The Chain-Reaction of Grace--April 18, 2023

The Chain-Reaction of Grace--April 18, 2023

"When [the risen Jesus] 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 20:22-23]

This is nothing short of a new creation.  

In an echo of the Genesis story where God makes the first human out of the dust of the ground like a potter fashioning clay, and then breathes into the lifeless body of earth [in Hebrew "adamah"] to bring Adam to life, Jesus now shows up among his lifeless, hopeless, aimless followers, and breathes on them the very Spirit of God [again, just like in the Genesis creation storytelling] so that they come to life again.  The risen Jesus now raises others around him to life out of their deathliness, like resurrection is contagious when he's around.  He breathes into them like the Creator at the beginning, and all of a sudden, everything is new.

And did you catch what Jesus says immediately after breathing out the Spirit onto his disciples? The mission to speak forgiveness anywhere and everywhere.  Once again, the resurrection of Jesus makes possible a new start, not just for Jesus... and now it's clear that it's not just for Jesus' inner circle of followers, either.  Wherever Jesus' followers go, they are sent with the same Spirit and empowered to declare the same forgiveness that Jesus spoke to a band of disciples in that locked room.  And, as we've talked about already in this story, Jesus' very presence there in the room communicated grace to those disciples. Rather than coming for vengeance to settle a score with the disciples for having abandoned and denied him on the night of his arrest, Jesus declared from the outset that he had come in peace and was not holding their failures against them.  Jesus' presence spoke forgiveness for the disciples, and so it makes perfect sense that he now calls them to pass along that forgiveness to whomever they encounter.  If the risen Jesus isn't holding the disciples' wrongs against them, then our calling includes releasing people from the baggage of guilt they've been carrying around, too. It's really all the same motion, spreading outward in all directions like ripples in a pond or a shockwave when a bomb goes off.  It's just that where Jesus sets things into motion, nothing gets destroyed, but rather creation begins anew.

In a sense, none of this should be surprising to us.  After all, we borrow the pattern of Jesus' words in prayer on a pretty regular basis, and in the familiar cadences of what we call The Lord's Prayer, we ask for forgiveness in the same breath that we own our own calling to forgive others.  That idea--that God's forgiveness of us is inseparable from our calling to forgive others--is woven throughout Jesus' teaching, parables, and instruction to his followers, too.  But here in the locked room of Easter evening, it's helpful to see this as something life-giving rather than burdensome.  

I'll be honest--sometimes, when I pray those words on Sundays, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," it can feel ominous, like God is likely to reinstate my sins and cancel my forgiveness if I hold a grudge.  It can feel like the process has to start with me and my capacity to forgive someone else that then earns God's forgiveness of me.  But as we hear Jesus' commission to his disciples here in this scene, it's clear [if it weren't already] that it's God's forgiveness that sets the chain-reaction of grace moving, and that our calling to declare others forgiven is simply carrying the momentum that Jesus has already begun.  In other words, God's forgiveness of us isn't contingent on how well I forgive others, but just the opposite--God's already-declared forgiveness of me empowers me and frees me to declare God's forgiveness to others.  Because God isn't holding my failures against me, I'm freed to tell others that God's forgiveness frees them as well... and then they are set loose to do the same everywhere they go.

So, wherever you and I go today, how might we communicate that grace to the people around us?  When we find people still worn down and weary from carrying all the baggage of their life stories, how might we take Jesus at his word and tell people, "You are free--you are forgiven?"  And how might a little bit of God's new creation take shape when we do?

Lord Jesus, bring us to life out of our deathly despair again as you breathe your gracious Spirit into us again today.