The gospel reading for Sunday, April 19th is John 20:19-31. This Sunday is the Second Sunday of Easter, which is also called “The Octave,” it being the eighth and final day of Easter Week.
Although the Council of Nicaea ensured in 325 that the Church’s calendar would be independent of Israel’s calendar, it shares significant resonances. Israel enjoyed two eight-day long feasts—Tabernacles and Unleavened Bread. So it makes sense that the Church takes twelve days to celebrate Christmas and eight more to celebrate Easter.
Starting on Easter Sunday, the Church feast which corresponds to the Feast of Firstfruits (Lev. 23:9-14), is a fifty day season that ends on Pentecost, the Church feast which corresponds to the Feast of Pentecost (Lev. 23:15-21).
Here are our gospel readings for the seven-week, fifty-day season of Eastertide in Year A. They jump between gospels, mostly stick with John, and about half of them correspond to themes:
Easter Sunday: Matthew 28:1-10
The Second Sunday of Easter: John 20:19-31
The Third Sunday of Easter: Luke 24:13-35
The Fourth Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday): John 10:1-10
The Fifth Sunday of Easter: John 14:1-14
The Sixth Sunday of Easter (Rogation Sunday): John 15:1-11
The Seventh Sunday of Easter (Ascension Sunday): John 17:1-11
It helps to know
Why this passage on this day. This passage tells two stories. The first one takes place “on… the first day of the week” (v. 19). The second one takes place “eight days later” (v. 26). If we had rewritten this story today, using more contemporary time reckoning, we would have written “seven days later”. Point is, what happened with Thomas happened on place the next Sunday, the first Easter commemoration.
The literary significance of Thomas. What matters as much as the the story of the disciples seeing Jesus (vv. 19-23) is the fact that Thomas didn’t (vv. 24-26), and that, consequently, his faith depended not on sight or touch, but on the strength of apostolic testimony. Thomas has the grace of seeing and touching Jesus (vv. 27-29), as do those of us who have extraordinary spiritual experiences, but most of us are those who “have not seen and yet have believed” (v. 29). For John, that’s the explicit purpose of his book: “these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (vv. 30-31).
The actual syntax of 20:3b. Some translation differences are a matter of preference; others drastically affect meaning. This is one of those others. The ESV has “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” The actual syntax, translated woodenly, runs like this: “Of whomever you forgive the sins, they are forgiven to them; whomever you hold fast are held fast.” “Hold fast” does not necessarily refer to the withholding of forgiveness, but I’ll get into that below.
John 20:19-31
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; *those who you hold fast are held fast.”
Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”
Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
What I noticed
“If you withhold (kratēte; root: krateо̄) forgiveness ( ? ) from any (an titо̄n), it is withheld (kekratēntai; root: krateо̄).” (20:23b)
I want to start with the translation issue, because that significantly reopens the passage.
Again, the ESV has “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” In this couplet, the first line describes the consequence of a positive application of forgiveness, and the second line describes the consequence of the negative application, or withholding, of that forgiveness.
This translation would be nice because it parallels a similar sentence in Matthew: “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (16:19). In both cases, you have a couplet on the consequences of forgiveness, withheld or given.
And while what Matthew says is true, we are in danger of taking John—who uses different vocabulary and who discusses sin far differently than Matthew—as simply echoing Matthew, rather than adding his own distinct witness. John doesn’t have to mean what Matthew means.
And he doesn’t seem to. For one, the word “forgiveness” is missing in John 20:23b. The ESV simply adds that noun back in to explain their translation. For another, the basic meaning of the verb, krateо̄, is to hold onto or embrace a physical object, as in, the women “came up and took hold of (root: krateо̄) his feet and worshiped him” (Matt. 28:9).
As of 2011, scholars have not identified any uses of the krateо̄ verb that describe the holding back of an immaterial good. It just means “hold”.
On a whole book level, it is difficult to imagine John, who has introduced Jesus as the one “who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29), investing his disciples with the power of refusing forgiveness and retaining guilt. (Let Matthew be Matthew; let John be John; let God be all in all. We’ll get to Matthew 16:19 on Sunday, August 27th.)
Here is John’s message, dynamically translated: “Those whom you forgive are forgiven; those whom you have bound to yourselves through forgiveness, reconciliation, and friendship, whom you have incorporated by these means into this communion of forgiveness—those whom you hold fast are held fast.”
I depended significantly on this paper by Sandra Schneiders to arrive here.
This enriches the link between the two stories.
Jesus arrives and speaks peace. Their fear becomes gladness. Thomas misses out on the meeting, which means he misses out both on their gladness and the grounds of their belief. Rather than being believing (from pistos), he is disbelieving (from apistos).
By missing their gladness and experience, Thomas drifts to the outside of his community. What he needs is to be held fast.
Held fast not because of a sinful act which he has committed, nor because of a sinful state of doubt, but because of his darkness and isolation. Wherever there is something less than full communion, there is need for a holding fast. The man born blind (John 9) was misdiagnosed as a sinner (9:2), when in fact he was an exile (9:34) needing to be forgiven and held onto.
Jesus holds Thomas fast by offering his body as a gift.
Although Ignatius reports a tradition that all the disciples went on to touch Jesus’ wounds (Epistle to the Smyrneans 3.2), the Bible does not record him doing it. Maybe that’s what John means by “what we have looked at and touched with our hands” (1 John 1:1).
Jesus says that Thomas has “seen” him. Was Thomas looking with his hands, or not? The text is not clear. But the text has always prodded readers to identify to “seeing” with knowing and becoming a witness.
Thomas’ confession is personal, using two personal pronouns: “My Lord and My God” (v. 28). The clearest line I can trace here is just that the fulfillment of self-offering is ownership. Thomas makes Jesus’ body his own.
How much could one say here about the value of the Eucharist, the mystical meaning of sexual intercourse, in-person worship being richer than Zoom, and sharing our wounds to bind people to us and to Christ?
Much.
Lectionary Resonances
In Peter’s sermon (Acts 2:22-32), I’m drawn to the line about the pangs of death: “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it” (2:24). The power of the disciple to hold another human fast is greater than the power of death to hold them in the grace. Both texts are about the power of holding.
In Psalm 111, I’m drawn to the setting of the thanksgiving: “in the company of the upright, in the congregation” (v. 1). Thomas encounters Jesus on a Sunday gathering (John 20). Peter preaches on a Pentecostal gathering (Acts 2). It’s so obvious that it’s easy to miss: these texts are a reminder to show up to Church when it’s time to do so.
The opening of 1 Peter is full of nuggets. We are those who “by God's power are being guarded through faith” (1:5). Holding. We aren’t Thomas; Thomas is closer to Jesus than nearly all of us will ever be, this side of glory: “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him” (v. 8). Peter’s main topic is not just our faith, but its “genuineness”, which is “more precious than gold” (v. 7).
I looked up the verse in The Second Testament, a translation of the New Testament by Scot McKnight.
Verses 22-23 of chapter 20: “Saying this, he blew and says to them, ‘Receive Holy Spirit. Whose sins you release have been released to them; whose you grab, have been grabbed’.”
I’m loving his translation, and comparing it to others👍🏼