Well, here we all are on the Sunday after Easter.... I bet a lot of you had big Easter celebrations last week, didn't you? Maybe a big family dinner.... an Easter ham, with some sweet potatoes and green beans. Last week, Rindy and I had dinner with our neighbors – it was wonderful. And I guess all those folks who gave up chocolate for Lent were finally able to dig in. What a marvelous day Easter is!
But today is the Sunday after Easter. It is traditionally called “Low Sunday,” and it's like the day after the circus leaves town. All the parties are over. The church staff which was swamped during Holy Week has been able to take a little rest with a little time off. The choir, which has sung the big anthem they've been rehearsing for months are going to take it easy for a while – we'll be lucky to get them to sing us one of those rounds in the back of the hymnal. All of the extra chairs we brought out for Easter have been put away, and the only folks who are left are .... are all you die-hards. Ah yes, the die-hards, the people who come every Sunday, rain or shine, dependable as can be. You'll even come on the Sunday after the biggest day of the church year, just to see what happens next.
We are gathered in this room today, just like the disciples were that first Easter night. Maybe they were die-hards too. Or maybe they were a bunch of tired, scared, demoralized men and women who didn't know where else to go or what else to do. They had just seen their Lord beaten, whipped, made fun of, and put to death in the most humiliating way possible; hung up on a road so everyone could gawk at him as he died. I don't think they felt very triumphant. I don't think they felt like followers of a mighty savior. I think they felt lost. They were terrified that the authorities might come after them next. And so they locked the doors.
Then, somehow, Jesus comes into the room and shares his peace with them, what we now call “the peace of the Lord.” They are trembling with fear, and he brings them peace. They are grieving his death, and he brings them peace. They are feeling guilty for betraying him, and he brings them peace. He greets them and he shows them his wounds. And what did he do next? He breathed on them. That's right. He breathed the Holy Spirit on them.
Breathing is the most important thing there is for life; it's more important than even a heart beat. When they teach you first aid, they tell you that if you come to a person who's unconscious to remember A-B-C – check the airway, start the breathing, then work on circulation. When God created Adam, what did God do? He breathed on him. When God raised those dry bones in Ezekial last week, how did he do it? He breathed on him. In Hebrew, it's called ruach Adonai, the breath of God - God's life-giving spirit. And so here, when Jesus finds his dejected friends huddled behind locked doors, what does he do? He breathes on them, and by doing so Jesus quite literally in-spires his disciples. (“Inspire” even comes from the latin word for breath.) Jesus infuses a ragtag group of tired and demoralized people with his life giving spirit, and he transforms them into the living body of the Church. It is by his inspiration, not by showing them his wounds, that he transforms them. And he sends them out into the world with one mission: to forgive.
Whenever you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them;
Whenever you retain the sins of any, they are retained.
The other night, I caught a few minutes of “The Apprentice” on television. Do you know that show? People compete for a job by doing tasks Donald Trump assigns to them, and when they fail, his tagline is “you're fired.” But I wonder what it would be like if Donald Trump were more like Jesus. “OK. You guys are the sorriest bunch of disciples I've ever had! You've failed every test I've put to you. You bicker among yourselves all the time. You're terrified when a little bad weather hits the lake. You can't catch a lousy fish without me telling you where to throw your nets. You denied me. You betrayed me. And you ran away and hid in my hour of greatest need. There's only one thing left for me to do with you bums! YOU'RE HIRED! All of you. I'm forgiving you all for all that stuff, and making you all responsible for the future of the entire church! Whenever you forgive someone, they're forgiven. And whenever you don't forgive, then they aren't forgiven. SO GET OUT THERE AND START FORGIVING THOSE PEOPLE!”
Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to imagine Donald Trump, or any business person for that matter, building an organization on forgiveness. I mean, if folks can't get it right, you're supposed to fire them and get someone in who can, right? But as we have seen so many times before, God's ways are not our ways; Jesus doesn't think like we do. Instead, Jesus formed his Church by inspiring his disciples and forgiving them. Then, in spite of all their failures, he hired them right there on the spot and sent them out to forgive others just as he has forgiven them. In other words, no matter what else the Church might become, Jesus founded it on the basis of complete forgiveness – God's forgiveness of us and, perhaps even more important, our forgiveness of others. The church is a community of forgiveness.
What does it mean to be a community of forgiveness? Does it mean that we all go around like a bunch of “goody-two-shoes” saying, “that's alright, I forgive you” every time someone cuts us off on the highway? Maybe not, because we cannot ever forgive as perfectly and completely as God forgives us. But like the Apostles, we too have been inspired by the Holy Spirit through our baptisms; when we were baptized, we died and were reborn in Christ. And through our joining together at this altar, our bodies have become part of Christ's body, just as his body becomes part of our own. Being a community of forgiveness means being a community which shares the burdens of one another just as we share the peace of the Lord, not only with one another here in this room, but with those out in the world who don't yet know God's peace.
We were not in the room that day to see Jesus' wounds, and yet here we are. We have also been inspired by that same Holy Spirit. That inspiration has been passed down to us through our baptisms. That inspiration has been passed down to us through the generations – through those who have gone before us; our parents and grandparents; our friends and loved ones; maybe even total strangers; anyone who brought us to peace of the Lord when we needed it most. And like the Apostles, we have been sent out to continue the work of the resurrected Christ by practicing forgiveness. We spread his peace the same way they did, through our acts of forgiveness. We too are continuing witnesses to the resurrected Lord who forgave his friends on that Easter night and transformed them. Whenever we forgive someone, they are forgiven – they are transformed if only just a little – and brought into the peace of the Lord; they are brought into fellowship with us and through the Lord's Supper, with Christ.
And that's why we die-hards are here today, we who have gathered on Low Sunday and every Sunday. That's why we have come back to this room, inspired by the Holy Spirit, seeking the peace of the Lord. It is right to celebrate the joyful day of Easter, coming as it does after 40 days of fasting and denial. It is a good thing to celebrate the Lord's resurrection. We are Easter people! But today is the day when the real work of the Church begins. Christ has inspired us with his Holy Spirit to go out into the world and continue the work he began – forgiving others and inviting them into his peace.
Thanks be to God.
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