The Gospel of St. John: A Series of Discourses. / New Edition

by Frederick Denison Maurice

I thank God that we belong to a Church which is not afraid to bring these diversities before us, as it does those in the reports of the Passion; a Church which believes so strongly in God, that it can leave Him to interpret these differences to us without making any awkward attempts at reconciliation. Our faith in the Resurrection is not affected by them so long as we live upon God's word, and not upon the letters of a book. When we change the one for the other, it must perish; no arguments or explanations will keep it alive. St. John, in some respects, differs from them all. I think many would have been glad if he had differed more widely. There is a dislike in our day, in Protestant countries, to any notice of angelical visitations. Romanists, and some who are not Romanists, would denounce the feeling as a sign that we are losing all faith in the spiritual world. I am not willing to interpret it so harshly. I think there is a feeling amongst us that we ought to be connected with the spiritual world now as much as in the days of old, and that these reports seem to keep us at a distance from it by drawing a line between us and former ages, by affirming communications to have been made to them which are not made to us. I partly considered this subject when I was speaking of the angel who is said to have troubled the Pool of Bethesda; but I must refer to it again, because we all feel, I think, that the angels who sang to the shepherds of the Child who was born in Bethlehem, and the angels who spake to the women at the tomb of Joseph, must have had a different message to deliver from all others. What was the difference? Surely this, that they came to tell of a union of earth and heaven, of the spiritual and the visible world in the person of a Man. If there were no such news to bring, we should indeed be left under the dominion of angels; for we should not be able to get rid of the thought—no nation ever has been able—that we are surrounded by invisible creatures, and that they do in some way communicate with us. But if there was such a truth to be told, should we not be rather startled to find that there was none to tell it? Would not the absence of these stories leave a blank, not in our imaginations, but in our hearts and in our reason? Was not the appearance of these angels a witness to men that we do not need, as former ages may have done, special messengers to come from behind a veil which the Son of God has rent asunder, but that hosts of such creatures may be working with us, and ministering to us, and joining with us, the sinful spirits, who present the sacrifice that was made once for all before the Father of spirits?

St. John tells us, at once, of another apparition to Mary, which was immeasurably more to her than the apparition of any angels. An actual human form stood before her, the one which she had known best and loved best in the world, and yet she took it to be the gardener's. It was not, therefore, that it was too radiant for her to look upon, that it had lost the signs and marks that belong to her race. But it was not the figure or the countenance which revealed Him to her. It was the voice calling her by her name, it was the voice which had bidden the seven devils depart out of her, that brought her to own Him as her Lord.

Then came those wonderful words which contain the deepest and most blessed of all truths in the form of the most startling contradiction. She was not to touch Him, for He was not ascended. That which appeared to invite intercourse was the bar to it; that which would appear to put them at a hopeless distance would be the beginning of a fellowship that could not be interrupted. The weak, penitent woman was to learn the lesson which the Apostles had been taught at the Paschal supper. He must go to His Father that they might know Him. The private and exclusive communion into which they had entered so imperfectly, must be merged in one in which all should share who would take up their lot as brethren of each other and of Him; for He was to dwell with His Father and their Father, with His God and their God. This was a risen life indeed; and we see at each turn how a risen life implies an ascension.

'Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when He had so said, He shewed unto them His hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.' You think of these as sudden apparitions, glimpses granted and withdrawn, of the Teacher who had once walked with them by day and sat with them by night; and you think rightly. St. John's words give us that impression of them. But do they give us no other at the same time? Is it not the apparition of an actual Person, of an actual human body? He may be seen, and may disappear; but He is. We are not among shadows more than we were before. The air is freer, the light is clearer. He only does not tarry in that room where the disciples are assembled for fear of the Jews, because they are to learn that wherever two or three are assembled in His name, there is He in the midst of them.

And consider His words to them. The last time they had met at the Paschal supper He had said—'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. And these things I have spoken to you that in me ye might have peace.' Since they heard that language, they had known more of fightings without and within than in all their lives before. And now He repeats it again, and shows them His hands and His side. Now it comes with power. If there was a moment of intense agonizing excitement, you might have fancied it would have been that. There is no excitement. There is perfect quietness in them all; in him who had forsaken the Master, in him who had denied Him. He has spoken peace to them, and they are at peace. The beloved disciple can only describe what he felt, what all felt, in the simplest, calmest words—'Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.'

What had happened to them? He with whom they had been at war had declared Himself at one with them. Christ had brought that message from the grave. His hands and side assured them of it. Their consciences were absolved. They were freed men.

'Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.'

The connexion between the two passages is too obvious to be overlooked. He had come in His Father's name to bring them peace. He sent them forth in His name with the same gift. The Spirit of peace should go with them, that they might execute their commission. The pierced hands and side, which had been the witness and pledge of it to them, should be the witness and pledge of it to the world. Their conscience had been absolved. A chain had been taken from them. They should, in the name of Christ and of His Father, break the chains which bind the consciences of others. They should remit, or send away, the sins which keep men the prisoners and slaves of an evil and accusing spirit, which prevent them from serving their Father in heaven. But since it was consciences they were to unbind—since they were carrying a message of peace to voluntary creatures—the liberty might be refused, the rebellion might be persevered in. The very word which looses becomes then a word to bind. It is a tremendous fact, asserted again and again in Scripture, certified by experience. The message of reconciliation and deliverance holds in an iron gripe those spirits which it does not emancipate. They cry out that it has come to torment them; they have a sense of evil which they had not before; they are bound by it as they were not before.

I cannot see less in the words which were spoken that night—or in the commission which was then given to the ministers of Christ—than I have expressed. If you say that I ought to see more, I submit willingly to the rebuke. But I deny that it is more to talk of some power of the keys being entrusted to the Apostles or their successors, if by that power is meant only some outward authority to withdraw the punishment for sins, or to enforce it. I cannot, in any case, read 'punishment,' where I find 'sin' written. I must regard remission of punishment as a very poor and miserable substitute for remission of sins. If it is said that we cannot imagine ministers who have received such a power, for that remission of sins must belong to God only, I answer, 'Most assuredly ministers can neither remit sins nor punishments in their own name.' If they assume to do either, they violate the charter upon which all their authority rests; they claim to be what Christ did not claim to be, to do what He did not claim to do. For He said that He was nothing, and could do nothing without His Father. His glory was that He did not come in His own name. But if the ministers of Christ do confess that they are sent in His name, as He was sent in His Father's name, then I say they can, in His name, speak to the conscience and absolve the conscience, not from its punishment but from its sin. And I say that the consciences of thousands and tens of thousands have waited in all ages, do wait in our age, to receive this blessing, and have actually received it, and are receiving it. And I say that when it is spoken to them, and they do not receive it, they bear testimony to the other half of the sentence; they are bound more closely, because they will not be loosed. Therefore I fear it is because Christ's ministers do not care to exercise His powers, but wish to exercise some powers of their own, that they fight so stoutly for these rights to punish or forego punishment, to curse or to take off curses, which, when they were most fully acknowledged and produced most terror in the minds of men, were generally very feeble for any good moral purpose, and were very dreadful temptations to tyranny and lying in those who exercised them.

I am far, indeed, from saying that absolution consists only in preaching the Gospel. The words, 'Peace be to you,'—the hands and the side,—spake to the consciences of the disciples. At what time more than when we are kneeling and confessing, is the conscience likely to receive the message, 'He pardoneth and absolveth?' What has been more effectual than the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ in carrying home the words to each heart, 'Son, thy sins be forgiven thee, rise up and walk'? And in both these cases it is not merely to single hearts that the blessing is imparted. The gathering together in Christ's name is a witness that we meet as a family just as the Apostles did; and that, as a family, we want the peace and reconciliation which a Father only can send us through His Son. Did we understand the worth of that communion more, and how all individual blessings are associated with it and rise out of it, the power of excommunicating would not be something to boast of, or to fight for, or to play with. To cut a man off from the Church would then, indeed, be to deliver one who had sold himself to the service of evil to the master he has chosen, that he may feel the bitterness of his yoke, and so may return to his true Lord, and his spirit be saved when that Lord appears. But till we know more of that Spirit which Jesus breathed on His disciples, on that first day of the week, we shall be as little competent to administer censures as we are to testify of reconciliation and absolution.