Jesus transfers the miracle of recognition from his disciples recognizing him across an overflowing fish net, to the world’s hungry recognizing Jesus in his disciples in a food bank line or across a soup counter.
This reading of Thomas’s story, for me, is a powerful reminder that faith is not a straight line from doubt to belief. It is a complex journey through relationship, rupture, and repair. From the perspective of self-psychology, Thomas represents not merely an individual struggling with uncertainty, but anyone who has experienced the pain of exclusion (a break in connection).
If we want to experience the full effect of Easter, we must recognize that it’s not just about Jesus…it sends ripples through the cosmos as it signals the dismantling of worldly kingdoms built on exploitation and invites us to participate instead in a social order that reflects God’s intentions for the flourishing of all.
Even in the midst of an empire that crucifies the innocent for political gain, despair is not warranted. Instead, there is work to be done.
My hope this All Saints Sunday is that we would fully and faithfully engage in the realities of life and death, so that those who have gone before us will continue to inspire us to work towards love for those around us in the land of the living.
Jesus doesn’t ban sitting or reclining in public. He encourages it, supports it, and even participates in it.
If Jesus is a vine, can we really accept a theology which permits us to sit back and take without contributing anything ourselves?
Mutual knowing is not a given in relationships…
The son of Man, the son of God gives us a sign that, once more, he is not only at odds with but opposed to the structures that administer (a certain kind of) life and death.
In this passage in John, light is associated with Jesus and with the love of God for the entire world. Light is explicitly linked with a capacious love that was present from the beginning of creation and includes all of creation. It is therefore opposed to racism of any kind.
In a world of increasing anti-Jewish sentiments, we do well to note at whom Jesus points a finger. It’s not at Judaism, it’s at Rome.
The capacious and eternal love of God is neither a verifiable fact nor an opinion, but a theological truth-claim, staked on trust in Jesus as a credible witness. Christians who believe in such love should be wary of both the politics of condemnation and the politics of purity.