Amos 1:1-2 An introduction to Amos his setting, words and what it has to say to us

 This message is available as an audio file  https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/hope-whangarei/episodes/26-1-25-Howard-Carter---The-words-of-Amos--the-Lord-roars-e2tvr82 preached at HopeCentral a site of HopeWhangarei Januray 26th 2025.

I have no experience of Lion’s in the wild. The only time I’ve heard a lion’s roar has been at the Auckland Zoo as the advertised feeding time draws near, and at feeding time at the Paradise valley springs wildlife park just outside of Rotorua. Amos as a shepherd in Tekoa had first hand experience of lions in the wild and would have been aware the ,lion’s roar was sign of impending danger or doom for his flock. But the roar is more than that.

 As I was preparing for this sermon series on Amos, and pondering on the phrase ‘the Lord Roars’ I travelled away from Whangarei and had a providential encounter. No I didn’t encounter a lion in deepest darkest Africa, rather this encounter happened in deepest darkest Waipu. Not on the wide savanna but in a Presbyterian church hall. Not over the carcass of a slain wildebeest but a selection of wood fired pizzas.   I was doing a seminar for the elders at Waipu on communion and afterward as we were having diner, the conversation got round to Lion’s roaring in the wild. AS I said God’s providence. One of the elders was south African and had been a safari guide at a wild life reserve. He spoke of lion’s roaring in the night in terms of a Lion calling it pride back to himself.  Here I am come to me.

The Lord roars and Amos is a book about God’s judgment on sin, but also of hope… the lord roars and calls his people back to himself. This is what God has always done. It is the basis of the gospel of Jesus Christ. A God who is holy and loving.

Leading up to Easter this year we are going to be working our way through the book of Amos. The series is called “the Lord Roars, Let justice flow’. Which I think is wonderful encapsulated in the image we are using for this series.  A lion roaring and crystal clear water coming out of its mouth. The image is a very 21^st century, its computer generated; AI at work. For me it also reflects a connection to the New Testament… Jesus as the lion of Judea and living water flowing forth as the lion speaks.  

The series title The Lord roars let justice flow’ picks up the introduction to the book of Amos we had read to us this morning,  and the most famous  quote from this book “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’, picking up Amos’ major theme that the worship of God should result in justice and righteousness, in how we treat people in society. Particularly the marginalised and poor. The true worship of God says Amos, results in justice and righteousness for all.

This message is an introduction to the series, and we are focusing on the first two verse of the book. These verses do two things. They introduce us to the prophet and the time in which he is speaking. Then in the second verse in poetic form we have the focus of his message. We going to look at those two things, draw some things out for us today and why Amos is important to us in 2025.

Firstly, we are introduced to Amos. All the information we have about Amos the person are in the two passages we had read this morning. We are told that these are the words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa, that he saw concerning Israel. I don’t know about you but this sort of gives Amos a kiwi feel. A farmer from a rural town down south somewhere.. Tekoa…in  Amos 7 we learn that Amos is into mixed economy farming. He has sheep and he also dresses sycamore trees, he is an orchardist. Anyone watching country Calendar these days will recognize that diversification in farming.  We think of a shepherd as a lowly person in society, but the word used of Amos is that he oversees shepherds, he is some one of substance in the  agrobusiness world of his day.

Amos 7 tells us he is not part of the official religious system in The North or even in his home land of Judea. He is not a professional prophet. The king in the north and the temple in Jerusalem would have had people who were official seers, he’s not one of them. Elijah and Elisha were part of a school of prophets. But he’s not. Amos says God called him to come and give a word to the northern kingdom. He follows in the tradition of Moses and David who are called from watching sheep to being about tending to God’s flock.

The book is introduced as the words of Amos yet Amos is one of the books where almost everything except the two readings this morning is prefaced with thus says the Lord. Amos believes he is speaking God’s word.  This is shown to us in the fact that we are also told that these are the words Amos saw. They come from beyond him, he looks and speaks with God given insight into what is going on in Israel. He is not an innovator but applies the Sinai covenant to the present situation. For Christians to be prophetic it’s the same, spirit led, we apply the gospel to the context and situation we find ourselves in.

The phrase ‘Thus says the Lord’ uses the language of a herald sent from a king, when the herald reads the kings message it is as if the King himself is speaking.  When you read Amos its God speaking but its also very much Amos… his rural background comes out. The idea of God as a lion, and the danger to the flock. Images of summer fruit, issues with weighing grain, the term fat cows of bashan, that he uses against the women of Samaria who encourage their husbands corrupt business practices. It’s Amos the farmer.

It speaks into our idea of the inspiration of scripture as we see Amos and his personality and background being part of a message from God. The prophets are not possessed or over taken by God’s spirit, but are sensitive and open to what God is saying and faithful communicate it. We shouldn’t be surprised by that God is able by his Spirit,  to use who we are and what we have experienced in life that shapes and forms us, to share his word into the situations we find ourselves in. I hope this inspires us that God is able to speak into our world and time through ordinary people like Amos, like  you and I who are open to seeing what God wants and then speaking and acting on it.

The second thing from the opening verse is that the writer gives us a context Amos is speaking to. We are told that it is in the reign of Uzziah king of Judea, Uzziah is the name used in 2 chronicles 26 but in 2 kings he has the name Azariah  and Jeroboam son of Joash king of Ephraim or Israel. Jeroboam’s lineage is mentioned as there are two king Jeroboam’s, and this identifies the king as Jeroboam the 2^nd. So Amos is speaking between 790-740bc, a couple of decades before the Assyrian empire will come and destroy Sameria, the capital of the northern kingdom, and take its people into exile.  

We get another more precise indicator of when Amos was ministering with the reference to ‘two years before the earthquake’. We have references to a catastrophic earthquake in Zechariah and archaeologists digging at a place called Hazor have found evidence of such destruction in what they say is about 760bc. This earthquake maybe one of the reasons that Amos’ words were deemed worthy of preserving as Amos in several places talks of the earthshaking. The earthquake was seen as evidence of his word coming true.

But this sets the scene for us as to when Amos is speaking. The northern kingdom, ten tribes of Israel, had separated from Judea and Dan after Solomon’s son had enforced harsh taxes and labour laws on the people. They form the northern kingdom, also known as Israel and in Amos as Ephraim. They still worship YhWh the God who called them out of Egypt, but it would not do to have people from the north go back to Judea to worship at Jerusalem.  They set up their own shrines at Bethel and Dan. They establish their own priests and worship rituals. These places are often sites where other prophets like Hosea will accuse Israel of being unfaithful to their God, as they combine their worship with the worship of god’s from the nations around them.

By the time Amos is ministering the two nations have been separate for over two hundred years. Jeroboam 2 reign is a time of prosperity and plenty in the north, which they saw as God’s blessing on them but the brief epitaph for Jeroboam 2 in 2 kings 15 says Jeroboam did evil in the sight of the Lord. And as biblical scholar Douglas Stuart says it was a time known for its greed, corruption and apostacy’ where there was a section of the population becoming rich but at the expense of others.  Amos will speak of people coming to worship God at their extravagant festivals full of colour and music and food and song but sitting on the cloaks of the poor taken illegally as collateral  for crippling loans.

Which lead on to the second verse today where the book is described as the Lord Roaring from Zion, and thundering from Jerusalem causing the land to wither and go into draught, even the fertile areas around Mt Camel.  The people of Ephraim thought that their prosperity and national security were signs of God’s blessings, but Amos rather tells them that God’s word is going to be judgment. It is a curse passage. Picking up attack by wild animals and draught, and later earthquake and exile, Amos tells the people at Bethel and in the north that while they have not kept their covenant relationship with God, God will keep his. In Deuteronomy there is a list of blessings for keeping the covenant and a list of curses consequences for not keeping it and God, says Amos, is going to apply that list to Ephraim.

A couple of things. The first is Amos points out that the real dwelling place of God with his people is the temple in Jerusalem, in Zion. This is where God speaks from. It is a condemnation of the northern religious system. While the message from the shrine at Bethel and Dan is God is blessing us, the message from God is not that. Second it tells us Amos’ words are specifically to Israel. Which is surprising as the first oracle of Amos starts with God’s judgment of Israel's neighbours. But the focus will be on what God is saying to the people of Israel.  The people in Ephraim thought they pleased God and earned his favour through their religious enthusiasm, their festivals and elaborate rituals, and sacrifices, like  God was like one of the god’s of their neighbouring lands who could be manipulated and coerced into blessing them. But YhWh, the God of Israel is a Holy God, righteous and just and calls his people to show that in how they live, in the treatment of one another. God has shown his mercy to Israel by delivering them from slavery in Egypt and bringing them to the promised land and they were called to be a people that reflected Their God’s great mercy and faithfulness. Looking forward to the New Testament Jesus says  people will know we are his disciples if we love one another. As john will put it ‘ God first loved us and gave his son as a redeeming sacrifice, so let us love one another.

I just want to make a couple of quick points about why Amos is relevant to us today here and in 2025.

Firstly, down through the ages Amos has been used by God to be the conscience of the church. To reawaken people to the connection between faith and a social justice. Maybe the best example of that in recent history is the fact that ‘let Justice flow like a river and righteousness like a never ending stream’ is engraved in granite on the wall of the Civil Right’s memorial in Montgomery Alabama. Where It over looks a fountain where the names of 41 martyrs who were killed in the Civil Right’s movement in the US are also etched.  It is a quote attributed to Martin Luther King Jr from his ‘ I have a dream’ speech on the steps of the capital building in Washington DC. But MKL is a biblical preacher and was quoting Amos. Calling America to remember their biblical roots and their own covenant the constitution, and apply it to all people. Again it was the Lord roaring… It speaks to us today as we wrestle with a world more and more divided between the haves and have not’s it speaks to a country like our own struggling with issues of Justice and righteousness around ti tiriti. It challenges our faith and how it calls us to be involved in this world in a Christ honouring way. The Lord Roars let justice flow.

Secondly Amos I believe calls us again to be aware of the holiness of God. It is easy to fall into a gospel which is only about God’s love and to forget God’s holiness. The danger of that is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace. Grace that does not change and keep on bringing transformation within us. That settles for the status quo, and personal comfort,  not the kingdom of God. To a certain extent that focus has come as a reaction to an over emphasis on the holiness of God and his wrath. The old hell fire and brimstone preaching. Which leads either to a moralism trying to earn the favour of an angry God, or walking away from an overbearing God altogether. As we come to Amos we need to realise that God is Holy, righteous and just and God is love, full of mercy and grace. That is at the heart of God’s concern for his people and the poor. We have to hold those things together. If we loose one or the other we loose the profound truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Of a righteous Holy God who in justice, comes with mercy and grace to make a way for us out of slavery to sin and death ,to new life in Christ and spirit lead new way to live.  You may hear it a few times in this series, Tim Keller puts it like this.

Only when people see God as absolutely Holy and absolutely loving will the cross of Jesus truly electrify and change them. Jesus was so Holy that he had to die for us; nothing less would satisfy his holy and righteous nature. But he was so loving that he was glad to die for us ; nothing less would satisfy his desire to have us as his people”

It’s then we can look at our sin and our need for repentance and also not be discouraged and think we are outside God’s embrace. We are loved and we are called to be changed by that love to reflect God’s holiness and there are times when we will hear the Lord roar.

We become a little bit like the people in Ephraim in Amos’ day and tried to domesticate the Lord. We need to hear again Amos’ say The lord roars, it is a message of warning it is a message of calling us back to himself. Let me finish with a quote from mr beaver and mr Tumnus the faun in The lion witch and the wardrobe by CS Lewis. When asked by a child called lucy if the Christ figure in the book aslam the lion is safe mr beaver  replies… "Safe? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

Mr. Tumnus added, "He's wild, you know. Not a tame lion”

Hear the lord Roar, let justice flow.

Witnesses to the resurrection: We have been empowered by the Holy Spirit as witnesses to the resurrection (Acts 2)

 

I thought I’d start today by sharing some of my experiences with speaking in tongues… my sort of Acts 2 experiences … I was prayed for to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and I believe I received the gift of being enabled to speak in another language, one I had not learned… On about four or five occasions I have prayed for people in tongues, and they have told me I’ve spoken in their mother language and they have understood what I said. The first time was at a healing meeting in Tauranga praying for a Maori man called Dallas. He wanted me to pray for his varicose veins, I didn’t know how to pray about that, I didn’t even know what they were at that stage, so I asked him if I could pray in tongues. He said yes, and so I did and afterwards he said to me “do you realise what you just did?’ …now I was worried I’d done something culturally inappropriate, so I said no and was getting ready to apologise, but he said you just prayed in fluent Maori, which much to my embarrassment I do not speak. He told me I had been praying against powers and principalities and giving praise to God. Hopefully what was needed in that case in his life... At least he could feel that God was there for him in a way that acknowledged who he was.

Another time in a service I felt the Spirit tell me to pray for a cook island man in tongues, after asking I could I did, and he told me that while he didn’t speak his own language, he had understood enough to hear God say “I have called you name”. which was very encouraging for him, as he was wrestling with being at Bible College and every one mispronouncing his name, butchering it, were his exact words, and being made to feel he was being squeezed into the mould of being just another beige pakeha. What a good thing to hear God say ‘I know you by name’ in a pacific language…He has gone on to be a leader within the Pacifica community and country. Now I have enough problems with English, as I’m reminded of so often, and languages are not my thing… However the Holy Spirit ministered in those situations… by power even in my weakness witnessing to those people the love of Christ.

I believe very much that the presence of the Holy Spirit is for all believers today, just as it was promised, just as it happened at Pentecost, and that the Holy Spirit empowers and enables and gifts his people to witness to the risen Jesus as Lord and saviour, in word and in deed. Between easter and today, Pentecost, we have been exploring witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We’ve looked at the women and Mary Magdalene, the pair on the road to Emmaus, Thomas, Peter and the disciples as they were commissioned to be Jesus witnesses and saw him ascend to heaven. Today we are rounding that series off by looking at the witness of the Holy Spirit: the Holy Spirit being poured out on all who believe, as a sign of a new age initiated by Jesus life, death and resurrection. Affirming Jesus as Lord and messiah. That’s the focus of Peter’s message at Pentecost… The pouring out of the  Holy Spirit which enables all who believe to witness to the risen Lord Jesus, in word and in how we live as a community.

Let’s have a look at the text, Luke’s account of what happened at Pentecost. We are going to do it by looking at the passage almost in three acts. We are going to look at the experience, the coming of the spirit, the explanation, peters message and the expectation, how then do we respond…

Experience or rather should I say Encounter, because while it is easy to get caught up in the phenomenon, the special effects, you could say that occurred at Pentecost and focus on them, we need to realise that behind them is an encounter with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force but is the third person of the Trinity, is God present within his people. 

We are told it was Pentecost, one of the three pilgrim festivals in Jerusalem, which is the festival of first fruits a harvest festival fifty days after Passover. The city was full of devout Jews from all over the roman empire, and the followers of Jesus were all together in one place, Not just the twelve, but the women and possibly up to about 120 people.  Then there is the sound like a rushing wind. Now I’ve been praying at midday all this week in this church building and it has been inspirational to hear the wind blow over the roof top in anticipation of Pentecost. The wind is a sign of theophany of God turning up in very real way. In the Old Testament it is reminiscent of the Elijah’s encounter with God on Mt Sinai and even Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones where the wind of the spirit blows and bring life to the bones, even creation in Genesis where the spirit of God was said to hoover blow over the formless void. Here it is new creation.  Then tongues of fire. A visual sign of the presence of God, you might look back to Elijah again, the burning bush in Exodus, the fiery cloud that led the Israelites through the wilderness. It’s God turning up in the person of the Holy Spirit.

These tongues of fire now split and came to rest on all the believers who were there. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, God dwelt with his people, and special people were said to be filled with the spirit to achieve special tasks, but now the spirit comes and dwells in all believers. The dwelling place of God is now with humanity. This is something new. Each believer is filled with God’s presence, as a sign of that they are enabled to speak in another language.  

Now in the past some Pentecostals believed that you needed to speak in tongues to be filled with the spirit, because that is the Pentecost experience, but that is not explicit in scripture and it made a lot of people feel like second class Christians. In the New Testament there are whole lists of gifts that God gives his people for the common good and the growth of the church. The key gift is God’s presence within us, God fulfilling his promise to dwell in his people. At this point these tongues were important as a sign because Jesus had said the disciples were to wait in Jerusalem until they received power and they would be his witnesses in Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the world. It was a prophetic sign of the universality of the gospel mission, it’s for all people.

It's interesting that it seems that there is almost a scene change between verse 4 and 5, as suddenly the believers are out amongst the crowd, and the Jews from all over come to see what is going on, and hear the disciples speaking in all their languages, speaking of the wonders of God. We get that comprehensive list of where people are from, the whole array of Jewish diaspora. The Holy Spirit is good at dissolving walls and taking us out of our holy huddle into the world around us, to speak of God’s mighty deeds. To witness to Jesus, of course in Acts 10 at Cornelius’ house we see that this meant beyond just the Jews to gentiles as well. We gathered here today are evidence of that on going spirit powered witness, 16,225 km away from Jerusalem, almost 2,000 years from that Acts 2 Pentecost, gathered from all over, to worship and proclaim Jesus as Lord and saviour.

Now Luke tells us of the crowds reaction. They are filled with wonder, these yokels from the sticks are speaking our language? But we see that others are skeptical and mock the disciples, they are all drunk. Miracles and experiences alone are not enough to induce faith as bible commentator dean Pinter says “faith requires not only hearing but careful explanation from the word of God. The Holy Spirit leads us into all truth… That is what Peter then does.

So lets turn to look at the explanation of what happened, or should I say the expounding of what happened, as Peter shows from scripture what is going on and what it means. Its worth noting the change in Peter. Here is Peter who denied knowing Jesus when challenged by a servant girl beside a fire in a courtyard, now filled with the spirit standing up before a crowd of over three thousand, and boldly proclaiming Jesus as Lord and messiah. Prepared to speak and contend for the gospel.

Peter’s message is based around three scriptures from the Old Testament. The first from Joel speaks of God’s promise that when the messiah comes it will issue in a time when God promises to pour out his spirit on all flesh. That the disciples are not drunk rather this passage is being fulfilled. Joel’s prophecy is comprehensive in that list of all people… men and women, and they will prophesy, that is they will speak forth God’s word. That more than tongues is a sign in Old and New Testament of God’s spirit. Old and young, will see visions and have dreams revealing God’s will and purpose for the world, regardless of social status, on your servants as well… even the group with the least status and protection, woman slaves.  There will be signs and wonders, which Paul ties into the miracles and signs and wonders Jesus did which attested to who he was. Acts is full of signs and wonders that Jesus does through the disciples by the Holy Spirit. Peter uses the words last days in quoting Joel, and there is the idea of this new age being the beginning of the last things, a looking forward to a future end point. But key to this prophecy is that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Peter then moves on to show that Jesus life his death and particularly his resurrection are signs that he is indeed the long awaited for messiah and… the Lord… in whose name we can be saved. He quotes from Psalm16:8-11 to show that it was God’s purpose that a descendant of David would die and be raised to life again. I wonder if that was one of the verses that Jesus used with the pair on the road to Emmaus to show the messiah must die and be raised to life again. The word holy one in that psalm is tightly tied to the Jewish understanding of the messiah. The holy one, anointed by God. David was not speaking of himself as Peter says you can go and visit his tomb over there… but Rather Jesus who the Jews had had crucified through the roman authorities… God raised Jesus to life again, and at this point you can imagine Peter waving his hand at those assembled when he says this ‘we are all witnesses”. He then quotes Psalm 110 again attributing it to David to show that the Messiah would be raised to life and glorified and seated at the right hand of God.   The pouring out of the Holy Spirit is evidence a witness to the fact that Jesus raised to life again is Lord and messiah.

The crowd now ask each other how we will respond to this. So let’s turn to look at the expectation, how they and we  respond. This section is in two parts… Peters call for repentance and then how the community lived.

Peter tells them to repent and be baptised for the forgiveness of sins, in the name of Jesus the messiah. It is the name of Jesus by which they are saved. Repent means to turn around from going one way to going another, and here it is going their own way and turning to follow Jesus as their Lord and saviour, baptism shows that they are sorry for their sins and can be forgiven. In this case it is through Jesus that they are forgiven. As they do this peter tells them they too will be filled with the Holy Spirit, that is God’s promise a promise not just for those first believers at Pentecost but for all who would believe. Them and their children a way of saying it is not just for that generation but for successive generations, and those who are far off… It’s almost if we too come into the picture. It’s for us as well…

Then the chapter finishes with a cameo a brief summary of what the early church is like, what it means to be a spirit filled community… not just expectation in response to the message of Jesus but a community empowered to witness.  I want to quickly work through that summary and look at what it says about a spirit filled community today. They were devoted to the teaching of the apostles; a spirit filled community, builds itself around the word of God, we shouldn’t be surprised by that as in John’s gospel Jesus said the spirit would lead us into all truth and recall the things that Jesus said. Revival round the world draw people to hungry for God’s word.  They devoted themselves to prayer, mission starts in prayer as we commune with our Lord and are changed by it. They were devoted to fellowship and unity, meeting for big events at the temple and also sharing hospitality in each other’s homes. It meant more than just a cuppa after the service as it tells us they shared all things in common.  They devoted themselves to the breaking of the bread, that may speak of hospitality, but also to remembering Christ’s death and resurrection as they shared the lord’s table together.  There was a renewed sense of worship, as they were glad and praised God and rejoice… moves of God’ spirit down the ages have often mean a renewal of worship music and creativity. There was a genuine sacrificial love and concern for the poor, they sold their possessions to meet need. There was a concern for the lost as there were people coming to Christ each day… and the there were many signs and wonder being done by the apostles… the spirit continued to use miracles to witness to Jesus Christ in their midst. All these things were the outworking of the Holy Spirit presence in their midst… they were the way in which they witnessed to the risen Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and saviour.

People…that brings us to today as we celebrate Pentecost… we have come to believe in Jesus as Lord and messiah… we too have been filled with the Holy Spirit, God dwells in us, in all of us. The Spirit leads us into all truth… it opens the scriptures to us, reveals where we need to repent and change. The Spirit enables and equips us to love one another and it empowers us, just like those first believers in Jerusalem to witness to the risen Jesus Christ. At the beginning of the thy kingdom come season of prayer this year archbishop Justin Welby of the Anglican church said that we are all called to witness to Jesus and that a witness is called to tell what they have seen and heard when called on, and to live out of the truth that they know’. We constantly need the fresh infilling of God’s Spirit to enable us to do that. The great thing is that Jesus told us in Luke 13 that our father in heaven is a good God and knows how to give God gifts to his children… So will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him… today may you be filled afresh with the presence of God, with the Holy Spirit in Jesus name… amen.

witnesses to the resurrection: Thomas (John 20:24-31)

 

My favorite band is Irish band U2. Their music has been a significant part of the soundtrack of my life. Recently amidst the pandemic, two members of the band, reworked many of their songs and recorded them as acoustic numbers which reflected the Irish folk heritage. To publicize the reimagined songs they invited David Letterman to Dublin to do an interview and TV special based round the first public performance of those songs.

During the interview the topic of nick names came up…  The two members of the band being interviewed were Paul Hewson and David Evans… but you may not recognize those names because they are known by their nick names, nick names they picked up in their Christian counterculture group in the mid 1970’s… Paul is known as Bono (which is short for Bono Vox… Latin for good voice, from a hearing aid shop in the Dublin high street) and a good name for a lead vocalist. David Evans is the Edge…so apt for a progressive guitarist. David letterman asked them why the two other members of U2 Larry Mullins Jr and Adam clayton didn’t have nick names? The reply was that their original nick names were the jam jar for Larry and Mrs Burns for Adam… neither of which stuck nor sounded good for a rock band. They didn’t fit.

This Easter season, from Easter Sunday through to Pentecost at the end of May we are looking at witnesses to the resurrection. People who met the risen Jesus and whose encounters we have recorded in the gospels.  Encounters which help us to have confidence in the physical resurrection of Jesus and what it means for us today. In today’s reading from John’s gospel we are going to look at Thomas… Thomas, who we are told was also known as  ‘Didymus’ which means the twin… by the way that isn’t a nick name as Thomas itself comes from the Aramaic word for twin… its just a Greek translation.  But he has picked up a nick name which has made its way into our modern vernacular ‘Doubting Thomas’… and is used in a negative way, to denote a skeptic, someone who is reluctant to beelive. It’s a nick name he does not deserve and one which does not fit the gospel narrative of his encounter with the risen Jesus where he moves from not being easily persuaded to being the first to actually articulate what the resurrection means, and thus form the high point of the whole of John’s gospel. When he sees Jesus raised from the dead he proclaims ‘My Lord and my God’.

Let’s have a look at this passage. This encounter this witness.

Firstly who is Thomas? Thomas is mentioned only eight times in scripture in the gospels and Acts. In the synoptic gospels and acts he is only mentioned in lists of the twelve disciples. In john he is mentioned as one of the twelve, present in John chapter 21 on the shore of galilee, an encounter with the risen Jesus that focuses on Peter’s restoration.

In john he also takes a more central role at the raising of Lazarus in John 11:16 where Jesus speaks his going to Jerusalem in face of threats to have him killed and Thomas says ‘let us also go, that we may die with him’. Which shows us the great depth to Thomas’ commitment to Jesus. He has his hope so tightly caught up in Jesus he is willing to go and die. There is an intensity to this man and his faith.

Then at the last Supper in John 14 as Jesus talks of going to prepare a place for his disciples and coming to take them to be with him, Thomas asks the question “but Lord we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” again showing he is really wanting to know and understand what Jesus is saying. Jesus reply of course is the last “I am” saying in John’s gospel   I am the way the truth and the life… no one comes to the father but through me”.  Thomas and we receive this assurance from Jesus that it is in his person, that we are put right with God.

In the passage we have read to us today we have Thomas’ encounter with the risen Lord. So lets have a look at that… In the beginning we are told that he was not with the disciples when Jesus appeared to them on the evening of that first Easter Sunday. No reason is given for his absence. It’s hard to argue from silence, but perhaps he was away wrestling alone with his having deserted Jesus and not died with him, or that he had this hope of a way, truth and life and it had ended in the tragedy of the cross. Like the other disciples he was wrestling with the despair of shattered hope.

When he finally joins the disciples he is greeted by their affirmation that they have seen the Lord… but is not willing to as EM Blaiklock puts it”hazard his life on a false report, mistake, hallucination or fabrication.” Or even an imposter. I don’t know about you but there is something real and honest and very human almost fitting into our twenty first century scientific mindset about Thomas’ response… “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and feet and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side I will not believe.” 

We are told a week later they were in the house again and this time Thomas was with them, the door was locked and Jesus appeared in their midst. We are confronted by the fact that Jesus resurrection body is somehow different, not limited as our bodies are, and Jesus is able to be present with his people physically even in a locked room. He is no longer confined by space and time… Resurrection is not reanimation or resuscitation, it is something new and different. But it is Jesus, he greets the disciples with his normal greeting “peace be with you” he looks straight at Thomas and addresses Thomas’ doubts and conditions almost word for word “put your finger here; see my hands: reach out your hand and put it in my side” and addresses Thomas’ affirmation unless I will not believe by saying ‘stop doubting and believe’.

Often we think that doubts are not a good thing they separate us and drag us away from God. But I love the fact that Jesus is able to address Thomas’ doubt and his questions. God is not put off by our doubts if we are open about them and open to seeking the truth they can lead us into a deeper understanding of, and encounter with Christ. Jesus shows us his care for Thomas, and I think that as we wrestle with things, doubts we can trust that Christ cares for us and is able and willing to reveal more of himself to us.

 

Thomas now responds “My Lord and My God”. There is a famous painting by reformation artist Caravaggio called the ‘incredulity of Thomas’ which has him touching Jesus, examining the evidence as he wished, but in the gospel we are not told that he does that. Jesus tells us that he believed because he saw. We Simply know that he responds to Jesus with “my Lord and My God.” Thomas is the person in John’s gospel who fully understands what the resurrection means. We are used to that affirmation of the deity of Jesus, but Thomas is a first century Jewish man, so for him this statement of worship is profound, amazing shocking even. He is willing to affirm that Jesus is divine “my Lord and My God’ that the resurrection validates who Jesus said he was his unique relationship with God. Part of Thomas’ reluctance to believe was the enormity of what it means. To believe that Jesus rose from the dead challenges us to ask the question who is Jesus? Thomas gives us the most amazing wonderful and challenging answer. Jesus is the unique son of God… was with God and was God before the creation as the writer of John’s gospel told us way back in the beginning.

Thomas according to Paul Metzger takes us through a very human process, one that Elizabeth Eliot says Christians go through when they face difficult faith crushing times. We go through Despair, the pain and suffering of a crucifixion like occurrence, to doubt, where is God in this, is God good, is it just a dead end, and finally on to devotion as God responds to us… “my Lord and my God”. This is the process Thomas works through. Old testament scholar Walter Bruggermann sees the same process in the psalms where there are the laments Psalms of disorientation, when it’s like we’ve been picked up by storm waves and spun round and round, and also Psalms of re orientation where the psalmist has found themselves comforted and assured because of the abiding presence of God… I mentioned U2 at the beginning of this message and they sing a song called stuck in a moment which articulates the danger we can face as we work through this process of getting stuck in it… stuck in a moment and we can’t get out of it… but if we trust the risen Jesus to meet us in that process we can be moved to that place of devotion, of transformation.

We don’t have a record of Thomas’ in scripture after the ascension and Pentecost, the scriptures, Acts and the epistles follows the spread of the gospel westward into the heart of the roman empire, with Peter and then Paul. It fits our Eurocentric understanding of the spread of Christianity. But that affirmation “ My Lord and My God spurred Thomas also to devote his life to telling people of Jesus Christ, crucified and raised to life again ‘My lord and My God”. Thomas we are told from other early church sources went east. He went outside the Roman Empire with the gospel. The church in Assyria claim that Thomas was the first to proclaim the gospel in there region. He is also seen to have taken the gospel to India. Both northern India and the southern region, even the early church in Sri Lanka trace their heritage back to Thomas. We have a group of Indian Christians who use our hall for birthday celebrations, they are part of a church in India that traces its roots back to Thomas. Thomas may have even gone to China with the gospel. We do know that he died by being run through by a lance in India in 72 AD. That he is considered the patron saint of India that that affirmation of ‘My Lord and My God’ took him way out of his comfort zones way out into the world to tell the story of Jesus. He was a faithful apostle convinced of who Jesus was. That is the challenge that the affirmation ‘My Lord and My God” really does bring to us as well. If Jesus is raised from the dead we are confronted with who he is, and it changes everything.

The passage does not finish with Thomas’ affirmation. Jesus gets the last word. He says to Thomas “You believe because you have seen”… then it’s almost as if Jesus turns from focusing from Thomas to look at those who this gospel was first written to, and beyond them to you and I today. If this was a movie it is a breaking the fourth wall moment. Jesus looks at us at you and me and he gives a beatitude “blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed”. That’s us… we have the witness of scripture, the witness of an empty tomb, the witness of people like the twelve, Mary Magdalene and the other women, of peter and Thomas and we have come to believe in Jesus, crucified and resurrected  as our Lord and our God. Because of the resurrection and Jesus ascension we have been given the Holy Spirit, and Christ dwells within us.

Then the gospel writer figuratively comes and stands with Jesus and addresses his readers. He tells us the purpose he has written the gospel. John tells us that he has chosen these specific things Jesus said and did so we would believe. The gospel is a series of signs and wonders and Jesus affirmations and teaching, based on them… so that we may believe. Believe in Jesus, the word made flesh, who was crucified and rose to life again, believe in Jesus as the messiah, gods anointed one, and the son of God and through that belief that we may have life… We may not see Jesus physically raised from the dead but we are not called to a blind faith, we have these witness accounts.

This series on witnesses to the resurrection is designed to give us confidence in the physical resurrection of Jesus. That you can believe… that in your own life we too can proclaim ‘My lord and my God’. I don’t know if it sends you out to India but it does invite us to step out and to a life of following Jesus where the spirit leads. ‘My Lord and My God’ is just not to be the soundtrack of our lives… but the very essence of our life… the focus and driving force of our life  and where we find life… abundant full life and eternal life in and with the risen Christ.