Conversion

Easter 3 C Conversion

Today’s Bible readings are about conversion – the Conversion of St. Paul in Acts and in St. John St. Peter after the Resurrection on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Conversion is change of one thing into another. Water at room temperature is liquid. Heat it and it becomes a vapor; when very cold it turns solid.  When Lucy and I went to Mexico this winter I converted American dollars into Mexican pesos at 18 to 1.  

St. Paul’s conversion was from hatred and anger toward the disciples of the Lord to proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues, saying, "He is the Son of God." St. Peter’s conversion was from a life of guilt and confusion to new life in Jesus in the truth and power of the Holy Spirit.  Three times Peter denied; three times Jesus commanded converted Peter, “Feed my sheep!”

Jesus appeared to Paul to convert him from hatred to love and witness. Jesus appeared to Peter to convert him from guilt and shame to truth and power. Acts tells us that Peter’s Pentecost sermon converted over 3000 people to faith and trust in Jesus.  Paul’s ministry brought the good news of Jesus to many parts of the Roman Empire.  

In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles: “Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.”  On the way he met Jesus, was struck blind, received the ministry of Ananias and the community of believers at Damascus, “and immediately . . . began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, "He is the Son of God."

Peter had confessed Jesus as Messiah by the stream at Caeserea Philippi in Galilee. Peter was a leader among the disciples, chosen to experience the Transfiguration, chosen to be with Jesus as he was questioned by the leaders of the people, and there Peter, as Jesus had foretold, three times denied knowing Jesus. But though Peter was a witness to the Resurrection, and though he continued to be with the other disciples, he was a broken man, bowed down by his memory of his betrayal.  His memory of his failure kept him from claiming the truth and the power of the Holy Spirit given him at Easter. He fell back on what he had been doing before Jesus called him; he went back to fishing. And Jesus met him there. Three times Peter had denied Jesus. Three times Jesus asked him, “Do you love me?” Three times Peter says, “Yes, I love you,” and three times Jesus calls Peter to love and serve, “Feed my lambs; feed my sheep; feed my sheep.”

In the Greek text there is a play on words.  I don’t want to push this too hard. The meaning is that God loves us where we are, as we are, and works in and with us to bring us to himself.   Greek has at least four words for love. C.S.Lewis wrote a book about them. St. John uses 2 of the 4 – agape and filia. The other two are eros and storge. Agape is used for the unconditional love – the love of God for his people – “to will the good of another.”  The first two times Jesus asks, “agapas me?” Do you love me with an unconditional love?  Peter responds, philo se, philo se, philo se.  Peter uses the word from which we get filial love, or philanthropy. Aristotle uses philia to mean loyalty to friends, brotherly love, love of family and community, a general type of love, like desire or enjoyment of an activity. The third time Jesus asks, phileis me? Jesus uses the word that Peter uses, not agape love but philia. 

The other two words for love in Greek are eros, physical attraction, and storge, for the sometimes exasperating love within a family. Storge also is used to express mere acceptance or putting up with situations, as in “love” for one's country or a favorite sports team. Lewis writes much about storge.

We sing an African American Spiritual, number 614 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship: 

Sometimes I feel discouraged and think my work’s in vain, But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again. There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.

If you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul, You can tell the love of Jesus and say, "He died for all." There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.

Don’t ever feel discouraged, for Jesus is your friend; And if you lack for knowledge, He’ll never refuse to lend. There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul. 

“Balm in Gilead” is a healing ointment, a balsam extract. We read of it in from Genesis 43:11, when it is part of the present the Patriarch Jacob sent to Joseph in Egypt seeking a second supply of famine relief. Joseph’s half-brothers had sold him into slavery and told their father Jacob he was dead. Joseph prospered in Egypt, and he sold the brothers grain in famine time. The brothers did not recognize Joseph, and at their first visit Joseph did not reveal himself to them.  But he asked for his full brother Benjamin. When Jacob sent them the second time with Benjamin and the balm Joseph revealed himself; the family were reconciled, and the family were invited to settle on the border of Egypt.  We anoint with olive oil, praying for God’s healing grace, physical healing, psychological healing, spiritual healing, healing of relationships. There is indeed a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.

A contemporary example:  Heather Cook is a daughter of the Rev. Halsey Cook, former rector of St. Paul’s Church, Baltimore, born 1956. She was elected suffragan bishop of Maryland. On December 27, 2014 while driving drunk killed Thomas Palermo, who was riding his bicycle with others on Roland Avenue in north Baltimore. Title 4, Canon 4 (1.4.8.5 & 9) requires clergy to refrain from “refrain from: “any criminal act that reflects adversely on the Member of the Clergy's honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a minister of the Church” and “any Conduct Unbecoming a Member of the Clergy.”  Heather Cook pleaded guilty, was deposed from the ministry, and sent to prison. By all accounts she has been a good prisoner, got sober, and has helped other women prisoners. She will be released later this month, on 5 years supervised parole. Thomas Palermo’s family and many others have objected. Heather Cook’s release will not bring back their husband, son, brother. He is dead; she killed him. May God grant that the rest of Heather Cook’s life will be a witness to God’s love in Jesus Christ. She’s 62, still young, with years to love and serve. May God grant her conversion.  May God grant us conversion, conversion from hatred and anger, conversion from sin and guilt, freedom in the gospel to love and serve. Amen.

Easter Revelation

Easter season is 40 days when we remember the risen Jesus present with his disciples. Easter season includes Sundays and ends on the Thursday of Ascension Day. The 40 days of Lent do not include Sundays and begin Ash Wednesday.  The light of the Paschal candle reminds us of the light of the risen Christ who ate with his disciples, men and women, and taught them. Our first Bible reading in Easter season is from the book of Acts not from the Old Testament. The Epistles this year are from the Revelation to St. John, next year A from the First Epistle of Peter, then year B from the First Epistle of St. John. The gospels are from St. John, first the Resurrection and then from Jesus’ teaching at the Last Supper.

Let’s look today at the reading from the Revelation. Revelation is the last book of the Bible. It is said to have been written in the late 90’s in the time of a great persecution ordered by Emperor Domitian. This was about 25 years after 7O AD when Domitian’s younger brother Titus put down the Jewish rebellion and destroyed the Jerusalem Temple. Revelation is John’s report of a vision received while John was an exile on the Aegean island of Patmos. John says he was in the Spirit on “the Lord’s Day.” That suggests that Christians were keeping Sunday, then as now, as the weekly remembrance of Jesus’ Resurrection. John’s report of his vision of the end times forms a letter to 7 Christian communities in what is now western Turkey, then called the province of Asia.

John begins his letter, “Grace to you and peace.” When Jesus appears to the disciples Easter evening he begins, “Peace be with you?’ When he appears again the next Sunday he begins, “Peace be with you.” God’s will for us, for his church, for the world Jesus has redeemed, is peace. God wants us to live in peace, in reconciled peace with God and with our neighbors. But peace is not easy; peace in a sin-filled world means that we are reconciled after conflict, that we forgive and we are forgiven. From early times an exchange of peace came before  communion. The Agnus Dei has, “O Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on us, have mercy on us, grant us your peace.”  In the exchange of the peace moved from words  at the altar party to greetings in the pews, obeying Jesus’ command, “When you bring your gift to the altar, make peace with your neighbor.” After the Prayers of the People we share God’s peace with one another, the reconciling peace the risen and living Jesus shared with the disciples on Easter Day and the Sunday after Easter, and every time he meets us.       

That peace, John says, is “from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”

In 1924 a Mississippi lawyer William Alexander Percy wrote a poem, “His Peace”

I love to think of them at dawn

Beneath the frail pink sky,

Casting their nets in Galilee

And fish-hawks circling by.  

Casting their nets in Galilee

Just off the hills of brown

Such happy, simple fisherfolk

Before the Lord came down. 

Contented, peaceful fishermen,

Before they ever knew

The peace of God that filled their hearts

Brimful and broke them too.  

Young John who trimmed the flapping sail

Homeless in Patmos died.

Peter, who hauled the teeming net,

Head down was crucified.  

The peace of God, it is no peace,

But strife sowed in the sod.

Yet brothers pray for but one thing –

The marvelous peace of God!”  

The last verses are Hymn 661 in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982.

Peace, John says, is “from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”

Jesus Christ, our Messiah, died and rose almost 2000 years ago. We believe his resurrection began the Messianic Age. Isaiah 2:4 and 11:6-9 describe that age: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not lift sword against nation and they will no longer study warfare. (2:4) The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. . . . They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (11:6-9)

But almost 2000 years later the sword has become the hydrogen bomb, Christians are murdered in church on Easter Day, and tourist families at breakfast are torn apart by suicide bombers. People continue to harm and destroy on the holy mountains. The gospel has been widely preached, but the earth is not yet “full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Glaciers are retreating, polar ice is melting, sea waters are covering more and more of the earth. The Messianic Age is not evident to the eye of the senses.  It is to the eye of faith.

Between 1927-29 Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest, and American astronomer Edwin Hubble developed the “big bang” model of the beginning of the universe – about 14 billion years ago. If all the physical world had a beginning, will it have an end?   

St. John says, “yes.”  Peace is “from him who is and who was and who is to come . . . and from Jesus Christ, the faithful wi1tness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”  Science and religion agree that the world as we know it will end. In the meantime we know “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”  

Remember that John’s vision came in a time of conflict and persecution. Human nature seeks liberty and autonomy, increased power to rule ourselves, to do what we want, when we want, as we want. Totalitarian governments before, during, and after the Roman Empire sought and seek complete control over the lives of their subjects.

John’s vision, and the experience of Christians in all ages, is that Jesus Christ is Lord, “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”  When Jesus Christ is our Lord we are assured of his love and grace. Our sin is forgiven and we share new life in Christ. Alleluia!  The resurrected Jesus has set us free to offer ourselves, our souls, and bodies to God’s service as members of his kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, sharing in his heavenly banquet as we receive the sacrament of his new life in the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Extravagant love

Lent 5 C April 7, 2019

I was born in 1939; my parents were both born in 1911, and began at West Chester State Teacher’s college in the fall of 1929. My father and mother both majored in secondary education. He graduated in 1932, she in 1933, into the depths of the Great Depression,. Pennsylvania had 100 school districts; 99 of them hired as teachers only graduates of their district’s own high school; one, Lower Merion, from which my mother graduated, never hired its own graduates. My father went to the Episcopal Divinity School in Philadelphia; my mother took what jobs she could get until they finally married in 1936 when my father was called as Assistant at St. Luke and the Epiphany in downtown Philadelphia (13^th St. between Spruce and Pine).  He was called to serve the people of the neighborhood and was paid $100 a month and an apartment.  

My point is that my parents learned in the Depression to be frugal people, and I was brought up to be frugal. We had what we needed, but extras were carefully considered. My father used to tell me, “Give 10% to the Lord, keep 10% for yourself as savings, live on what is left.”

With that family history, I find today’s gospel challenging. Its teaching about God’s extravagant love is hard for me. Judas said the perfume was worth 300 denarii. 300 denarii was more than a year’s income. A day’s wage for a working man was one denarius – 4 grams of silver - $2 today, but worth a lot more then.  When you file your taxes note your gross income, and figure that as the cost of Mary’s perfume, poured out over Jesus’ feet. It was an extravagant gift.     

But the spiritual truth is that God does love us extravagantly. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”

It didn’t take supernatural wisdom for Jesus to know that the leaders of his people wanted to silence him, to kill him if that was necessary.  Saint John places today’s gospel story “six days before the Passover.” Jesus is aware of the hypocrisy and the increasing hostility of the religious establishment.  Despite the Commandment, “Thou shalt so no murder,” St. John (11:50) reports that the high priest Caiaphas said, after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, “You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.”

Our continuing temptation, as individuals and as social institutions, to set self-preservation as our first goal. We naturally do whatever we have to do to keep on living and to preserve the institutions we care for. We learn early to care for ourselves, to fight back against those who would harm us. That is prudential, and prudence is a virtue. The Prayer Book includes this rubric, “The Minister of the Congregation is directed to instruct the people, from time to time, about the duty of Christian parents to make prudent provision for the well-being of their families, and of all persons to make wills, while they are in health, arranging for the disposal of their temporal goods, not neglecting, if they are able, to leave bequests for religious and charitable uses.”  The 1979 book places this rubric on page 445 at the end of the service of Thanksgiving for a Child. Earlier books placed it at the end of the burial service. 

“The Minister of the Congregation is directed to instruct the people . . . to make prudent provision . . . .”  For example, our church board is charged with prudently spending the money we all contribute to support the ministry of this congregation. Ron, our Treasurer, tells me we are spending more than we are receiving. Prudence calls us to increase our income or decrease our expenses. We have received grants from the Synod and diocese for $8000 to help with the expenses of the Spanish language ministry we host. That will help some. But we need to be prudent.  

And while we are being prudent we also are called to serve our risen Lord. We are generous in our food basket contributions; the quilt ministry helps many; we tithe our income to the work of the synod and diocese. We gather week by week to worship Christ Jesus. Jesus offered himself on the cross for our sins and the sins of the world. Jesus is Son of God, and God received his self-offering as full and perfect expiation for the sin of the world. When on the cross Jesus cried, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing,” God answered that prayer. God forgives all our sins, the wrongs we do knowingly, in full awareness that what we are doing is wrong, and also the wrongs we do in ignorance, the wrongs we do because our knowledge is limited by our limited knowledge, and by the limits of our circumstances. God loves us extravagantly; God forgives us extravagantly.

Jesus said to Martha and Mary and Lazarus, “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” In the physical world, the world of prudence, we do always have the poor, and we don’t have Jesus physically present with us. The resurrected body of Jesus ascended to the Father 40 days after Easter.  And we do physically always have the poor. We are called to do what we can to help the poor.  

But in the spiritual world, the world of abundance, we always have Jesus present with us: present in our hearts by faith, present in his word written as we read his Holy Scriptures, present to us in the sacrament of the altar as we receive his body and blood in bread and wine. And we are the poor, the poor in spirit, continually dependent on God’s grace, on God’s extravagant gifts showered on us by the Holy Spirit of truth and power.

“The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”  God grant that our lives may be filled with the fragrance of God’s grace, unearned and undeserved, extravagantly poured out on us, and that we may witness in our lives to God’s love in Jesus Christ.

The spiritual truth is that God loves us extravagantly. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”  

Pentecost 18

At Pentecost we remember God’s gift of his Holy Spirit to Jesus’ spiritual body the church. We are baptized in God’s Holy Spirit to become God’s holy people and to proclaim Jesus’ salvation to Avery County and to the world. God grant the world may say of us, “we hear them tell in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.”

Pentecost is the Greek word for the Jewish feast of Shavuot - 50 days after Passover. In Judea the barley harvest began in April at Passover, the winter wheat harvest began in late May at Shavout or Pentecost.  The Exodus is remembered at Passover, and God’s giving the Law on Sinai is remembered at Shavout or Pentecost. God has blessed the people of the Law, both Jews and Christians, with knowledge of God’s perfect will eternally expressed in his unchanged and unchanging Law, knowledge and power received by God’s grace through the faith God gives.

On Pentecost in Jesus’ time and now devout  Jewish men spend the night studying the Bible and eating dairy foods - lots of cheesecake – to remember the manna in the desert while the women prepare a feast for family and visitors. The Passover seder meal ends, “Next year in Jerusalem!” Devout Jews in the many countries to which the people of Israel have been dispersed dream of celebrating Passover in Jerusalem. In Jesus’ time it was a long, expensive, difficult trip: people came in March for Passover and stayed the 7 weeks visiting family, worshipping in the Temple, seeing the sights, until the weather got hot. Then they ate the Pentecost feast and headed home.

Jesus’ disciples gathered for the Pentecost feast with the many new believers in Jesus. They talked about Jesus and his free and freeing teaching about the Law. Traditional interpretation had made the Law complicated and difficult to observe. The disciples remembered that Jesus had quoting the summary of the Law, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ (Deuteronomy 6:5) This is the first and great commandment And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Leviticus 19:18) On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

We confess that we do not keep even these two commandments, nor the 10 commandments of Sinai, nor the 613 commandments the Jewish scholars found in scripture. We know that our efforts to obey the Law do not save us from sin and spiritual death. We are saved by God’s grace in the death and resurrection of Jesus, grace received in faith. We are justified by God in Jesus without the Law, and then God the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth shows us how to return thanks to God for the gifts of justification and salvation. We return thanks as we seek to obey the law and to become the holy people God calls us to be. We cannot obey God in our own spiritual strength, but with God’s power and God’s strength given by his Holy Spirit we can grow in faith to love God and obey him.

On the first Pentecost the disciples remembered that Jesus had promised them the Spirit of Truth. They had come to know the truth of Jesus. They remembered Jesus had promised them the Spirit of Power. They knew Jesus’ power because he had defeated the great enemy death by rising from the dead. And at the Pentecost feast they remembered the giving of the law at Sinai, Moses on the mountain top, the fire lighting up the sky, the powerful wind almost blowing the people away.

They remembered Jesus teaching at the Ascension 10 days before when Jesus “opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”   They remembered Jesus’ teaching and so on that first Pentecost they studied Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit. What was this Spirit going to be like? How would life be different with Jesus no longer physically present with them?

Then suddenly came a sound from heaven like a mighty rushing wind, . . . tongues as of fire appeared among them, and “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” From Iran in the east to Lybia in north Africa, from the north coast of Turkey to south Yemen and all the places in between, “we hear them tell in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.”

Professor Bruce Rigdon tells of being in Russia to make a movie about the Christian church under Communism. Mikael was their minder, arranging interviews, getting churches opened, making the project possible. After the last night’s farewell party Mikael told Rigdon, “You showed me parts of my Russian heritage I never knew; I had never been in a church until you came to make this movie.” He fell silent. Rigdon moved toward the door, tired and ready for bed. Mikael stopped him and said, “You are a Christian?” He knew Rigdon was ordained and a seminary professor, but he had to ask, “You are a Christian?” Rigdon said, “Yes, I am a Christian.” Mikael said, “It was not true when I said I’ve never been in a church. I was once but I don’t remember it. My parents are atheists and party members, but my grandmother was a Christian. One day when I was an infant she took me to church and I was baptized. Tell me now, I’m just curious, you understand, but for curiosity’s sake, tell me, do you think anything happened when I was baptized?” 

The Jewish custom is to spend the night of Pentecost in study of the bible and prayer. Rigdon and Mikael spent that Pentecost night in study of the bible and prayer. An American Christian in Russia with a young man raised in Communist atheism, “We hear them tell in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

The same Holy Spirit who came to the disciples at Pentecost comes to us when we are baptized and believe.

St. Paul wrote to the contentious church at Corinth that the Holy Spirit gives many gifts, but they are given in the one body of Jesus Christ.

We are all baptized into one body, filled with one Holy Spirit just as the disciples were on that first Pentecost.   

We are filled with the Holy Spirit to remember Jesus’ teaching, “Love God, love neighbor.”  

We are filled with the Holy Spirit to keep the commandments and grow into the holy people God calls us to be. We are filled with the Holy Spirit to know the truth of Jesus and witness to that truth in the world Jesus redeemed by his death and resurrection.

We are filled with the Holy Spirit to witness to the power of Jesus who defeated death and gives us new life.

We are filled with the Holy Spirit so that the whole world, and everyone we know may truly say, “we hear them tell in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” Amen.

Easter 3 Repentance to forgiveness

Today’s gospel ends, “Then Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

In both gospels, St. John and St. Luke, Jesus appears to offer “Peace” and the forgiveness of sins. We share the peace of Christ, and in Christ’s peace receive his grace and his power to be forgiven and to forgive. Our justification by grace through faith includes both receiving and offering forgiveness. We are forgiven sinners and because we are forgiven we receive the truth and power of the Holy Spirit to be repentant sinners.

In his lectures on the Epistle to the Galatians, Luther said, “Thus a Christian man is righteous and a sinner at the same time (simul iustus et peccator), holy and profane, an enemy of God and a child of God.” Luther calls this a paradox. A paradox is a true statement that appears to be logically inconsistent.  The Christian church affirms that Jesus is both fully and completely God and fully and completely human. We affirm that we worship one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Spiritual paradoxes remind us that life includes more than one dimension of existence. Literal-minded people find life difficult; things are never quite what they seem. I talked last week about forgiveness, and I want to do that again.

The Biblical Hebrew and Greek words we translate forgive have the common meaning of “take off” or “let go.” For a children’s talk I used to put a backpack on a child and one by one fill it with bricks until the child could barely stand. Then I’d lift the back pack off and ask the child, “How does it feel?” One child obliged with, “I feel like I could fly!”  That’s the feeling we hope for in being forgiven ourselves, and in forgiving others.

Christian forgiveness is turning over to God. We give up feelings of condemnation, both self-condemnation when we are forgiven and condemning others when we forgive them. 

Let’s not confuse forgiving with condoning. By God’s grace we can forgive bad behavior, our own bad behavior and others’ bad behavior, but by God’s justice bad behavior remains bad behavior, subject to divine and human righteous judgment. Because God is infinite, God offers us immediately a restored relationship of love and trust. But we are limited, limited by time and space. Restoring human relationships takes time and effort. Trust, once broken, is not easily or quickly restored. We have the obligation of prudence in restoring relationships. We do no one any good by confusing forgiving bad behavior and condoning bad behavior.  We have done what we have done and we have to live with the natural consequences of our behavior – and the natural consequences of others’ behavior toward us. 

Repairing relationships requires repentance. Repentance is turning away from sin and turning to God and to God’s will for our lives. Repentance is the proper response to forgiveness. We are forgiven sinners and therefore we are repentant sinners.  I close with a story.

In Jerusalem the Holocaust museum YadVaShem is surrounded by trees, “the Garden of the Righteous.” Each tree has a plaque with names of those who sought to save Jews. One so honored is a Dutch woman, Corrie Ten Boom. Her family hid Jews, were betrayed by a neighbor, and sent to Ravensbruck where Corrie’s sister Betsie died. After the war Corrie offered a home for former prisoners and wrote a book, The Hiding Place, from which I quote (pp 214-215).

“It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former SS man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing centre at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message Fräulein”, he said “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!”

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your Forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.” 

Then Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things."

Easter 2 18 Peace and forgiving

“These are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” 

 

In Easter Season our first lesson is from the Acts of the Apostles. The second lesson this year is from the First Epistle of St. John - last year from St. Peter, next year from the Revelation to St. John.  The theme of St. John’s epistles is light and love. “God is light” and “God is love.”  “. . . if we walk in the light . . . we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus God’s Son cleanses us from all sin.”

“But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” In the old Prayer Book tradition this is one of the Comfortable Words after Confession and Absolution. Jesus Christ is our advocate, the one who speaks for us on judgment day. Jesus speaks for us - we are guilty and pardoned. By his death Jesus has set us free from sin and God’s judgment for all our sins – “for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Jesus’ death and resurrection was not only for Jesus’ disciples, but for every one in every place and every age who admits sin and claims the pardon. I’ve sat in court and heard the state’s attorney offer a plea bargain. The defendant pleads guilty to a lesser offence and the more serious charges are dismissed. The judge says to the defendant, “Do you accept this agreement, and are you in fact guilty of the crime to which you plead?” The required answer is “yes, I am guilty.” So say we all. We all are guilty of willful disobedience of God’s law in some respect at some time. But “if we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

One of the major problems of our society and church is pervasive denial of the reality of personal sin. We all want to focus on our good intentions and ignore our morally ambivalent and sometimes egregiously evil actions.  The Jesus Prayer in the Eastern Orthodox tradition is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  Only as we become aware of our own sinfulness can we accept the wonderful grace of our risen Savior. “We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

In today’s gospel Jesus comes to the disciples gathered traditionally in the upper room where they had celebrated the last supper. The doors were locked; the mob was still out there looking for more blood. Jesus comes; he offers the disciples his peace, and in that peace Jesus shares his power to forgive sins.

By Jesus’ death and resurrection, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, our sins, and the sins of the whole world, have been put away forever. Our sins are washed away by the blood shed by Jesus on the cross.

Baptism is the beginning. The water of baptism washes away sins and every time we confess our sins we renew the spiritual effect of our baptism. And where water baptism is not possible we recognize a “baptism by desire.”.

The risen Jesus shared with the disciples his authority of the cross to forgive sins against God, and he  shares with all Christians his essential power to forgive sins committed against ourselves. “If you forgive the sins of any (against you), they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any (against you), they are retained (to you).” We all sin against God’s presence in our own lives, and we sin against God’s presence in the lives of others. We are all sometimes sinned against. Evil has been done to the dignity and honor of God’s creation in our lives. Jesus gives us the choice. We can hold to the memory of being sinned against, or we can forgive. We can continue to resent, or we can forgive. We say in the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The contemporary version of the prayer has “sins” – “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

The gift of being able to forgive sins against us, to let go of resentments, is a gift of the Holy Spirit by the resurrected Jesus. It is also hard spiritual work.  G.K. Chesterton once said, “Jesus commands us to forgive our neighbors and forgive our enemies. Frequently they are the same persons.”  We need to forgive over and over again, as often as the resentment comes back to bother us. When we have forgiven the sins committed by others against us we also can forgive the sins we have committed against ourselves, the things we have done to harm ourselves even when we knew they were wrong when we did them, When we forgive God gives us his peace, and in his peace  the wisdom, the grace, and the power to change, to do things differently. For that we thank God.

          The peace of God in Jesus made possible Thomas’ radical change from skepticism to belief, from “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” to “my Lord and my God!”

           “These are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”