Less Like A Deal

"Less Like A Deal"--April 25, 2017

"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'." [John 20:21-23]

So... what are you supposed to do with a dirty diaper? 

The answer to that question tells you a great deal about the nature of forgiveness...and about the freedom that is made possible by Jesus' resurrection.  No, seriously.

Okay--let me say at the outset here that I have changed my share of diapers, perhaps more than was common for males a couple of generations ago, not to toot my own horn but to be honest about it.  I have changed diapers.  I know the drill.

I have changed them in the house.  I have changed them in public park bathrooms. I have changed diapers in the midst of long car trips across country, and I have changed them at all times of day and night.  I have changed them, with the help of a traveling diaper pad kit, on the floor of not one, but two, pastor's offices.  And, at the risk of sounding like a rejected Dr. Seuss book, I have changed diapers here and there, and practically everywhere.

So I know two important truths about what happens with the... used... diaper once the baby has been changed. First off, I will grant that there are times, rare as they might be, when I cannot immediately throw a diaper away into the closest trash receptacle.  For example, if I am visiting relatives or extended in-law family far, far away from home, it is not good form to leave a fresh and fragrant (shall we use that euphemism?) Huggie in their kitchen trash while no one is looking.  No, in that case, the best call is to hold onto the diaper for a short bit of time longer, and then to ask the hosts where I can safely and appropriately dispose of the article in question.  And then, of course, into the correct trash receptacle it goes.  And that, obviously is the second important truth about used diapers--pretty much, you want to get it out of your hands and disposed of as quickly as possible... but granting whatever local constraints you may have to deal with (like, hey, if you're at the park, how about throwing that used diaper in one of the outside trash cans rather than concentrating any smell in the restroom trash... because other people are going to have to use those bathrooms for the rest of the day at the park).  If you are the diaper changer at the moment, you may consider yourself empowered--with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto--to find and make use of the nearest appropriate trash receptacle.  No one will question your judgment in getting rid of the diaper, and no one will suggest you just wad the used diaper in your traveling bag to hold onto for a while.  You are empowered to get rid of it--and to get rid of it with haste.

In summary, when you find yourself with a freshly changed child in one hand and a plastic grocery bag with a dirty diaper in it resting in the other hand, pretty much your mind is focused on getting rid of the stinky bag as quickly as possible.  This should be a no-brainer.

Well, it is in that light that I think we need to hear Jesus post-resurrection charge to a room full of ten of his fearful and still kind-of dense disciples, when he says to them, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven" and conversely, that "if you retain the sins of any they are retained."  Jesus knows that sin is like the dirty diaper of the soul--and in all honesty, the only thinkable thing you can do with someone else's sin when it is brought to your attention is to dispose of it as quickly and safely as possible.  And that is precisely what Jesus empowers his followers to do.  That is, in a word, what forgiveness really is like, and Jesus says it is ours to do in light of his resurrection.

I will be frank with you here--for a long time in my own faith journey in the Lutheran tradition, I didn't like this saying of Jesus.  Not because I'm not "pro-forgiveness," but because my good solid Lutheran upbringing taught me that God is the one who issues forgiveness, and that we human beings are not supposed to pretend it is in our hands to dole out.  After all, Luther's whole project, the central issue that launched the Protestant Reformation five centuries ago, was driven by his assertion that the institutional church didn't have the right or authority to put strings or conditions on forgiveness that came from God.  Luther's point was that nobody--not a local priest, not an absentee bishop looking to fill his coffers, and not even the Vatican--could charge money or require a special prayer or demand a certain number of empty rote repetitions of liturgical gobbledygook as a condition for forgiveness.  And I am still to this day convinced that Luther's point is exactly right.

That led a younger version of myself to wince at Jesus' sentence here, that if his disciples say someone's sins are forgiven, they are... and also that if those same disciples decide to retain those sins, well, they are retained.  That just hit my dyed-in-the-wool Lutheran ears too much like Jesus was saying that Christians, or Christian leaders (or priests or bishops or popes?) get to decide who really is forgiven and who really isn't.  And something about that notion just made my Lutheran Spider-sense start tingling.

But maybe I've been giving sin too much credit.  Maybe I've been hearing it all wrong all this time.  Maybe I have been imagining all this "if you forgive" and "if you retain" business like Jesus is offering his disciples leverage... when really he is charging his disciples with diaper disposal duty. 

Here's what I mean: we have a way of hearing Jesus' words in this passage like he is authorizing religious extortion or racketeering, as if he is saying that his authorized group of apostolic forgiveness-merchants can choose to grant divine forgiveness to the people they deem worthy of it... or at least the people who do the correct religious action to get access to this forgiveness.  We have a way of hearing Jesus like he is some crooked deal-making snake-oil salesman authorizing his middle managers to squeeze unsuspecting customers for something valuable, like he is some pathetic CEO figure trying to look strong by giving the appearance of being a tough and shrewd negotiator and insisting on "getting something good in return" for that forgiveness.  We have a way of projecting the worst of humanity onto Jesus that way, and making him sound like he is saying, "If the sinners will play ball and do what you want, go ahead and give them some token forgiveness... but if they won't do what you say, well, you just threaten to withhold that forgiveness... and then they'll come crawling and groveling, and you'll show what a tremendous deal-maker you are!"

Please, please, please--let us stop for a moment and seriously ask if we really think that is how Jesus operates.  Please let us stop and make sure we can still see the difference between the living Christ and that kind of sleazy, slimy, self-serving scheming.  Please, let us see if it is possible, maybe, just maybe, that Jesus isn't some conniving corporate type... because maybe forgiveness of sin is, as in the words of that beautiful Jonathan Rundman lyric, "less like math, less like a deal." 

And maybe Jesus has been saying all along that sin is best dealt with like a dirty diaper--once it's in your hands, the best thing for you to do is to look for a quick, responsible, appropriate way to get rid of it.  There is no "leverage." There is no "deal" to be made.  When Jesus says, "if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven," he says it not like someone authorizing a religious racket, but someone saying, "For goodness sake, if you have the stinky sins of someone else in your hands, get rid of them as quickly as you can!"  You could, in theory, hold onto that disgusting dirty diaper for longer--you could cram it in your travel bag and take it with you... but why on earth would you?

Yes, of course, you need to find the right receptacle.  Yes of course, you don't use your grandmother-in-law's dining room trash can for an overripe Luvs from your toddler--that's just not good form.  But you don't hold onto the diaper forever then--you just go out to the outside trash cans and get it out of your hands as fast as possible.  And it is the same with speaking forgiveness to other people.  The forgiveness comes from Jesus--it is God's prerogative, and only God's (thank you, Martin Luther, you were right on this one all along) to forgive our sin... but that has already happened.  The old diaper is already off.  The old sin has already been forgiven from God's perspective.  The open question is whether I will live like God's forgiveness is true--and get that stink old diaper out of my hands as fast as possible--or whether, for some bone-headed reason, I think I need to hold onto someone else's already forgiven sin still, like a dirty diaper in my hand.

See, this is how to get rid of that moronic deal-making "leverage" mistake in our thinking.  It's not that I can hold someone's sins over their heads and say, "Do what I want, or I will deem you unworthy and you'll be stuck with your sins again."  No--they are forgiven already by God. The question is what I am going to do with the sins that God has already forgiven someone else of but that I am still holding against them in my mind.  If I refuse to forgive (and by the way, the Greek word "forgive" more literally means "let go of"), the old sins don't go back onto the other person--no, not any more than the old wadded up dirty diaper ever goes back on the baby!  No, the question is whether they will stay in my hands and I awkwardly amble around the house, or whether they will be gotten rid of in the nearest appropriate trash can.  If I recognize that there is a better or worse moment for the letting to go happen, fair enough--that's like choosing which trash can is the right one to pitch the diaper into.  But the goal is for me to get rid of them.  "Retaining" the sins of someone else doesn't mean that I have the power to slap a dirty sin diaper back on someone for whom Jesus already died and erased the record against them--it just means I am left holding the bag with the stink in it until I can bring myself to let go of it.

To hear Jesus' words rightly, then, means that we think of ourselves less as shrewd religious dealmakers, leveraging someone else's sin to get something out of them in order to win our decree of forgiveness, and more like we are holding a dirty diaper that holds all the... let's say "mess"... of what they have done to us.  Ok, well if you are holding someone else's diaper, you are not hurting them to keep holding onto it, you are hurting yourself.  You are just making yourself miserable with the stink--thinking that you can't let go of it, or that you are somehow punishing the other person by holding onto it, or that you are protecting yourself from future wrongdoing by holding the grudge and wishing evil on those who have wronged you.  It's like the old cliché says, "Refusing to forgive someone else is like drinking rat poison yourself and expecting the rat to die."  Withholding forgiveness is like holding a dirty diaper--you may need to pick the right moment or receptacle, but you are a damn fool (and I mean that literally) if you think that you are stronger, tougher, better off, or safer if you are clutching that diaper in your hands rather than pitching it in the right place.

Now for us, all of this radical forgiveness flows out of the resurrection.  It is the risen Jesus who gives this blanket command and authority, and that is because on the Easter side of the empty tomb, our sin really has been dealt with from God's perspective. The resurrection of Jesus is like God taking the old diaper off of all this whole stinky, sinful world... and then God hands the diaper in the shopping bag to us, and says, "Please, go--you are empowered to go get rid of this."

This thing called forgiveness is so much more than a deal brokered by a stingy blowhard.  It is like letting go of some awfully smelly garbage... so we can start over fresh.

So... I guess, go ahead an hold onto that stinky pile in your hands if you want to... but it seems to me the right question for us to ask today in light of the risen Jesus is... why would you ever want to?

Lord Jesus, let us take you at your word and announce your forgiveness to all the world, well aware of the mess each make of it.