Sunday, April 3, 2016

Monday's a'comin': Living Forgiveness in a Post-Resurrection World ~ John 20:19-23


19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
Jesus and Thomas

As I read this passage over and over again and poured over commentaries this past week I was surprised by what many scholars principally worried over and what they didn’t and how their partisan identity shaped their reading. Many of them talked endlessly about the “locked door.” Why was it locked? What was the point? Fear? Persecution? Or was it about Jesus’ resurrected body which could now do amazing things – like walk through locked doors? They also worried about the receiving of the Spirit by Jesus breathing on the disciples. What about Pentecost? Was this a partial giving of the Spirit? Was this symbolic and metaphorical rather than functional? Did John know about Luke’s story? Or who was this power of forgiveness given to? The 11 (sans Judas) or more? All Christians? Lots of spilled ink but a real failure to see the gorilla. Yes, that’s what I said – the gorilla. I’m referring to recent research on paying attention and a short video in which six people-three in white shirts and three in black shirts-pass basketballs around. Participants are asked to keep a silent count of the number of passes made by the people in white shirts. You can watch the video at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo
At some point, as you've guessed or seen, a gorilla strolls into the middle of the action, faces the camera and thumps its chest, and then leaves, spending nine seconds total on screen. After it’s over the participants in the study are asked how many times the ball was passed. And then they are asked if they saw the gorilla – on average, only 50% or less respond, “yes.” Would you see the gorilla? Where is the gorilla in this text? What’s that thing that truly stands out? It’s not the locked door nor the breathing of the Spirit by Jesus – it’s his claim that we have the power to forgive others. That’s the gorilla in the room. And that’s what I would like to talk about today.

What’s this forgiveness that Jesus talks about? What is this gorilla in the room?

1.    Jesus is telling us that forgiveness begins with us and is the job responsibility of the resurrection. To say that this passage is difficult and puzzling is hardly an overstatement. Apparently, even the disciples and Jesus himself shared this sentiment because he spoke “peace” to these disciples twice, no less! The first time, to reassure them as he miraculously appears and the second time, as a preemptive measure for a job they now have to perform. The resurrection, in other words, wasn’t simply a reality to celebrate but also a wonderful gift that demanded a great amount of personal responsibility. Isn’t that always how life works – the most beautiful gifts always demand the most of us. The new grandchildren for Sandi and Mike Prather as well as Don and Martha Johnson – what gifts and oh, how much work. And the best gifts also demand a conversion.



Forgiveness begins when we look at his wounds, hear Jesus speak “peace,” and unlock our doors. It’s our response to being shown and being sent by Jesus (20-21). It’s the recognition that we must first be released from our own prison of fear, unforgiveness, and alienation. We need to be liberated from our own locked room before we can even begin to liberate others. We cannot lead others where we haven’t been.  We need to realize what Nelson Mandela realized: “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.” Have you allowed Jesus to liberate you? Have you seen his wounds and accepted his words of "peace to you."?

We don’t unlock our doors because the ministry of forgiveness is a safe ministry. We unlock our doors because the One who conquered even death frees us and sends us. We are his agents. Jesus wants agents and not simply believers – agents are people invested with a task. And Sunday we can celebrate but on Monday we’ve got something to do – forgiveness. Forgiveness is Monday theology, a theology in the trenches. I so often imagine that I’m commissioned for a moral task but it turns out to be a mystical one of releasing fearful people held captive in locked rooms, often by themselves.



2.    Jesus words about forgiveness, however, reminds us that it can’t be just about you. The Christian life is not a me and Jesus life or even a life yet to come but about a community of forgiveness in real time. Consider Matt. 5:23-24: “if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.” In the Sermon on the Mount – Jesus’ ethical teaching on how to behave he points out that forgiving others is more important than worship, even more important than assuring yourself of your own forgiveness (that’s what happens at altars.). Why is this so? Why is forgiving others so important to Jesus?

Imagine that you are a parent with two small children at a playground.[1] Your older child gets frustrated with the younger one and punches that kid. You jump up and scold the older one, who, feeling bad, looks at you and says, “I’m sorry.” What would you do in that situation?

I imagine you would say, “I understand that and I love you – nothing changes that – but you need to go say, ‘sorry’ to your sister over there.” As parents, we can forgive our child but that forgiveness will not automatically fix the other relationship. It can, however, empower our older child who feels loved even when he has done something wrong to do the same for his sibling.

I think this is what Jesus is trying to say to us. We are forgiven by what he has done – because of his death and resurrection we are assured of God’s love and faithfulness and that our sins are forgiven by God. He shows us his wounds for us! However, now we are released, sent, to live out that forgiveness with each other and that forgiveness is not incidental but the very glue of our life together and if you don’t get that right in this life – you will have to get it right in the next. Why? Because salvation is not primarily an individual thing but always an “us” thing. Jesus doesn’t aim for a lone-sinner-saved-by-grace sort of group but seeks to create a community of forgiveness (c.f. Isaiah 61:1-4; 1 Peter 2:9-10). What unlocked this this text for me was linking Jesus’ statement to the book of 1 John, which tradition tells us, was also John the Apostle. And 1 John, I believe, is the very working out of Jesus’ statement on forgiveness in the confines of the church. 1 John 4:20-21 states, 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.” Salvation, eternal life, is a corporate life, a relational life that begins in Jesus but which also must be worked through us. Otherwise, our belief about Jesus, even our own personal forgiveness, is a lie. We don’t believe it ourselves.

So imagine that I sin against Jack. If Jesus’ words have any force then I better get right with Jack. My reconciliation with Jack is not optional but deeply intertwined with my own feelings about God and God’s whole project of forgiveness of bringing people together, the near and the far, the Jew and the Gentile, male and female, slave and free. And my ability to grasp that – to believe in Jesus’ sacrifice – connects with my ability to forgive others, to be reconciled. I can’t say that I love God and don’t love Jack. I can’t say that I believe in Jesus’ sacrifice for my sins and not practice forgiveness myself.

The Gospel message is not one in which I can say, “Jesus has forgiven me, so I can forget it.” This is far too vertical a vision of forgiveness, lacking any sense of the geometry of the cross involving both our vertical relationship with God and horizontal relationship with others. Amazing grace is not a way to avoid honest human relations, but to redo them – gracefully – for the liberation of both sides. My personal guilt, in other words, is not all that matters. That would be self-serving and hardly in keeping with being an agent of Jesus. A loving question and much more in line with the Spirit of Jesus and his ministry is to ask, “How can I free others from theirs?” This will also cause us to ask the question, to whom must I seek forgiveness from? This may take a while – an entire lifetime.

Jesus’ teaching here is a wonderful incarnation of his ministry, which keeps Christianity grounded, honest, relevant, and focused on God’s global project of saving others instead of just ourselves (1 John 2:9). Go back read 1 John and remember that God’s project of forgiveness is always a “we” project. It begins, however, in this room. Don’t worry the door is not locked but if you leave without offering or receiving forgiveness from someone here it might as well be.

3.    Finally, Jesus words and actions turn victims into powerful priests. A quick aside – this text and sermon are meant to serve as a theological platform for forgiveness and reconciliation and not necessarily a “how to” do this. That would require more than one sermon or even what one person could advise upon. Sins are not all the same and some of you have endured awful things, which require a sensitivity and discernment that should not be rushed in your journey toward forgiveness. Yet, it’s interesting that we often define ourselves in the church as “forgiven.” Jesus, however, defines us as those with the priestly ministry of forgiveness. And that this power to forgive functions as the ground for our being for our life in Christ, which is why this act mirrors the first creation where God breathed into humanity the breath of life (Genesis 2). And priests primarily aren’t the forgiven, thought that’s certainly true, they are forgivers. As such, Jesus’ words and actions offer power to victims in two ways. First, they aren’t simply commanded to forgive but given the responsibility and power to do so. The word “retain,” krateo, is a powerful word, which means to “take hold of, lay hands on, seize, bring under one’s power.” It means that we can decide when or where and how this forgiveness will happen. But make no mistake, it can’t be “if.” We are his agents – we do His will and not simply our own. His wounds are also for them. In some way, I like to imagine that we are not seizing the sin per se but the person, attempting to help them see what their actions or words have done. Second, by breathing out the spirit onto disciples, Jesus reminds us that we don’t have to do it alone on our own strength or power. And when we do – the earth itself will shake, the doors will unlock. What might this forgiveness sound like? Listen to this http://www.npr.org/2015/07/17/423549790/at-the-end-of-a-murder-sentence-a-redemption-forged-from-forgiveness


What kind of power am I talking about? The power to turn murderers into sons. What if we took this to jail? What if we took this to the streets?



So where are you in this drama of forgiveness?



[1] I borrowed the idea for this analogy from the blog “Experiemental Theology,” though I tweaked it – making the children belong to the same parent.

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