One Ending is Never Enough

John 20:26-31, 21:24-25

Easter 2 / Holy Humor Sunday

April 28, 2019

William G. Carter

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, 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. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt 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 come to believe.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

Here are two different endings of the Gospel of John, which is, essentially John's big sermon. One ending isn't enough. He has to end it twice, at the end of chapter twenty, and at the end of chapter twenty-one.

The scholars agree the story of Jesus ends with the Easter story of chapter 20. Doubting Thomas blurts out his affirmation: “My Lord and my God!” and that’s where the whole Gospel of John has been headed. Then, as a pastoral note, John quotes Jesus as saying, “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.” It’s a beatitude for those after Easter, for those like us who live centuries after Thomas and the others. We were not there, we did not see, but there is a blessing in our believing.

Then John says, “There were a lot of other things that Jesus did, a lot of other things that Jesus said. I didn’t write them down. But I wrote these things down, so that all of you will believe, so that you will be brought to life through your believing.” That’s the conclusion of chapter 20. The end. The finale. The curtain comes down. The story is over. The postlude begins. We are done. It is finished.

But for some reason, John can’t keep it there. He can’t shut it down. He picks up his pen and adds another chapter. There is a surprising catch of fish, the rehabilitation of Simon Peter, the probing three-fold question of “Do you love me,” and the prediction of Simon Peter’s death.

Then we come to the second ending in chapter 21. John gathers his church around him and says, “What he says, we know to be true.” With that comes the final line: “There are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” Now, that’s just crazy.

John has already told us there are stories that didn’t make it into his book. That is always the author’s prerogative. John is writing to cultivate our faith. He spares us the stories that really don’t matter. We never discover Jesus’ favorite meal. We do not know if he snored when he slept. We have absolutely no description of how he looked, whether he was short or tall, bald or clean-shaven, whether or not he had ever gotten a splinter in the wood cutter’s shop. We never learn if he was married. Apparently those details were not important.

What we do know is that Jesus comes to reveal God to the world. Through a carefully crafted narrative, John tells one important story after another, aiming us toward that final confession with Thomas, “My Lord and my God.” He transforms water into wine, revealing the mundane as the sacramental. He points Nicodemus, the ultimate religious insider, and the Samaritan woman at the well, the ultimate outsider, toward a God who moves freely to bring us alive. Jesus heals a crippled man on the Sabbath, because God can act whenever he wants. One event after another, spiced with long speeches that push us beyond our calculated views of God – this is what the Only Begotten Son of God provides as a gift.

And John says, “There’s even more to the story. “All the books in all the world could not begin to write down everything that Jesus has done.” All the books, in all the world? Really? That’s the language of extreme excess.

As best we know, the Gospel of John was written about 90 AD in the Turkish city of Ephesus, a major center of learning in the ancient world. Some 45 years after John wrote this book, the Library of Celsus was finished in downtown Ephesus. It was one of the greatest libraries in the Roman empire. The Library of Celsus could hold twelve thousand scrolls – that was more than anybody could ever imagine in the time of the Gospel of John.

Before the Library of Celsus, there was the Great Library of Alexandria. The original plan was to build the largest library in the world, with room for 500,000 scrolls. It was enormous, and John would have had this in mind.

Today we could visit the Library of Congress and walk the hallways of its three different buildings. According to the reports, the Library of Congress has 650 miles of shelf space. It holds 32 million books, 61 million manuscripts, one million issues of newspapers, half a million microfilms, six thousand comic books, and a Stradivarius violin. Every business day, about 22,000 new books arrive to be catalogued.

John says, “Even if you had a Library of Congress in every town, there wouldn’t be enough room to hold all of the books that describe what Jesus has done.”

The language is excessive. It’s extravagant. Sometimes the Bible just talks that way. At the end of the book of Ecclesiastes, the wise sage says, “Of making many books, there is no end” (12:12). As a book lover, I know that to be true. There are more books on my shelf than I need.

Raymond Brown says John is giving us a hyperbole. He’s overdoing it. He’s amplifying the reality. He’s overstating the case. After all, John is a preacher. Preachers have been known to speak and talk in enormous terms. As a way of helping us imagine the size and scope of their topic, they speak in an extravagant tongue.

Jesus talked this way. “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.” (Matt. 5:29) Now, does he really mean that – or is he amplifying to make a point? We must decide. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.” (Mark 10:25) “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” (Matt. 7:3) Or this little pearl that we never read on the second Sunday of May: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate his mother cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)

The power of such speaking is its extravagance. This is super-charged language. It has the power to wake us up, to stir our hearts, to shock us with the truth, to renew our commitment. We know this – especially when we speak of things that are really important and deeply true.

I think of the great American poet, Stevie Wonder. He sings a song about love, and says, “I’ll be loving you always . . .”

until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky,

until the ocean covers every mountain high,

until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea,

until we dream of life and life becomes a dream,

until the day is night and night becomes the day,

until the trees and seas just up and fly away,

until the day when 8 times 8 times 8 is 4,

until the day that is the day that are no more…” (“As”)

If we don’t have a poetic bone in our body, we might simply say, “I’m going to love you a long time.” But there’s something about this beautiful excess, this generosity of description – it expands our view of the world, it enlarges our imaginations, it points beyond the settled limits of what we can see and what we’ve become comfortable in expressing.

So John concludes his book by saying the book isn’t finished. The story of Jesus keeps going on. If we could write down all the things that Jesus has been doing, it would fill all the books, on all the shelves, in all the libraries of the entire universe. This is John’s way of announcing the resurrection continues. The Risen Jesus keeps bringing souls alive. Faith is not settled and nailed down as soon as the Bible is published. If anything, the Bible prepares us for an ongoing conversation with the Risen Christ, throughout our lives and into eternity.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.