Peace and Forgiveness

Please Click Here For Sermon Video

John 20:19-23

One of the things I appreciate most about John’s Gospel is how the stories John chose to share with us tend to be very reflective of our experience of relationship with God. If I were to say in my own words how John tries to some up our experience of relationship with God it is that we abide in Jesus by virtue of the Holy Spirit abiding in us and abiding in Jesus we then actually share with him in his relationship with God the Father so that we abide in them and they in us. We find our place in the loving, familial inner relational self of the God who is best addressed with the personal pronoun “We”. The Holy Spirit binds us to Jesus, unites us to him, and Jesus is in the Father. We are in him, he is in us, he is in the Father and the Father is in him. We know the Father through him and we share in their relationship by the Holy Spirit’s abiding in us. Abide. Abide. Abide. It’s all about abiding.

If I had to off the cuff a definition for abiding, I would say it is imbibing in the presence of another, having a present relationship. I am here for you and you are here for me and we sense each other’s presence. In fact, having a relationship with God is what John would call “eternal life”. At John 17:3 John defines eternal life straight from the mouth of Jesus. Jesus is praying his great prayer for the church. Jesus says: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (NRSV). Knowing another person involves being in a relationship with them. But how does one have a relationship with another whom we cannot see? How does one get to know someone they can’t see.

To answer that question, we need to step back to the beginning of Easter evening and look at how John has chosen this encounter to inform our experience of Jesus. The disciples are hiding in fear. They are disillusioned. They are in that numb, shock stage of grief. They don’t know what to do. The one they had invested their lives in is gone. But then Jesus does something only God can do. He shows up resurrected from death. He shows up and says, “Peace be with you.” He shows them the scars. It’s really him. Jesus showed up. To have a relationship with God in and through Christ Jesus, Jesus must show up. Jesus must step into our lives with the breath of the Holy Spirit and give us his blessing of peace. There is nothing we can do to conjure him up or make that happen. He must reveal himself to us through the presence of the Holy Spirit. It helps to sit and give him a place, like an empty chair, to help us welcome the presence of his person. It helps to make a regular practice of reading Scripture during the time in which we give space to Jesus. It helps to talk to him, to let it all out. Keep at it. He will show up with Peace.

Jesus showing up in the presence of the Holy Spirit can so often happen in the presence of the community of faith at worship. Do you ever wonder why people in small churches always sit in the same place? We make jokes about this, but I am reasonably sure that it is because that spot in that particular pew has been the place where they have had some very powerful experiences with our Lord. It is sacred space. My sacred space. This is where I was when Jesus showed up.

Just as he did on that evening with his first disciples, Jesus the wounded and risen One also sends us forth in his ministry as the Father sent him. He empowers us with the power of his own life, the Holy Spirit, to carry it out. We need to notice how he defines his ministry in terms of forgiving or not forgiving the sins of others. One of the key components in true Christian spirituality is working at the practice of forgiving. A lot of what floats around as spirituality today is simply learning how to conjure up feel good brain chemistry. But, the peace Jesus gives us drives us to make peace in our relationships with others. Almost always, if we are not at peace in ourselves it is because we are not at peace with those closest to us. Jesus pushes those who follow him in the spiritual practice of forgiveness.

The concept of forgiveness is a tricky one. I say that because what the Bible means by forgiveness isn’t exactly what we think forgiveness means. We think of forgiveness as a transaction involving apology. The wrongdoer must hopefully be remorseful, apologize, and want to change. The one wronged must not bear a grudge against the wrongdoer, accept the apology, and try to keep friendship. The Bible’s a little different here.

The Hebrew word we usually translate as forgive actually means to pick up and carry; to bear the burden of another. On the Day of Atonement in ancient Israel, the day they dealt with the sins of the people, one of the rituals they did involved what we call a Scapegoat. The High Priest would place his hands on a goat and whisper the sins of the people into its ear, thus transferring the sin to the goat. They then lead the sin-laden goat off into the wilderness and let it go so that it could be destroyed by whatever was out there. By the death of the scapegoat the sins of the people were destroyed in death as well. Forgiveness involves our listening to the shameful stuff of others and not rejecting them, but rather embracing them to restore their dignity. Shame can only be relieved by touch, be personal physical contact, the touch that says we are still connected. You are not rejected. It is in the way we are physiologically wired. Shame is only relieved by the embrace of others. Forgiveness is I take your shame to myself in this embrace and I do not reject you and there the shame dies. Shame is not cured without affection.

I’m reminded of a story in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that gives us a good image of forgiveness as bearing the shame of others. Four men are carrying a paralyzed man on his mat to Jesus to be healed. The crowd around the house where Jesus is teaching is huge. So, they climb on the roof and make a hole in the tiles and lower the man down on his mat and then they picked him up on his mat and carried him to Jesus. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all three say that it was when Jesus saw the faithfulness, the efforts of the men, that he told the man on the mat his sins were forgiven. They were carrying him, bearing him as a burden, in all his brokenness, lameness, and shame to Jesus so that he could be healed. They touch his may. They touch him. They carry him in the weight of his shame to Jesus where he can be restored. That’s forgiveness.

I don’t think in this passage from John that Jesus is simply telling his disciples to forgive those who have wronged them rather than bear a grudge. I believe he is telling them to get involved in the shame-filled muckiness of the lives of others and bear them to himself where they can be healed and transformed like the paralyzed man becoming able to pick up his mat, his shame, and go home.

So how does a small congregation of elderly people who sit in the same pew week in and week out go about bearing others in their sinfulness to Jesus where they can be healed? Prayer is the place to start. Let me share with you a prayer an elderly matron of a small congregation once prayed out loud in a prayer meeting at church.

“Lord, I’m tired—so very tired. Please, Lord, I don’t want any advice. I’ve heard enough of that over the years. I don’t want to be told what I must do. I’ve been told often enough. Lord, I just want to sit here in quietness and feel your presence. I want to touch you and to know your touch of refreshment and reassurance. Thank you for this sacred little spot where I have heard your voice and felt your healing touch across the years. Thank you for these dear friends who share this pew with me. Together we have walked the tear-lined lanes. We know what it is to be lonely…we also know the comfort and strength of one another and the joy of your presence. O God, the child of my womb has become a drunk…Daily I watch her die before my eyes. Where have I failed, O Lord? How can I find the strength to continue? How can I help my dying daughter find herself?

O God, soon I will be going home to be with you and my husband. I am ready, even eager. But until that day help me to be a help to others. Give me strength to live this day and peace to enjoy it. Amen.”[1]

Friends, I think this prayer is what forgiveness looks like. The practice of forgiveness is in that question, “how can I help my dying daughter find herself?” This mother isn’t waiting for an apology. This is praying. She isn’t judging or abandoning her daughter. She’s asking how she can walk with her daughter in love to help her daughter find herself, find peace, find the Lord, find her home in the heart of God as beloved. Peace and forgiveness, they walk hand in hand. The peace of Christ be with you. Amen.




[1] Dudley, Carl S.; Effective Small Churches in the Twenty-first Century; Abingdon Press; Nashville; 2003; pg. 49.