Incidentally, this also fits with my experience of God. For some, God is felt to have a plan—and this makes sense. After all, one of the persistent claims of the faith is eschatological, that which concerns the end. God has in mind an end of all things, a glorious end in which all is praise, a consummation of the creation and creator. So it must be that God guides all things to that end, and this could be felt as God’s plan. But for me, I experience God less as “having a plan” and more as acting in response—responding to what unfolds, responding even to me in forgiveness and grace. I act: God responds. We act: God responds.
Did you know -spond is the Latin root meaning promise? So to re-spond is to renew an already-established promise. There’s theological truth in this, then, that God, the one of ancient promises, is also fundamentally responsive, ever renewing those ancient promises. There’s also, then, an imperative in this, a claim on us if we mean to be God’s people: we’re to be responsive. We’re to respond to changing circumstances and new developments in hope. We’re to respond to needs as they arise in faith. We’re to respond with love.
But it strikes me that this microdynamic way of being together doesn’t rely so much on “membership.” Really, membership, in the context of a responsive community, might feel like an “un-necessity” or even a stumbling block.
This is why, currently, many congregations are struggling mightily to give up their old membership model and mindset in favor of something more current—a discipleship model or stakeholder model. The church shouldn’t be about making members but about forming disciples. The church shouldn’t be about joining, as if it were a club; it should be about sending out, as if it had a mission or were itself a mission.
As it happens, I’ve read those books and I’ve attended those conferences; and I always do so as one who’s already made that shift, as one serving a congregation that’s already come out from under the heavy burden of membership and committees and Robert’s Rules of Order, and is now burdened but lightly with freedom in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit who doesn’t stay still for long.
So why, then, would I celebrate as we take in new members today? Why should any of us seek to join, or rejoice that so many are joining, if we mean not to be a club of conformity but to be a mission on the move?
If you’re comfortable with those questions, then you’re likely uncomfortable with what appears to be John’s aim with his gospel narrative. We’ve heard from John a lot in recent weeks, so we’ve heard a lot John’s insistence that his hearers and readers believe in Jesus. And yet we’ve fallen far short of hearing many instances of his insistence. In fact, over fifty times in the twenty chapters of this gospel comes in several forms the refrain “so that all might believe through him”: “Do you not believe?” “Do you now believe?” “Tell me that I may believe,” “We have come to believe,” “Lord, I believe,” and, as we heard earlier, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Really, by this insistence John justifies having written his whole gospel: “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.”
Maybe you didn’t notice all the insistence on believing, though, because so much else is going on here as well.
First, there’s this—the disciples locked away in fear of the Jews.
This, though, is more usefully heard as their being locked away simply for fear. The disciples were, after all, Jews themselves; and there was nothing, and is nothing, inherently frightening about Jews (or about any other brand of human group). What is frightening, however, is violence let loose, violence now without proper framing or structure or reason or aim. I mean, violence with those attendant fetters is frightening enough. The violence of the electric chair or the firing squad is frightening enough, but at least it’s controlled, somewhat predictable and reasonable. The violence of war is fearsome enough, but at least there’s such a thing as “war crimes” that give structure to war and a sense of fair play, if a perverse one. (One of the many things that’s so disturbing about the recent police shootings, racially charged and caught on tape, is that it’s violence approaching the out of bounds. And once we can’t trust the police to use violence “correctly,” then we’re in a new and very deep sort of danger.)
After all, violence let loose is another matter. And violence, this week, this “Holy Week,” had (perhaps?) been let loose. The state working with the priesthood had killed an innocent man, and now his followers were scattered and doing God knows what, proclaiming and planning God knows what. So the fears were real, and likely all around. Among the authorities, would the followers of this Jesus retaliate for all this? Among the followers of Jesus, would the authorities seek to kill off still more of their movement, come after each of them, one by one? And so would any among the disciples break out of their discipline of peaceful resistance and strike back?
Second, there’s this: Jesus’ coming and standing among them and breathing on them the breath that is the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete as it’s called in this gospel. Strictly speaking, Paraclete means “called to one’s side,” and so is often translated into English as “comforter” or “advocate.” Think of a public defender or a health care proxy. Think of someone trained and skilled in a field where you’re stuck in mire and unable to fend for yourself. But then consider this, which this Holy Spirit enables the disciples to do: if now they forgive the sins of any, those sins are forgiven; but if they retain the sins of any, those sins are retained.
This has been heard as the founding Scripture for the Christian priesthood, which came to be felt as having the power to forgive and redeem, or not, as the case may be. But what if this passage weren’t saying anything so general as all that? What if this detail were most relevant in the context of what’s going on here in the story on that very scary night?
Violence was let loose and on the move, and it was either going to keep lashing out and keep claiming more victims or someone was going to have to stop it—by deciding that, though this one had the “right” to retaliate, he or she would not retaliate. In this way, either the sin of the other would be retained and so the acts of retaliation would continue—until everyone everywhere was engulfed in violence; or the sin of the other would be forgiven and so the whole downwardly spiraling dynamic of violence-begetting-violence would be put to rest. This is to say that Jesus, resurrected and returned now in peace, could simply be saying to his friends on this terrifying night, “The choice is yours: forgive and have forgiveness reign, or retain and continue in the path of resentment and violence. The choice is yours.”
Third, there’s this: Thomas, poor Thomas, whom we condemn as “doubting,” but who I think was simply deeply unfortunate. I mean, he was out when all the other disciples received visitation from the risen Christ. And who knows why he was out? Maybe he was out gathering supplies for their lengthening stay behind those locked doors. Maybe he was out getting a sense of things, “doing recon,” as it were, to gauge how much longer they’d need to stay locked away, to determine whether it was safe at last to come out. Whatever. The point is that he was out. And then he came back, and everyone told him, “We have seen the Lord! (Oh, but you were out.)”
And we blame him for doubting. Traditionally, the church has condemned him as doubting. Jesus, however, didn’t. He simply granted Thomas his request. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands,” Thomas said, “and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” So, the following week, Jesus returned and said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”