Author: Bryan Richardson

Re:Verse passage – John 21:15-25 (day three)

“He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me?’”

Everyone longs to know the answer to this question. You’ve asked it all your life in various ways. “Do I matter to you?” “Do you treasure what I’ve accomplished?” “Will my presence make a difference to you?” You wanted your family to see your game or your recital. You feel joy when a friend celebrates your birthday. The question is a vulnerable one, and the stakes for your inner life are high. The answer isn’t always yes, even when the words would claim otherwise. You feel love when it’s really there, and you can tell when it’s not, though admitting its absence is sometimes more painful than you can bear. Jesus longed for Peter’s love, and he longs for yours. He’s really asking in all vulnerability.

Re:Verse passage – John 21:1-14 (day three)

“None of the disciples ventured to question him, ‘Who are You?’ knowing that it was the Lord.”

Several passages in the gospels’ post-resurrection accounts deal with the question of recognition: Who is this person? Luke says the travelers on the road “were kept from recognizing him.” (Some say recognition was divinely prevented, but their experience was that dead people stayed dead.) Mary thought he was the gardener. And here, it took the disciples some time before it began to dawn on them that this was their Lord. In each of these passages, Jesus encounters them with measured demeanor, never breathlessly declaring his identity and pressing them to recognize him. This is the way friendship proceeds. When Lord and disciple love each other, the disciple will know, even if it takes some time. Jesus was patient with them, as he is with you.

Re:Verse passage – John 20:24-29 (day three)

“Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

It’s not hard to read Jesus’s words as, “Those who will believe without physically having seen me occupy a place of greater favor than those who have seen me with their eyes.” But Jesus pronounces a blessing on generations of people yet to be born without taking anything away from Thomas’s experience. Thomas was a man grappling with a sense of grief and loss. His initial disbelief might well have served as a buffer against further suffering – his way of saying, “I can’t let myself long for something like that to be true, lest I become even more bitterly grieved when it turns out to have been wishful thinking.” What Jesus does do here is announce to future disciples that he longs for them as deeply as he does these eleven dear friends.

Re:Verse passage – John 20:19-23 (day three)

“Peace be with you.”

You might from time to time encounter a self-proclaimed “straight shooter” who will “tell it like it is.” That kind of bluster will ride roughshod over a person’s soul. Jesus, by contrast, used words not to establish a reputation, but to move in close to a person’s heart. Sometimes the person rejected that move. Other times, the person welcomed it. In either case, Jesus always spoke words that perfectly fit the circumstance. His words served people. This instance is no exception. A “straight shooter” would have shamed the disciples for their terror and scolded them for their confusion about resurrection. Jesus, deeply moved by their fear and pain, knew they needed peace, not a pep talk. Their courage to love the whole world arose from their experience of the one who spoke words of compassion into their weakness.

Re:Verse passage – John 20:1-18 (day three)

“Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping.”

The disciples of Jesus were going to believe in this miracle at the speed of their lifelong experience, which is to say, belief was slow in coming. All their lives, these men and women had seen only a limited number of possible outcomes for any given circumstance. It’s just the way things were. When you can see no possibility for resolution to suffering but a darker future, despair makes sense. In fact, to hope is foolhardy. And when evidence points to something other than that bleak future, you’ll dismiss the evidence. The resurrection reveals, though, that despair is only a habit of thought. God has opened up new possibilities for the human race. If the dead are raised, no other seemingly impossible thing is off the table, no matter what it is.

Re:Verse passage – John 19:38-42 (day three)

“So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.”

Beyond the group of twelve and the group of women who looked after Jesus, this partnership of Joseph and Nicodemus seems to be one of the earliest expressions of what would become a company of those united in their devotion to serving Christ. In one of the most tender accounts in scripture, these two men – careful, deliberative, and deadly serious in their attention to all that Jesus said and did – acted according to their regard for Jesus as one worthy of their reverence. What did they think about the future of Jesus’s teachings? What did they believe about Messiah? These questions aren’t addressed. What John does show is this somber little fellowship doing all they know to do.

Re:Verse passage – John 19:31-37 (day three)

“Not a bone of him shall be broken.”

Loneliness is one of the most horrific circumstances that a human being can experience. It will lead to severe distress, which can manifest as despair, depression, even psychosis. It is agony. To be lonely is to suffer. Jesus knew loneliness. His hometown turned its back on him. A disciple betrayed him. Hoped-for companionship in the garden of anguish did not materialize. Most of the others left him prior to his execution. His Psalm 22 quote on the cross became his cry of utter abandonment. He remained alone until the very end. No one came to hasten his demise by the breaking of his legs to force bodily collapse and suffocation. He went all the way through without solidarity, without fellowship, without the intimacy of God the Father, without even an assist to speed his death.

Re:Verse passage – John 19:28-30 (day three)

“I am thirsty.”

Jesus Christ came in the flesh. That means God the Son was now human for all eternity. He didn’t temporarily cloak himself in a body and then escape it after the cross and resurrection were done. The scriptures make clear that the “man Jesus Christ” is the mediator between God and humans as the writer of Hebrews states. A “temporary human” would be a joke or a ruse or a cringe-inducing attempt at being “one of the gang.” If Jesus were slumming for a little while, you would perhaps perceive him as special – lovely even – but you would know he’s not really part of your experience. On the cross, the simple words Jesus speaks about the state of his bodily dehydration are dear. They show a Lord who doesn’t rage against bodily frailty, but rather embraces his body – and yours.

Re:Verse passage – John 19:17-27 (day three)

“They divided my outer garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.”

The gospel accounts of the actions of the soldiers in getting their hands on Jesus’s possessions – namely his clothing – has some history of being used as a cautionary tale to warn people against participating in games of chance: “To gamble is to partake in the same activities as the Roman soldiers at the foot of the cross.” With all due respect to the good intentions of those who would exhort people to avoid practices that can lead to crime and addiction, John’s intent is something other than throwing shade at casinos. What the scriptures reveal is Jesus Christ having come in the flesh – God made human, God made vulnerable. Only from a human being could everything be taken, from friends to the clothes on his back. Behold the man.