I remember hearing a Christian speaker talking about the time when his son burst into a meeting he was having with some very important Christian leaders. His son burst in and said, “I know that Jesus is amazing.” The speaker was very pleased about this, and glad his son had burst in on the meeting. One of the leaders said, “do you believe Jesus is the greatest then?” The boy waited a moment before saying, “Nah, Spider-Man is better because he can spin webs.”
I was thinking about this when I looked at the reading from Revelation (1:4-8) which we have heard this morning. In this reading the writer made the point that Jesus was greater than any other ruler. This also meant that Jesus was greater than the ruler of the whole Roman Empire.
In the reading we heard that Jesus rescued people from sin and all that held them back from enjoying the good news of God’s love. Not just this but he had made His followers a kingdom. When we read the New Testament, we come across words like King and Kingdom a lot. We hear about God’s kingdom, and our place within it. The writer of revelation could see that there was a new and better Kingdom than had ever been. Jesus, God the Son, was the ruler of this kingdom and to Him there was to be all glory and dominion. I love the way that when Jesus is pictured as coming again, even those who had pierced His side, as He was taken from the cross would see Him come again. He is described as the alpha and Omega which are the first and last letters in the Greek alphabet, meaning that He is everything.
I like to be honest with you all, and I have a confession to make. This is that when I read the gospels I used to get really cross with the disciples. I would think why can’t they just see what’s happening? Why can’t they understand every parable? Why aren’t they braver? The why questions would come easily to me. However, when I put myself in the shoes of the disciples then the questions had to stop.
This is certainly the case in the gospel reading (John 20:19-31) we have heard this morning. Before this sounds like I am going to get us all to feel sorry for the disciples today, I want to ask how would we have reacted if we were them ? I expect locking ourselves away may not have seemed a bad idea. After all we might have been attacked and killed the same way that Jesus had been. Jesus who they followed, Jesus their leader had been killed and He had risen again. The impossible and happened and as they saw Jesus they were filled with joy.
However, for some reason Thomas had not seen Jesus. I often feel sorry for Thomas, his name has been changed from Thomas the twin to doubting Thomas. I may have told you this story before, but I remember hearing a long and scholarly sermon about Thomas. It was very detailed, at the end a four year old boy went up to the preacher to tell him something important about his sermon. It was, “Thomas is an engine.”
Back to Thomas not the man, he had walked with Jesus, he had followed Him, he had worshipped him, he had trusted Him, he had seen Him die. Maybe he was a little unsure as to whether he wanted to believe again. Maybe he was worried he would get hurt, maybe he felt left out, maybe he wanted his own experience of the risen Jesus.
Would we have been filled with joy on hearing the news ? Would we have been scared to trust again, just in case it all went wrong? Notice I have changed the questions from why did they to would we ? I have done this to make us think about our own lives as followers of Jesus. Do we always see Jesus working amongst us and in our world ?
At times it is hard to see the works of God, we can be oblivious sometimes to all that God does. I am not saying that we don’t believe, but how often might we have missed what God was doing? When people make claims about God, I don’t know about you but I like to be sure before I agree with them. I think this may make me a bit like Thomas. Now, if I wanted to make this sound good, I may say that I wanted to be a little more circumspect. I am not sure that this is quite good enough though.
Poor Thomas, he had been through a lot and he just wanted some reassurance. He asks to put his hands in Jesus’ side, but he doesn’t actually do this, he just sees Jesus and believes. This in my books makes the doubting seem a lot less. On seeing the risen Jesus he knew who he was and he proclaimed, ‘My Lord and my God.’.
In the rest of the gospel reading this morning we heard the reason the gospel according to John had been written. It was so that people would come to believe. Back to the reading from Revelation, we worship the greatest God ever. The almighty God, who has patience with us. So that even when we are doubting, or are just a little unsure He shows Himself to us, just like He did for Thomas.
All we need to do is to believe. To believe that even in the best of moments God is with us just us much as He is in the worst of moments. He loves us, and never lets us down. He loves the world, and even when things don’t seem to make sense we can trust Him, after all He will always be there for us, it’s just sometimes we don’t listen to Him. Sometimes we can get cross with the people who just don’t seem to be able to bring peace, even when they promise to try.
However, we like the writer of Revelation believe in God who is greater than anything. In times when we may want to ask God why, then we can remember that He is greater and all we can do is to keep trusting and following Him, and all so that we can truly say, ‘To God be glory and dominion for ever and ever.’ AMEN
No comments:
Post a Comment