Believing Without
Seeing
1 John 1:1-4[1]
I’m afraid that the Easter
message—that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified and rose again—can seem
somewhat out of touch with the realities of our lives here and now. After all,
it speaks of things that most of us have never actually seen for ourselves. We
weren’t there to see him die on the cross. We weren’t there when he appeared to
his disciples. And even though our Scripture lessons throughout the Easter
season give us their testimony of what they saw and experienced, I wonder if
some of us may have a hard time believing that it makes a difference today. I
wonder if many of us may have a hard time with this.
We are, after all, a people who
have been trained to be skeptical. “I’ll believe it when I see it” applies to
everything from the weather forecast to government promises to the simple
matter of friends keeping their word. And when it comes to supernatural things,
like claims about miraculous signs, I think our skepticism can go into high
gear. Many of us want some kind of tangible proof that our faith is real. But
at the same time, we reject claims about mystical experiences that supposedly
serve as proof. And so we face the dilemma of believing without being able to
see for ourselves. How are we supposed
to do that?
I think our lesson from 1 John
might help us here, even though it originally addressed a different situation.
Apparently the Elder who wrote this letter was concerned that some of the
believers in the churches he was serving had embraced the idea that Jesus was
so completely the Son of God that his humanity was only a disguise, a kind of
make-believe.[2] And yet,
the message of the Gospel included the claim that those who were with Jesus
were eyewitnesses to his full humanity, to his very real suffering, and to his
bodily resurrection. The Scripture lesson puts it this way: “We declare to you
… what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at
and touched with our hands” (1 John 1:1).[3]
The point is that those who were with Jesus could attest that they had a very
tangible experience of Jesus’ full humanity.[4]
I think this might help us with
our dilemma as well. In one sense, the fact that the eyewitnesses heard and saw
and touched Jesus can refer to being with him during his ministry.[5] They
actually heard him teaching; they saw the amazing things he did. At the same
time, however, the language of this verse also relates to the eyewitnesses’
experiences with the risen Christ.[6] As
the accounts of Jesus’ appearances tell us, their encounters with him were very
real indeed. They heard him as he instructed them and helped them understand
the scriptures that pointed to his resurrection and to the good news of
salvation. They saw him come into their presence, though at first they had difficulty
recognizing him. Nevertheless, they did see him; in fact there were many who
saw him—St. Paul recounts an event where over 500 saw him at one time (1 Cor.
15:6).
All of this, of course, at least
theoretically could be attributed to some sort of elaborate hallucination, or
perhaps a kind of spiritual visionary experience. But the scripture lesson goes
on to say that they touched him.
That’s hard to explain away. At one of Jesus’ meetings with them, he says to
them, “Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see;
for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Lk.
24:39). And while they were overcome with joy, he actually asks if they have
something to eat (Lk. 24:41)! It would seem that all of that makes it hard to
deny that there was something very real about Jesus after he had risen from the
dead.[7]
And yet, for us it happened very
long ago and very far away. When faced with the challenges of our lives, it may
be difficult to find the faith to believe in the good news that the same Jesus
who died for us is the one who rose from the dead. We may wonder how we can
believe that he is alive and present with us as we face the sometimes harsh
realities of our lives in the here and now. The first believers saw and believed.
How can we believe without seeing?
In the first place, I think it’s important to take seriously
what our lesson for today says: the witness of the Scriptures constitutes the
testimony of those who were eyewitnesses to the events; they are not just
“cleverly devised myths” (2 Pet.1:16). And so one way to believe without seeing
is to rely on the testimony of the Scriptures. I think another way we can
approach this problem is by remembering those who embraced the faith before us
and who passed it on to us. While none of them were perfect Christians, they
not only taught the faith to us but also modeled it for us. In a sense we “see”
the effect of faith in their lives. That’s another way to believe without
seeing. But finally, we can all believe without seeing because we can have very
real encounters with the risen Christ in our own lives.[8]
They happen sometimes when we least expect them. When they do, they leave us
with a sense of Jesus’ presence through the Holy Spirit who lives in us all.
Though this can be hard to explain to someone who hasn’t had this experience, I
believe it can be one of the most important ways for us to believe without
seeing. In these ways, we can face the challenge of maintaining our faith that
the risen Christ is present with us today. As so many before us have done, we
can believe without seeing.
[1] ©2015
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/12/2015 at Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] In fact,
it would seem that this became such a problem that they broke fellowship with
the main body of the Johannine community. Cf. I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John, 105. Cf.
similarly, D. Moody Smith, First, Second,
and Third John, 19: “Evidently, the community of Johannine Christians not
only is threatened with heresy but also has undergone division. The Pauline
Pastorals reflect a similar situation. Already in 1 Corinthians (chaps. 1-4)
there were divisions in the church, but channels of communication were still
open. In the Pastorals, however, as in the Johannine Epistles, lines of
division have hardened, and any efforts at persuasion have long since given way
to denunciation and exclusion.”
[3] The
reference in the text regarding what they claim to have seen, heard, and
touched is “the word of life.” While some aspects of the text point to an
identification of the “word” as the gospel message, others point to the person
Jesus. The Elder probably uses the terminology with an intentional ambiguity,
for the "word of life" is both the life-giving message and the one
who brought life (cf. Jn. 1:4), and “the
gospel is essentially a proclamation about Jesus who is the living Word of God”
(Cf. Stephen Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John,
6). On this point, cf. also Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John, 163-66; Smith, First, Second, and Third John, 36.
[4] Cf.
Smith, First, Second, and Third John, 27:
“Jesus is for them [the Gospel and letters of John] no pious fiction or figment
of the imagination but the historically real and physically visible and
palpable manifestation of God (John 1:14; 1 John 1:1-4).” He says further (p.
39), “Apparently, 1 John lays down the lines along which John 1:14 should be
interpreted. The Word’s becoming flesh means that Jesus Christ was a real human
being, real flesh. . . . Jesus was not
only audible and visible but tangible.” Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences in Theology: Ways and Forms of
Theology, 45: “The God of Jesus Christ is not a dark and obscure mystery,
which we approach by closing our eyes and by mystical submersion in the
inwardness of our own hearts. He is the manifest God of life, whom we encounter
in the history of Christ.” Cf. further Jürgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, Arise! God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth,
47-48: “The women and the disciples didn’t ‘see in their hearts’ or ‘with their
spiritual eyes’. They didn’t have intuitions, while they were ‘caught up out of
this world’, nor did they receive enlightenment in trances. The accounts tell
us that it was with their normal five senses that they perceived the risen
Christ.”
[5] Cf.
Brown, Epistles of John, 174-75,
where he states that the primary effect of this text has been to secure the
authority of eyewitness testimony for the Johannine writings (cf. Brown, Epistles of John, 174–75). He insists
that this still holds true even if the author of this letter was not John the
Apostle but an unidentified leader of the Johannine community because the statement still reflects the reality
of the manifestation of the word, but through the means of preserving the
eyewitness testimony of the Beloved disciple to the life and ministry of Jesus
(cf. Brown, Epistles of John, 175; cf.
similarly Jn. 20:29–31; 21:24–25. Cf. further Brown, Epistles of John, 159–61, 183–84, 194, 226-27.
[6] It is
not clear whether the reference is to the incarnation or the resurrection, or
perhaps as an all-inclusive reference, since the aspect of “touch” is
associated with the resurrection elsewhere in the NT (cf. Jn. 20:24-29; Lk. 24:39), while the aspect of
his “manifestation” usually relates to the incarnation (cf. 1 Jn. 3:5; 4:9; 1 Tim. 3:16).
[7] Cf.
Smith, First, Second, and Third John,
41: “Very often, exactly at the point or in quarters where Jesus’ divinity is
most strenuously extolled, the humanity that he shares with us is lost sight of
or threatened. A kind of “Superman Christology” that refuses to contemplate a
genuine humanity is as damaging to orthodoxy as its opposite. In such
Christology, Jesus humanity becomes only an incognito behind which the true God
is hidden. Jesus remains omnipotent and invulnerable, not really subject to the
dangers that encompass or threaten us. But according to the New Testament,
Jesus was truly human, and, as such, subject to the same temptations and perils
as we (Heb. 4:15). His humanity was no disguise. His death is eloquent
testimony to that fact.”
[8] Cf.
Jürgen Moltmann, The Ethics of Hope,
56-57, where he points out that eternal life is in the Johannine writings
identified with Christ himself. He elaborates that “eternal life” is “the
fullness of life, the life that is wholly and entirely filled with livingness.
It is a life which by virtue of the risen Christ, the Christ who is present in
the presence of God, is liberated from terror, from death, and from anxiety. It
is an entirely and wholly human life participating wholly and entirely in the
divine life. It is a human life which God indwells and which, for its part,
dwells in God. Where do we find a life like this? The answer given in John’s
Gospel is clear: it has appeared in Jesus Christ, is experienced in the
life-giving Spirit, and will one day become the life of the whole future world.”
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