A New Humanity
A Reflection on John 20:19–31 for Easter 2A
LEVELLING UP
In another, much younger lifetime, when I used to play epic, role-playing computer and video games, I learned the glorious joy of ‘levelling up’. For those who have not been initiated into the mysterious world of gaming,1 ‘levelling up’ happens when your character manages to stay alive long enough, win enough victories, and amass enough wealth or magic or whatever is required to become stronger and better equipped to navigate the more difficult levels ahead. I am reminded of the scene in The Matrix Reloaded when Neo encounters a group of agents (computer code beings created to hunt and destroy humans) inside the matrix. After fighting them for a few moments, he realises that they are not as easy to defeat as they once were, and he comments to himself, “Hmmm…upgrades.”
But of course, upgrades don’t only happen in the world of technology. They are also a natural and necessary part of human life. We all know what it is to experience sudden leaps in our knowledge, insight, or skills that enable us to ‘level up’ in our work, a hobby, or even our relationships. For example, I will never forget the day when I suddenly saw how the fretboard of my guitar worked. I was new to the instrument and had been struggling to find a way to work out chords that I hadn’t previously encountered. As my fingers moved around familiar chord shapes, I discovered that I was able to recognise relationships that I hadn’t seen before. And then all at once, the patterns on my guitar revealed themselves to me. But I didn’t just uncover new information; I unleashed a new fluidity and freedom in my playing. It was a moment of being ‘upgraded’ as a musician.
Significantly, such ‘levelling up’ experiences often come in the midst of, or shortly after, times of crisis, struggle, or setback. It seems that no new thing can be born in our lives or our world without some kind of birth pains. I often quote Richard Rohr’s insight that transformation can really only come from either great suffering or great love—and the two are strongly related.2 Yet it is not only in our individual lives that this pattern plays out. It seems that before any great transformation happens in society or on a larger, global scale, great turmoil comes first as the birth pains of the new reality. Certainly, the biblical pattern is that new creation always arises out of chaos (Genesis 1:1-2). And this brings us to the resurrection.
The writer of John’s Gospel loves to link Christ’s life and message back to the Hebrew creation myth of Genesis.3 In the resurrection account of John 20:19–31, which is the Gospel reading for the second Sunday of Easter in all three years of the Revised Common Lectionary, Jesus appears in the chaos of the disciples’ grief and speaks a word of peace. He then breathes on them, the way God breathed life into the first human in Genesis 2:7.4 These images reveal the writer’s intention to show Jesus’ resurrection, and its impact on his followers, as a new creation—a new humanity—born out of the crucifixion. For John, the cross was not just the catalyst or the birth pains of this new resurrected humanity; it was an essential part of it. That’s why, when Jesus appeared to the disciples, he showed them his scars.
But it’s not just that Jesus was resurrected into a new, ’upgraded’ version of himself. It’s that through the resurrection, all of humanity has access to this new, ‘upgraded’ life. Or perhaps it’s not so new—it has always been there, because the life and presence of God has always permeated all of creation. The resurrection makes us aware of it and gives us access to experience it for ourselves. In the language of evolutionary mysticism, as Bruce Sanguin so eloquently puts it:
…we imagine that G_d/Spirit is, or if you prefer, is within, this impulse to evolve, and we are most truly ourselves when we are conscious of this impulse and have the wholehearted intention to be That which wants to evolve through us. To be “in Christ,” then, is to awaken to this cosmic identity, this Big Self, and to be the new creation that needs you/us in order to emerge.5
And so as we celebrate the Easter season, John invites us to awaken to and embody this “Big Self”, this new humanity, which is revealed and made available in Christ. But what does this mean in practical terms? What is the new humanity, and how are we to embrace it?
THE NATURE OF THE NEW HUMAN
John’s Gospel was probably the last of the four canonical Gospels to be written, although not long after Matthew and Luke (probably around 75–85 CE).6 This means that the trauma of the Roman sacking of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple (66–70 CE) would still have been fresh in people’s minds, and to confess faith in Christ would have been a dangerous act. Nevertheless, the writer states that the purpose of his Gospel was to lead people to faith in Christ (20:31).7 For John, as for all of the biblical writers, faith is not a mental process of agreeing with certain concepts or doctrines. Rather, in the words of Marcus Borg, it is about realising, actualising, or making real “the new way of being, the life under grace”.8 Or, to use another of his definitions of faith, it is beloving God such that we belive God’s principles, priorities, and purposes in the practicalities of our day-to-day routines and relationships.9 So this means, first of all, that the new humanity into which John is calling us is essentially embodied.
The second thing we have to recognise is that John’s new creation is the antithesis of the Roman Empire, or any human empire that may set itself up as the ultimate authority in our world and which claims our ultimate allegiance. As Simon Cross notes:
The crucifixion then is not just a meaningless death, rather it is the Roman (for which read ‘any’) empire exercising what it claims is its unquestionable and ultimate power: to kill. Control over life and death. That is what makes the state the state, really. The resurrection, on the other hand is a way of destabilising that claim to ultimate authority. Here the state’s “legitimate violence” is, in fact, neither final nor legitimate. It’s quite literally hollowed out. The ‘kingdom’ supersedes the state.10
John’s new humanity, then, embodies a way of being, relating, and ordering society that defies and subverts the power, prestige, and prosperity systems of our world that seek to recruit us to their ideologies and values. Believing (in Borg’s sense) in the resurrection, then, is about much more than asserting the factuality and historicity of an ancient miracle. It is, as Thomas must have realised when he demanded proof of Jesus’ resurrection, to change everything to conform to the new humanity that the risen Christ revealed. It is to ‘level up’ our understanding and experience of our personal and collective humanness. What we think about the resurrection is far less important than how we live when we realise that it is, in a far deeper way than mere facts, true.11
BELIVING AND BELOVING THE NEW RESURRECTION REALITY
In John’s resurrection narrative, when Jesus entered the locked room and appeared to his friends, he spoke words which radically and practically upgraded their humanity. Three times he pronounced, ”Peace be with you” (20:19, 21, 26 CEB), silencing the fear which was keeping the disciples imprisoned behind locked doors (20:19). In a world in which peace was defined by the Pax Romana, maintained by the violence and control of the Roman army, Jesus’ words were a subversive redefining of peace, moving it beyond the absence of war and competition. Rather, as he had stated in John 14:27, Jesus’ peace was completely unlike that of the world. It was a liberation from the old, hierarchical, domination-centred logic of empire, and it was a “direct challenge to the empire’s claim to define reality, truth, and legitimacy”.12 All of the Gospels link Jesus’ message and mission back to the Hebrew concept of shalom: a peace that “evokes a balanced and integrated ‘life to the full’” and that “deconstructs dominance patterns in religion, family, education, and government…and sees greatness in service instead of domination”.13
Flowing from this experience of peace, Jesus then commissioned his disciples to continue his mission, sending them out as he himself had been sent (20:21). The task he gave them was not to recruit people to a religion or organisation, but to share God’s liberating forgiveness. It is tempting to understand Jesus’ words as an invitation to withhold forgiveness from those whom we deem unworthy, or who have hurt us. But Eugene Peterson offers a more helpful way to understand what Jesus meant when he said, “…if you don’t forgive them, they aren’t forgiven”:
If you forgive someone’s sins, they’re gone for good. If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them? (John 20:23 MSG)
It is not that we now have the power to distribute God’s grace according to our whims and perspectives. Rather, Jesus is challenging us to recognise that when we withhold forgiveness, we rob both the other person and ourselves of the peace he offers. And so, once again, Jesus reveals the new humanity to be an upgrade from the “eye-for-an-eye” justice systems of our world, as it embodies radical grace and restoration for all.
Immediately before sending his disciples as agents of forgiveness, Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” There is much debate among scholars about whether this is John’s version of Luke’s Pentecost outpouring or a precursor. John places the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of his Gospel (2:13-17) rather than at the start of the passion narrative, and the closest he gets to Gethsemane and the Transfiguration is in 12:27-29. So it seems likely to me that the writer was using this moment of Jesus breathing on his friends to show the new humanity as filled and empowered by the divine Spirit.
The resurrection upgrade is not just about engaging and experiencing the world from a non-imperial set of values and priorities. It is also about recognising and tapping into resources and resilience that cannot be bought or made and that are not based on domination. The Spirit in John’s Gospel is a source of wisdom (16:13), comfort and guidance (14:15–17), and is the one who empowers the disciples to fulfil Jesus’ command to love one another and live in unity (14:15). This means that we cannot experience and embody the new humanity only as individuals. It requires us to participate in a new, unified, mutually loving and serving community. This is a community that still welcomes those who have questions, as the disciples did with Thomas before he had his own encounter with Christ. It makes space for those who fail, as they did with Peter, even before Jesus restored him. And it welcomes others into this new, upgraded, love-and-justice-based humanity as Jesus’ followers did as they shared the Gospel with their world. As I have written in the past:
When Jesus first appeared to the disciples in their locked room, he sent them out to continue his work, which included practicing forgiveness. This emphasises the extent to which faith, for Jesus, was about action. The call to believe without seeing, was not a call to a mindless faith. It was a challenge to live by what we believe—to follow Jesus in the way of love and justice that he proclaimed and lived—even when we don’t know for sure what the outcome will be. It is a challenge to be loving, generous, and peaceful in a hateful, stingy, and violent world, even if we never see the more compassionate society we long for. It is a challenge to love generously and unconditionally even if those we love never reciprocate or acknowledge our love. And it is a challenge not to waste time with unforgiven grudges, but to live the way of grace, love, and justice that Jesus has shown.14
CONSCIOUSLY UPGRADING
As our world goes through the terrible pains of birthing a more just, generous, and loving society—which I believe are also the death throes of destructive religious Nationalism15 and fundamentalism, at least in this era—we need to learn to live in ways that contribute to the new world being born. We need to recognise that our daily choices are the pebbles in the ponds of our relationships, neighbourhoods, and societies that ripple out, combine with, and magnify one another. These ripples have the potential to subtly reorganise our reality, and that means that one of the most important, subversive, and prophetic things we can do is to consciously and constantly seek to participate with God’s Spirit in ’levelling up’ our humanity to embody the resurrection life and mission of Christ.
So what can we do to make ‘levelling up’ a consistent spiritual practice in our lives? The following small, micro-practices can be highly effective in helping us to connect with, and stay mindful of, Christ’s resurrection life:
We can develop a habit of regularly checking in with ourselves to identify the ‘default frequency’ from which we are operating. We can notice whether we are allowing ourselves to be controlled and directed by fear, anxiety, anger, and revenge, or by love, trust, peace, and forgiveness. And then, if necessary, we can be intentional about addressing these concerns and shifting, even in small ways, to more liberating and life-giving frequencies.
We can nurture a daily practice of micro-forgiveness (releasing small slights and frustrations), micro-service (doing little things like listening or making tea as a kindness to those around us), and micro-love (expressing our appreciation and admiration for others or connecting briefly through touch, a massage, or breathing in sync).
We can include in our spiritual practices the meditative act of visualising our union with others and with the Earth. This can be taking a few moments from time to time to close our eyes and, using our imagination, identify the lines that connect us with our family, friends, and neighbours, and with the world and its inhabitants.
We can practice taking brief moments when we find ourselves in a crisis to ask ourselves, “What is seeking to be born in this moment?”, and then to seek to cooperate with the new, emerging life.
And finally, we can choose to nurture the habit of doing small actions that can add new, positive “ripples” to the pond of your family, neighbourhood, and society. When we can combine or create resonance between our ripples and those of others, so much the better. And then watch and notice how your reality shifts as those ripples expand outward.
The resurrection is not just an ancient miracle that happened to one person. It is the manifestation of a new, upgraded humanity that operates on a different frequency and by a different set of principles and priorities from that of the world around us. And it is an invitation for us to experience and embody this new humanity as we learn to ‘level up’ and live in alignment with the life and love of Christ. Perhaps Wendell Berry described this life best when he wrote:
So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world…Love someone who does not deserve it…
Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts…
As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.16
I must confess that I was never a devoted gamer, and my initiation, which was limited and short-lived, was into a much simpler and less immersive world of games than is available now.
Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, (The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009), EPUB, Chapt. 16.
Simon Cross, “Progressive reflections on the lectionary #108: John 20:1-18 - John’s resurrection story,” Simon Cross’s Substack, March 30, 2026; https://simonjcross.substack.com/p/progressive-reflections-on-the-lectionary-0ba.
Tom Wright, John for Everyone Part 2 (New Testament for Everyone), (SPCK, 2004), Kindle, 149.
Bruce Sanguin, The Way of the Wind: The Path and Practice of Evolutionary Christian Mysticism, (Viriditas Press, 2015), Kindle, Location 551.
Craig R. Koester, “Summary of John,” Enter the Bible, Accessed April 2, 2026; https://enterthebible.org/courses/john/lessons/summary-of-john/.
John van de Laar, Resurrection Now! A Liturgical Guide for Easter, (Sacredise, 2023), PDF, 14.
Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus & the Heart of Contemporary Faith, (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 115n.35.
Marcus Borg, Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power—And How They Can Be Restored, (HarperCollins, 2011), EPUB, Chapt. 10. Note ‘belive’ is my word adapted from Borg’s ‘belove’ and added to it to emphasise the embodied nature of biblical faith.
Cross, “Progressive reflections on the lectionary #108”.
van de Laar, Resurrection Now!, 14.
Cross, “Progressive reflections on the lectionary #108”.
Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything, (W Publishing Group, 2006), 150.
van de Laar, Resurrection Now!, 14–15.
While much is being said about Christian Nationalism at the moment, a recent article shows that “Messianic and apocalyptic elements of all three major Abrahamic faith traditions have been instrumentalised by increasingly authoritarian leaders in a global confrontation”. See Toby Matthiesen, “God on their side: how the US, Israel and Iran are all using religion to garner support,” The Conversation, March 26, 2026; https://theconversation.com/god-on-their-side-how-the-us-israel-and-iran-are-all-using-religion-to-garner-support-279337.
Wendell Berry, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” The Country of Marriage: Poems, (Counterpoint, 2013), Kindle, 14–15.