See the Lord and Be Glad

SOURCE:  Quoted in an email from The Foundation for Reformed Theology. April 10, 2020
KEYWORD:  Witness, sight, eye, seeing,

Karl Barth (1886-1968)--preacher, teacher, pastor, theologian--preached the following as part of an Easter sermon at the Basel prison on March 29, 1964.

"On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, 'Peace be with you'. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples became glad when they saw the Lord." John 20:19-20

"Dear friends, we were not there when the risen Jesus, in spite of all the folly and mourning of his disciples, in spite of these doors shut from sheer terror, came into their midst. We cannot see him now as directly as they could, nor shall we be able to see him like that until he comes to judge the living and the dead at the end of all time. But in our way, indirectly, that is in the mirror of the narrative and so of the witness, the confession, the proclamation of the first community, we too can and may see him here and now. Many before us, a whole race of men, have seen him in this and have become glad. For this very reason we celebrate Easter, the festival in memory of that day, to join those people, to see the Lord in that mirror, and so too become glad. Without seeing the Lord nobody can be glad. Whoever sees him will become glad. Why should this not happen here to us as well, to the little Easter congregation of prisoners in Basel's Spitalstrasse with their chaplain and their organist, with all the inmates and wardens of this institution and (after all, I suppose I belong here too) with the old professor who occasionally pays a visit here? All of us can see the Lord too. So all of us may become glad too. God grant that this may happen to us. Amen."

Karl Barth, Call for God: New Sermons from Basel Prison (London: SCM Press, 1967), p.  124.