Forgive!

 

A Sermon preached on Easter II, April 24, 2022, at St. Augustine’s and St. Christoph

Acts 5:27-32, Revelation 1:4-8, John 20:19-31

This year I think I know just how Thomas felt. He “only” missed Jesus’ first resurrection appearance. I missed the Last Supper, the crucifixion, and the Resurrection! Well, unlike Thomas I could at least participate virtually in all the services, but it still feels as if I have missed something, as if Easter hasn’t quite happened yet. I think that’s why Thomas was initially so sceptical when the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ (John 20:25) It hadn’t happened, because he wasn’t there. And let’s be fair, the other disciples had not fully believed Mary Magdalene when she had told them, I have seen the Lord!

What do we know about Thomas? All four gospels list him as one of the 12 disciples, in John he is called the twin. A couple of centuries after the gospels were written down, a story was circulating in the Mediterranean world that he had gone to preach in India; and there are a number of Christian communities in India, the St. Thomas Christians, who trace their foundation to his mission, including the Mar Thoma Church, which is in communion with Anglicans.

Only in John’s Gospel do we get to hear Thomas’ voice, and it tells us a lot about who he is. The first time is in the story of Jesus bringing back Lazarus from the dead. While the other disciples try and stop Jesus going to Judea again because it’s dangerous, “Rabbi, they were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?”  Thomas instead turns to his fellow-disciples and says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11: 7, 16) This tells us that Thomas is both brave and faithful. And the fact that he wasn’t hiding in the locked room with the other disciples on the evening of that first day is also an indication of his bravery!

The next time we hear him speak is during Jesus final discourse, which took place in that same room – the upper room of the house where the disciples had met. Jesus tells the disciples, “’And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ (John 14:4-6) Here we meet an honest and direct Thomas, one who was willing to ask the question the others did not dare to ask. I sort of imagine them muttering, what is Jesus talking about, and Thomas simply speaking up. And what an answer he gets from Jesus in response to his question: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” 

Finally, in this chapter, today, we heard him saying to the other disciples "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."  Let’s be clear, it is not Jesus he is doubting, it’s his companions he does not fully trust or believe. Perhaps they had just seen a ghost? In his Gospel, Luke tells of a meeting between Jesus and the disciples at which all the disciples think they are seeing a ghost (Luke 24:37). So, to convince them he is not a ghost, Jesus invites them to touch him and he eats a piece of broiled fish (Lk 24:39-43).

Thomas’ final line is his best one. When Jesus appears a week later and shows himself to Thomas, inviting him to touch him and not to doubt, but to believe, Thomas answers, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28) This is the clearest description of Jesus’ divinity in the entire NT. Jesus has invited him to catch up with the others in their new stage of faith, but Thomas just shoots right past them with his Confession of Faith. He’s not a bad disciple at all. And with Jesus’ gift of peace, he is reintegrated into the body of the disciples. It doesn’t matter that he missed the events of the previous week. Just as it doesn’t matter that we can only read about them, as long as we believe them: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” Jesus says. (20:29)

What had happened the previous week? The 10 disciples, minus Judas, and minus Thomas were back in the upper room again; in the place they had met for the Last Supper. Back where they had shared a final meal with Jesus, where he had washed their feet, and where in his long final discourse he had taught them the new commandment to love as he loves us, and where he had promised to send them the Spirit of Truth as a guide and companion.

But neither not that fond memory nor the miraculous return of their teacher and friend Jesus from the dead that Mary Magdalene has already told them about seems to have improved their mood: “The doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews.”  In the Greek original, the word translated as “the Jews” is Ioudaiōn, literally Judeans. There are lots of places in the NT where that translation makes sense, but this is not one of them, here it is borderline antisemitic. The disciples are Jews, so they are not afraid of the Jews – just of the Jewish or Judean authorities – both Jewish and Gentile! But should they even be afraid? In his instructions at that farewell feast Jesus had spent a lot of time and a lot of words preparing them for his departure, reassuring them and trying to take away any fear: “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)

But it didn’t work, and it doesn’t matter because, thankfully, Jesus was not and is not looking for perfection, as Thomas also discovered. Jesus comes and stands among them, and first takes away any remaining doubts when he shows them his hands and his side. Their mood instantly changes – the disciples rejoiced – and then Jesus commissions them with these words: “‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘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.’"

Usually, John’s descriptions of events are much longer, much more literary, and much wordier than those of Mark, Matthew and Luke. John’s Jesus talks a lot. But not here. In two short sentences, John combines Matthew’s Great Commission, the sending out of the disciples into the world with Jesus’ authority and on a mission to make disciples, with Luke’s story of the Pentecost event, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and Matthew’s “gift of the keys,” the power given in his Gospel first to Peter and then to all the disciples to forgive all and any sin…. or not. It’s as if he is saying, we’ve had enough words, we’ve talked long enough, now is the time for action. I am going back to the Father who sent me. I have work for you to do, and at its core that work is forgiveness.

That should not be a surprise. The cross is all about forgiveness. According to Luke, Jesus first words from the cross were “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) When Jesus promises the thief “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise,” that is also an act of forgiveness. (Lk 23:43) In the first reading from Acts we heard how the high priest fears that the apostles are just out for revenge: “You are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.” (Acts 5:28) No, Peter says, that’s not why Jesus came, and that is not what we have been sent to do. “God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Saviour that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.” (5:31) Jesus forgives Peter’s betrayal and the disciples’ including Thomas’ doubts. And let’s not forget the petition in the Lord’s Prayer “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”

Hate, fear, or a desire for revenge separate us from God and one another, and they are unhealthy too. Psychologists teach us that forgiveness helps lessen the grip of whatever hurt us and helps free us from the control of the person who did the hurting. Forgiveness is not forgetting, nor does forgiveness deny the need for justice and for repentance. The peace Jesus shares with Thomas and with all the disciples flows from all of our relationships being put right — with God, with(in) ourselves, and with others. Jesus reconciled us with God. His work and the gift of the Holy Spirit give us both the work and the means to restore relationship with one another. And only that will enable us all to live the abundant and joyful life in Jesus name that is his promise.  

Amen.

 

Looking forward, looking back?

A Sermon preached on Lent V, April 3, 2022, at St. Augustine’s

Isaiah 43:16-21, Philippians 3:4b-14, John 12:1-8

As many of you know, being a priest was not my first profession. For over 25 years I worked for the Allianz insurance company as a senior manager, until the push and pull of the call I felt to become a priest just became too strong to resist. While I can only agree with Paul about the “surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,” (Phil. 3:8) I still wouldn’t say that I consider my entire past and my previous profession to be a loss or to regard them as rubbish, which is a polite translation for the word that actually means dung or manure. On the contrary I think, and I hope that some of the things I learned in that time have helped my ministry with you, the ability to organise myself and others and to run meetings, for example! I know for sure that I had lots of opportunities to learn from many, many mistakes.

Just a little later in the service, we will celebrate a 40th wedding anniversary. I bet the couple don’t regard everything as loss but instead look back with joy on a marriage consecrated 40 years ago here in Christ’s Name and presence. And I’m equally sure that they have learned and grown in the process.

But I don’t even think Paul is saying that we must always forget or negate all our past. That would be wrong. We cannot change our past, but we can learn from it. And anyway, Paul himself starts off this extract from his letter with an impressive description of his own past, of his Jewish credentials, and of his exemplary behaviour and actions. When he then goes on to say, “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ” he is not negating that past. He remains a proud Jew. But what he has discovered is so much greater, so much more important, so much more attractive, that his past simply pales in comparison. That discovery is Christ and the power of his resurrection, a power that stands, as we know, for the promise of forgiveness and new life.

Anything that stands in the way of following Christ is therefore a loss or debit. Following Christ, Paul says, requires a radical re-orientation of priorities and that may require letting go of some of the past. In his case those things he wants to let go of are an excessive pride, a belief that access to God entails belonging to a particular group or nation, his own role as a zealous persecutor of Christ’s followers, and a mistaken belief that he was blameless and righteous based on his own merit and ability to follow a set of rules. So, on closer examination, many of the things he had listed as “gains”, many of the things he had identified as being on the credit side of the balance sheet, were in fact not that good or positive after all.

So yes, Paul is calling on us to take a close look at our own past, and to see if there is anything there that we need to discard in the present, as it would stand in the way of our faith and our future. For us as individuals this is what the invitation to observe a holy Lent is all about, the call we heard on Ash Wednesday to self-examination and repentance. For us as a community and as part of society it is the call to examine, name, and lament our collective sins of discrimination, oppression, and prejudice – all our failures to respect the dignity of every human being.[1] And it is the call to repent and to change our collective lives to reflect and enable the new world and new life God offers.

When God speaks to the Israelites through Isaiah and tells them: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old,” (Isaiah 43:18) he, like Paul, wants them to discard things that are holding them back, in their case a fear for the future based on their past experience. Bad things had happened to them – the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, their exile in Babylon. But these are over. “I am about to do a new thing,” (43:19) God promises. I am offering you a safe return on a well-watered and safe way I will make in the wilderness. I will give you an opportunity to rebuild, to build a new Jerusalem. Do not be afraid of the past, and do not be afraid of your role in that past. God’s promise is that their part in those bad things, their faithlessness, their false allegiances, that had led to Israel’s fall are forgiven, redeemed, and will not impact their future.

In Isaiah God calls Israel “the people whom I formed for myself,” (43:21) while Paul says of himself that “Christ Jesus has made me his own.” (Phil. 3:12) Both are referring to a status that has nothing to do with who we are or what we have done in the past, but to God choosing them, him, us. This status of righteousness, of being accepted, loved, and saved by God “comes through faith in Christ.” (3:9)

Faith in this sense is not just an abstract ‘knowing about’ Christ like knowledge from a book. Faith is a matter of personal knowledge, what some traditions describe as a personal relationship with Jesus, one that enhances and complements our collective relationship as the body of Christ and as a worshipping community. Faith is trusting in the presence of God even when we don’t see or feel it. And faith is us attempting to imitate Christ, to conform to the patterns of behaviour that he taught and showed, in Paul’s words the desire to “know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.” (3:10) To become like him in his death does not mean dying as such but sharing in the characteristics Jesus exhibited when he offered himself: sacrifice, love, forgiveness, trust.

Paul concludes this section of his letter by reminding his audience that this process of knowing Christ and growing like him is, unlike God’s choice for us, not a one-off single event: “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal,” (3:12) he says. It is a journey, in his image a race with the goal, the finishing line, “the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” in view. Now Paul can forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead.” (3:13) because he has carefully examined and learned from his past and allowed God to redeem it. And runners don’t look back as it would only distract them and slow them down. Of course, in this particular race it doesn’t matter how many other runners are behind us, or even if they overtake us. In this race everyone who wants to can win the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus to live a resurrection life.

Amen.

---

[1] See for example “A Covenant for Dismantling Racism, Advancing Racial Justice and Building Beloved Community in Europe” at: http://www.tec-europe.org/covenant/