John 20:18
“Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.”
When I read this passage of scripture I’m pretty confident that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene at the tomb in the very early morning hours. Once Jesus had spoken to Mary she then goes to the disciples and tells them “I have seen the Lord” and she explains the things Jesus said to her. The next account we have is that the disciples are gathered together in the evening. I wonder what went on between morning and evening? Were the disciples skeptical of Mary? Did the disciples not believe her? I have to wonder, if the disciples believed Mary, wouldn’t they have zoomed back to the tomb again to see Jesus if they did—but John gives us no indication that they did that; which leads me to believe the disciples might have been a bit skeptical of Mary. Perhaps they even thought Mary was just being emotional and discounted what she’d seen and said.
“On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” (v19)
Something quite unordinary happens; the door to the room where the disciples were meeting was locked, probably out of fear that the Sanhedrin might be looking for Jesus’ disciples to do the same things to them that they had done to Jesus. Suddenly, Jesus is standing among them. This reminds me of those scenes from the movie Ghost with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, when, as a ghost, Patrick Swayze can walk through walls, trains and cars. When Jesus had mentioned to Mary Magdalene earlier in the morning that she couldn’t touch his body because he had not yet ascended to the Father yet, maybe this is an indicator why she couldn’t touch him, there was something otherworldly about Jesus physically that allowed him to pass through solid objects. This sounds very science-fictiony, sort of like Scotty beaming Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk up to the Enterprise in Star Trek.
Jesus’ first words to the disciples are “Peace be with you.” In the original language that phrase meant something like “may God give you every good thing.” How amazing of a statement is that! God had given the world every good thing and it was all wrapped up in the very One who was speaking to the disciples at that moment. Could there have been anything better that God could have given the disciples in that moment, or for that matter, for their entire lives than Jesus?
I was working on a posting for my blog site last night. A thought had come to me and I wanted to add another paragraph to the introduction to my discussion on Better Than General Tso’s and Sex. Here’s the new opening paragraph that I came up with…”Could it be we’re an over-sexed culture in America? Could it be we’re a sex-saturated culture in America? Could it be that all the ”hot sex,” “porn sex,” “rough sex,” “new sex,” “gay sex,” “sex games” “sex movies,” “sex toys,” “sex books,” “sex clubs,” “sex ads,” “sex TV,” “sex novelties,” “bi-sex,” “lesbian sex,” “same sex,” “self sex,” “kinky sex,” “sex stimulants,” “child sex,” “pay-per-view sex,” “sex shows,” “sex websites,” “sex books,” “sex manuals,” “sex therapists,” “sex addicts,” “raw sex,” “hungry sex,” “group sex,” “orgy sex,” ”bestiality,” and “kiddie porn” are all symptomatic that we’re an over-sexed culture? And, why is it that some people pursue all these things, but their sexual appetite is never satiated?”
All those things are found in our newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and other media every day, as well as just walking down the streets of the Short North in Columbus; they’re not new to us, and they’re not even shocking anymore. As I asked in the paragraph, why is it that people’s sexual appetite is never satiated? I could take this same point and apply it to countless other things in our lives; we could say a similar thing about food, spending money shopping, being entertained, acquiring material possessions, work and on and on and on. Why is it that we can never be fully satisfied even when we have vast quantities of these things? I believe Jesus speaks directly to it when he says “peace be with you” or “may God give you every good thing.”
I think what we struggle with in our world is that we don’t take The Good Thing that God has given us and completely saturate ourselves in it (Jesus). Without saturating ourselves in Jesus we cannot know how satisfying he is, how fulfilling he is and ultimately how good he is. Without saturation we leave room for other things which we think can help satiate the longing of our hearts and minds. There is a Force at work upon us that is trying to get us to believe that Jesus is inadequate in filling our deepest hunger and thirst to be fulfilled. This same Force wants to suggest to us that sex and food and spending money and entertainment and material possessions and work and other stuff can be the “good thing” we need.
“When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.” (v20) Could this have possibly been one of the greatest understatements the world has ever known, “then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord!” I’m guessing that John really didn’t have words to express what seeing Jesus meant to him and the other disciples. What it really meant was “it’s all true!”
Everything that Jesus said, everything that Jesus did, everything that Jesus promised, everything that Jesus taught, everything that Jesus believed, everything that Jesus claimed was absolutely true.
“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.’” (v21-23)
There is so much going on in these three verses that it makes your head spin to think of all of them and dissect them. First, Jesus could have been saying something like this; “God has given you every good thing, and now I’m sending you to carry on what I started—you’ll be the ones to carry the message of redemption and the good news of the gospel to the world. In fact, that will be a message to the whole world; God offers us every good thing in himself.”
Second, when Jesus breathes on the disciples and says “receive the Holy Spirit” it’s reminiscent of Genesis 2:7 “then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” In a way similar to how God first awakened Adam by breathing life into him, Jesus awakened the disciples (and the Church) for the first time to offer new life to the world.
Third, when Jesus says, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld” it seems kind of contradictory to what he taught. Jesus had taught that ONLY God could forgive sins. It seems likely that what Jesus is saying here is that he has now fully equipped the disciples (and the Church) to announce God’s forgiveness to the world. In essence, the disciples’ message to the world is the same message that Jesus gave them as he stepped through the wall or door to stand in their presence “may God give you every good thing.”
Every good thing had been given to the disciples from God through Jesus, and now Jesus is instructing his disciples to take that same message to the rest of the world.
It wasn’t enough for the disciples to hear from Mary Magdalene that Jesus had risen from the dead, it required the presence of Jesus in their midst.
For us today, if we are to ever believe and behave as though God is more fulfilling than sex and food and spending money and entertainment and material possessions and work and other stuff, it’s going to take Jesus’ presence in us. As Jesus’ disciples today he continues to say that same thing to us—peace be with you.
