Easter 2 - April 27th, 2025 - John 20:19-31

by Jan Savory

Since it’s Holy Humour Sunday, I thought I’d emulate Stephen and start with a joke

Joe asked God, "How long is a minute in heaven?"

God said, "One million years."

Joe asked, "How much is a cent worth in heaven?"

God replied, "$1 million dollars."

Joe asked for a cent.

God said, “Oh, sure.  Just give me a minute.”  

[Didn’t like that how about these

The Pharisees believe in the resurrection of the dead, but the Sadducees don’t. That’s why they’re sad, you see.

Once I prayed to God for a bike but then I realised the God does not work that way........so I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness]

Joking aside, (or maybe not), some people have said that God’s greatest joke was the one he played on everyone at Easter, by raising Jesus after he was crucified. It was certainly an ending no one expected.

If that is God’s the greatest trick God played on humanity, I sometimes think his second greatest joke might be the Bible. 

The teacher and podcaster, Tripp Fuller, as a devout young teenager, decided to try to put together the various accounts of the death and resurrection of Jesus from the four gospels. To his surprise, they didn't fit; and he went running to his Baptist pastor father shouting: “Dad, Dad, my Bible is broken!”  If you tried that exercise, you too would find that the stories really cannot be meshed together. In fact, the Bible is full of stories that often contradict each other – 2 creation stories, 2 versions of Moses receiving the 10 commandments, 2 histories of Israels monarchy, 4 gospels … but 1 message.

We tend to read the Bible one book or, more usually, part of a book at a time. If we don’t read the Bible at home, we hear parts of it, week by week, in church. Matthew one year, Mark the next, and Luke in the third year, with bits of John thrown in from time to time. No wonder we don't spot the discrepancies or differences in the stories.

Let’s just look at the resurrection stories; this is what we find.

·       In the original ending to Mark, the earliest gospel, we have the women visiting the tomb where they are told by a young man in white that Jesus is risen and they are to tell the disciples; but they are afraid and just go away. That is where the original oldest manuscripts we have of Mark’s gospel end. Two later endings have been added; in the shorter one the women do tell Peter and the others but that’s all.  The longer ending follows a mishmash of the stories in the other gospels.

·       In Matthew, two Marys go to the tomb where they see an Angel and then see Jesus. Two soldiers left there to watch the tomb lie and say that the body was stolen. After that the disciples go to Galilee where Jesus commissions them to go out and spread the gospel throughout the world.

·       In Luke, several women at the tomb meet two men who say that Jesus has risen. Peter goes and checks the tomb, finding it empty. That evening two disciples meet Jesus on the road to Emmaus and later Jesus appears to the 11 disciples and has supper with them; he tells them to stay in Jerusalem. Luke’s gospel ends with a brief account of Jesus’ ascension.

·       Luke expands on the story of the ascension at the beginning of the book of the Acts of the Apostles, which is often referred to as Luke Part 2. Here we find out that the ascension happened 40 days after the resurrection and, ten days later, the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles, with tongues of fire and great winds.

·       In John, Mary Magdalene goes alone to the tomb, finds it empty and tells Peter and the beloved disciple. These two run back to the tomb and confirm that it’s empty. They leave Mary there alone and she meets up with Jesus whom she mistakes for the gardener. Jesus joins the disciples that evening, commissions them to follow his example , and breathes the holy Spirit on them. Jesus returns the next week when Thomas is there too and later joins some of the disciples for a meal on the beach,  Which we hear about next week.

Paul, who wrote his letters before any of the gospels were written, says this “he appeared to Cephus [Peter], and then to the 12. After that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time ... Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also …” (1 Corinthians 15:6)

So – Who went to the tomb? Did they see Jesus, or guards or angels? Later, who saw Jesus and when? What was Jesus’ message (Matthew – go to Galilee; Luke - wait in Jerusalem; John – continue my work, ie Follow me. Feed my sheep; Mark – tell the disciple, but they were too afraid)

Today we read part of John’s version of the post-resurrection story.  What has always struck me about this story in John’s gospel is not about Thomas at all. It has always struck me as strange that the disciples receive the Holy Spirit from Jesus on the day of his resurrection, and then, apparently, had to wait to get it again at Pentecost seven weeks later. That was what got me looking at all the ways the resurrection stories were different in the Bible.

Shouldn’t we expect consistency in a story as important as this?   I don’t think so. People are all different, and everyone has different experiences. How do people receive the Holy Spirit? In many different ways.

We have to remember that none of the gospels were written until about 40 years after Jesus died. Paul wrote earlier, in about 53 to 57 CE; Mark, the earliest gospel, is dated somewhere around 70 CE; Matthew and Luke about 80-90 CE; and John not until 90 or 110 CE.

During the time between the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the writing of the gospels, the followers of Jesus were clearly telling their stories and orally passing on the tradition of what happened to Jesus, what he stood for and what he did, by telling and retelling the stories. And in the process, they’re defining Jesus for themselves. Their world was not a world of telephones, tape recorders and the Internet, or even the printing press. So, it’s not surprising that traditions varied in different communities. Each of the gospel writers wrote for their own community, using words and images that would express their thoughts to that community, whether it had a Jewish background like Matthew, a gentile background like Luke, or a mixed background that we assume for John’s community. In this way the stories may have changed and become embellished In details. But not in the essential message they were setting out to share.

There is no doubt that something happened to change the disciples after Jesus resurrection, they were transformed from confused and frightened men hiding in an upper room, to courageous and confident apostles going forth to tell the story of Jesus.  I don’t think it was seeing the resurrected Jesus, which only a few experienced, that changed the disciples from fearful to fearless witnesses.  Rather, it was the infilling of the Holy Spirit in their lives which was and is available to all believers.

Some might have said: I felt like I was on fire; my heart was burning with love for God; my joy must have shone out from my face. As these stories were told they became tongues of fire which came down on the disciples at Pentecost. Others, remembering how Jesus told Nicodemus that like the wind the spirit blows where it wants, ……..and they felt the freshness of the Holy Spirit like a wind blowing into their lives. Hence the rushing wind of Luke’s Pentecost.

For others, the experience may have been a more inward spiritual event – the sense of new life growing within them. If they were familiar with the Hebrew scriptures, they might liken it to the way God breathed life into Adam in the creation story, or brought the dry bones to life as told by Ezekiel. This became the background story for John’s Pentecost.

So we shouldn’t ask which one is true. They’re both true, and they tell us but there is not just one way that God comes to us. The Holy Spirit comes our lives in many different ways, probably as many different ways as there are people.

There is no flat, one-dimensional vision of spirituality in the gospels. The resurrection stories extend a radical, multivocal invitation to all. What does following the risen Jesus look like? Go into all the world (Matthew). Stay right where you are and wait (Luke). Stand still and take time to work through your fear and trembling (Mark). And when you can’t see the way before you, Jesus is there, holding your hand, making you breakfast, saying, “Follow me.”  (John)

We don’t have to pick one gospel ending. We have all four, and we can choose all four, at different points along our journey, as the Spirit leads. Christianity isn’t so much about trying to reach up to God with clean, successful lives; it is all about God reaching down and reaching out to fragile, flawed  people like us through Jesus, and through his Spirit of Jesus, to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.

Remembering that, With empty hands, let us pray:   Come Holy Spirit …

… as we sing our closing hymn Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.