The Power of Forgiveness

Text: John 20:19-23

Focus: Forgiveness

Function: To help people see the power of forgiveness

¹⁹When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, 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.”

I have read and preached this passage several times and because of the reading of it, I never really noticed that this appearance of Jesus to the apostles was also on Sunday.

He had a busy day when: he rose from the dead, he appeared to Mary, and then for some reason, he took a long walk with two other disciples as they were returning home to Emmaus. It was a 10 to 12 mile walk depending on how accurate our reckoning of their measuring system was.

After that walk, he broke bread with them and then disappeared.

So then, they, the two disciples, returned to Jerusalem to tell the apostles that they had seen the risen Lord. Then they heard the wonderful story of Jesus and Mary in the garden.

I can imagine that by the time the evening had come the excitement and realization among the disciples was really beginning to grow.

And in the middle of that excitement, Jesus suddenly appears in front of them.

The first words out of his mouth, as he is addressing the entire group, probably more than just the 12 apostles because it included at least the two men from Emmaus and from the book of Acts, we read that they were all hiding out together, so the two Mary’s were most certainly there as well. And those first words to this group of faithful followers were this: “Peace be with you…”

I can imagine that they might have suspected that he was a ghost because of his sudden appearance. The text says they didn’t recognize him until he showed them his wounds.

Remember, Mary didn’t recognize Jesus’ resurrected body until Jesus spoke her name and then she knew that it was the one she was pining for. I don’t mean in a romantic relationship, but an intense one that was healing and restoring her from her brokenness.

The two disciples didn’t recognize Jesus until he broke bread with them. Then they knew. They must have broken bread with him before he was raised and the familiarity of Jesus’ actions confirmed what they had been suspecting.

So, here they all are, in the room and suddenly a stranger appears to them, miraculously, we presume, and the first words that he gives them are given to assuage their fears. Peace be to you. I love it when during contemplation and meditation, I sense the Spirit of God whispering the same words in my ear. It has happened a few times. I wish my prayer life was disciplined enough for that to happen more often.

They were hiding for fear of the Romans, afraid because this man, who claimed to be setting up a greater kingdom than Caesar’s, had just been caught up in a Roman display of their absolute power of life, death and torture over those that they had conquered. And they justified it by calling it the peace of Rome.

Jesus refused to fight when he said he could call 10,000 angels to defend himself and willingly let they kill him in order to show us that the kingdoms of this earth are temporary and the way of God, doing justice, loving one’s enemies, even the Romans who oppressed them, loving mercy and walking in quiet submission to God are the true paths to peace. Both in the human heart, and in human governance over societies.

Jesus speaks peace to the entire world.

Peace, Jesus gives us real peace.

And that wasn’t all he gave them during this encounter.

I have to continue to remind myself that the kingdom of God is peaceable.

After they accepted that it was indeed Jesus, risen from the dead, because of the wounds on his body, they rejoiced and Jesus gives them a second aspect of this gift of peace.

It was and is the Holy Spirit of God herself living inside of anyone who trusts in Jesus.

He gives them the Holy Spirit and with that, he gives them the authority to forgive sins and withhold sins.

I could have titled the sermon, The Power of Peace, but this forgiveness thing, and the authority given to us is pretty profound.

When Jesus forgave sins, the religious leaders who were against him condemned him for doing it because they said that only God can forgive sins. They called it blasphemy. I don’t believe there is any scripture that actually teaches that only God can forgive sins. But it seems to make sense. We believe that God is the ultimate judge and we believe that God will judge with mercy. And we believe that only God is wise enough to be able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the hearts of the people that God is judging. All of that makes sense, but none of it is actually spelled out in the Jewish and/or Christian scriptures.

Jesus forgave people and then told the apostles to forgive and he gave them, what appears to be divine authority, to forgive sins.

“You forgive them” is the command.

We have been given the power and the authority to forgive.

Now, that isn’t consistent with protestant theology. Because of this teaching, the Roman Catholic church gives the priests the authority to forgive sins.

And I want to look in to that. They get the authority to forgive from this scripture. Protestants just ignore it, by the way. I like the concept that if we have the power to forgive sins, then we should be trained in it so that we do not “cheapen grace.” So a trained theologian can parse out differences and there are mortal and venial sins that carry different weights in the eyes of the RC church, and they make a lot of sense to me.

If.

Jesus went through a terrible ordeal on the cross, and he did it for us.

So, I say IF because although the price that Jesus paid for our restoration to God was his very life and that was not cheap. We can’t turn around and make grace expensive than what God intended.

God gives God’s mercy freely to everyone who asks it. It is free, but not cheap. And we can’t make it more expensive by adding to the command to love one another as ourselves by codifying a bunch of rules so that we know who is in and who is out.

Jesus’s command here is to carry on the mission that he had already started of bringing people into the kingdom of God that the self-righteous folks didn’t think belonged.

And sadly, there is the authority to deny grace to those that we don’t think deserve it.

Now I really wrestle with the last part of this command. I almost wonder if it got added into the text by a scribe who, just like the self righteous religious leaders that condemned Jesus, couldn’t accept that certain people could be saved.

The more I follow Christ, the more I am convinced that the tent that Jesus has is a lot bigger than I can imagine. I would not be surprised if it went even to the other religions which also teach that we should love others as we love ourselves. It is a pretty common theme in the world’s religions.

And story after story, time after time, he tried to teach the self righteous that the way included those that they wanted to exclude.

The move of the Holy Spirit throughout the church age has been to bring the Church into a place where more and more people are welcome.

Because it is in community where the Holy Spirit brings us into the presence of Christ Himself.

God is love and God wants everyone back in God’s family -loving God by loving others as well.

So who makes the rules as to who is in and who is out?

Jesus said, Don’t judge others. Doesn’t that mean that we cannot decide that their sin is worse than ours?

But throughout the ages the mission of God is to spread a bigger and bigger tent for people to join the family of God.

The early church suffered division because it was hard for some to understand this.

If you look at the OT you can see the importance of the Jewish ritual of circumcision.

There was a split in the first church over who was in and who was out based on whether or not they were following Jewish customs as gentiles or their own.

But before that split, Peter had a vision whereby God told him that the law about circumcision no longer applies when God sent Peter to preach to the gentiles.

Irv Heischman, the West Charlston Church of the Brethren pastor, pointed out to me that the Holy Spirit had them set aside a clear scriptural command so that we gentiles could be saved even though the scriptures say that the covenant of circumcision was permanent.

There was a group of early Christians who just couldn’t accept that God would change God’s mind about this when it really was a big deal in the OT.

And yet God opened the door for us to come in.

For the principle of inclusion, God set aside the command of scripture and now we are saved.

And the command is right there. All we have to do is say yes to the principle that God wants everyone to come to the knowledge of God’s peace.

You forgive them and they will be restored is the principle here.

So what am I really saying here? Let me give you an example about inclusion:

Personally, I advocate on behalf of people with different sexual orientations. We are called to forgive, not judge. This is why I believe that the church should give full acceptance and participation in its ministries and activities to people who choose to marry someone from their own sex because that is they way, I believe, that God has made them.

We have the power to include them.

We are called to be the ones who offer God’s forgiveness to them.