Places of Revelation # 4

Places of Revelation #4

Implications of Jesus’ Breathing on the Disciples

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            My goal in beginning this blog series entitled “Places of Revelation” has been to set forth the view that God reveals Christ into our lives especially through the Scriptures, in relationship to the Church, and in the sacraments (or ordinances). This all made sense when I first encountered this viewpoint in connection with Martin Luther’s theology. I thought I knew enough about the subject to write about it in an interesting and compelling way. I confess that the more I have written the more I have realized that I began the process having no real idea where to begin the series or how to develop it. I think this is my last attempt to begin anew in writing about how Christ is revealed to us through the Scriptures, the Church, and the Sacraments. I discovered on this past Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter that a text preached on for that Sunday is perhaps a perfect starting place to consider how Christ is revealed to us in the Scriptures, Church, and Sacraments.

            You can read here the text of John 20:19-31. This passage describes what we can see now to be the turning point in the lives of Christ’s disciples after their deep disappointment that came upon them when Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried. There are two scenes developed in this passage, but I suspect we are meant to see the first scene as moving towards the second scene, and the second scene as highlighting the first. In the first scene Jesus’ disciples are gathered in a room, with the doors shut and locked for fear that the particular group of Jews who had orchestrated Jesus’ crucifixion would now be seeking to see to their executions. They were discouraged and although they had heard rumors that Jesus had been seen alive, they were not quite ready to embrace the reality that he who had been dead was somehow now actually alive. Jesus comes into their midst, but Thomas isn’t among these disciples. So Jesus appears to the disciples again later and this time Thomas is with the others. Thomas’ response, although isolated was not unique among the apostles. None of the disciples had been ready to fully believe until they saw Jesus and knew them by seeing his scars. That is why I think the second story focusing on Thomas is a way of highlighting not simply that Thomas was a doubting Thomas, but that he shared in his doubting with every other disciple that had been at the first meeting where Jesus appeared. In both meetings, Jesus expressed how these disciples were about to become the Apostles whom Jesus would send into the world to bring forgiveness to men through their proclamation of Christ. All of these disciples had doubted until they had seen Jesus’ wounds and knew it was him, not an apparition or vision, not his angel, not his spirit. He was seen in their midst, having been resurrected in the body, having overcome death in the flesh. Jesus was now describing to them how he was sending them out into the world to bring people to believe on him and have their sins forgiven and their lives transformed by his presence in their mission. Thomas must not have been alone in marveling at Jesus’ promise that they were about to go forth in his name and that people would begin to believe in Jesus although they had never seen him. The disciples who all had to see the risen Jesus was to bring people to a faith in Jesus without their seeing Jesus. That he was about to send them into the world was a message he gave to his disciples both in Thomas’ absence from the group and in the group when Thomas was present. What was it about this passage that could help explain why the disciples who had never believed until they saw would bring about the sort of faith where we have believed without seeing?

            It seems to me that St. John writes like someone who could have made a wonderful painter. When an artist paints a painting he doesn’t necessarily tell you what he means for one to see and feel and think upon as they study the details of a painting. The great works of art ooze forth meaning that is seen only as one is brought to contemplate the details of a painting. At first the student of the painting notices the very obvious qualities of the scene. But then as an observer studies a painting he notices details that are full of meaning. In the scenes that John paints for us there are the obvious things, like the disciples shutting the doors in fear of the people that had crucified Christ, or how Thomas doubted. We notice his message of peace. We notice his announcement that he is sending them forth into the world. We notice that he describes the greater blessing about to fall upon people who will believe in Jesus without seeing him. We see all this, but there is something of a small detail easily overlooked that John never explains, but perhaps it explains everything.

            The detail never explained that catches our attention is how as Jesus blesses them saying “Peace to you.” As he announces to them “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” at this moment he breathes on them and says to them “Receive the Holy Spirit.” It is this detail mentioned along with what Jesus says that slowly becomes the thing which we notice most. He breathes on them. We don’t know how he did that. Perhaps he stood about at a distance and looked at each of them as he breathed in a way that demonstrated to the disciples that he was breathing in each of their directions. He seems to have highlighted what he was saying with this action of his breathing upon them. This detail intrigues us. We wonder within this scene why this breathing must be important. It must be important. Like a great artist painting a masterpiece John never explains what the symbolism of this detail means in his painting. But we come to believe that we know, that we understand, what this detail means.

            We think back to the story of the creation. God formed Adam from dust, from dirt. He molded him. He gave him a body. But then God did that one extra thing. He breathed life into the man and he became a living soul. That was the story of the first Adam. But now we are considering the story of the second Adam. But is there something in that creation story we are meant to see here in the scene being described by St. John?

 

            Perhaps St. John, the theologian of the incarnation wants us to see how God breathed life into the first Adam in the midst of the old creation that had become doomed by the sin and death and corruption that had entered the first creation through the sin of man. But the second Adam entered into that first creation. He took upon himself a body and became a part of that weakened doomed creation. He entered into its weakness and remained faithful unto that weakness unto the point of death, even death on a cross. That was the message of the cross. This second Adam had entered fully into the original creation and he had wrapped himself up in that old creation, in that old humanity, into that doomed corrupted creation. He had assumed the old creation and the old humanity into his being. He was that old creation and that old humanity who died on Good Friday and in his death that old creation and that old humanity passed away, at least it passed away in him to be fully revealed at a later time.

            The second Adam has now risen from the dead. He is living with the life of a new creation that has overcome the former things. He has overcome sin and he has overcome death. In the words of an Eastern Orthodox liturgy, “He is risen. He has trampled death by death.” He is the second Adam now standing in their midst with a life that had overcome sin, and hell, and death. The first Adam had received the breath of life from God. The second Adam now breathes life and the Spirit upon the disciples. This is the life of the new creation.

            This is where we begin to understand how it is that Christ meets us in the words of the Apostles and of Holy Scripture, in the Church, and in his ordained means of Baptism and the Supper. We are not merely hearing a message with words which somehow we intellectually believe. We are encountering the energy of life breathed upon the Apostles, upon the Church, and into the ordained rituals given to the people of God. The second Adam is resurrected life and breathes the life of the Spirit upon His apostles and commissions them to carry not only words, but life to those to whom he sends them. An entire creation is to be breathed into being through the Apostles. There will be words that enable people to believe what they do not see. There will be a church that will be able to be described as the living body of Christ. There will be water that cleanses and sanctifies as we are baptized into Christ. There will be a cup of salvation that we drink and there will be the bread of Christ, the manna from heaven, our daily bread that sustains us because in all of this Christ has breathed upon the disciples and sent them forth that through them the new life of a new creation would be breathed upon the world.