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One of my favorite paintings is Van Gogh’s Cafe Terrace at Night. Before I was a Christian I had a poster of it on my wall. Dark, colorful, beautiful, with a mysterious figure in white at the center of the cafe, serving the people at the tables.
I remember when I was a cadet in the Salvation Army, I was about to graduate. That spring me and my session mates Abby, and Shanell were visiting a Goodwill outlet store, and I was wandering around shopping, praying and asking God for something to pop up to me, and bam, I found a plate, with the picture of the man in white from Van Gogh’s painting, and it later became the emblem for our Sunday night church service at Owosso, ‘dinner church’ we called it.
All those years I looked at the Cafe Terrace at Night, but I never could quite see into what was happening in the painting. A bigger story was being told. But sometimes it’s just so hard to see. I didn’t even know why God led me to the plate that day in 2018, but he opened my eyes, that it would become an emblem of a new season.
Similarly today we’ll see how one disciple of Jesus struggled to perceive the true meaning of what Jesus’ life and ministry meant.
We’ve talked about how the women had seen Jesus at the tomb on Sunday morning, then, the Emmaus road incident occurred in the afternoon of that same Sunday. In the evening of that same Sunday, we look at yet another appearance of the resurrected Jesus Christ.
We’ll be in John 20:19-29. Verse 19 says, “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders…”
So we have our setting. The disciples are in hiding, fearful of the Jewish authorities. They are behind locked doors. It reminds me of many believers today throughout the world, who have to meet in secret, in nations like Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, or China. It is not safe to proclaim Jesus, so believers meet in secret.
I can only imagine the kind of battle with fear those believers have. The thought might be, “I could be arrested at any moment.” Then again, the choice might be simple at the end of the day, I will be afraid, or I will trust. There’s little middle ground. But I can only imagine what they must endure. In the USA we have freedom of religion, for now.
The disciples of Jesus were afraid, and uncertain about what was happening. They had heard Jesus was alive, but to them, it was just a rumor.
They didn’t understand. They didn’t believe. And this led to fear. And when fear takes over, we withdraw, go into hiding, and this leads to even greater doubts. It’s a vicious cycle.
Unbelief leads to confusion leads to fear leads to withdrawing/hiding which leads to doubt which leads to more unbelief. Round and round the cycle goes. That is… until Jesus shows up.
Second part of verse 19: …Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”
Jesus simply appears in the room right in front of the disciples. They must’ve been shocked. And immediately he speaks saying to them… “Peace be with you.”
Let me ask you something: How much peace do you have in your personal life? Would you say you generally live at peace, or would you say your life is filled with a high amount of fear and anxiety?
Jesus comes to give us peace. In Noah Webster’s dictionary from 1828, he defined peace personally in this way: “Freedom from agitation or disturbance by the passions, as from fear, terror, anger, anxiety or the like; quietness of mind; tranquility; calmness; quiet of conscience.”
Freedom from fear. Real peace. Oh how we long for it, don’t we? Real peace, to be free from anxiety and worry. But we can have it, truly we can. We can have it in Jesus.
Next, verse 20, “After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.”
Jesus immediately shows them the locations of the wounds on his hands and feet, and his side, where the spear was plunged into his flesh. They must’ve been stunned to see the scars from the wounds. If we were to see Jesus face to face today, we would still see those wounds in his hands and feet, and side. They are permanent scars of his gift to us.
In the book of Revelation, (Rev 5:6) Jesus is pictured as a lamb who looked as if he’d been slain.
Imagine being a non-believer on judgment day, and you’re standing before Jesus and the Father, and the Father is explaining to you, pointing to the wounds in Jesus hands and feet, that Jesus had done everything for you to be saved, but you wouldn’t receive it. To look at those wounds in the Son of God would be sobering, Jesus did all that for me, and I still I wouldn’t let him save me.
Let us always remember what Jesus did for us, it was extreme, that God would come as a human, to offer himself for our sins… Those nasty little things we did that we were wrong. Jesus paid it for us.
Jesus is showing them, so they understand he isn’t a ghost, he isn’t a different person, he’s the same messiah whose body was placed in the tomb.
How do the disciples respond? They are overjoyed. Joy is one of those uniquely Christian emotions. Most people don’t experience joy, they may experience pleasure in various forms, but joy seems to me to be linked to the divine, it is pleasure mixed with holiness and goodness, it’s happiness combined with God’s favor. There is nothing like it, when we have this joy of knowing we are loved by God, walking in God’s will, or we just did something pleasing to God. Maybe we just visited someone in the nursing home, or we picked someone up for church, or we attended a bible study, or brought food over for a neighbor, as a Christian, during this event or immediately after we experience joy, a sense of happiness mixed with Godliness. It’s beautiful.
The disciples experience happiness in God as they see Jesus their dearest friend risen from the dead.
Next, verse 21: Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
A second time Jesus offers them peace. It harkens back to the upper room, when Jesus said to them, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you” (John 14:27). Why does he say it twice?
Jews would often say to each other “Shalom.” as a hello or farewell. But sometimes it would be stated “shalom shalom” as a double portion, a double blessing, and in Hebrew to say it twice indicates a superlative, so to say “shalom shalom” meant not just peace to you, but perfect peace to you.
Jesus said in John 14 ,that he doesn’t give peace the way the world does, worldly peace is often based on positive circumstances, if everything is ok in my life, I’ll be at peace, but Jesus’ peace is not dependent on circumstances, it is perfect peace, that we can receive and live in.
But he doesn’t just want us to sit basking in his peace, as amazing as that is. He says, I’m sending you, just as the Father sent Jesus.
The new mission begins to take shape immediately here. Go out and tell the world that forgiveness of sins is possible. Eternal life is open to those who will repent of their sins and receive Jesus as Lord.
Next, verses 22-23: And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
At this moment, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit, who is the Lord. Jesus breaths on them. And so they receive the living God’s presence within them. What a mighty gift of peace, and empowerment for service.
And Jesus tells them, you have the power by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the forgiveness sins. And to also tell people when they still need forgiveness.
After this moment, Jesus again disappeared. And the disciples were left in awe at what they’d seen. But it turns out one of the disciples had been missing.
Next, verses 24-25: Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
Thomas refuses to believe that the disciples had seen Jesus, unless he personally witnesses it himself. He does not believe their witness. Many throughout history have since dubbed Thomas, doubting Thomas, but I think he gets a bad rap here.
All the disciples doubted until Jesus appeared to them. Thomas wasn’t there to see it. So he doubted the incident as well.
We struggle with doubt too, don’t we? We struggle to believe.
Next, verse 26: A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”
One week later, same situation. Disciples together, at the house, doors locked, but this time Thomas is present.
Again Jesus releases peace to them. The statement is a command, “Peace be with you”, the Greek word here eirēnē (i-ray’-nay) pictures harmony or unity between peoples. But I think it also points to personal peace, and even more so, ultimately, peace with God.
Peace of the soul had been found at last for the disciples. And maybe today you feel like you’re lacking a peace of the soul between you and God… Like something is causing a separation, I encourage you to pray right now, and seek the Lord on whatever might be causing a rift in your heart. And if it’s a need for salvation, ask Jesus Christ to be your savior today.
Peace with God is a beautiful thing. It’s one of the best feelings in the universe, going from buried in sin, to set free.
What barriers to peace exist?
1. Not knowing Christ as savior, if you don’t really have Jesus, and you aren’t really born again, you’ll never have real peace
2. Don’t believe his word / unbelief
3. Unresolved trauma / Pain / PTSD
4. Disobedience / lukewarm relationship with God
If you don’t have a lot of peace in your life, please don’t feel hopeless. There is a solution. There is a way to find that, and have it, because ultimately Jesus says to each of us, “peace be with you.” But it may take seeking Jesus to help break down a barrier.
Next, verse 27: Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
The NLT says “Don’t be faithless, believe.”
The most important truth in the universe is… Jesus is alive. So hard for Thomas and the others to believe, after seeing his brutal crucifixion. Yet here he stands right in front of them. And this time he comes directly to Thomas, and fulfills everything Thomas requested, to touch his scarred hands and his side where he was pierced.
If you could see Jesus today, you’d still see those scarred hands and feet, all of it done for you and me. And one day we all will meet him face to face. And give an answer for our lives.
Jesus rebukes Thomas, corrects him, stop doubting, and trust. Believe. Get past your hurt, to the truth, I’m real, and I’m alive, and the whole world is about to change, when you take my message to the ends of the Earth.
Next, verse 28: Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Here we see Thomas’ reply to Jesus. He calls him two things, Lord, which means among other things, “master” or “owner.” The second statement is very much a statement of divinity. He is God.
Similarly for us, if we desire to walk in peace with God, we must understand these truths. Jesus is our master, and Jesus is our God. If we misunderstand or disregard these realities, we will miss peace.
Whenever I get focused on my pleasure, instead of on God’s will, I begin to lose my peace, and shift into worldly pleasure, and that road always ends at an empty feeling.
But we face a challenge different than that of Thomas and the other disciples. They got to see Jesus risen from the dead. They felt his hands, they touched him, talked with Him, saw him alive, and as they say, seeing is believing, right?
What about us today? We don’t see Jesus with our physical eyes. What a challenge we face! We have these writings in the Bible, we have the evidence of the world around us, we have history, and we have experience. But.. it’s a tough challenge. And a blessing to overcome it. So Jesus says in verse 29…
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
This scripture is referring to us. But I think it’s also referring to John, the writer of this gospel. When John and Peter initially ran to the tomb, they both looked in, and when John saw the empty tomb, he saw and believed. He saw the evidence, without actually seeing Jesus himself, and began to believe.
Can we believe in Jesus without seeing? Indeed we can, we have, and it’s changed our lives. And in a way we’ve seen. We’ve seen Jesus through the testimony of others, our parents, friends, family members, people in our community whom Jesus has changed. And we’ve seen Jesus change our lives, once we believed in Him, and it causes us to believe even more, that he’s really real. We’ve seen, not with our physical eyes, which so often can deceive us anyway, we’ve seen with our mind and heart. It’s written inside every human that God is real and Jesus is His son. So it’s not too much to ask, for us to believe today, and not doubt.
Though if you doubt, take your doubts to Jesus, and perhaps like Thomas, he will come to you, in a way you can understand and reveal himself to you.
John tells us, in verses 30-31: “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
The whole purpose of the written accounts of Jesus life, is that we would really believe, and by believing, we would have life. And in that life, is great peace. A peace that comes from the unveiling of our eyes to something we couldn’t understand without His help. He really is the Lord of this planet, the Lord of the human race, and the Lord of us personally.
Look again into the Café Terrace at Night. We have a dark night, yet stars shine the sky above. The stars, suns and galaxies, point us to the reality that God is real. But it’s darkness that makes them visible.
And we see the scene, of the man in white, which many interpreters believe to be a representation of Jesus, symbolic of him serving, or the last supper.
The bright golden light that surrounds the café is so very powerful in the painting, it’s as if those in the café are in a physical world, yet just above them is this spiritual reality symbolized by the golden light. Yet we also see a dark figure in the scene…
We have a doorway on the left, blue, that seems to lead upward toward the heavens. Jesus is the door.
Sometimes when we see something, like a painting, we don’t fully see everything that is happening.
Elizabeth Edwards, an art analyst, reveals on her Substack, that everything in the painting by Van Gogh is intended to point us to the figure in white in the midst of the café.
When I was a non believer, I couldn’t see the deeper realities in this painting. But now, today, I have the honor of seeing Jesus not just in this painting, but everywhere in this world.
But do you see the point? Thomas doubted. Just like we struggle with doubt. But, Jesus helped him to see.
Jesus also helps us to see. He puts it all together for us. We look at the same painting and suddenly it’s so different. It’s like that when Jesus opens our eyes. Suddenly, we see differently. We see beyond the physical, to the spiritual realities all around us, seeing this spiritual plain, as Jesus said, is seeing the kingdom of God in this world.
Can you see today? Are you beginning to look beyond the physical to the spiritual? Even as Christians we need God to open our eyes, remove veils, take us deeper, to see the spiritual all around us, and ultimately, to see Jesus Christ himself, the risen Lord of our lives. Amen.
