John 20:19-31 (NRSV)
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." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
Declare Forgiveness
A sermon preached by Dr. Jon Burnham
at Batesville Presbyterian Church on April 23, 2006.
I declare to you, in the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. Saying that is one of the highlights of the service for me each week. It is such a relief that get it out in the open. After we've just confessed to sin on behalf of all humanity. Then to hear the blessed words ... I declare to you, in the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. And the pastor is not the only one who gets to declare forgiveness. God calls each baptized Christian to declare forgiveness.
More than once someone has confessed to me that they have not done all the sins in the prayer of confession. So they wonder if they are being hypocritical by asking forgiveness for something they haven't done. I do not dispute the fact that some of the sins for which we ask forgiveness are sins that we have never committed. But I know someone, somewhere did commit that offense against and his or her neighbor. As Presbyterians, we understand that during the prayer of confession we are praying on behalf of all humans. We are like priests confessing sin on behalf of all humanity. Perhaps you've heard the term "priesthood of all believers." We believe each baptized Christian is a priest of God. So the prayer of confession is when all the gathered priests of God, all the baptized Christians gathered in a sanctuary on a Sunday, confess sin on behalf of the entire human race. We confess the sin of all humanity because human beings are sinful.
We are sinful in thought, word and deed. Jesus once told some Pharisees who were very careful never to sin by breaking any law that they didn't have to break the law in order to sin. You are as you think, said Jesus. You don't have to commit adultery with a woman in order to sin. Just imagining being with a woman other than your wife is sin enough in itself. You don't have to kill someone to be considered a sinner in God's eyes, Jesus said. Your mere anger toward another person is considered sin in God's eyes. So according to Jesus' viewpoint we are all sinners. We sin in thought, word and deed. We, as individual human beings, are sinners.
But that is not the end of sin. Sin is like the bird flu we keep hearing about. It spreads from one continent to the next, from one species to the next, and we aren't sure how to stop it. Sin is like that. It spreads from one continent to the next and one person to the next and we don't know how to stop it. We can't stop the spread of sin and we can't keep from getting the infection. And sometimes groups of people commit sin. Nazi Germany sinned, as a nation, against the Jewish people. The South African government sinned against black citizens of that nation through a policy called apartheid. We won't name examples of our own nation's sins but we know there are many. True, there are Christians in our country whose national and political loyalties causes them to overlook or deny our nation's moral failures. Its injustices. But we know better. The realities of collective sin cannot be denied.
There is some good news here. There is some good news about sin. The good news is that Jesus practiced forgiveness of sins. You can see it in our text today. Just three days after he had been crucified on what we now call Good Friday, Christ arose from the dead on that first Easter morning. According to John's Gospel, it was Mary Magdalene who first encountered the risen Christ. And she told the other disciples who were huddled up in a safe house that she had seen the risen Christ. That night, the other disciples got the proof. For the risen Christ appeared to them. And what did the risen Christ say? Did he say, as he had reason to say, "What in the world have you people been doing for the last three days? I was taken captive in the Garden of Gethsemane and you all ran away like a bunch of scared chickens. Then I was tried by Pontius Pilate and you were nowhere to be found. I was nailed to a cross between two thieves and a few of you showed up to cry about it. Is that the best you could do?" No, the risen Christ did not "dress down" the disciples. Instead, the risen Christ built up the disciples. The first word the risen
Christ spoke to the scared disciples was not "Why!" It was "peace." Peace. Peace be with you.
Jesus comes to the disciples and offers the peace that comes from forgiveness. You may have felt that kind of peace before. It's the good feeling you get after an argument with your spouse, one that was your fault, and you ask for forgiveness and she or he says okay. That feeling of peace you get then is the kind of peace the disciples felt on that first Easter evening with the risen Christ.
But even beyond peace the risen Christ gives his disciples another gift. The Holy Spirit. He breathes Holy Spirit onto them and into them. The comforter. Guide. Deliverer. Teacher. The gift that keeps on giving. The Holy Spirit. Which is the spirit of Jesus Christ. The risen Christ, in effect, gives the disciples his own spirit. He gives them the greatest gift they could ever get. This is three days after they fell asleep while he prayed in the garden. Three days after they denied ever knowing him. Three days after their betrayal. The risen Christ comes to the disciples and he gives himself to them in a deep and real and spiritually mystical way. Now that, my friends, is forgiveness. And that is Jesus. And that is the risen Christ. And that is what we are to declare.
We are to declare the forgiveness of Christ. As if we still haven't gotten it -- as if we may be dull of understanding -- John's Gospel immediately gives us another account that demonstrates the forgiveness of the risen Christ. It is the story of a disciple named Thomas. This story takes place one week after the risen, forgiving Christ, appears to the disciples. Thomas wasn't there when the risen Christ appears to the other disciples. And Thomas is not buying their story. It sounds too good to be true. Thomas thinks he knows better. He won't be taken in. He's thinks he's smarter than the average disciple. So he tells the other disciples, the ones who have seen the risen Christ, "Listen, until I have seen his nail scarred hands and put my hand in his sword pierced side, I don't believe it." Well, the risen Christ must have gotten word about Thomas, so one week later he appears to Thomas. And notice how Jesus responds to Thomas. Instead of renouncing his lack of faith, instead of accusing him of doubt, instead of insulting him for requiring evidence for himself, the risen Christ focuses his attention on Thomas and says: "Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don't be unbelieving. Believe." The risen Christ offers himself, exposes himself, and challenges Thomas to believe.
Thomas said, "My Master! My God!" I wonder if Thomas was more astounded by the fact that Christ was indeed risen or by the fact that the risen Christ forgave his doubt and accepted him as he was.
Jesus said, "So, you believe because you've seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing."
And that, my friends, is where we enter the story. We do not get to see the risen Christ with our own eyes on this side of heaven. But we do get to experience the risen Christ in a myriad of other ways. Through the Holy Spirit. Our conscience. Our spiritual sense. We get to experience the risen Christ when we barely survive an accident that could have killed us. We get to experience the risen Christ when we witness the birthing of a baby. We get to experience the risen Christ in many ways the disciples never could because the risen Christ is with us through the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit.
When Jesus walked this earth with his disciples there were times when the disciples were not with Jesus and he was not with them. There were times, such as the time when the risen Christ appeared to the disciples, when all of them were not there. There were times when one of them, such as Thomas, was not present and so did not experience Christ. But now, through the power of the Holy Spirit, whose presence covers this globe like the oxygen we breathe, every Christian has access to the risen Christ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The risen Christ is present to each of us in a way he could not be when he walked the earth in human flesh. The risen Christ is with us always and every moment of every day. Even to the end of the earth.
The risen Christ is all about forgiveness. And the risen Christ has commissioned us to declare forgiveness to all God's creation. Everything broken will be put back together again. Everything twisted and tied up in a knot will be unloosed by the loving hands of our divine creator. Everything that is cracked wide open will be glued back together, or better yet, transformed into something greater than it was before. That is true for us. That is true for all humanity. We declare forgiveness. We speak it. We breathe it. This is real and eternal life in the way the risen Christ personally revealed it. We'll give it away. It's too good to keep it to ourselves. Declare forgiveness. This the truth that shoves us forward and takes us places we never thought we would go. Declare forgiveness. This is the truth that shows us miracles we never thought were possible. Declare forgiveness.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
