John 20:19-23
A Sermon Prepared for the Hollywood Presbyterian Church
Rev. Stephen A. Herring
May 1, 2011
Today is our 68th annual Homecoming. This is a good day to think about all the struggles we have gone through as individuals, as families, as a congregation, and as a community to keep the faith going in this place. There has been a lot of sacrifice. There has been a lot of joy and a lot of tragedy. There has been a lot of struggle, but here we are and we are blessed.
I want to talk to you today about how it is that we work out our own salvation history. How is it that we come to survive all the troubles and all the hardship within our lives and within our world to be here on this beautiful day? How is it that all the positives end up being so much more powerful than all the negatives? How is it that we are not defeated by all that is wrong?
I believe that the key to our spiritual victory is found in the fullness of Christ just after his resurrection.
On the evening of the first day of his resurrection, Jesus met his disciples in a room where they had shut themselves away because of fear. He showed them the wounds of his crucifixion and they rejoiced to see him alive. He blessed them, saying “Peace be with you.” He told them that he was sending them into the world as the Father had sent him. “Saying this, he breathed upon them and said to them; “Receive Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any they are retained.” (John 20:22-23)
What do these words mean? What would it mean for Jesus to breathe upon us and say these words? How do these words offer us the victory we so badly need in the struggles of each day?
Receive Holy Spirit.
If you forgive the sins of any
They are forgiven.
If you retain the sins of any
They are retained.
In order to understand these words we first need to understand two words. HOLY SPIRIT.
The Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost is the Spirit of life that God breathed into the nostrils of Adam when Adam became a living being. (Genesis 2:7) This Spirit is the eternal soul within Adam and the eternal soul within each of us. The Spirit is that part of us that will not die. Our Spirit is related to the Holy Spirit as the part is related to the whole. By the Spirit we share in the same substance as God.
The Holy Spirit is the wind invoked by Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones. This wind came and breathed upon those who had been slain, The Spirit breathed upon them and they lived. The whole House of Israel lived beyond death after falling away from the LORD. (Ezekiel 37:1-14)
The Holy Spirit is the Paraclete, the Counselor, the Great Comforter whom God will send to console and guide us in times of tribulation. (John 14:15-17)
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. (John 14:17)
I did some research last week to see how the words Holy Spirit, or Spirit of Holiness were used in the Dead Sea Scrolls, a set of ancient Jewish texts outside the Old Testament. Holy Spirit was used consistently in the ancient Essene world as a way of drawing contrast against something called “the spirit of Belial.” (See the Damascus
Falsehood binds and imprisons us because lies always require more lies in order to function. How many people do we know who are bound because they have been living a lie?
Truth brings freedom as in the statement Jesus made when he said; “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” (John 8:32) I have taken these words to heart and counseled time and again that we need never be afraid of the truth. It is safe to face the truth, safe to know the truth, and safe to learn the truth, even if the truth requires us to let go of lies we have held dear. The truth will set us free and freedom is always best in the end.
Truth brings us closer to God, as John says; “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
Truth is the way God communicates directly with us as Jesus says; “Sanctify them in the truth. Your Word is truth.” John 17:17) God speaks to us by the power of truth. This tells us that if we listen to the truth, if we engage in a rigorous and honest search for the truth, we will find it and we will find God in searching for it. This is one of the founding principles of the enlightenment. Our whole civilization is based on the search for the truth.
Those who do not know the truth cannot understand the truth, choosing instead to see truth as something unknowable in human terms. Pontius Pilot expressed this when he asked Jesus; “What is truth?” (John 18:38) The Greeks and Romans of the ancient world saw truth as something that was relative to the one perceiving it.
Jesus had told Pilot; “For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” (John 18:37)
Today there are a few lessons we need to learn about receiving the Holy Spirit, hearing the voice of Jesus, and knowing the truth.
First, we live in a time when people will believe something that is not true if they hear it repeated often enough. An untruth can be made to look like the truth if it is repeated often enough. In the same way, half truths are sold to people as they were whole truths. The result is that lies abound in politics and in government. It would be interesting if we were to talk about half truths and lies in politics and in government because if we did we would just about all get angry and aggravated. This is the case because most of us want to believe what we want to believe and we are not interested in learning a truth about something we do not want to believe. And that is as far down that dangerous dark alley as we are going to go.
Instead of looking at politics and government, we should look at the truth about us as people. We live in a world of lies and falsehood, or truth being made into lies and lies being made into truth. In all this falsehood, what do we believe about ourselves? How does the knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus and his breathing forth of the Holy Spirit help us to face the truth about ourselves? Can we see the truth about our own nature, or do we choose to see some falsehood instead?
The Holy Spirit allows us to move away from whatever is not is not of God and it allows us to move toward whatever is of God. These two things are spelled out when Jesus says; “If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any they are retained.” (John 20:23)
The Spirit gives us the freedom to move away from sin by the power of forgiveness. Forgiveness is just letting go. When we let go of sin, it is released. It is that simple. Jesus gives us the power to let go because he has covered that sin with the blood of his atonement on the cross.
Retaining sins offers us another avenue for managing all that is wrong in our lives and in our world. You see, forgiveness alone does not always work for us. This is because all of us, if we live long enough, will come to face sins which are impossible for us to forgive. Often, people who are abused can’t really forgive their abuser. The truth about our world is that there is a lot of abuse going on. Some things are just impossible for us to forgive. Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. This is an example of something that can’t be let go and forgiven in human terms. The evil that was perpetrated is simply too great to be simply dismissed by forgiveness. For Jewish people it is offensive to even suggest forgiveness for the massive sins of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Forgiveness belittles the suffering of the six million people who died. Instead, the righteous response to the Holocaust is: “Never Again.” Never Again is a statement of righteous balance. We can’t forgive the perpetrators of the Holocaust, but we can make certain that the lies and falsehood which gave rise to it are never repeated. We can defeat the power of lies and the Father of lies by lifting up the truth. Truth requires illumination and it requires understanding.
Let’s look closely at these words of Jesus: “If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any they are retained.” (John 20:22) These words offer us a choice to forgive or to retain. If sin is retained, we need to use another way to deal with it beyond simple forgiveness. This other way is by the truth of the unending righteousness of God. Righteousness means right balance in relationship with God. I am going to suggest today that these two paths for facing sin are as follows:
- Graceful forgiveness.
- Torah Righteousness.
Graceful forgiveness means that there is a way to let personal grace flow into the situation in such a way that we can wash away the sin. It is simply released and let go. For almost all of the troubles we face on a day to day basis this grace filled approach is perfect. All we need to do is to lift it up to God, whatever it is, and let it go. The sin debt is canceled out and the sin exists no more. That is forgiveness by the power of grace. It is worth noting that graceful forgiveness is easier if we have lived graceful lives. If life has been harder for us it is much harder for us to even understand this thing called grace, much less to let sin go by such grace. As an example of grace in action, how are most alcoholics cured of alcoholism? They are healed by one word and that word is acceptance. Acceptance requires grace.
Beyond graceful forgiveness is another approach. This approach requires the hard work of living up to standards of righteousness. Torah Righteousness is the Old Testament path of mediating grace by covenant. In Torah Righteousness we obligate ourselves to a path of working to do better. This is the path of repentance, purification, and holiness. This is the path where we go our way but sin no more. This is the path where we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. (See Philippians 2:12)
If we are going to face the truth about ourselves, we will see that we need both grace and works. We need to breathe deep of the Holy Spirit, the breath of God which Jesus breaths upon us. We need to accept the need for both grace and works of righteousness. We need to forgive and to retain.
We need to face the total, unconditional truth about ourselves. The truth is that we have accepted lies and we know it. The specifics of the lies which we have bought into are up to each of us as individuals to sort out. Sometimes we need to ask for grace and forgiveness, and sometimes we just need to do better.
We need to let go. We need to allow the atoning sacrifice of Jesus wash away our sins and those of the people who have sinned against us. We need to forgive. We need grace.
At the same time, there is a level at which we must face sin and sinfulness which is beyond our ability to forgive. Here we need to seek the path of righteousness by careful attention to the way we are living our lives. In many cases, we need the righteousness of works. We need to do better and we need to demand that others do better. If we are stuck in that terrible place where someone has done something to us which we feel we can’t forgive, perhaps that is the simple truth. Perhaps that sin will need to be retained. If this is the case, we still have another level of balance offered us by God. This is the righteousness of Torah. Torah is a master direction which shows us the way to take painful little steps in the direction of God. Torah gives us the option of working things out in practical, daily conduct.
Since this is Holocaust Remembrance day we should remember that our faith was begun by Jewish Essene mystics in the time of John the Baptist, Jesus, James, and Peter. These men were Jews and they followed a Jewish path to Salvation. Their faith was interpreted and shared with the Gentile Greeks and Romans in the lands west of Judea by Paul and Luke. In the sharing of this faith a misunderstanding developed which let to an ugly truth in history known as Biblical Anti-Semitism. The early disciples fought over this distinction between faith reckoned as righteousness and works reckoned as righteousness. We can see this argument if we compare the letter to the Galatians with the Letter of James. They fought over salvation by works and salvation by grace. They fought even to the point of death. (See Acts 8:1) Jesus offers us a more comprehensive path by giving us the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives us the power to forgive or to retain. This is the power of simple forgiveness and the power of working things out by old fashioned works of righteousness.
Today we have the blessings of a deeper historical critical understanding of our scriptures. This allows us to draw upon the fullness of traditions which are Jewish and Christian. By drawing upon these deep historic traditions we can find a path of grace and righteousness with which to heal the divisions which separate us. We can find healing within the personal divisions which wound us within. We can find healing in our unbalanced relationships. We can find healing in our families. We can find healing in our community. We can even find healing in our divided world. So let us receive the Spirit which the Risen Christ breaths upon us. Let us receive the Spirit of Truth. Amen.
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