various ways of interpreting Jesus’ words. My drash would be that He is partly referring to their role of essentially taking over from the Sanhedrin and making halakhic decisions to help the new community mature and grow up into God’s promise for them.
• But the main thing that today’s reading leaves me with is that Jesus is constantly moving us forward, He does not want us to get sucked in to the spectacular but to move forward in the supernatural.
• He is not interested in shouting “Boo!”
• He wants us to be naturally supernatural.
• Hoping I can be that today!