Living in the Spirit
June 6, 2020
Scripture Reading:
John 20:19-23
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.’
I have never entirely understood what John is saying in this last sentence: If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. According to The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary: In John, sin is a theological failing, not a moral or behavioral transgression (in contrast to Matt 18:18). To have sin is to be blind to the revelation of God in Jesus. . . Jesus brings people to judgment by his revealing work and presence in the world*.
Perhaps John is trying to say we are not judged on what we do wrong as much as we are judged by what we do not do right—sins of omission, not commission. Amid the chaos of racism and all its ugly ramifications, the idea of sin as a theological failing rings true. Jim Wallis calls racism America’s Original Sin in his book by the same name. I think sins of omission are what Jesus outlined in Matthew 25 when he said we would be judged by how well we fed the hungry, clothed the poor, cared for the sick, restored the prisoner, and welcomed the stranger.
Today I got a broader sense of the idea of retaining the sins of others. None of us are perfect, and none of our ancestors were perfect. Yet if we retain the sins of our ancestors in our faith practices, we have not learned from the error of their ways. A few years ago, I found in a historical record in Illinois that the first Christian worship service in that area was held in the home of my third-great grandfather around 1835. He had traveled to Illinois to homestead land made available as Union soldiers had, in the Blackhawk War, beaten back the tribes that used the area for hunting. Christian missionaries had been working with those tribes since the 1600s. Some of the natives became Christians and most likely held worship services. I doubt my third- great grandfather thought much about that. He may have had some concern that the natives might come back to reclaim their land. He was practicing the “theology” of Manifest Destiny or the Doctrine of Discovery, take your pick. He believed that God had given this land to those who came from across the ocean to claim it. The irony of the story was many of those who came were here in search of freedom from religious oppression. The same “theology” was practiced by my ancestors, who owned slaves. I have wills where the slaves were left to family members with the slaves listed by names among the horses and cows.
I am proud of my ancestors, who overcame hardships and made contributions to the furtherance of God’s Kingdom on earth in many useful ways. Yet, with the hindsight of history, I hope not to retain their theological sins in my theology. I pray for the clarity to know the differences and to emulate their righteousness as I forgive the communal sins of the past so my society can prepare a better future for the generations to come.
Prayer: Lord, help us to see and address the societal sins of our time and our place, so we do not leave them to our descendants to overcome. Amen.
*The New Interpreter’s Bible, a commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume IX, page 847, Abingdon 1995.
All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.