Eastertide
April 11 2015
Scripture Reading: John 20:19-31
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.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘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.’ –John 20:19-23
What does Jesus mean by retaining the sins of any? First, I think it is important that we recognize that in the book of John “sin” is a theological failing, not a moral or behavioral transgression.* More importantly we must look at our role model, Jesus Christ, and note that in his walk on earth, I do not recall, an instance when he did not forgive. He even implored God to forgive those responsible for his death on the cross.
What results from the retention of sin within a community? Most often I would say, the answer to that question is broken relationships, discord, dysfunction, and lack of progress toward the community’s purpose. Could Jesus have been giving his followers a warning? He had become very well acquainted with humans being human. He knew from experience that evil came raise its ugly head and totally disrupt positive forward movement by the smallest of slights or disagreements. Could he be saying: Let it go? Retaining anyone’s sins, including our own after being forgiven, has no redeeming value.
The Mission* is my favorite all time movie. It is the story of the church being established in South America at the same time natives were being captured and sold into slavery. One of the slave traders has an encounter with one of the missionary priests who grants the slave trader forgiveness for his horrendous sins and instructs him to climb a very steep mountain with all his armor tied in a bag on his back. The slave trader makes it to the top totally exhausted and totally defenseless. The first person he encounters is a native youth with an axe in his hand. There is a moment in the movie where the slave trader clearly understands his plight when the youth briskly swings the axe down and cuts the rope holding the bag, which falls down the mountainside metal clanging against metal. His sins had been forgiven and now he knew it, too.
There is always a period of time after a disconnection or “sin”, even when fault is clear, which by the way is rare for fault is almost always shared, that wounds need to heal on all sides, but healing is faster when we can let the situation go and in many instances we can only do that by asking God to abide with us in the healing process.
Prayer: Lord, give us the strength to let go of the retention of sin, heal all involved and abide with us as we heal. Amen.