The Power of Forgiveness: A Meditation on John 20 for the 2nd Sunday in Easter

The Power of Forgiveness:  A Meditation on John 20 for the Second Sunday of Easter

 

Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week,

when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews,

came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side.

Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.

 

 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you:

as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

And when he had said this, he breathed on them,

and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:

Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them;

and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

 

One of the greatest distinctions between the Church of Jesus Christ, and the fallen world around it, is the gift of forgiveness.  On that same Easter Sunday in which the Lord arose from the dead, the disciples were huddled behind a locked door for fear that the Jewish authorities would do to them what they had just done to Jesus.  In the Roman mind it would be justice to have the followers of Jesus executed the same way He was, if indeed they considered Jesus a rival king to Caesar.  And the Jewish leaders already demonstrated their murderous vindictiveness by trumping up charges and fomenting mobs to betray an innocent man to a tortuous, humiliating public death.  Further, the disciples had abandoned Jesus to this fate, and despite their protestations a few days earlier, showed plainly that they were not really committed to dying with Jesus for His cause.  The disciples rightly feared the dark brutality of justice from the Romans, the power-hungry vindictiveness of mob-wielding Jewish leaders, and even what Jesus Himself—if He had truly risen from the dead as the women at the empty tomb reported—might visit upon them for their betrayal of Him.  What terror must have been relieved in that locked room, when Jesus arrived in the midst of them with words of peace and forgiveness, and a commission to be sent as He was sent in the power of the Holy Spirit to forgive the sins of others.  As St. John began his Gospel with the distinction of Light and Darkness at creation, so he brings that distinction into the clearest possible focus with the Risen Jesus:  a world of self-righteous evil and death, invaded by the Light of divine forgiveness and eternal life.

 

The world today is not much different than it was in the Mediterranean two millennia ago, with the machinations of political leaders wreaking havoc in countless places.  There are those who demand a brutal justice according to their own skewed law, using twisted reason to destroy all who will not fall into obedience with their psychotic disordering of the world.  There are those who are vindictive, full of malice and violence toward others with whom they disagree, particularly against those who stand in the way of their aspiration to, or retention of, power.  And there are plenty of people who, whether they have power or not, seek vengeance upon others for some perceived wrong done to them, either in the present or by their supposed oppressors’ ancestors.  The rapid emergence of these phenomena in America are not unique to world affairs, as they have destroyed societies with war, murder, and treachery in Africa, Europe, Asia, and anywhere else people have gathered into community.  If the only light of man in a society is the darkness of their own twisted nature, how great will that darkness swell, until it inspires neighbor to devour neighbor in fire and sword.  We see it in our cities, in our schools, in our universities, and in our halls of power, where people who have lost sight of the Risen Jesus unwittingly bring forth a preview of hell on earth.  Societies of men without forgiveness are dead men walking, murderers who hate their neighbors and scratch out their lives in fear, trying to avoid the one who will eventually murder them in the same reciprocal hatred.

 

Consider then what a great light forgiveness is to a fallen world.  Forgiveness begins with a right understanding of what true Justice really is, and the honest culpability of a fallen soul before that righteous Law.  It is not a false acquiescence to some man-made prudence, nor a self-flagellation for purported ancestral improprieties now unfashionable in the present zeitgeist, but an honest repentance before the Law of God.  It is the failure of men to love God which drives them to hate their neighbors, and the failure of men to love their neighbors which impels them to embrace an atheistic will to power, working out all sorts of evil upon those around them.  Forgiveness begins with an acknowledgment that Truth and Justice and Reality are inseparable from God Himself, that they are built into His Creation by the Providence of Natural Law, and revealed even more clearly by His divine Word given through His Prophets and Apostles.  Forgiveness illumines the darkness of fallen minds to see the reality which is before them, dispelling the delusions of self-centered vainglory.  Before this holy Law all people shall give account, in this world and the next, and no amount of self-deception or self-justification will release them from it.  It is this Law, the true Law, which reveals every man a sinner worthy of destruction, whose accountability is first and foremost to their Creator as the giver of all life.  It is only the Forgiveness of Calvary which meets the Judgment of Sinai with satisfaction for all, not because the Gospel abolishes the Law, but because it establishes and fulfills it.

 

The Light of Forgiveness doesn’t stop there.  With the Blood of Jesus poured out for the sins of the whole world, His Word of Forgiveness creates the Peace which He offers to everyone who will receive it from Him by faith.  When the Risen Jesus met His disciples in that locked room, their fear was displaced by the love He poured out upon them, as their peace with God and with each other was made reality by His forgiveness.  Jesus’ forgiveness not only rightly ordered their thinking to what love authentically commands each soul before their Maker and their brethren, but absolved them of their failure to love as God commanded them.  What the Law could not do to convert the hearts of fallen men before the clarity of its divine mirror, the Gospel of Jesus’ Forgiveness made reality by the work of His sacrifice for all men.  The disciples gained a capacity for divine love because God first loved them, pouring out the riches of His peace and forgiveness upon them, so that they might become emissaries of this same divine love.  Forgiveness is the manifestation of love in action, the highest and most holy satisfaction of the Law.  Such love as this, empowered by the Eternal Word and Omnipotent Spirit, transforms the receiver of this love into the image of the One who sent it, and makes of him a messenger of that same divine love.  It is not an abstract love or a theoretical love, but a real and powerful love that is manifested with the transformative grace of forgiveness.

 

This light that we hold is what makes us new, makes us different, makes us like Jesus.  It is Jesus who breathed out the Holy Spirit upon us, and sent us to proclaim forgiveness freely to all, that all who might receive it by grace through faith in Christ alone, might live forever in the peace it creates between God and men.  This gift of Forgiveness in Jesus is the power to dispel all darkness, to cast out all demons, to tear down all unrighteous facades, to transform fallen sinners into righteous saints, and to turn the world upside down.  This Forgiveness is eternal life reconciled to God, the sole Author of Life and Love and Truth.  This Forgiveness is the power of love in action which our neighbors need as much as we do, that they along with us might bear witness to a better world, a better society, and an eternal Kingdom which has no end.  Hear the Word of the Lord as it comes to you today, and receive the Forgiveness it offers for Jesus’ sake—then bear it out to everyone you meet, in Jesus’ Name.  Soli Deo Gloria!  Amen.