Canadian Mennonite
Volume 9, No. 07
April 4, 2005
I have to forgive
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On this second Sunday after Easter we have another opportunity to remind ourselves that God has delivered the world from fear and set our feet on the path of love. And at the same time, we reflect on how difficult it is to believe how good the news is. In the passage from John 20:19-31, Jesus comes saying three times, “Peace be with you” to his doubting friends and disciples.
Jesus meets them on the evening after Peter and John have seen the empty tomb, and after Mary Magdalene had told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Despite this good news, the disciples are meeting in secret, with doors locked for fear of the Jews. They can’t quite believe it. Jesus’ words, “Peace be with you,” are meant to settle their fears. Jesus does not rebuke them because they had deserted him, nor for being afraid, nor for lacking faith; Jesus is kind even to Thomas, stressing his belief, not his doubts. The disciples respond with joy.
Next, Jesus sends them out with an incredible mandate; they are given the power to forgive sins and to hold back forgiveness.
Again Jesus says, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you…. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Earlier in his ministry, Jesus provided a caution and a warning against withholding forgiveness. In Matthew 18, Jesus tells his listeners the story of a servant who accepted forgiveness but was not himself prepared to forgive. At the end of the story, the master placed in prison his servant who had not forgiven his debtor, even though he himself had been pardoned. Jesus concluded: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
After the disciples had received God’s spirit, in Acts 5, they boldly tell all about the new life that God brought about. When the angel releases them from prison, it tells them to go to the temple courts, “and tell the people the full message of this new life!”
Luke writes that both forgiveness and repentance are unearned gifts. It’s the end of accusations, the end of finding fault. It’s time to make known the righteousness God assigns to women and men. This is what it means to proclaim the message of life.
I want to offer three illustrations that can encourage our faith that evil has been conquered and that we are free to live in service modelled on what God did for us.
The first an excerpt from the Easter Sunday sermon of Martin Luther, a 16th century preacher. Luther’s words are clear and graphic as he describes Christ’s conquest over sin. Jesus ends, in a fundamental and real way, the power of sin in the cosmos. Through Jesus, God terminates the punishment for sin everywhere for everyone.
From Luther’s Easter sermon 1529:
You have heard in the Passion how Christ let himself be crucified and buried and how sin and death trampled him underfoot…. Sin, death and the devil are his lord…. But in the instant when [the devil] believes him destroyed, the Lion tears himself away from sin, death, hell and the jaws of the devil…. This is our comfort, that Christ comes forth: Death, sin, and the devil cannot hold him. The sin of the entire world is powerless. When he appears to Mary Magdalene, one sees in him neither death nor sin nor sadness, but sheer life and joy…everything that the devil, sin and death have done is destroyed. It is easy to say such words, but still no one believes it….
To have faith is to believe you are good despite all evidence to the contrary. Repentant sinners see in themselves sin; but they also believe themselves to be justified, or made righteous and good, by God in Jesus. Sadly, in its desire to encourage a life of discipleship, the church has pointed the faithful towards probing self-examinations intended to expose failure in their lives. In the resulting cacophony of guilt, who can believe Paul when he claims God has made us righteous in his letter to the Romans?
A letter from an MCCer, about her grief at the death from AIDS of her Christian friend, illustrates the harm done when we concentrate on sin. Then, she writes, “we will always try to hide our actions, we will not set it out for all to see, and as long as we condemn sinners, we will continue to be silent about HIV/AIDS.”
With sensitive insight the letter writer urges us to “place sin alongside God’s grace and love and mercy [and then] it becomes not an object of scorn or ridicule, but a symbol of movement from brokenness to wholeness, from sickness to grace, from hate to love.”
It is important for us to realize that God is at work liberating and freeing today as much as he was in the days of the resurrection.
There is a touch of irony when one discovers this work in a secular paper such as the Globe and Mail. A recent article by Stephanie Nolan shows God active in the life of a Rwandan woman whose husband was tortured and killed 10 years ago. Her experience represents God’s work in the whole human race—stained with sin we reluctantly accept the reality of God’s healing. Her name is Athanasie Mukarwego and she herself was captured and for three months suffered unspeakable brutality and violence. Her existence can be seen as a paradigm of living in hope and decency while still stained by sin. In the midst of her hell she questioned her belief in God.
“I asked myself, Does God exist? ‘We were always taught that God loves us—he would not have let me live through this. Clearly, he does not love me.’”
After her release she found herself surprised that life continued, although it was difficult to hope. She was sure she had HIV, so she went to be tested. When the physician told her the tests were negative, that she did not have HIV, she did not believe him.
“So he explained, you don’t have HIV. And I said, ‘But that is impossible. Me? I don’t have it? You’ve made a mistake. I was raped by more than 500 men. Your machines don’t work. I told him what had happened to me.’ And he said, ‘Well, do you believe in God?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘So believe in this result.’”
She did believe, and her life is now a positive expression of living in faith and hope. She works for a project called Village of Hope. It helps village women live meaningful lives with their families by offering them training. Twice a week she stands before hundreds of poor and weary widows. She tells them about medical care, family planning and about the law—a new law that gives women the right to inherit land.
“The work I do is like a medicine, it’s like a cure for what I have lived through…. I’m good these days.”
This does not mean it’s all fine. As she walks in her village, she sees the wives and fathers of the men who killed her husband and who hurt her.
“It’s like a film before my eyes, it never turns off—in the shower, at the table. I have to forgive so that things are different for my children.”
May we help each other to believe that the news of God at work is indeed great. And let us, like this Rwandan women, believe that we are good these days and respond in hope through lives of service and unbounded good will towards others.
The sermon was originally preached at Langley Mennonite Fellowship, B.C., on April 18, 2004.