It’s been far too long since I’ve posted something here, so as we spring from Easter into a summer of Pentecost here’s a playlist and song-infused sermon for Sunday, May 28, 2023. Turns out that Don Henley, Billie Eilish, Mavis Staples, Amos Lee, Brandi Carlile, and many more have written some great songs on the spirit of confession and forgiveness.
The holy gospel according to John’s 20th chapter. Glory to you, O Lord.
19 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.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, O Christ.
Grace, Mercy and the Peace of Christ who shows up in our midst even when we’ve secured ourselves behind locked doors; may this Spirit of Christ Jesus be with us again today as we consider these words from our scriptures.
I want to start with some words from a Texan and poet. You might recognize them, and though they might seem to have been written yesterday, these words were first published in 1989. Here they are:
Ah, these times are so uncertain,
There’s a yearning undefined and people filled with rage.
We all need a little tenderness. How can love survive in such a graceless age?
Ah, the trust and self-assurance that lead to happiness, they’re the very things we kill, I guess.
Oh, pride and competition cannot fill these empty arms.
And the work I put between us, you know it doesn’t keep me warm.I’m learning to live without you now, but I miss you.
And the more I know, the less I understand.
All the things I thought I figured out I have to learn again.
I’ve been tryin’ to get down to the heart of the matter, but my will gets weak,
and my thoughts seem to scatter, but I think it’s about forgiveness…
Yes, I think Don Henley, member of the Eagles and writer of this song from my high school days gets it right. It’s about forgiveness. It’s all about forgiveness. And this forgiveness is baked into this Gospel reading on every level.
Let’s take a look at what’s going on in this reading from John by first noting how different it is from the Pentecost reading of Acts 2. In John’s Gospel this is the moment when the disciples receive the Holy Spirit and when Jesus commissions them to share the Good News of forgiveness. It’s not a big showy display with every language being spoken and tongues of fire appearing above the disciples heads. It’s deeply intimate, even quiet, but initially that quiet is more about fearfulness than comfort.
In John’s gospel the dark of night is a time of fear and uncertainty, and the first hearers of the Gospel of John were in a time of uncertainty. Our Lutheran Study Bibles note that, “there are clues in [this] Gospel that lead scholars to believe that it was written for Jewish Christians who, because they were followers of Jesus, experienced hostility within their Jewish communities” (Augsburg Fortress Lutheran Study Bible, page 1752).
You likely remember that in John’s Gospel it’s the night time setting in which Nicodemus comes to question Jesus about being born again. And now those closest to Jesus are cowering in their own dark fears, but Jesus, the one that is prophesied to in John 1:5 as “the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” fulfills John’s opening prophesy by showing up in our midst and speaking to his disciples both then and now saying, “peace be with you.” And it’s a peace that we are deeply longing for today.
And part of that peace, well, it’s about forgiveness. But notice that the forgiving peace of Christ in our midst does not remove Jesus scars. And similarly this forgiving peace of Christ doesn’t cover over our own scars. In fact, in profound ways the forgiveness Christ brings exposes our wounds and still speaks a word of light into those dark communal gashes. And the light of forgiveness cannot be overcome.
Franciscan priest and writer Richard Rohr puts it this way:
Sin, evil, and disorder included and forgiven is the Divine Order! Forgiveness doesn’t nullify or eliminate offensive actions. It acknowledges and radically names and exposes that sin, evil, and fault did indeed happen—and then lets go of it! Forgiveness does not, and cannot, undo it. It can’t. Sin and evil happened. God does not undo the sins of humans or of history, but from an infinite Source, forgives them. …Every time God forgives—seventy times seven, apparently—God is showing a preference and capacity for sustaining relationship over being right, distant, superior, and separate. We are slow learners in that regard. The unilateral “covenant love” promised by the prophets is God’s absolute ability to sustain relationship with everything (1).
[In our scriptures] both Jesus and Paul invite us to live a vulnerable human life in communal solidarity with both sin and salvation. Neither sin nor salvation could ever be exclusively mine, but both of them are collectively ours! Universal solidarity is the important lesson, not private salvation. Human solidarity is the goal, not “my” moral superiority or perfection (2).
Jesus then sends these disciples, who collectively share both their brokenness and the light of Christ which shines brighter through their broken places; And Jesus sends his disciples out, both then and now, to a world in deep need, into a neighborhood for good. Then Jesus breathes on them. Weird right… well the word here in Greek is even weirder. It is not so much about Jesus breathing on his disciples as breathing INTO his disciples, gifting them with the Holy Spirit just as God breathed life into Adam at creation.
Here I want to read the First Nations Version, because it gets closer to the original Greek text than our New Revised Standard Version. Here it is:
When they saw their Wisdomkeeper, the hearts of his followers were filled with joy, 21 so he said to them again, “Peace be with you! In the same way the Father above has sent me, I am now sending you.” 22 He blew his breath on them and said, “You will breathe in and receive the Holy Spirit. With his wisdom and guidance, 23 if you release others from their bad hearts and broken ways, they are released. If you do not release them, they are not released.” (First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament).
Rev. Dr. Karoline Lewis, professor of Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary who I got to know through working together at Outlaw Ranch notes this about these words of Jesus:
it is because of the inbreathing of the Spirit that it is possible to be sent… Sending can only happen with the security of the Spirit. …for [John], sin is not a category of morality but a category of relationship, [sin is therefore] depicting a lack of relationship with God or unbelief in Jesus as the Word made flesh… With this in mind, Jesus’ words are a charge to the disciples that a significant act of discipleship will be tending the belief of others. …[And] the retentions of sins, therefore, would have to do with [those] preventing belief, discouraging belief, or not nurturing belief in the other (pages 246-247 in Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentary: John).
This discipleship, this “tending the belief of others” is part of what Christians have called the Office of the Keys. In the Large Catechism, which Pastor Layne talked about in this past Tuesday’s episode of Together in Faith, Martin Luther writes about the role confession and forgiveness plays in tending belief:
Thus by divine ordinance Christ himself has placed absolution in the mouths of his Christian community and commanded us to absolve one another from sins. So if there is a heart that feels its sin and desires comfort, it has here a sure refuge where it finds and hears God’s Word because through a human being God looses and absolves… [this] confession consists of two parts. The first is our work and act, when I lament my sin and desire comfort and restoration for my soul. The second is a work that God does, when [God] absolves me of my sins through the Word placed on the lips of another person (pages 477-478 The Large Catechism, The Book of Concord, ed. Kolb/Wengert).
And so, dear friends, having now heard from Father Richard Rohr, and Rev. Dr. Karoline Lewis, Martin Luther, and Jesus who repeats to his disciples of every time and place that peace with God and one another is to be found in Christ who empowers us to forgive as Jesus first forgives us, I am now even more confident in utilizing a pop song from the 80s as an opener and now closer to this sermon!
Don Henley closes his song “The Heart of the Matter” with what to me is a clear reference to the Apostle Paul when he sings,
I’ve been tryin’ to get down
To the heart of the matter,
Because the flesh will get weak,
And the ashes will scatter,
So I’m thinkin’ about Forgiveness…
Friends, let us not hesitate to strengthen the bonds of peace with a word of forgiveness which also confesses the ways in which we’ve failed to live peaceably with one another as we actively look for Christ, who walks through the doors we lock to say once again, “peace be with you” and “my peace I give to you.” Amen.
1 – https://cac.org/daily-meditations/one-stream-of-love-2023-05-19/
2 – https://cac.org/daily-meditations/solidarity-is-our-goal-2023-05-18/
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