Sermon 4/18/04
Prove It! - John 20:19-31
The Sunday after Easter is a hard place to be as people of faith. As during the Advent and Christmas season, we have just spent weeks in preparation, weeks in Lent, and finally a week in Holy Week, following Jesus at last to the cross, and rejoicing in resurrection. We made it - we did it all - from the trial to the betrayal to the last supper to the empty tomb. We went there, stayed there, reflected there. But now we move into a time in the church calendar called the 50 Days of Easter - a season that takes us all the way to Pentecost - and we think - 50 days of Easter? Wasn't the one Sunday enough? I don't know about you, but I'm pretty tired out, and I now understand why most pastors take a vacation as soon as Easter Sunday has passed. But vacation or not, from school, from church, from work, we're still in the midst of this Easter Season, like it or not.
Perhaps the disciples feel a bit the same way - while we have relived these eventful moments in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus by recreating the days with what we know from scriptures, the closest followers of Jesus had to witness all these things first hand. While we might envy the privilege of walking and talking with a physically present Jesus, I personally don't envy the emotional roller-coaster their lives must have been in this time. And so, after Mary Magdalene witnessed a risen Jesus, the disciples find themselves gathered, in sort of limbo, not knowing where to go from here. They are just sort of waiting, waiting to see what they should do next. And suddenly, Jesus appears to them and offers them a word of peace. Our text gives us two vignettes, each important, each challenging.
First, Jesus breathes into them the Holy Spirit, or God's Holy Breath. He commissions them, sending them, he says, as the Holy Spirit has sent him. And then Jesus says, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." These words are shocking and puzzling. I don't know about you, but I don't want that kind of power from Jesus, and I'm not sure what he would be thinking by giving it to me! We read elsewhere that we are to forgive 70 times 7, that we ought to pray that God would forgive us as we forgive others. The authors of "Preaching Peace" insist: ". . . if he had taught his followers to "forgive us as we forgive our debtors" and "with the measure you measure you will be measured", surely the text cannot mean that [we have the] authority to retain sins. If [we] were to be like Jesus, [we] would never retain one single sin of anyone. So what sense does it make that he tells [the disciples] to follow him and live like him and then turn around and tell them it's OK to act like everybody else?"
But still, there Jesus' statement is: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." What on earth does this mean? If you wrong me, and I refuse to forgive you, does God forever hold your wrong against you too? Is my forgiveness all God needs to be convinced to forgive us as well? Like I said, I don't want to have that much power, that kind of power, because I would fear I would abuse it, that I would not be able to forgive and let go as Jesus asked us to do. And yet, Jesus says, we do have that power. In fact, I think he was trying to remind us of the power we humans have: and perhaps our biggest abuse of power is when we try to act as if we don't have it. True, we do not decide who God does and does not forgive, but I don't think that is what Jesus is saying. I think he's trying to remind us that beyond what God does, we also come into this equation - what we do, how we treat one another - how we forgive, or not, really matters, really makes an impact.
Second, we move to the famous passage of our friend, doubting Thomas. He has been absent while Jesus was with them - he has not seen Jesus with his own eyes, and when the others tell him the news, he can't believe it, not without seeing as they have been able to see. Who can blame him? Thomas says, "Unless I see . . . I will not believe." In all honesty, which of us would not react as Thomas did? You need only to think of someone you have lost who was dear to you, and imagine hearing reports that they were actually alive after all - would you believe it? I think Thomas speaks for all of us when he asks for some tangible proof. We like to have our facts straight - it's only responsible, after all, in this age of reason to support our claims with substantiated evidence.
So Jesus shows himself to Thomas too, and Thomas is able to have his proof, and find his faith. Jesus does not rebuke him, but simply leaves them all with this blessing and challenge in one: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." What falls into this category for you? There is much that we have not seen and yet believe in this world. We rely on the proof of others, the knowledge they have, for our faith. For me, I think of pretty much anything that falls into the category of science and technology. For example, I may be able to use a computer quite well, and build a web page, and tell you what part is what, basically. But can I explain to you how on earth I can type something, press send, and have it instantly sent around the world? Not a chance! But I believe it!
We can believe in the science that makes planes fly, cameras capture images for eternity, phones transmit our voices wirelessly around the world, because we trust people that we will never meet to know, to understand, to prove, to invent, on our behalves. But for the intangible, we are forever skeptics. We believe in love perhaps - we just fail to believe that we can be worthy of the love that others give us, and fail to believe that it is important for us to boundlessly give our love to others. We've heard about that grace thing, but we still don't believe that God wants to give it to us for free, that we can't somehow earn it, and we certainly don't like it when God just goes around giving it freely to everyone else. And we believe that Jesus lived and died and rose, but that doesn't convince us that what he taught us might be important enough to actually try to follow.
So what will it take for you to believe? What kind of proof are you looking for? What will convince you and convict you so much of who Jesus was, how he lived, and how he loved, that you'll actually want to follow him, actually be willing to sacrifice for him, that you'll seek to live as he lived and love as he loved? Thomas wanted proof, and Jesus was able to give it to him. But "blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
John tells us that he has written and recorded these events so that we might believe in Jesus as Messiah - but not only that, but that "through believing, [we] may have life in [Christ's] name." So here it is: the facts have been presented to us. We have followed Jesus from life to death and back again. We have heard him teach and preach. We have listened to stories of his healing, and his miracles. We have heard him call us to do likewise again and again. We have heard about God's incredible love for us. The testimony is in. Now is our moment to deliberate and decide.
But our text today reminds us that we don't just decide to believe or not believe and call it a day. Though perhaps out of order, our passages remind us that when we are ready to believe, Jesus is ready with tasks for us: to give to us the Holy Spirit. To send us to the kind of life that God has sent Jesus to, to forgive and love even as he has loved. To say we believe and yet do nothing would be to God the most baffling reaction of all - and so we are called to believe, and to act, to believe and to serve, to believe and to love, to believe and to forgive, to believe and to be sent forth.
Our task is no small one, and Jesus knows it, knows the blessedness of belief that comes even when it comes from faith and not from tangible proof. But the reward is great: that through believing, we may have life, real life, blessed and full life, life worth living, in the name of Christ. Amen.