Virtual Church 2021-04-11 Seeing, Knowing, and Experiencing

Seeing, Knowing and Experiencing

• Sixty years after the event.
• Gnosticism
• Here are the questions that come to my spirit as I studied this passage.

How do we know Jesus?  (Ginoskw)

How do we see Jesus?  (Oraw) (The “W,” is pronounced like a long “O.”)

• Do we know Jesus from fear?  Jesus appears behind closed and locked doors!
• The Spirit of Christ is not hindered through locked doors of Fear
• He comes in Peace, Gentleman Spirit

First, he announces what appears to be the simple, standard form of salutation: "Peace be with you" (v.19). But shalom is a term that connotes far more than "peace" as the absence of conflict. John's use of this address as Jesus' first words to his disciples after his death and resurrection suggests that he also intends to include the meaning of "wholeness" that shalom contains within it. This wholeness, which is the gift of the "suffering servant" in Isaiah 53:5, is none other than the gift of salvation itself. 

Being an artist is about seeing!

• How I see and experience Jesus maybe different than you. That seems normal to me.  
• How I see and experience Jesus over the years has changed because my life and world view has changed.
• Christ reveals himself in anyway necessary for us to believe.  Show n Tell or through intuition.
• We all perceive the world differently.
• Dr. Lanza in Biocentrism.  Our world view is dependent on how we see it.  The world view of a fly is very different than from what our eyes show us.

Doubting Thomas

• John uses emphatic language to describe Thomas' rejection. The Greek describing the disciple's witnessing efforts is better translated as they "kept on telling him" - repeatedly without success. The tone of Thomas' surly response would be more accurately rendered into English as "unless I jab my finger ... I will never 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.”
• Why and How do we believe?  What do we see?  What do we feel?  What do we seem to know?
• Parker and my sculpture.  “I just have a knowing.”
• The final benediction Jesus offers in verse 29 encapsulates the whole theological purpose behind this text. Having established the mission of the church through the enabling gift of the Holy Spirit, the resurrected Christ identifies and blesses all future generations of disciples - those who "have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
• How will those who have not yet seen believe?
• They will see, hear and feel what we say and do.
• Our spirit working the Holy Spirit helps others to see and believe!  
• We trust not only in what we do and see but, most importantly in our knowing.  Intimate knowing!