With Arms & Hearts Wide Open

John 20: 19-23

Roger Lynn

June 26, 2016

(click here for the audio for this sermon)

“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (John 20:23) Wow! That is an absolutely remarkable statement. There is the promise of power and authority. It implies a profound level of trust. And it is spoken to a group of people whose lives have very recently been thrown into turmoil because of the “sins” of people who, even now, would probably arrest them if given half a chance. What an opportunity for paybacks.

In the 2,000 years since those words were first spoken, there have been plenty of examples of both individuals and Church organizations who have read this story and taken it as divine instructions for their mission and purpose. “We have not only the right, but the obligation, to render judgment on God’s behalf. It comes to us straight from the lips of Jesus.” And tragically, the results have been pretty much exactly what Jesus warned them about (for it was, indeed, a warning) – lots of people have spent their whole lives absolutely convinced that they were no good, dirty rotten sinners who were cut off from God as well as from the people around them. After all, that’s what the good folks in the Church kept telling them, so it must be true.

But wait! Surely there is more to the story than that. Indeed, there is almost always more to the story than our first, limited, limiting impression leads us to believe. And in this case that is most certainly true. All that is required to begin seeing it is to pull back just enough to notice even the most immediate context in which Jesus’ words appear. The disciples are running scared. They’ve been scared for days, ever since everything fell apart so completely. The man they had been following – the man they thought was going to lead them all to a better life – had been killed. And now they were sure that those responsible for that murder were also coming for them. And so it was that on Sunday evening they found themselves clandestinely gathered behind locked doors, hoping against hope that no one would find them.

Fortunately for them, someone did find them. God found them. For there in that room, behind those locked doors, they have an encounter with the risen Christ. Even a casual reading of the stories in the Gospels concerning resurrection appearances is enough to convince us that there is no clear and easy way of understanding what really happened. And it is just as easy to see that something profoundly real and profoundly powerful occurred in their lives. So, in the midst of their overwhelming confusion, uncertainty, and fear, they are gifted with an experience of the Sacred. “Peace be with you!” If it had been a case of their imaginations at work, this is not the message they would have come away with. Under the circumstances, Peace, Shalom, wholeness, is the last thing they would have thought of on their own. But there it is. “Peace be with you!” – the first clue that Jesus has something other than judgment and condemnation in mind for us and for the world. He says it twice, just in case they missed it the first time. And then almost immediately he offers clue number two. “As God has sent me, so I send you.” (John 20:21) Our mission is the same as Jesus’ mission. We are to be about the same things he was about. And the overwhelming evidence throughout the Gospels, from beginning to end, is that Jesus understood his mission in terms of sharing the good news of God’s love and grace and acceptance – no matter what. 

In the early church, one of the titles for Jesus was the Greek word “theotokas,” which literally means God-bearer. And now Jesus is saying that we, too, are called to be “theotokas” for the world. “As God has sent me, so I send you.” This, then, is followed almost immediately with clue number three, making sure and certain that there is no room left for misunderstanding. “When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (John 20:22) Throughout John’s Gospel it is clear that this Gospel writer loves playing with words and the multiple layers of meaning they can hold. To read this Gospel as a simple, literal story is to miss 90% of what is going on. Jesus breathed on them. Wind, breath, spirit – in both Hebrew and Greek they are all the same word. Ruach in Hebrew. Pneuma in Greek. It is a powerful word. It is the stuff of life itself. It is what God breathes into human beings at creation. It is the very essence of God. Jesus breathed on them! John might as well have used an all-caps, 72-point, bold typeface to write, “Be alive! Be filled with God! Be about the work of God! Be God’s people!” Throughout the scriptures, the work of God’s Holy Spirit is the work of life, and healing, and wholeness. It is never about division and condemnation and death.

So why, here, in this one place at the end of John’s Gospel, would it be otherwise? The answer is clear – it would not! Our mission is to be one of healing, and reconciliation. If we will dare to be about this business of proclaiming and living radical acceptance it will contribute to the transformation of people’s lives. They will experience themselves in relationship to God and to the world in a new and vibrant and life-affirming way. And (here is the warning) if we fail to be about that work – if we withhold the good news of God’s love and grace and healing and wholeness, for whatever reason – then people’s lives will continue to be defined by brokenness and death. That is what Jesus tells the disciples there behind those locked doors. That is what he tells us. Take a deep breath. Be filled with God. Be bearers of God. And then live like the Spirit-filled people that we are, with arms and hearts wide-open. The world is quite literally breathless with anticipation. What are we waiting for? Breathe deep!