Catherine Toon—Year A Easter 2

Anthony: This transition to our next Bible passage of the month, it’s John 20:19–31. It is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for the second Sunday of Easter, April 12. Catherine, would you read it for us, please?

Catherine: I would be so delighted to do that.

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹ Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”²⁴ But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵ So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” ²⁶ A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷ Then he 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.” ²⁸ Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” ²⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” ³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. ³¹ But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Anthony: Hallelujah. I like the way you intentionally said peace be with you.

Catherine: Yeah.

Anthony: What a glorious declaration from the risen Lord Jesus to his friends. And like humanity sometimes paralyzed with fear. How might that be good news today?

Catherine: Yeah. We as human beings, we suffer with so much fear and we couch it with a lot of different verbiage: anxiety, trauma. Sometimes we couch it as like concern or anxiety, but at the end of the day, it is fear. And fear says it’s not going to be okay. I’m not going to be okay. There will be loss. Ultimately, Hebrews says, it’s fear of death and Jesus overcame death. And as the risen Christ, he can speak unto us, “Peace be with you.”

And there is an empowerment. This is not something that we have to jockey up our faith to apprehend peace. It’s what we get out of our communion with the One who is the Prince of Peace. He causes us to transcend the issues, the torments, the anxieties, the pain, the confusion, the uncertainty, the feeling that we’re not in control.

And honestly, control is an illusion anyway.

Anthony: Amen.

Catherine: Right? And so how can we be peaceful when we don’t have control? Because it was never up to us. It is from our place of our oneness and our union with this God who transcended death, who transcended sin, who transcended everything in order to grab hold of humanity and pull us out of darkness and meet us in the places where subjectively we’re experiencing all of that, we have the objective truth of what was accomplished on the cross, a death, burial, and resurrection.

And then we have the subjective truth of where we meet him, where he meets us in our felt life. And so, the beautiful thing is that there’s always a place to go. And when I’m struggling with something, I have this thing that I’ll walk around and I’ll think of something like that would create anxiety and I literally say out my mouth, this is funny, but it works for me. Nobody panic. Okay, there’s no one there but me, my Father, Son, and Spirit, right? We’re all one. They’re not panicking. So clearly, it’s me, but it helps me apprehend my haywire mind and what’s going on in my emotions so that I can go inside and connect with the one who is my peace. Because one way or the other it is going to be okay.

If somehow Jesus wasn’t this masterful Savior, if somehow, he wasn’t able to redeem all things and hold all things in himself then we might have a justifiable reason to be anxious, to be fearful. And life happens. There are things that will squash you. It is a thing. But in that, he causes us to transcend as he transcended, because we are one with this One who carries peace.

And so, this is peace beyond our comprehension, beyond our ability to understand. Because I don’t know how it’s all going to work out. But one way or the other, it’s going to be okay. One way or the other, it’s going to be good because we’re journeying in this with this God who says, “My peace I give to you.” “Peace be with you.” And we can commune in this place of peace so that somehow, we’re able to navigate whatever comes before us, and then we’re able to give out of that place.

So, when people are freaking out and there is a lot of freak out, yeah, we’re able to minister that which is inside us because we’re carriers of Christ who is our peace. And that also allows us to come up with creative solutions to the problems that comes up because our mind’s not so haywire. Yeah.

Anthony: Yeah, for sure. It’s when he says peace be with you. He can do that with integrity because peace is embodied. Peace has a name. His name is Jesus. And I’m with you. And I love that. I often call this upper room the panic room, and he enters as the unanxious presence in the room. And sometimes I think we think we want God to be just as fired up or as, just as …. No, I want God to be the One who holds the beginning from the end and is unanxious. And as I keep my eyes fixed on him, my anxiety begins to dissipate because he’s, as you said, he’s not freaking out. He’s the Lord. And he actually, even though I wouldn’t say God is in control, because we just have such a fallen understanding of control. He does have everything in his hand.

Catherine: Yeah.

Anthony: And he’s okay. And that’s such good news in an age of outrage. You mentioned Catherine, that there is an objective and subjective perspective. And I think that’s really helpful when reading Scripture, and maybe that will help frame this next question. What does it mean as it says in verse 22 to receive the Holy Spirit?

Catherine: I love that question and you totally set me up, so this is great.

Anthony: Good. Go for it.

Catherine: What a generous host. So objectively, right? We’re all in Christ. Christ is in us. God is omnipresent. So that means where is God not present? Where is his Spirit not present? “If I make my bed in the midst of Sheol, you are there.” And we make a lot of beds in Sheol. Just a thing in our mind and just in our experience, not “our fault,” but just a fallen world.

And so where is this Spirit? And so, if the Spirit is in Sheol and in him, we live and move and have our being, okay? To be, is to be in Christ in the Spirit. So, it’s not like Jesus, the Spirit wasn’t there, and then suddenly, Poof! Spirit’s there. Holy Spirit is that called the modesty of God, does not point to himself, but points to Christ.

Anthony: Yes.

Catherine: But he moves and he’s in us. I remember growing up, I was not raised in a Christian home. I didn’t say those sinner’s prayer until 27. Okay? But I had massive encounters with the Lord that literally saved my sanity in areas that were very … I knew God. Now there was a lot to that story and I don’t want to go haywire with it, but I knew God and he knew me. I knew he loved me. And I loved him. And that was pretty much my theology, which is actually dang good theology right there. And that’s what I needed to survive a traumatic childhood, right?

Anthony: Yeah.

Catherine: And in order this thought that somehow, like I say, the magic prayer and the Spirit just pops inside now. And I didn’t know? Of course, I knew him before, but this is an awakening. Like Mary, when she couldn’t see the embodied Christ before, the incarnate Christ before her until the veil was lifted. We don’t always recognize the Spirit that dwells in us, that inhabits us, that in him, we live and move and have our being until that’s unveiled.

So, we’re talking about an objective reality and objective truth that Holy Spirit is everywhere. And in us. I remember when I was … I got through a period of God I was so angry with God because everything in my life fell apart. And I was just like, “I don’t want to hear from you.” “I don’t want to see you.”

And he was like, “Okay, Catherine, I understand,” but he wouldn’t leave me. And so even when it was giving him the flying fingers. “That’s okay, babe. When you’re ready, you’ll come around.” He’s so patient.

I have a chapter in my book called Annoying Relentless Love, because he would not leave me alone. Okay. This is the God that you can’t shake even if you want to, because we are one with him. But this is our issue as human beings, that we are veiled. We don’t experience. We experience things over time. Things are unveiled to us. And this, any sense of separation is in our minds. We’re alienated in our minds.

And this is God, healing our minds, healing our ability to see what already is, because the breath of God, the ruach of God was with us in the very beginning. When you talk about Genesis and Adam and Eve walked with him in the cool of the day. Adam walked with him in the cool of, he walked in … the ruach is “cool of the day.”

We were walking in the Spirit. You can’t shake him, but we need to wake up to him. In Galatians 1, it talks about, Paul was talking about how he had been set apart from his mother’s womb and called by his grace, “was pleased to reveal his Son in me.”

Did the Holy Spirit suddenly hop in there? No. It was a revelation, a revealing and unveiling of the Spirit already present. And in this thing — so it wasn’t that Jesus was going to give them this theological thing — “so let me just, guys, let me just help you here. Holy Spirit’s already here.” He didn’t do that. He did something practical. I love God for so many reasons, but I love the way he moves practically.

We need sacrament, we need laying on of hands. We need Jesus to breathe on us. We need something so that we can apprehend what is already true and live in it.

Anthony: No, that’s so good. The sacraments, that which physically makes manifest the unseen reality of what is true and that. That the lights would come on in our minds, and it would reach our hearts. This is, oh, we could spend days talking about this, that God has objectively made it so. May we receive what is already ours. In essence, receive what is already ours in Christ. Amen and amen.