The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
April 23, 2006

Note: Sometimes I write a sermon, then later decide that is not the sermon to give that week. That happened with the sermon below, which was completed and then on Saturday I decided that while it was perfectly fine, it was not the sermon for the next day. I wrote another sermon called The Holy Spirit—the 18th horse, which I gave instead. Usually I then do nothing with the original sermon, but I decided to post it this time. —Frank

Power to Forgive and to Retain
John 20:1-31

Jesus died Friday and it is now Sunday. But the group of his followers has not dispersed. They are gathered together in shock at what has happened, hidden behind a locked door out of fear that they will be found and persecuted as Jesus was persecuted. 

Jesus comes to them and sets them free from the fears. Jesus greets them saying “Peace be with you” he breathes on them. This is inspirational in its literal sense. To inspire is to put breath into something. Breathing into his disciples rings in the ears of those immersed in the Biblical story as familiar. For God breathed life into Adam in the same way. This is intentional. What is taking place is new life, new creation. Just as God breathed life into the first man, so to God through the second person of the Trinity, Jesus, breathes new life into humanity. 

The apostle Paul will make this clear when he later writes, “If anyone is in Christ: New Creation.” The breath that Jesus gives is specifically named as the third person of the Trinity—the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit working in and through us that animates the new life. It is the Holy Spirit that breathes the potential for resurrection into our dying bodies. 

Then Jesus gets to the problematic words of the passage. The words that a clever preacher will pass over. Jesus says, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 

Jesus forgave sins during his earthly ministry and took a lot of heat from the religious elite for it. Now Jesus calls on his disciples to take up this same ministry and now we hear that not only can those of us forgive sins, we can also retain those sins. We can refuse to hold out forgiveness. Do you see why it would be easier to head off to Thomas’ doubts and talk about those while skipping right over the part about having power to forgive sins and even more problematic, the power to retain them. 

First let’s consider quickly how to consider a passage from the Bible we don’t understand. The answer for Anglicans (which includes Episcopalians) has been since the 1500s that we use a three-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. So when we read and interpret the scripture, we also look to the traditions of the church and use our reason as we try to understand how God is speaking to us in a passage.  

This use of Scripture, Tradition and Reason together is very different from some denominations. Common among many churches is to say that we just hold to the plain meaning of the text, and some will say we go by the Bible alone. That’s fine as long as everyone who reads something understands the plain meaning of the Bible alone the same way. But we don’t. So for Anglicans, the idea is that we will look at our understanding of a passage alongside the rest of scripture and the ways that Christian communities have always understood the words of scripture and we will use our God given ability to reason as we do so.  

First Scripture. We interpret one passage from the Bible alongside others. So if your understanding of one passage is not in line with the rest of what the Bible teaches, it is best to reconsider how you understand that one text. For example, in this passage, Jesus says we can forgive sins. One thing to ask is how did Jesus understand sins and forgiveness. Then we can turn to a few other passages to bolster our understanding. Let’s look at a few other places in John where Jesus talks about sins. 

In John chapter 8 (21-24), Jesus told a group of Pharisees, 

“I am going away, and you will search for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.” Then the Jews said, “Is he going to kill himself? Is that what he means by saying, “Where I am going, you cannot come?” He said to them, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he.” 

Jesus then teaches that forgiveness of sins or retaining sins is bound together with belief. If someone comes to know Jesus as the Messiah, as the Lord of their life, then they can be forgiven. If not for this belief, he or she will die in their sins. 

One chapter later in John 9, Jesus said, 

“I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may come to see, and those who do see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains. 

Here perception is everything. If you know who Jesus is, you see. To not know who Jesus is is to be blind. But the worst case is to know who Jesus is and to not believe in him. Forgiveness comes then through knowing who Jesus is, that he is God’s son, and in believing in him. 

Finally, in John chapter 15 (20-22) Jesus says, 

Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.  

So once again, knowing who Jesus is matters most. If you know who Jesus is and do not believe, that brings judgment on you. But if you come to know who Jesus is and to put your trust in him, then that brings forgiveness of sins and life. So now we see that as we read about sins in John’s Gospel, it is not so much about an individual moral failing as it is about whether or not you understand who Jesus is and you believe in him. The idea in John’s Gospel is that once you come to know Jesus and believe in him, Jesus will work in your heart through the power of the Holy Spirit to convict you of sin and bring you closer and closer to him. 

Now let’s look briefly at tradition. It also must be said that a preference has always been given to the earliest Christian traditions, specifically to the writings of Christian teachers that came in the first three centuries after Jesus’ death. This is in the time when the church was persecuted and before Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. The idea being that the religion of state might err on the side of things in the interest of the state, and that earlier opinions of what Christians understood the Bible to mean would get us closer to how the first Christians understood a passage. 

So, I have books at home and I use others on the web to help me get into the minds of those early Christian writers. With this particular passage on forgiving sins, there is a difference between the earliest teaching and that of the church after Constantine. During the first three centuries of the Christian faith, this passage from John about forgiving or retaining sins was understood in that the Christians admitted others to baptism or not. And to offer baptism to someone was to hold out God’s forgiveness of sins and the new life that comes with that. To not bring someone into the community through baptism was to retain their sins. In this way, the decision to baptize or not baptize was a communal decision about holding out forgiveness to another or withholding it. 

Later, Christian teaching used this passage as justification for priests hearing someone’s confession. Not just any Christian hearing another’s confession, but the priest alone. The justification for this was that it was those who Jesus commissioned in verse 21 saying “As the Father sent me, so I send you” who receive the Holy Spirit and are given the power to forgive and retain sins. So, for the later Church it was those who were commissioned by the church in ordination who were sent out with the power to forgive and retain sins. 

We have read the passage and understand the words well enough that Jesus gave the breath of new life to his followers and then told them they had the ability to forgive sins and the ability to retain them. We know that elsewhere in John’s Gospel, Jesus taught that what is most important is coming to understand who his is and then to believe in him. 

We have also discovered that even in the varying interpretations, there is the idea that this is not merely some metaphor, but a real commission to forgive sins or not. For the earliest of writers this came through baptism, but for later Christians, it was understood as a gift of the ordained clergy, not of all Christians. Now to use reason. 

Jesus appeared to all those gathered together out of fear of being tagged as one of his followers. Jesus did not pull out a specified few to give them new life. Jesus appeared to all in this same crisis of faith and he offered all of them assurance of his resurrection and then gave all of them the gift of the Holy Spirit and the ability to forgive or retain sins. So whatever is going on here, reason would dictate that the Bible does not want to limit it to a select few. So any gift I have as a priest in holding out God’s forgiveness is common to all Christians even if we have found it more practical to hold its use to one office within the church. We may limit the practice for practical reasons, but God did not. 

What is taking place in John’s Gospel is that Jesus appears soon after his resurrection to commission the first Christians to go out with the Good News and in doing so he inspired them with the gift of the Holy Spirit to give them new life within them. Then he called on them to forgive or retain sins. That was their commission. That was what those with new life were to do. 

But as we see in our look at scripture, forgiving sins has nothing to do with a pronouncement, “You are forgiven,” and everything to do with helping someone come to faith. We are to assist others in seeing Jesus rightly. By the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we are to help others to come to know that Jesus is God’s son and that through him we can have new life. This is why early Christian writers would write of baptism. For those early Christian authors, anyone who understood rightly who Jesus is and believed in him would naturally seek out baptism, that opportunity for a public profession of faith.  

The way you forgive sins is helping someone come to know Jesus. The way you retain sins is by holding still, keeping quiet, and not speaking up when the Holy Spirit gives you an opportunity.  

One commentator on this passage[1] has written, “It is in choosing or rejecting this relationship with God that sins are forgiven or retained. The faith community’s mission, therefore, is not to be the arbiter of right and wrong, but to bear unceasing witness to the love of God in Jesus.” 

That’s it. We either share God’s love or not. If we share God’s love, others may find the path to forgiveness. If we withhold God’s love we are working to retain that persons sins. Jesus offered the first followers new life, new creation, trusting them to offer that new life to others. Jesus has given you new life and he expects you to share that gift as well. It was for this that you have been inspired. 

Amen.