Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Psalms 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

On God’s Friday, Stawell heard Australian spirituality described in the words of historian C. Manning Clark as “a shy hope in the heart”. As Australians, we are not known to blow our trumpet in the world too much, unless it involves something sports-worthy on the global stage: mostly we are a people who like to go unnoticed in the world; we don’t like tall poppies, and we don’t like being told what to do. Australia is not a shy nation, we never have been; but as citizens of the world we are far less brash than our nasal accents and the boisterous singing of our countrymen in European pubs might suggest. We live in a lucky country, (a phrase which was originally an insult, as if convict scum like us don’t deserve golden soil and boundless plains to share), and we like to think of ourselves as a nation of battlers, pioneers, diggers, and vanquishers only so far as we have made a go of it. We are hard-fought survivors not empire builders; we are not flashy, and we dislike those who are. It is in view of this that Clark addressed the spirituality of Australia: we are not a nation of showy preachers, we are not Americans; we are not a nation of lofty cathedrals and bells and smells, we are not Europeans. Even as it is possible to find the showy and the lofty in some Australian churches, for the most part our churchgoing is local and hidden. We are quietly confident that we are on the side of right: like Crocodile Dundee we believe in a Jesus who has fishermen for mates, and we reckon he’d like us because of that. How much of this view of Australia is true, how much of it is stereotype, and how much of it was once true but is no longer so in an Australia whose culture now better resembles the northern hemisphere than it does the Northern Territory is not for me to say. We’ll leave that to the sociologists, I’m a preacher; but it’s an idea worth exploring.

So, what is this shy hope in our hearts? Is it allowed for Christianity to be “a shy hope” at all: after all isn’t Christianity all about witnessing and boldness? Isn’t our call to extroversion, extravagance, and exaltation? Aren’t Christians supposed to be the Strayan tourists in the world, loud, brash, bold, and publicly celebrating in season and out of season? Well, maybe not.

The Bible demonstrates that the people of Jesus are to be confident but not flashy. In today’s set reading from Psalm 16 we hear a song of trust and security in God. Those who trust in the Lord in reliant assurance will live lives of delight, confidence, and joy. This is how we are to be. This confident reliance upon God is the Australia of the shy hope.

In John 20, following from last Sunday’s reading and returning to the events of the evening of Easter Day, Jesus appears to the ten, greets them with shalom and breathes the Holy Spirit onto them, imparting to the Church the power to forgive. The purpose of the gospel is later summarised as being that those who hear it, without seeing, will believe that Jesus is Messiah, and that having heard and believed the message, the life of trust in Christ brings an abundance of life. It isn’t fair that Thomas, who meets Jesus a week after Easter, (that’s today), deserves the title of “doubter”. Thomas is no different to the other men. Only a week ago these men had not believed the testimony of Mary; indeed they had locked themselves away in terror until they saw Jesus personally, miraculously enter their locked room. Jesus demonstrated grace in showing himself 1:1 to Thomas, as he had done on Easter day to the other ten. In the same way that the revelation was given to eyewitnesses who then went and spoke of what they had seen to others who were never given the opportunity to see, so now we have The gospel according to John to tell us that even though Jesus has ascended (which John does not record at all) all who read what John wrote can believe on the evidence of the evangelists.

Seven weeks after that first appearance of Jesus to the ten Peter stands up on the day of Pentecost, the Jewish festival celebrating the giving of the ten commandments at Sinai, and he addresses the people he calls Israelites. As in Peter’s day, so in ours, the Israelites were native Jews who were not priests or Levites. Peter is literally addressing the crowd, the common people, when he tells them the story of Jesus and how his ministry amongst them had carried the evidence of God’s favour in powerful action. God obviously blessed and was in favour of the work of Jesus, says Peter, but you Israelites, you mob of common folk, you handed him over to the Romans and the Romans killed him; Peter doesn’t pull his punches here. Perhaps he is bold in the Holy Spirit’s anointing, perhaps he’s an unschooled fisherman and doesn’t know how to be polite in public speaking; it’s probably a bit of both, but at least he’s speaking plainly. In his blunt way he goes on to that the same power that worked through Jesus in his life, God’s power, the power which then raised Jesus from death and continues to attest to his identity; that same power now courses through Peter and the 120. And by that power, God’s direct empowering of them, the Jesus group proclaims Jesus as Messiah even as David in his day proclaimed the messiah as the message of the Lord God. The power of God in Jesus the Christ makes his disciples bold; they are confident and joyous in the face of continued life on earth. “We have seen Jesus raised,” says Peter, “therefore, we are confident and no longer hiding in locked rooms afraid of what the Priests, Levites, and you Israelites might do to us.”

This is supposed to be true of us today. As Christians living in Australia in 2026 we can live without the terror of Jewish authorities; indeed we live without terror of any authorities. In part this is because of how Australia operates as a secular democracy, but it is also because we are each filled with the spirit of God, and we live a life of freedom and confidence because of “Christ who liveth in me”. The big story of the Hebrew scriptures carries an overarching message of the fulfilment of a promise for home: here we hear as God tells Peter’s Israelite audience the same story of God’s faithfulness to Jesus. Jesus has been redeemed from the exile of death, into everlasting life in the land of promise.

In a letter attributed to him Peter extends the promise of God revealed in the resurrection (rebirth) of Jesus to all who trust in Jesus. We, like the risen Christ, are reborn into a living hope, and into the promise of abundance in Heaven and protection on Earth. Life will be hard in days to come, there is no hiding from that fact, but God has your back and you can trust with full confidence in the promise given to you. Let the fires of the world burn away the rubbish, let that happen because you know that there is something precious within you just waiting to get out. Although you have not seen him you love him reads 1 Peter 1:8, fulfilling what Jesus said in John 20:29.  So, as early as the middle of the first century the discipleship thing is seen to be working in the Church: there are second generation believers who have heard about Jesus from the eyewitnesses and believed in their testimony. Peter and the eleven, and the other members of that first 120 on the day of Pentecost, and Paul, and others who saw the risen Christ went on to tell the story to others who never saw Jesus, and those others believed what they were told. And they told others, and they, and they, until in our day we have no-one who saw the risen Jesus, or even met the apostles in person, but we have believed the message of Jesus in our billions.

This is the shy hope in our hearts. We have confidence that God loves the world in which we live. We have seen and heard evidence of that love in a Bethlehem barn, a Roman cross, a garden tomb, and the eyes of the woman or man who told each of us that story and we believed it. It is a shy hope, almost unbelievable, but it is a sure hope. Amen.