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The Migraine & The First Words Of Jesus

John 20:19-31
March 30, 2008

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." But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them
when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he
said to them, "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." A week later his disciples
were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut,
Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to
Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in
my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"
Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those
who have not seen and yet have come to believe." Now Jesus did many other signs in
the presence of his disciples,which are not written in this book. But these are written so
that you may come to believed that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that
through believing you may have life in his name.

I have to say that this passage gave me a migraine when I first began studying it for this
week’s sermon, and that had mostly to do with my decision to focus on the first part of
the text, rather than the part about Thomas, which is and remains one of my favorite
texts of Scripture. In loving the latter part of our reading today, I think I’ve sort of
skipped over this first encounter with the disciples in that locked upper room, though, in
looking at my sermon files, I realized that I had actually preached on this text without
focusing on Thomas sometime in the late nineties. Still, I notice I hadn’t tackled the
most difficult part of the Scripture, at least for me, and that is the moment right after
Jesus breathes on them and in doing so, he gives them the Holy Spirit and says to
them these odd words, really, "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." Now, as I was
researching this sentence I went to my favorite commentaries, including one from my a
former professor at Emory, and despite the research I still didn’t get it, at least not on a
personal level: what it would mean for Jesus to say to those disciples these words right
after his resurrection, and what does the Holy Spirit, this gift of God within us, have to
do with this command to forgive, or not to forgive? In addition, what does it mean to
have Jesus seemingly say to the disciples that they have the option to not forgive
when, at other times, Jesus is always telling them that must forgive others, seventy
times seventy, and so forth? Well, I like to think that on Tuesday my brain just got
overworked trying to figure this out, and not getting it, and by 4, I felt like my head was
about to burst, so I told Beth, the church secretary, I was going home to rest, but even
when I got home, the migraine wouldn’t go away, not until the next morning, really.

And so I want you to know I paid a heavy, heavy price for this sermon—I am such a
martyr for you—but I must admit that its been awhile since I’ve been really challenged
with a particular text, and this is one of them. But you know, sometimes you just need a
good night’s rest, and this is one of those moments, because the next morning when I
woke up, with one of our cats on my chest, I think it came to me, I think I got WHY Jesus
had to say these words to these frightened men AND women in that locked room, these
folks full of fear about what was outside that very door. For years, I’ve missed
something really important when I’ve looked at this passage, and that is the context in
which Jesus is saying these words to his disciples, to the people tasked with going
forward and telling the good news to the rest of the world.

Right before they are tasked with the work of being apostles, that is, bearers of good
news, of the Gospel, they are given the Holy Spirit, at least in John’s version of the
events, and then they are given these cryptic words about forgiveness, and their right
to forgive or not forgive. Traditionally, the Roman Catholic Church has interpreted
these texts as being about Jesus giving authority to the institutional church to decided
what is and isn’t sin, and the authority to forgive the sins of church members in the act
of formal confession. Now, Protestants do what they do best—they “protested” this
interpretation, saying it wasn’t so, and that instead this passage is directed to all the
church, not to the authority figures found in that room, the apostles, but to all of us,
empowered by God’s spirit to do the work of forgiveness and reconciliation in all the
world, which is really the heart of the Gospel. To be frank, neither explanation satisfied
me, and both sides just gave me a headache, because neither really explained WHY
Jesus said this thing at this moment, after he was resurrected, right after he wishes
them peace, fullness, shalom, but before he right gives them the actual Spirit, this gift
of God being within them by breathing on them.

But on Wednesday morning, it hit me, it really hit me, and I think what I had forgotten
was the whole context of what had just happened. Think with me for a moment: Jesus
had just gone to the garden, and there he was betrayed twice—not only by Judas, with
his kiss of death, but by the other disciples, who swore they would never leave him,
never forsake him. And then he is alone, alone, to take on the brunt of the religious
and political rage around him that saw him as a threat, the institutions that see self-
preservation as the only thing worth preserving. The people who had greeted him days
earlier as a Messiah are now crying out for his death, choosing to pardon a highway
robber rather than him. He is thrown under the bus in order to keep the peace, both by
the Romans and the temple officials, even though he done nothing wrong. And then he
was flogged and beaten, crowned with thorns, mocked as a joke, and paraded up a hill,
to Golgotha, with the very instrument of his death on his shoulders—it’s like having to
dig your own grave, or load the gun that will be used to kill you. So much betrayal, so
much treachery, so much disappointment in the people you trusted—so much to be
forgiven, so much forgiveness that must done, so much betrayal that must be dealt with
and let go of, just so much…I think the reason that the first command Jesus gives them
is about forgiveness and un-forgiveness is because he knows that this is what needs to
be done in this moment, this moment infused with this God spirit within them, this
moment they must get through before they can truly go out and share the Good News,
the good news that the world is loved and all have been reconciled to God.

For a minute, think of what must be forgiven—not only by the Christ, but of and by the
disciples themselves. The disciples had to forgive Judas for what he had done, that he
had helped to kill their master—what a betrayal—and they had to forgive themselves
for failing their own words, their belief that they could go with him to the end, even to
the moment of his crucifixion. And they had to forgive the unjust forces that had
brought about this horror, this mockery of justice, the religious authorities, and the
Roman power structure, and the people of Jerusalem who turned so quickly on Jesus—
all this betrayal and horror had to be let go before they could walk out of that door,
before they could do what he asked them to do. Maybe they even had to forgive Jesus
himself for not being the kind of Messiah they had expected, the one who would
obliterate the forces of Rome with brute and cosmic force.

The disciples, all of them, women and men alike, all of them had to put down the just
and real strands of other people’s guilt that they held in their clenched fists before they
could go forward out of that room and tell the world about the forgiveness that this
Jesus had brought into their lives, and the life of the whole world. With those words,
the ones that caused me such heartache, he was putting before them the very heart of
the Gospel, and saying to them, choose my way, choose the path of forgiveness.
Eugene Peterson, the Lutheran minister, and the man who produced THE MESSAGE,
which is a paraphrase of the Bible, which our youth received in their confirmation rite a
few months ago, translates the beguiling passage little passage we have before us this
way: If you forgive someone’s sins, they’re gone for good. If you don’t forgive sins,
what are you going to do with them?” I think Peterson really gets it right—this is not
about handing off the right to forgive or not to forgive to the apostles—its about
challenging them to do what Jesus himself has done: to forgive those who have done
great harm to him and to the one he loved. They cannot leave that room with a
message of forgiveness and reconciliation without doing that work themselves…it will
ring hollow in the end, if they cannot practice what they preach. We cannot speak of
reconciliation, of bringing that peace, that shalom, that fullness about in this world, if we
cannot do it in our own lives, with those who we need to forgive and release from their
guilt.

“During the Second World War a platoon of American soldiers were fighting their way
through a French village. When the battle had ended and the GIs began checking to
see if everyone had survived the fight, they found one of their comrades had been
killed during the battle. Because of the respect and love these men had for each other,
the surviving members of the platoon carried their friend through the village to the local
church. They knocked on the door of the church. A priest answered the door and
asked them how he could help them. They requested permission to bury their friend in
the church cemetery. The priest asked if their comrade was a Roman Catholic. Their
answer was “No.” He was not of that particular church. “I’m sorry,” the priest said, “I
cannot give permission for you to bury your friend. The cemetery is for Roman
Catholics only.” The men weren’t sure what to do, so they buried their friend just
outside the wall of the cemetery. When they had finished they left the area
disappointed but pleased that they were able to care for their friend. The next day, as
they were preparing to move out, the members of that platoon went back to the church
cemetery to pay their last respects to their friend. When they reached the church and
the cemetery they could not find the grave where they had placed their friend. They
noted the landmarks around the church and were certain that they were in the right
place. But there was no grave to be found. Finally, in frustration they went back to the
church and knocked on the door, hoping to speak with the priest. When the priest
they had spoken to the day before came to the door, they asked him if he remembered
them from the previous day. He said that he did. They asked him about what had
happened to the grave of their friend. The Priest answered, “After you left, having
buried your friend, I was so ashamed of how I had treated you that I spent the rest of
the day and night moving the wall of the cemetery to let your friend in.” (Dennis
Gleason, “Reconciliation,” from a sermon April 17, 2005. forministry.com. Retrieved
November 6, 2006) Indeed, if the story we are telling is how everyone is in now, inside
the wall, because of what God has done in Jesus Christ, that the world is loved and
met, and welcomed, and yet we cannot do the very thing that has been done for us, it
makes our story of being reconciled ring false, and Christ does not want his disciples to
walk out that door without at least beginning the work of letting go of the guilt of
others—not the responsibility, mind you—but the guilt they carry themselves, and the
guilt Judas carried with him, and the guilt of the people of Jerusalem and Pilate and
religious authorities.

I don’t know why the issue of forgiveness has haunted me the last few months, because
I can honestly say that there is not a lot I am struggling to forgive, at least on a
conscious level. Maybe it’s the work of the Spirit, but with this new book study coming
up in the next few weeks, and a recent youth group gathering where forgiveness was
the topic, it is obviously on my heart for some reason. I will trust the Spirit to work out
the why, but I also don’t want to ever pretend that the work of forgiveness is an easy
thing—it isn’t and it never will be, but it is obviously one of the most important acts we
will ever do in our lifetimes, so much so that our Christ brings it up right after the
moment of his crucifixion where there is so much guilt to be allocated and shared, by
the disciples, by Judas, and by the unjust forces of government and organized religion.
“When we hear a story of someone who wrongs another person, we expect an ending
like that of Homer’s Odyssey when the mighty Odysseus bends back the bow-no-man-
can-bend, loops the string over its free end, and sends his first arrow whooshing
through the row of battle-axes set up as targets. Then, with the cold, methodical
precision of a serial killer, Odysseus sends one arrow after another flying into the living
bodies of the sleazy suitors who’ve been trying to steal his beloved Penelope. The end
of the Odyssey is bloody, but fair; harsh justice is meted out, under the impassive eyes
of the Greek gods. Yet, what the New Testament teaches us about loving enemies and
forgiving those who persecute us seems to defy the world’s ordinary logic. “An eye for
an eye.” The way of the world is the way of revenge. Jesus Christ demonstrates for us a
higher way: the way of forgiveness. Forgiving others, especially when the wound is
deep, is one of the most difficult things any of us will ever be called upon to do. Yet, few
tasks are more important, for the person being forgiven, or for the person doing the
forgiving. It’s Frederick Buechner who says, in one of his books: “Forgiveness is when
you set a prisoner free, and then you realize the prisoner is yourself.” (uncited
illustration from Homiletics Online). Amen and amen.