“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.”
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