Roger Ray, pastor
Easter 2 April 27, 2014
John 20:19-23
19When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
My daughter is movie star beautiful. I say that with a certain shameless pride because, clearly, I made no genetic contribution to my very Asian daughter's appearance. She is movie star beautiful but she is not perfect, a fact which seems to often get lost in the eyes of those who are easily star-struck by beauty.
As an Asian in a 96% white school system, she stood out and, I believe both her school peers and her teachers gave her a pass on many assignments and expectations because people naturally liked her and wanted to be liked by her. Before adopting this little rock star, I had never had reason to consider the potential liability of beauty. When friends and success come too easily, you can start to assume that the world owes you kindness, generosity, the best seat, the first place in line, and you can afford to be dismissive of people who don't measure up to your unrealistic standards.
We had several conversations in the process of growing up about the minimum expectation that if someone is nice to you the very least that the universe demands of you is to be nice in return. Boys fight, vandalize, tear stuff up, and generally test the boundaries of civilization as they are growing up but girls.... Girls verbally cannibalize one another.
When all of her very pretty friends from her cheerleading squad were over for a sleep over, I often found myself thanking God that I was not one of people in their school they were dissecting. Few things made me more proud as a father as when I heard her chiming in to defend one of their peers.
And when she was in college and, naturally, joined the pretty girl's sorority, I was proud when, as an upper classman, she defended the candidacy of young women who were not attractive, who had weight and complexion problems, or who didn't have the resources to have nice clothes.
When I was a kid, one of the most popular movies was they syrupy sad film, Love Story. Perhaps the single most quoted line from any movie in those days was the claim that.... And I bet you can say it with me.... "Love means never having to say 'I'm sorry.'"
I was no Einstein but even as a very young kid, I knew that was a load of bologna. I grew up as the youngest of four kids in a family that was, as Elizabeth Warren described her childhood, on the ragged edge of the middle class. Resources, both financial and emotional, were scarce and so there was some fierce competition among us and we did not always fight fair.
Remaining in a relationship.... Be that marriage, family, friends, work associates, or neighbors, means being willing to say, "I'm sorry." It means choosing to be grateful for kindnesses shown. It means learning the relationship skills of not taking others for granted... not abusing them and assuming that it is their job to take it off of you and pretend the next day that it didn't happen because you are so special that you deserve extra grace.
Humans are pack animals. One of the most cruel forms of punishment in any prison system is solitary confinement. We do not do well without other people in our lives. The famous Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, lived as a hermit for years on the grounds of the Gethsemane Monastery. His abbot agreed to let him live in a hermitage rather than in the monastic house with the rest of the monks because, he said, that Merton was the most difficult person to get along with he had ever met.
Yet Merton wrote in his journal, "Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone. We find it with another." I find that the ability to maintain meaningful friendships, family relationships, marriages and sibling relationships to be one of casualties of the modern era. Our mobile population with so many forms of entertainment and distraction, and myriad methods of communication has, in many ways, turned us all into the pretty girl in elementary school who can afford to be mean to people at will.
I live alone and work alone. Other than public services and counseling appointments, it would be entirely possible for me to spend days on end without ever having to interact with anyone. But I have hundreds of channels on TV, podcasts and videos to approximate human voices and interactions. I have hundreds of friends on Face Book and thousands of viewers with whom I correspond on line. Still, I feel the existential reality of my own isolation and am shocked with how fragile real human connections really are.
Most of you know that with this Wednesday's paper, my long running opinion column in the Springfield News-Leader will come to an end. I was not ready to give it up, even after 20 years of being the most vilified of liberal writers in Southern Missouri, because that media contact with the people of Springfield has been a vital outlet for me.
Still, I am realizing that the drum beat of hate mail, and especially the vicious comments posted every week in the newspapers on-line comment area, have been poisoning me for years. I never gained the discipline to just not look. I seemed to be as drawn to the comments as a cat to cat-nip, and I often felt as humiliated by my reactions to the mean and critical posts I read as a cat walking away from a cat-nip mouse hoping that no one saw her behavior.
I'm no saint, but even a saint has a limited supply of patience and thick-skinned endurance. I believe that for a lot of the past generation I have walked around with most of my supply of patience and generous kindness about a quart low because it was used up on hostile readers. I am going to make it my conscious goal to be a better friend, a more patient and tolerant person and more naturally forgiving. But, like when it comes to weight loss, I will not likely appreciate being reminded of this goal or being offered unsolicited advice on how to do it.
Our gospel lesson today comes from the gospel of John. I usually avoid reading John in our services because the Jesus John describes is the most magical and least human of all of the gospel accounts.
At the end of the first century, John is at such pains to elevate the image of Jesus above any competing religious figures that he gives us gross exaggerations of walking on water, miracle healings and a magical transformation of water into wine. His resurrection stories make Jesus out to be so much God and that places him beyond meaningful connection to actual people.
But there is something about this story that I can't let go of. This Jesus, whom John describes as being give sight to the blind, feed the multitudes and to even raise the dead, comes to see his disciples after his own miraculous resurrection and he gives to them one magical power... and I would go so far as to say that it is a magical power... a power given to the apostles and given to you and to me.... John says that Jesus breathed on them. Breath is symbolic of the force of life, of soul, of spirit... Jesus breaths on them and says, "Receive the Holy Spirit....now if you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven."
If ever there was a time that you were going to take John literally, please do it here. You have the power to forgive sins... you just have to be willing to do it. You have the power to heal broken relationships...To restore family ties...You have the ability to end hostilities...to give strength, confidence, and renewed ability to your own children, if you will choose to forgive.
Marriages don't have to run out of love. Sisters and brothers do not have to become estranged. Friendships do not have to die from time and distance. You never have to throw a co-worker under the bus. You do not have to give reign to your bad moods to emotionally abuse the people near to you.
The French poet, Anais Nin wrote, "Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
Remember the source of what made you fall in love, what common bonds made you friends, the shared vision of justice, compassion and love that drew us together. And do not forget to use your magical powers for good... forgive... be the first one to forgive.... Forgive generously, recklessly, divinely.
