I Send You--to Forgive
Easter 2
April 15, 2007

I Send You--to Forgive
by Donald Hoffman


John 20:19-31

How do you know when you’re forgiven? How would you recognize forgiveness? Suppose that you said or did something that hurt your spouse, your child, your parent, your friend; and they say, “I forgive you, ... but I’m never going to let you forget it!” Would you really feel forgiven? Is that forgiveness?

Karla and Jim have been married five years. Jim has to go away on a business trip. When he gets home he confesses to Karla that he got drunk and invited a woman up to his hotel room. He’s torn with guilt, he doesn’t know why he did it, he begs Karla to forgive him. “I’ll make sure it never happens again,” says Jim. “No, dear,” says Karla, “WE’LL make sure it never happens again!” Karla has forgiven Jim, she says, but from then on she phones him at work constantly. She quizzes acquaintances and co-workers about his behavior. She “drops in on him accidentally” at various events, at various times. When Jim gets home each day, Karla subjects him to a careful cross-examination to make sure every minute has been accounted for. Has Karla truly forgiven Jim? And if she hasn’t yet, how will Jim know, eventually, that he HAS been forgiven?

How DO you know when you’re forgiven?

You know you’re forgiven when the punishment stops. You know you’re forgiven when the punishment stops.

It’s Sunday evening, and the house is locked up. The disciples are hiding inside. These people have not exactly covered themselves with glory. All through Jesus’ ministry they have managed to DO the wrong thing, SAY the wrong thing, get the wrong idea, and make his job harder rather than easier. When he needed them to stay awake, they went to sleep. When he needed their support, they ran away. If they were given an opportunity to speak up on his behalf, they claimed they never knew him.

It’s Sunday evening, and the house is locked, and the disciples are inside, being punished. I understand that mostly they are punishing themselves, but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear. They are being punished by guilt. They are being punished by fear. They are angry with each other. They are plagued by the “if only’s”: If only you had done this. If only I had done that. If only we hadn’t done something else. Each one is deeply aware of their own inadequacy. … The disciples are inside, being punished.

Each one of these losers is painfully aware that God can never forgive them. If it turns out that Jesus really IS alive, as they’ve heard, really WAS brought back from death by God’s power, they know that JESUS can never forgive them. Think of this, if YOUR friends deserted you at the moment you needed them most, could you ever forgive them?

So this is the ultimate punishment: not the awareness that the government is out to get them; not the awareness that the religious authorities are out to get them; no, the ultimate punishment is the awareness that God ... is out to get them. The door is locked. The disciples are on the inside. Being punished.

And suddenly Jesus is there. If there is a panic meter, the needle just got wrapped around the stops. If there was high tension before, all the safety valves have just blown. What’s going to happen to me now?! Jesus is really here! Now, we’re gonna get it!

If Jesus has the right to be angry with anybody, it’s these bozos. If Jesus has the right to PUNISH anybody, it’s these bozos.

“Peace be with you.” What? “Peace be with you.” He says it twice. Making sure they get the message. “Calm down, folks. Relax. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“Peace be with you.” Say it once in that culture: it’s a greeting. Hello! Shalom! Say it twice, and it’s something more, something greater: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, and don’t let them be afraid.” He’s calming them down, but also doing something more: Jesus is ending the punishment.

How do you know you’re forgiven? You know it when the punishment stops. And the punishment, for these disciples, has just stopped.

This is the second call for these people. The first call, when Jesus was walking by the lake calling disciples, that call didn’t work out. These folks were failures. They weren’t up to the challenge. If it were my choice, I’d tell Jesus not to waste any more time on them. Get somebody reliable this time. Get some disciples you can trust.

But Jesus doesn’t take my advice. He goes right back to those bozos he can’t trust, and he trusts them. How do you know you’re forgiven? You know when the mistrust ends. You know it when the relationship continues. You know when the punishment stops.

This is the second call. Jesus trusts them to get it right this time. They know they are forgiven. So what is Jesus calling them to do?

What is Jesus calling them to do? Now that’s interesting. If you read Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is calling them to go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them. But you won’t find that great commission in John’s Gospel. Here Jesus is sending them to keep doing what HE was sent to do, forgive sins.

It sounds spooky. It sounds weird. It sounds like Jesus is giving them great and dangerous powers: You have the power to forgive sins. You have the power to retain sins. And it’s true that down through history the church has misused this dangerous power. But Christians have done something worse. We have ignored the power of forgiving, and have insisted on the power of punishing.

If you look at the discussions, debates, and decisions of the church, and of the church’s members, down through the last 2000 years, a great deal of this has been efforts to determine the right amount of punishment. Making the punishment fit the crime. What is the right punishment for this infraction? What is the correct punishment for this sin? It was Christians who invented the idea of Purgatory. Purgatory is an effort to make sure everybody gets exactly the right amount of punishment. It was Christians who invented courts of appeal, an effort to make sure that nobody gets the wrong punishment. It was Christians who invented the idea of trial by jury, so that every wrong-doer would be judged, and punished, by their peers. It was Christians who invented double-jeopardy: you can’t be punished twice for the same crime. It was Christians who decided that some punishments, but only some, are cruel and unusual.

Now balance this by any efforts down through history to determine the correct amount of forgiveness. I’m not sure you can find ANY attention to this. I’m not sure you can find ANY attempt, either in the Vatican courts or in the governments of Christian nations, or the polity of any denomination (including the Disciples of Christ) to decide on the right amount of forgiveness. All we have is something Jesus said--not any of us--Jesus said it. “Forgive them seventy times seven times.”

I have to be very careful here, because I once multiplied those numbers in a sermon years ago, and got it wrong! Seventy times seven is 490. Right? ... If your brother sins against you 490 times, you have to forgive him. Well, you might make an arithmetic mistake of your own, just like I did, so lets round it up to an even 500.

The first 500 insults ... we have to forgive. The first 500 lies ... we have to forgive. The first 500 Drivings While Intoxicated ... we have to forgive. (Are you starting to get uncomfortable? I love making people uncomfortable! Trouble is, this is making ME uncomfortable, too!) The first 500 times your marriage partner cheats on you. The first 500 murders. The first 500 acts of terrorism. It’s there in the contract. We have to forgive them!

Okay, this is making me so uncomfortable, I’ve gotta think of a way to get around it. ... Hmmm ...  Oh, I know: It says I have to forgive my BROTHER 500 times; it never mentions my spouse! ... I can accept forgiving a member of my political party 500 times, but not those other guys! I can forgive somebody from Creston, but not anybody from Davenport!

Now in this particular story, Jesus has said, “If you retain anyone’s sin, if you hold on to anyone’s sin, if you grasp tightly somebody’s sin, and never let it go, then that’s the way it’s going to be.” I don’t get the impression that Jesus means God is rubber-stamping our decisions not to forgive. I think this is a warning. The image is sort of like a miser, unlocking his purse of gold coins, and lovingly handling each one of them. I get the impression of Scrooge McDuck diving into his money bin. It wouldn’t take a very big change to call it an insult bin. ... Haven’t you known people who treasured up every insult, every indignity, every sin, and thought about it, over and over, and rubbed it smooth? Haven’t you done that yourself? Gulp! I know I have!

I think this is a warning. Jesus is saying, if you don’t forgive, the other person is in trouble, yes. But you also are in trouble. You’re falling down on the job, your forgiveness job. As the Father sent me, so I send you. You have to forgive people. If you don’t do it, it won’t get done. And a world that doesn’t experience forgiveness, a world where everything is punishment, where Christians have to punish Muslims and Muslims have to punish Christians, and brothers and sisters have to punish each other, this is a world that is insane and dying. It’s called the punishment cycle, and the punishment cycle is killing us.

Jesus is telling those disciples, Jesus is telling you and me: I trusted you once, and you failed. I’m trusting you to get it right, this time. Every one of us in this room is a forgiven disciple of Christ, and our job is to continue the forgiveness. Our job is to break the punishment cycle.

Jesus doesn’t just beak into locked houses. Jesus breaks into locked hearts. Jesus breaks into locked treasuries of insults. Jesus breaks into locked portfolios of sins we’ve retained. Jesus bursts open our locked diaries of righteous indignation. Jesus breaks through locked doors of fear and shame and resentment and guilt and the need to get even. Jesus breaks the punishment cycle. “Peace be with you. Peace ... be between you.”

“As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you. As I forgive you, so you must forgive others.” And then he breathes the calming Holy Spirit into us. And then he blows us out into the jet stream of God’s love. It’s our second chance. We know we’re forgiven, because the punishment has stopped. He’s trusting us to forgive. He’s trusting us to love. He’s trusting us to break the punishment cycle. He’s trusting us to get it right this time.

He’s trusting us. ...

(Comments to Don at crestnch@televar.com.)
Creston Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Creston, WA, USA