The Radicality of Grace: A Flower Blooming Upon the Ruins of Understanding (John 20)
The Radicality of Grace: A Flower Blooming Upon the Ruins of Understanding
John 20
8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)
25 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."
29 Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."
1. A Celebration of Incomprehension
John 20 begins with a celebration of incomprehension—a festival of not-knowing. Even in the face of the empty tomb, the neatly folded grave clothes, the testimony of angels, and encounters with the risen Jesus himself, the disciples remain bewildered. Peter and the beloved disciple witness the scene but fail to grasp the prophetic Scriptures; Mary Magdalene mistakes Jesus for the gardener; Thomas declares he cannot believe his fellow disciples' testimony without his own empirical evidence. This wasn't due to a deficit of faith, but because the resurrection event—which shattered death, humanity's ultimate boundary—completely transcended their [[capacity for understanding]]. The resurrection was not a realm humans could reach through prediction or comprehension. It was an invasion from heaven, a new creative act of God that utterly demolished the framework of human perception.
2. The Anomie We Fear, the Anomie We Live In
Thomas's demand represents our existential condition. We desire a faith we can touch with our hands, verify with our eyes, and bring under the control of our understanding. Jesus embraces Thomas in his weakness, but immediately turns the horizon of faith completely upside down: "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who [[believe without seeing]]." This declaration is a radical invitation into the world of grace extended to us.
We fear this invitation. We worry that if we surrender ourselves to [[total grace]], won't anomie come—the collapse of our morals and order? But at precisely this point, we encounter the [[paradox of anomie]]. The world we inhabit is already in a state of true anomie. A world ruled by survival of the fittest and endless competition, self-righteousness and merit-based thinking. Chaos where God's law of grace is absent and only the logic of power reigns. This is the anomie we experience daily. God's grace doesn't promote anomie—it is the only order that breaks through and shatters the world's anomie to which we've become addicted. The reason we worry about the consequences of grace is, paradoxically, because we've grown far too accustomed to the world's laws.
3. The Dynamism of Surrender
So what must we do? The very act of worrying about behavioral anomie that might occur from dwelling in total grace is already proof that we cannot dwell in total grace. This realization changes everything. Our task is not to maintain a precarious balance between grace and works. Our only task is to leap beyond fear into the ocean of grace completely. This is the mystery of [[active passivity]]. Just as the most active thing a branch does to bear fruit is simply to remain attached to the vine, our calling is not to fret anxiously about outcomes, but to surrender ourselves entirely to the risen Lord and to the Holy Spirit he sends—even if the result appears powerless in the world's eyes. Within that surrender, the Spirit will bring forth the most dynamic fruit of life we could never imagine—just as he sent disciples out into the world who had locked themselves behind doors in fear.
John 20 asks us: Will you still try to build the house of faith upon the rubble heap of your understanding and experience, or will you willingly acknowledge those ruins and surrender yourself completely to the Lord of grace, who causes the flower of life to bloom upon them?