The Last Beatitude

It is the last beatitude of the Gospels—the last one Jesus says before his  Ascension, and the only one that we know of after the Resurrection. In the last beatitude, Jesus says “Blessed are you who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

A beatitude is a fancy word for the particular way that Jesus taught. He taught by saying “You are blessed.” Remember when Jesus said “Blessed are the poor…” and “Blessed are the hungry…” and all those other beatitudes on his sermons on the mount and on the plain?

Okay, you say, that's fine... but “Blessed are you who have not seen?” What kind of a strange beatitude is that?

The Last Beatitude comes at what is probably the original ending of the Gospel of John—John 21 being an epilogue to the Gospel—but here, in this narrative of the upper room just a week after Easter is where the Gospel of John probably ended originally.

Imagine the scene:

The disciples—with at most ten apostles in the upper room—meet the risen Jesus in their midst on the evening of that first Easter Day. Jesus gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit, and he gives them authority to forgive sins. Happy birthday, Church! Hooray!

But for whatever reason, Thomas was absent, because we’re told after Jesus did all this that Thomas wasn’t there. When he does come back, the other apostles excitedly tell him what’s happened and… he won’t believe it…let me touch his hands and his wounded side, he says…only then will I believe!

Fast forward seven days, Thomas and the ten are again present in that same upper room and Jesus reappears and it is Easter Day all over again. Thomas sees and touches Jesus’ wounds, his hands and his side, and he believes.

Now here comes The Last Beatitude:

Jesus says, ‘have you believed because you have seen? Blessed are you who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

It is because of that Last Beatitude that I have come to dislike the title tradition has given to Thomas: “Doubting Thomas.” Because Thomas is not just some stick-in-the-mud holdout; he’s not being a stubborn mule—at least not any more than the rest of us—Thomas, it turns out, is standing in for all of us!

Look at how the Gospel writer has set the scene. All the early Christians of the day would recognize in an instant that what John has painted is the very picture of your basic New Testament house church! Remember the Church was not always Gothic-revival basilicas, fancy vestments, Sunday schools, and such. The early church was a movement. An underground movement, at that! And those first Christians in the early Jesus movement met in homes!

The first Christians were also Jews (until the influx of Gentile converts would outnumber them, anyway). So, they’d go to their synagogue worship on the Sabbath—Friday night and Saturday—and then they’d gather in their homes to do what Jesus did with the disciples and apostles when they gathered in the upper room of a home before the crucifixion and the first time they gathered after the resurrection was probably in that very same home.

And in that home, they’d gather, they’d sing, they’d pray, they’d listen to scripture and share teaching they’d break bread and share the cup and recount the teachings of Jesus. Maybe they’d also wash each other’s feet or they’d go down to a river or lake or to the sea to baptize people. But they’d do all of this in their houses.

It was a long time before they’d have to rent an auditorium or build their own buildings and longer than that before the Roman government would let them build basilicas.

And when those first Christians met and did what they did with Jesus, they discovered something: every time they gathered it was just like Easter all over again! There are hints of this all over the Gospels—when we read the Emmaus story in the Gospel of Luke, listen for it—and imagine someone reading Paul’s letters to you in the main room of someone’s house.

John is no dummy. He knows his audience. When he describes the disciples gathering in John’s Gospel, and talks about how Jesus appeared among them and how Thomas saw that Jesus is in fact alive, and comes to believe that he is the Risen Lord and Savior; then, wherever this Gospel story was shared, little light bulbs went off and people said “Oh! Wait! That's what happens here!”

Of course, we know that, too! Somewhere down deep in our own experience, we meet and touch and encounter the Risen Jesus. We meet the Risen Jesus in the breaking of the bread. We meet the Risen Christ in scripture and worship. We meet the Risen Jesus in gathered community. Let me tell you about one of those... I will bet that it will sound familiar to you!

The Rev. Dr. Giles Frasier, who was priest-in-charge of St Mary's Newington in south London and the former canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, wrote in the Guardian some years ago about what it means to be a resurrection people:

The resurrection is not an argument, still less a philosophical argument. That’s why rational skepticism about the empty tomb just bounces off the surface. As Jonathan Swift was right to say, you can’t reason people out of something they weren’t reasoned into. The resurrection is more an identity than an argument. That’s why we turn it into participatory theatre, with [processions, music] incense and candles. It is who we are – our word for how we go on in the face of overwhelming odds. It’s the Christian term for defiance.

He describes his parish and its neighborhood:

Mine can be a tough parish. Stuff is always going on. After Easter mass, a car screeched into our car park and crashed into a brick wall, knocking it down. Four guys got out and had a fight. Then they got back in the car and drove off. Stuff like this happens all the time – indeed I called the Brixton police three times on Easter Sunday….

…All this sounds pretty miserable. But the resurrection is the name we give to the multiple ways we push back against the darkness.

Frasier describes how his church opens itself to the homeless, how they care for young people, how the parish sees to the needs of his rough neighborhood. He calls this practical ministry a “glorious non-compliance with the so-called tragedy of the commons.” He writes:

Likewise, between Christmas and Easter, we opened up the church to the homeless, with local people, both churchgoers and non-churchgoers, teaming up to cook food and provide guests with a safe place to sleep. One couple cuddled up together under the Lady Chapel altar. I did breakfast duty, with bacon and eggs for 20. Do I believe in the resurrection? Of course I do! And I believe in it by frying bacon and refusing to give up. This Easter rising is not just some fancy intellectual idea, it’s a form of praxis.

This is the real-world reason that Jesus’ addresses his Last Beatitude to us.

We might not touch the literal wounds of the crucified and risen Jesus, but we meet the Risen Jesus all the time. We meet him in word and sacrament and in all the follies and foibles and imperfections and in the joys and victories and friendships and graces that mark life in Christian community.

We are the Blessed Ones who have not seen and yet have come to believe.

We are the Blessed Ones who believe that Jesus is the Messiah and have life in his name.

We are the Blessed Ones who show off the crucified and risen Jesus to people who wish to meet and touch him.

We gather here to do exactly as the Apostles did on that first Easter. We hear and reflect on Scripture. We share Communion. We pray together. We care for one another. We equip each other for ministry. We worship God and meet the Risen Jesus. We go to where real people live, and love, and suffer, and hope, and we care for them just as they are where they are.

And each time we do these things, every Sunday becomes a little Easter... where people encounter for themselves the Risen Jesus! Blessed are we! 

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Here is a link to the bulletin for the Second Sunday of Easter at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater

Here is a link to a video of the sermon.

Here is a link to a video of the  liturgy.