Forgiveness: Bulldozers and Baltimore

Sermon 5.03.15

John 20:19-23

Real Life. Risen Life!

For these weeks since Easter we’ve been hearing the stories that are told in the gospels that witness to Jesus’ post-death existence.  Each scene we’ve heard includes Jesus appearing to his followers in completely unexpected ways – because, let’s face it, no one expects a once dead person to show up for a walk on the road, or hang out in gardens, or BBQ on the beach…but Jesus does all that and then some.

And each story is filled with seemingly small details that the gospel writers take great care in laying out for us – and one detail that has been catching my attention is all the running involved in the resurrection! After the people realize who Jesus is, alive and walking alongside them, they run like mad!

Two men walk the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus and Jesus appears teaching them for hours, entering a home and sharing a meal.  And when the disciples, who have unknowingly spent much of the day with their beloved teacher realize who is sitting at the table…they take off! Running to find the other disciples, running to tell them that Jesus is actually alive!

Just last week we heard Mary’s story – how she found the empty grave and went running to get others.  And then the first people she sees also go running.  They run to find people who will listen, they run to share their news – probably looking for validation and help as they wrestle with the experience of seeing Jesus, scars and all, living among them.   These could be flights of fear, they could be complete jubilation – it’s hard to know, but there is no denying that the vision of the risen Christ gets people moving.

And then, on the evening of the resurrection we get this story.  As light as fallen, the movement has ceased.  The yelling and story sharing turn to hushed, intense whispers and running stops and turns to bent postures for the followers of Jesus are terrified. Darkness has fallen on that Easter day and the disciples cower behind locked doors.

And still, the risen Christ appears.  Just has he appeared to Thomas who was doubting, just as he appeared to the disciples walking the road and grieving, just as he appeared to Mary who stared into the empty tomb confused and hurt and betrayed.  The risen One appears through the locked doors into a room of stillness and fear.

Peace be with you, he speaks.  All that running has paid off, their minds are sharp, they recognize Jesus immediately.  Still, no one moves. 

Jesus shows them his scars, proving his identity? Fulfilling the prophecy? Or perhaps, he is displaying his body with all the violence that has befallen him, all the injustice that cut into those scars and he speaks the response that can only come from new life…Peace be with you.

Still, no one moves.

Then Jesus breathes on them and gives them the power, breathes on them the authority, and speaks these empowering, yet very difficult words…

 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.

The marching orders for the church of the risen Christ have been received.  Now, with our vantage point of over 2,000 years of hindsight and history – I think it is safe to say these words have been used and mangled throughout time.  Acknowledging the differing viewpoints of the entire body of Christ around the world – these words are down right scary! Followers of Christ are given the authority to forgive and retain? Doesn’t Jesus know who he is talking to? A people, then and now, who are prideful and self-seeking.  A people who love sensationalized drama and getting ahead.  The human instinct to judge and label and exclude…to these people, (these people) Jesus says if you forgive, they are forgiven.  If you retain, they are retained.  

Forgiveness sounds different depending on who is speaking it.  Forgiveness requires different modes of confession and repentance depending on what church is offering it.  There have been and still are eras of the church when forgiveness required looking a certain way, pledging allegiance to an empire.  There have been eras when the authority of the church was wielded with blood and control and oppression.   And there throughout all these eras there are churches who are quiet, fearful, stingy with their authority, slow to share freedom and forgiveness with its people.  The charge to  offer freedom in the name of Jesus, also brings the capacity of inflicting deep pain in that same name.

 So, what does a church, fully risen and forgiven by the scarred and risen Christ look like and sound like? How is this forgiveness and retention really lived in our faith community?

Every time we worship we participate in an ancient practice most recently called, the sharing of the peace.  Here at Westwood it happens differently at every worship service, at 9AM is falls just after the prayers of the people, at 10:30AM it comes at the beginning of our worship and on Wednesday evening people are invited to share God’s peace as they are leaving. It may be our most flexible, yet consistent, worship practice.  

Today it’s a friendly face and a genuine handshake.  In its earliest form however, the sharing of the peace was seen as an act of worship which responds directly to Jesus’ teaching that one cannot approach the altar of God without first having reconciled with their brother and sister.  The sharing of the people was also meant to be a sharing of grace and forgiveness. This ministry we do to each other is far greater than a sociable handshake or a ritual of friendship.   We give to each other what we are saying: Christ’s own peace, just as Jesus did in that locked room.  In worship we are called to be reconciled to one another, to get our affairs with one another in order, before God.   We move around, shaking hands, offering greeting and Christ’s peace – and sometimes reconciliation does indeed come through these small gestures. But we all know that the deep healing we all are in need of and the profound forgiveness our world is seeking often takes big efforts, sweeping humility and  mass movements. 

Being unassuming, quiet Midwesterners, forgiveness so often looks like a shrug of the shoulders, the trite mummer of “Oh, its ok.”. With these socially acceptable words and movements we confine the gift of forgiveness into a controllable exchange, nothing more than a polite handshake. However, the forgiveness of the cross comes from a darker, more prevailing and more hopeful place than a shoulder shrug.

A few years ago, I was preparing to leave a darkened corner of my world, an environment filled with anger, shame and violence.  After leaving, it took two more years before I could really discuss it and as shared with a trusted pastor how deeply I longed for reconciliation, how far away forgiveness or peace or wholeness seemed and I railed against how much pain was laid on these years.  I heard him say, “Of course it hurts, forgiveness so often does.” I was stunned by his statement and disturbed by how true it felt in my very core. Had there simply been shrugged shoulders at every offense we could have still been in that former place, leaving was a form of forgiveness.  Moving out of a ben posture of fear was a way of saying that there was something more life-giving.  It was in leaving that I finally experienced that new life God promises and extends to every person – even the angry, even the shameful.

When we simply shrug our shoulders we are saying that whatever brokenness that exists is ok, whatever hurt that has scarred us (or others) is ok and that ok-ness will stay with us. The forgiveness extended to us by God is so different from the shoulder shrug, for when God forgives us there is a swift and powerful movement away from what has been.  Forgiveness is a bull dozer that clears the way for newness of life and healthier ways of being human! 

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.  If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.  This is the call of the church, this is the charge from our Risen Savior: forgiveness is about being on the move, seeking out and fight for and pointing to life among us!

The world needs no more retaining – no more binding up hurts and horrors, our world is full of such spirits already.  I’m sure all of us where struck by the distressing headlines that filled the news this week.  When I read the endless blogs and articles addressing the horror that filled the streets of Baltimore this past week I was also remembering the words that have been preached from this pulpit these weeks since Easter – words that have claimed a resurrected world in the name of the Risen Christ.  And so the movement for reconciliation begins, the cry for the peace of the risen Christ must be heard from the church of Christ, from the people who share the peace and claim the resurrection here.

Where are you, risen Savior? Are you on the streets of Baltimore?

Where are you, risen Savior? Are you in the villages of India and Nepal?

…..Are you on the pillaged fields of the Bakken oil fields?

Where are you, risen Savior?

The risen Christ appears in these places of fear and locked doors.  He comes, breathing new life to the angry and shame-filled and destroyed ones.  And in his presence we know the violence that fell upon the body of Jesus was not the end of the story.  The injustice and corruption, the pride and prejudice did not have the final say! The risen Christ did indeed rise from all these powers of the earth and from the depth of the grace and spoke to his followers… “Peace be with you”

I saw the risen Christ in the feet of the clergy who marched together peacefully through the streets of Baltimore.  And I saw the risen Christ in the passionate face of a young man who put himself between a police line and restless protesters crying out, “Do not give them a reason, do not give them a reason.” 

Because forgiveness and reconciliation is a powerful, sometimes painful experience, Resurrection is not clean.  It is not devoid of emotion and outrage.  Being an Easter people does not mean living in our Easter clothes, afraid of getting them stained.  Being an Easter child means speaking life into death, breath hope into despair, it means getting in the face of division and hate and shaking up apathy and laziness.

Peace be with you, Baltimore.

Peace be with you, India and Nepal.

Peace be with you wastelands and oil fields.

We can share this peace because it has been spoken and shared with us.  Because our stories of fear and shame have been freed.  For it begins with you and your stories of forgiveness and movement and it is carried out into God’s world.

You are forgiven. You are free.

You are the church of the risen Christ on earth, may we be forgiveness, may we be freedom.

For the peace that surpasses our deepest hurts, for peace that will change the world, we say thanks be to God.  Amen.