Easter 2 Year C
April 14, 15, 2007
The Rev. Barbara Schlachter

The Second Sunday of Easter is Peace Sunday, Breath Sunday, Forgiveness Sunday. All too often when we read this Gospel, which we do every year on the second Sunday of Easter, we concentrate on the question of belief.  Thomas’ doubt and subsequent exclamation of faith obscure the earlier, and I believe, more important elements of this passage.

Peace, Breath, Forgiveness

The first words out of the Risen Christ’s mouth are Peace be with you.  We are right to exchange the peace with one another every Sunday.  Peace in all its fullness, as shalom, as wholeness, as unity, as abundance is a wonderful blessing to share with one another.  The greeting of “Peace be with you” from Jesus’ lips does more for me than “Don’t be afraid, from the lips of the heavenly messengers who say those words 365 times in the Bible, one for every day of the year.

Peace be with you—wholeness, healing and health be with you.  He says that once, lets it sink in—we are told that the disciples rejoiced—and then he says it again.  “Peace be with you.”  It must be important—he repeated it, as if he wanted to make sure they understood what he was saying.  Then he gives them the Great Commission according to the Gospel of John.  As God sent him, so now he sends them.  And to empower them he breathes on them. 

This is reminiscent of God breathing into the first human creature in the Garden and giving Adamah life.   God breathes the life force that animates the clay of our flesh.  Jesus is empowering this same flesh for the task that he is about to give them.  And that task turns out to be to proclaim and offer forgiveness.

Forgiveness.  Today we celebrate the power of forgiveness, the importance of forgiveness, the ministry of forgiveness.   To live a life that is forgiven is to live a life that is free and available for loving, without carrying burdens from the past.  There is no more burdensome life than carrying guilt for what we have done that we wished we had not done or carrying resentment toward people for doing something to us that we can’t forgive them for.

Jesus came to proclaim forgiveness of sins, ours and others, and breathes into us the Spirit to go and not only live the forgiven life ourselves but offer it to others.  The first ones to receive this forgiveness were the ones who had let him down at his moment of greatest need in the events of the weekend of crucifixion.  These were not the ones who had lived a perfect life and could therefore offer forgiveness to others.  These were the ones who felt crummy about how they had not been there for Jesus and who experienced the need for forgiveness and the experience of forgiveness as a pre-requisite for offering it to others.  You can’t be a believable witness if you haven’t gone through it yourself.

The disciples are given the power to forgive sins.  Remember, this was one of the great charges against Jesus.  “Who is he to forgive sins?  Only God can forgive sins.  The temple system of sacrifice is the only way sins can be forgiven.  We the priests of the temple hold that power and do not claim you can do this!”

The power to offer forgiveness is a mighty power indeed.  The church has realized this and has claimed for itself alone the power to do this.  For instance, I can absolve your sins because I am a priest.  The lines in the gospel giving the disciples the authority to forgive and to retain sins have been seen to belong to a select group of people.

I’m not sure Jesus would be happy about this interpretation.  What about the priesthood of all believers?  What if he really meant any follower of his could offer God’s forgiveness to anyone else?  That God’s forgiveness is not ours to withhold and that if we do retain, if we refuse to forgive, those sins remain with us.  If I refuse to forgive you, those sins are retained—by me.  I now carry the burden of your sins.  You wanted to give them up to God, but I refused to forgive you, and now I carry them.  That’s not where I want to be.  I am perfectly happy to let God be the final judge of someone’s sins.  I am happy to offer forgiveness to anyone who wants to repent, intends to lead a new life and is willing to find a way to make amends, if possible.

There is a powerful scene in a powerful book entitled “A Thread of Grace,” by Mary Doria Russel. It is set in Italy in the last years of World War II.  A Roman Catholic doctor takes a medical leave from his post in Nazi Germany and goes to a little village in North Italy where he finds a Catholic church so that he can make his confession before he dies from tuberculosis.  He goes to the priest and confesses to him that he has been responsible for the death of 91,867 people.  This is before knowledge of death camps, of the experimentation and extermination that occurred in them, has become known to the Italian populace.  The priest thinks he must be joking.  Then he realizes the man is sincere, and he is bewildered and horrified by the story that unfolds. And ultimately, he refuses to offer him forgiveness.

But the story does not end there.  The priest now knows what is happening to the Jewish people, and he knows he needs to do something to prevent any deaths he can possibly prevent.  And he starts in motion a series of actions that eventually saves the lives of what history says is about 50,00 Jews.  This is the actual historical truth behind the story.  In the process, however, the priest is apprehended and is put into a Nazi prison in Italy.  He is tortured beyond a human being’s ability to withstand pain and yet he lives.  Word gets to the Jewish community, and the Nazi doctor, who has been nursed back to health by a rabbi’s wife, has helped treat countless Jews who are part of the resistance to the Nazis.  He puts on his old uniform so that he can get into the prison to see to the priest prisoner, as if he were following orders from higher up, although he is risking his own life if he is discovered.

Then, in an amazing moment, he takes from his black doctor’s bag, a pyx, holding the communion host.  He says the words of confession and absolution that he has memorized for this occasion, taught by a different priest who gave him the pyx.  He gives the priest who has been so miserably beaten, absolution and the sacrament.  And then, in an act of mercy, his second act of mercy toward this priest, gives him an injection that puts him out of his misery into the blessed healing of death.   

So he provides the priest both the absolution that was withheld from him and the death that he has administered in one form or another to more than 91,000 people.  His total deaths goes up by one.

It is an amazing story, full of twists and turns, reminding the reader that not only that life is not always easy, but it is also not always simple to figure out who are the good guys and who are the bad guys and that forgiveness needs to be available for everyone, no matter what.

As Jesus’ followers we are given the gift of forgiveness, for ourselves.  And we are empowered and commissioned to give forgiveness to others. 

I went to a workshop on forgiveness at a psychotherapy workshop last month.  I was interested in hearing about the work of a man who does forgiveness seminars for people for whom religious faith seems unimportant.  I heard his reasons for learning to forgive and to give up holding onto resentments.  Ultimately, you hurt no one but yourself when you refuse to forgive.  Forgiveness of course is not the same thing as forgetting or as reconciliation.  But it is letting go of the burden of carrying around something that someone else did to you or someone you love.  It can take awhile, but it can be done, no matter what it is.  Otherwise, you continue to remain a victim.

Secular forgiveness, psychological mechanisms to help people learn how to do this are useful, but they are for me no substitute for the Risen Christ who stands in the midst of us and proclaims Peace, Life, and Forgiveness.  We know this Risen One as the One who has forgiven us and empowered us, has filled us with the joy of sharing the forgiven, healed, whole and loving life with others.

Today is our quarterly healing service.  The Risen Christ stands in our midst and proclaims to each of us, peace, forgiveness, healing and hope.  All we need to do is accept it, and then pass it along.  As we forgive, so are we forgiven, which is what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer every time just before we break the bread and proclaim “Alleluia. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.”  Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.  Or in the alternate version, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.  Forgiving others and being forgiven ourselves is central to what it means to be a Christian.

We are all on the journey toward ultimate healing and wholeness.  Pray God to help us each accept what healing we need along the way.  Pray God we may accept that healing today.  Amen.