Central West End Church Central West End Church

To have a name is to be a person: a unique self with meaning and dignity. Evil is anything that distorts and destroys your personhood. It erases your name. But in this passage, we see how Jesus restores it back to us.

Faith healing is a real thing. And it isn’t magic, unless you put your faith in someone other than Jesus. This passage considers the significance of vulnerability, prayer, and gratitude in healing.

With this question, Jesus doesn’t ask whether we have faith. He assumes we do. That might sound counterintuitive to many, but this passage takes us deeper into the real nature of faith.

We live in a weeping world, because everything we love is always dying. But we also live in a seeking world, because we long for something that cannot be touched by death. How does the resurrection of Jesus address this struggle?

“Why have you forsaken me?” Jesus didn’t ask this question of a human being. He asked it of God. What does it mean? To look at the cross is to come face to face with something we don’t want to look at, but desperately need to.

Eric Stiller - John 21:15-19