The Home Council

Jesus Appears To Thomas

But Thomas one of the Twelve, called The Twin, was not with them when Jesus came; so the rest of the disciples said to him: “We have seen the Master!”

“Unless I see the marks of the nails in his hands,” he exclaimed, “and put my finger into the marks, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

A week later the disciples were again in the house, and Thomas with them. After the doors had been shut, Jesus came and stood among them, and said: “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas:

“Place your finger here, and look at my hands; and place your hand here, and put it into my side; and do not refuse to believe, but believe.”

And Thomas exclaimed:

“My Master, and my God!”

“Is it because you have seen me that you have believed? ” said Jesus. “Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed!”

The Object Of This Gospel

There were many other signs of his mission that Jesus gave in presence of the disciples, which are not recorded in this book; but these have been recorded that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God—and that, through your belief in his Name, you may have Life.

Jesus Ascends To Heaven

After this, Jesus led them out as far as Bethany, and there raised his hands and blessed them. As he was in the act of blessing them, he left them [and was carried up into Heaven.] They [bowed to the ground before him and] returned to Jerusalem full of joy; and they were constantly in the Temple Courts, blessing God.

—John.

The Life Sublime

A boy of twelve in old Jerusalem one day realised that he had reached the age when he must think for himself and make decisions. Without false ideas of independence he went back to his home and workshop and did the things his parents thought best, but he began that day to live his own life and to make plans for helping the world. He was not ambitious to be rich or famous, he would not fight, and he hated meanness, cruelty, injustice and hypocrisy. When he grew to manhood he healed sick people, comforted the sorrowful, pitied those who did wrong, divided his food with the hungry, strengthened the weak and made friends with children.

He loved the sea and boats, the hills and fields, flowers and birds. He was brave in danger, patient when persecuted, heroic in temptation, pure in heart, and so loving and unselfish that millions of people who never saw him love him and would lay down their lives for him. He did not preach long sermons—he never wrote a book. You could easily commit to memory all his recorded words. He died poor and almost friendless, and yet we celebrate his birthday throughout the world; we date our letters from the year of hfe birth; we offer in Congress and Parliaments prayers in his name. The history of his life is printed in four hundred languages. Kings and emperors, presidents and judges, statesmen and scholars, peasants and slaves, declare this to be the greatest and best of all books. Thousands of magnificent buildings have been erected to him—abbeys, cathedrals and churches. Our greatest colleges were dedicated to this poor boy who never went to college, never left his own little country, and died when he was only thirty-three years old. From his life and death painters, poets, orators and musicians have gained their highest inspiration. From this wonderful, perfect boyhood and the work he began, girls and boys of every land may learn kindness, courage, obedience and devotion to duty.

Alternate Reading: Revelation 22: 6-16.

Forever Alive, Forever Forward

The soul travels; the body does not travel as much as the soul;
The body has just as great a work as the soul, and parts away at last for the journeys of the soul.
All parts away for the progress of souls;
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and comers before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.
Forever alive, forever forward, they go! they go!

—Walt Whitman.

The Law Of A Happy Life

Are you willing to take the Beatitudes of our Master, our Elder Brother, and Saint Paul’s chapter on love, and saturate your whole scheme of human relations with them: your friendships, your likes, your dislikes, your neighborliness, your trade and political relations, your club life and all the rest? Will you agree to these simple comments on some of Saint Paul’s words? “Love is not covetous, for it would scorn to profit by another’s loss.” “Love will not kill either suddenly with a sword or slowly by unkindness, for love gives and enhances life.” “Love will not steal, either goods from the counter, money from the purse, value from the stock, or time from an employer.” “Love will not be proud, for the weakness of another is a sorrow as keen as though that weakness were our own.”

—William F. McDowell.

Alternate Reading: Revelation 3: 14-22.

Nobility

True worth is in being, not seeming—
In doing each day that goes by
Some little good—not in the dreaming
Of great things to do by and by.
For whatever men say in their blindness,
And spite of the fancies of youth,
There’s nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.

We get back our mete as we measure—
We cannot do wrong and feel right;
Nor can we give pain and gain pleasure,
For justice avenges each slight.
The air for the wing of the sparrow,
The bush for the robin and wren;
But always the path that is narrow
And straight, for the children of men.

‘Tis not in the pages of story
The heart of its ills to beguile,
Though he who makes courtship to Glory
Gives all that he hath for her smile.
For when from her heights he has won her,
Alas! it is only to prove
That nothing’s so sacred as honor,
And nothing so loyal as love!

We cannot make bargains for blisses.
Nor catch them like fishes in nets;
And sometimes the thing our life misses,
Helps more than the thing which it gets.
For good lieth not in pursuing,
Nor gaining of great nor of small,
But just in the doing; and doing
As we would be done by, is all.

Through envy, through malice, through hating,
Against the world early and late,
No jot of our courage abating—
Our part is to work and to wait.
And slight is the sting of his trouble
Whose winnings are less than his worth;
For he who is honest is noble,
Whatever his fortunes or birth.

—Alice Cary.

Alternate Reading: Revelation 3: 7-11.

Immortality

Immortality is a fact of man’s nature; so it is a part of the universe, just as the sun is a fact in the heavens and a part of the universe. Both are writings from God’s hand; each therefore a revelation from Him, and of Him, only not miraculous, but natural, regular, normal. Yet each is just as much a revelation from Him as if the great Soul of all had spoken in English speech to one of us and said, ” There is a sun there in the heavens and thou shalt live forever.” Yes, the fact is more certain than such speech would make it, for this fact speaks always—a perpetual revelation, and no words can make it more certain. As a man attains consciousness of himself, he attains consciousness of his immortality. At first he asks proof no more of his eternal existence than of his present life; instinctively he believes both. Nay, he does not separate the two; this life is one link in that golden chain of immortality; the next life another and more bright, but in the same chain. Immortality is what philosophers call an ontological fact; it belongs essentially to the being of man. To my mind this is the great proof of immortality: The fact that it is written in human nature; written there so plain that the rudest nations have not failed to find it, to know it; written just as much as form is written on the circle, and extension on matter in general. It comes to our consciousness as naturally as the notions of time and space. We feel it as a desire; we feel it as a fact. What is thus in man is writ there of God, who writes no lies. To suppose that this universal desire has no corresponding gratification is to represent Him not as the father of all, but as only a deceiver. I feel the longing after immortality, a desire essential to my nature, deep as the foundation of my being; I find the same desire in all men. I feel conscious of immortality; that I am not to die; no, never to die, though often to change. I cannot believe this desire and consciousness are felt only to mislead, to beguile, to deceive me. I know God is my Father and the Father of the nations. Can the Almighty deceive His children? For my own part, I can conceive of niothing which shall make me more certain of my immortality. I ask no argument from learned lips. No miracle could make me more sure; no, not if the sheeted dead burst cerement and shroud, and, rising forth from their honored tombs, stood here before me, the disenchanted dust once more enchanted with that fiery life; no, not if the souls of all my sires since time began came thronging round, and with miraculous speech told me they lived and I should also live, I could only say, “I knew all this before, why waste your heavenly speech?” I have now indubitable certainty of eterpal life. Death, removing me to the next state, can give me infallible certainty.

—Theodore Parker.

Alternate Reading: Revelation 3: 1-6.

Jesus Appears To Mary

Meanwhile Mary was standing close outside the tomb, weeping. Still weeping, she leant forward into the tomb, and perceived two angels clothed in white sitting there, where the body of Jesus had been lying, one where the head and the other where the feet had been.

“Why are you weeping?” asked the angels.

“They have taken my Master away,” she answered, “and I do not know where they have laid him.”

After saying this, she turned round, and looked at Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.

“Why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” he asked.

Supposing him to be the gardener, Mary answered:

“If it was you, Sir, who carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away myself.”

“Mary!” said Jesus.

She turned round, and exclaimed in Hebrew:

“Rabboni!” (or, as we should say, Teacher).

“Do not hold me,” Jesus said; “for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my Brothers, and tell them that I am ascending to him who is my Father and their Father, my God and their God.”

Mary of Magdala went and told the disciples that she had seen the Master, and that he had said this to her.

Jesus Appears To The Apostles

In the evening of the same day—the first day of the week—after the doors of the room, in which the disciples were, had been shut for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said: “Peace be with you”; after which he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Master. Again Jesus said to them: ” Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me as his Messenger, so I am sending you.”

After saying this, he breathed on them, and said:

“Receive the Holy Spirit; if you remit any one’s sins, they have been remitted; and, if you retain them, they have been retained.”

—John.

Sunset And Evening Star

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne or Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

—Alfred Tennyson.

All Is Well

I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.

But who shall so forecast the years
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand through time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?

—Alfred Tennyson.

Alternate Reading: Revelation 2: 8-11.

The Continuity Of Life

Jesus plainly teaches that the next life is a continuation of the present on a higher level, that it will be itself a continual progress. When He referred to the many mansions in His Father’s house, He may have been intending rooms—places where those who had been associated together on earth may be gathered together; but He may be rather intending stations—stages in that long ascent of life that shall extend through the ages of ages.

Does not this conception of the future solve a very dark problem—the lives that have never arrived. Besides the man whose gifts have been laid out at usury and gained a splendid interest, are others whose talents have been hid, not by their own doing, but by Providence. They realized their gift; they cherished it; they would have used it; but for them there was no market. Providence, who gave them wings, placed them in a cage. Round us on every side are cramped, hindered, stillborn lives—merchants who should have been painters, clerks who should have been poets, laborers who should have been philosophers. Their talent is known to a few friends; they die, and the talent is buried in their coffin. Jesus says “NO!”

It has at last been sown for the harvest; it will come into the open and blossom in another land. These also are being trained—trained by waiting. They are the reserve of the race, kept behind the hill till God requires them. They will get their chance; they will come into their kingdom,

Where the days bury their golden suns
In the dear hopeful West.

The continuity of life lifts the shadow also from another mystery—the lives that have been cut off in their prime. When one is richly endowed and carefully trained, and has come to the zenith of his power, his sudden removal seems a reflection on the economy of God’s Kingdom. Why call this man to the choir celestial when he is so much needed in active service? According to Jesus, he has not sunk into inaction, so much subtracted from the forces of righteousness. He has simply gone where the fetters of this body of humiliation and embarrassment of adverse circumstances shall be no longer felt.

—John Watson.

Alternate Reading: Jude 1: 3-25.

The Resurrection Of Jesus On the first day of the week, early in the morning, while it was still dark, Mary of Magdala went to the tomb, and saw that the stone had been removed. So she came running to Simon Peter, and to that other disciple who was Jesus’ friend, and said to them:

“They have taken away the Master out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him!”

Upon this, Peter started off with that other disciple, and they went to the tomb. The two began running together; but the other disciple ran faster than Peter, and reached the tomb first. Stooping down, he saw the linen wrappings lying there, but did not go in. Presently Simon Peter came following behind him, and went into the tomb; and he looked at the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth which had been upon Jesus’ head, not lying with the wrappings, but rolled up on one side, separately. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, went inside too, and he saw for himself and was convinced. For they did not then understand the passage of Scripture which says that Jesus must rise again from the dead. The disciples then returned to their companions.

—John.

Why Seek The Living Among The Dead?

“The Lord is risen indeed,
He is here for your love, for your need—
Not in the grave, nor the sky,
But here where men live and die;
And true the word that was said:
‘Why seek ye the living among the dead?’

“Wherever are tears and sighs,
Wherever are children’s eyes,
Where man calls man his brother,
And loves as himself another,
Christ lives! The angels said:
‘Why seek ye the living among the dead?'”

—Richard Watson Gilder.

The Death Of Jesus

Afterwards, knowing that everything was now finished, Jesus said, in fulfilment of the words of Scripture:

“I am thirsty.”

There was a bowl standing there full of common wine; so they put a sponge soaked in the wine on the end of a hyssop-stalk, and held it up to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he exclaimed:

“All is finished!”

Then, bowing his head, he resigned his spirit to God.

It was the Preparation Day, and so, to prevent the bodies from remaining on the crosses during the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a great day), the Jews asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies removed. Accordingly the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man, and then those of the other who had been crucified with Jesus; but, on coming to him, when they saw that be was already dead, they did not break his legs. One of the soldiers, however, pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water immediately flowed from it. This is the statement of one who actually saw it—and his statement may be relied upon, and he knows that he is speaking the truth—and it is given in order that you also may be convinced. For all this took place in fulfilment of the words of Scripture—

“Not one of its bones shall be broken.”

And there is another passage which says—

“They will look upon him whom they pierced.”

The Burial Of Jesus

After this, Joseph of Ramah, a disciple of Jesus—but a secret one, owing to his fear of the Jews—begged Pilate’s permission to remove the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him leave; so Joseph went and removed the body. Nicodemus, too—the man who had formerly visited Jesus by night—came with a roll of myrrh and aloes, weighing nearly a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen with the spices, according to the Jewish mode of burial. At the place where Jesus had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a newly-made tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because of its being the Preparation Day, and as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.

—John.

The Recompense Of Death

When I was laid in my coffin
Quite done with Time and its fears,
My son came and stood beside me—
He hadn’t been home for years;
And right on my face came dripping
The scald of his salty tears;
And I was so glad to know his breast
Had turned at last to the old home nest,
That I said to myself (in an underbreath):
“This is the recompense of Death!”

—Susie M. Bates.