A Powerful Peace

Text: John 20:19-31

Focus: Peace through forgiveness

Function: To help people be less judgmental

Form: GOK

Intro: In Matthew 20, there is a parable about land owner who hired people to work at different intervals along the day. He told the first group that he would give them a day's wage.

At the end of the day, those who were hired and worked only one hour received a day's wage while those who bore the heat and brunt of the day's work received the same wage.

They complained against the generosity of the master, but they all got at least that for which they agreed to work.

I buried a dear old saint once, her name was Margaret. Her mother was from “the trailer court” and like her daughter, she spent many regrettable years away from the community of the Church.

Both women gave in to pressure from their unbelieving husbands and regretted it.

At her funeral, the story of God's grace just kept coming back up, again and again, how both women had found their way back into the fold.

Upstairs in worship during the funeral, tears of joy flowed. But downstairs, gossip was happening and one person was offended that the women got to get away with sinning for years and they got the same reward as her.

Why, I wonder, do people resent grace?

Now, the lady who said those awful things was indeed a dear old saint and a wonderful Christian woman. But she, like me, was far from perfect and I thought about how we so readily tolerate gossip, a sin that perpetrates harm, and therefore, evil.

We, as a body politic in Christianity have certainly forgiven and excused the sin of gossip for years and again, gossip harms people.

And we hold other sins, what I am going to call “non-evil” and for the sake of this discussion, “sins” because we are dealing with commands based on principles from God's commitment to justice, love and mercy, but we hold these other things, things that are not evil in nature, like what happens in bedrooms, private business that has nothing to do with faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus and its corresponding change, by the Holy Spirit to become people who all of a sudden confess their brokenness and start living for the good of others.

Wow.

The passage says, “forgive sins and they will be forgiven.”

There really are no qualifiers on this as to which sins are to be forgiven and which ones are not except John mentions only one, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

I wish I could go back in time, be two places at once, and go into that basement and say “Forgive her, you have been forgiven. Don't you see?”

Sinning is committing acts of evil that break community with God and others.

This person left the church.

It hurts when people leave.

It wasn't a secret that she left the church to keep peace at home.

She was indeed broken and when she returned, she was more broken. We were pleased to be the place to help her find restoration and forgiveness.

The first promise of our passage is peace.

I imagine the fear that they are hiding for their lives an suddenly a ghost appears in their midst.

Scary stuff.

But maybe Jesus' offer of peace is more than that.

This is a powerful peace that transforms the way they will live from then on.

This is His big appearance to the 12.

This is the moment they are now hoping for since Mary, Peter and John have seen Him.

He gives them peace and (point toward floor dramatically) the very first thing he tells them is to forgive others without condition.

And, He gives them the actual power to do it.

Do it. Forgive. You have the power.

Sadly, the Church may have made a distinction about sin that just doesn't seem right to me.

It may have picked and chosen the sins that it will accept and forgive and the ones that it will not accept and forgive in order to maintain its own sense of being.

But simply maintaining our sense of being can begin to separate us from what Christ is doing in the world today.

As the Hymn says, “The Darkness will turn to the dawning...”

One of the first OT commands the Lord revoked was the separation between Jews and Gentiles, non-Jews.

And that began the process of breaking down barriers to everyone.

Sin is committing acts of evil that harm others.

Brokenness may be referred to by some as sin, but it is different. It is things like the exaggeration to the point of lying that a person may say about themselves in order to make a good impression.

It may be the unfulfilled psychological need that drives a person to deviant behavior, or prevent them from forming some healthy relationships.

Broken people are forgiven people who have found Jesus the Savior.

And He says one thing here, Forgive others.

The Church is for broken people. I am not going to judge what is brokenness for you, I am responsible for me.

It seems easier to forgive broken people who make mistakes born out of their brokenness. I understood the woman felt she needed to leave church to keep her husband happy.

I celebrate the kind of mercy that forgives her and I think that is what God means when God says “Love Mercy.”

I have wondered at times if the Church has elevated some of these “non-evil” sins in order to misdirect themselves from their own lack of obedience when it comes to extending mercy toward people with whom we do not agree.

I heard the N word in my home a few times. But we were told we were great Christians because we did not drink any alcohol, play with cards or ever go to movies.

And we were Christians. I met Jesus in that home. I was raised to love and trust Jesus in that home even though there was sin in that home and it was sin that at the time, the church was okay with.

That church, like this one and every other one, was made up of people who are broken and not yet perfect. They, indeed, We, are people who believe in Jesus as the Savior.

But sometimes, broken people make up rules to justify themselves and in the process, all of a sudden forget Jesus. And God loves us and brings us back.

Like, as I mentioned, justifying racism with tea-totaling.

That kind of judgment is exactly what Jesus was talking about when He condemned the lawgivers for making up human rules about sin that went way out of bounds about God's concerns.

Broken people sometimes make mistakes and need forgiveness.

So, there is one choice, stand forgiving.

But what about evil?

Well, ...even though racism is one of the biggest evils we have yet to over come in our society, we are gradually making progress. I have to forgive the one who used the N word, I need to, he is my father.

And God looks at everyone as family.

BOKO Harem has turned kidnapped Chibok girls into suicide bombers. They are our girls, can we not forgive them? Are they willing? Do they suffer from Stockholm syndrome where a cognitive dissonance compels them to empathize with, and then join their captors?

We have been given a powerful peace from Christ by our own forgiveness.

I conclude the message with this thought, we have been forgiven, forgive others.