RESURRECTION FORGIVENESS

Sunday, 15th April 2007 : Easter 2 : Year C
9:30am Westfield
Acts 5:27-32 : Revelation 1:4-8 : John 20:19-31

At sunset yesterday the Jewish holy day, Yom Hashoah, began. Yom Hashoah translates as The Day of the Holocaust, as western Gentiles call it. But Bishop Mark, in an address at the clergy conference in Mandurah, pointed out that Shoah really has the sense of calamity or catastrophe: "holocaust" is a mediaeval term coined from a couple of Greek words, meaning a whole burnt offering, or a sacrificial offering wholly consumed by fire.

It was out of the horrors of Ha Shoah, from the Auschwitz death camp, that the following prayer of forgiveness apparently came:

O Lord,
Remember not only
the men and women of good will
but also those
of evil will. And in
remembering the suffering they
inflicted upon us,
honor the fruits
we have borne thanks to this suffering
--- our
comradeship, our humility,
our compassion, our courage,
our generosity,
the greatness of heart
that has grown out of all this;
and when they come
to the judgment,
let all the fruits that we have borne,
be their
forgiveness. Amen.

It’s a prayer that we can well imagine on the lips of Jesus himself, who even from the torture chamber of the cross sought forgiveness for those responsible for his agony. The post-resurrection outpouring of forgiveness confirms that those words were not the delirious rambling of a man near death after suffering barely-imaginable torments.

It’s part of the scandal of the cross that even after it’s all over and God achieves the ultimate victory over what Paul calls the "last enemy", death, God does not react in a way that humankind might expect, least of all in the manner that humanity has chosen century after century, decade after decade, year after year …

After all that brutalising and torture, God does not come out fighting, hurling thunder-bolts at the major players in the drama. No all-encompassing earthquakes or tsunami swallowing or sweeping away innocent and guilty alike. In short, no acts of vengeance, even though the God who can raise a Son from the grave would have no trouble at all in sorting out the villains in a very seriously permanent way indeed!

But that’s part of the point. We humans like to scapegoat, point fingers, blame and accuse. That’s how Jesus got himself the best view at Golgotha, hammered onto a couple of pieces of wood.

But not God. Jesus began his ministry preaching forgiveness, he demonstrated that forgiveness throughout his ministry, he preached at the most dire moment of his waning life – and after resurrection he’s still urging us to exhibit the attitude and behaviour of the forgiving spirit.

And so we find Peter proclaiming the message in the temple and John reinforcing it, albeit in different form, in the Book of Revelation. Equally, the risen Jesus gives a clear, though ambiguous, instruction to the ten apostles skulking in their locked room, to be agents of God’s forgiveness.

Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

It’s no accident that Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on the apostles before giving them the instruction to forgive sins because no human can achieve the kind of blanket, no-matter-what forgiveness that Jesus espouses by invoking mere will-power.

We can squeeze our eyes tight enough to pour with sweat or concentrate our forgiveness energy hard enough to give ourselves the mother of all migraines but without the Holy Spirit we will never get to the kind of radical forgiveness that, in the post-resurrection world, is the mark of Jesus’ good news avalanching upon the whole creation.

But here’s the problem and this why Jesus’ words are ambiguous. Priests in our tradition and those who’ve attended enough ordinations know those words very well because they’re an integral part of a priest’s ordination: .If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

Almost immediately, it sometimes seems, we translated that statement into exactly the kind of power-playing, authoritarian weapon that Jesus spent so much time trying to destroy. For centuries the Church has used this power over people to terrorise them, to fill them with guilt, to blackmail and extort, to control.

Priests and bishops took Jesus’ words as a gifting of well-nigh ultimate power even though we knew that Jesus clearly forbade his followers to exercise what Richard Rohr calls "dominative power". Jesus’ terminology is more familiar – he called it "lording it over others", and he wasn’t planning to make exceptions when he told his followers, You are NOT to do that.

So that’s exactly what the priesthood did! You’re all a bunch of wormy, totally-depraved sinners – but don’t worry, chasps, just see me after the Service and I’ll take it all away from you. Until next time. (I reckon a statement like that ought to conclude with eerie church-organ music and a manic laugh!)

But here’s the good news – remember the good news? the stuff Jesus came to disseminate in wildly extravagant, prodigal container-loads? And it’s this, an interpretation I came across only recently.

It’s a reading that is exactly in keeping with the God of peace, the God of non-violence, the Jesus who refused to fight back, the Risen One who did not seek revenge for his maltreatment but offered forgiveness instead.

According to this reading, forgiveness is what I like to call the "normal and natural" demeanour of all followers of Jesus. Forgiveness is to be our hallmark, one of the qualities that distinguish us as Jesus’ own people, truly following Jesus because we are doing exactly what Jesus himself did.

For all of us it’s an enormous power. I suspect that many Christians regard forgiveness as a nice idea but deep-down nurse a suspicion that it’s actually a sign of weakness. In a sense, of course, it is – in a worldly, secular sense. Think of tough-guys like John Wayne throwing away tough-guy advice like, "Never apologise, son. It’s a sign of weakness."

Then consider Jesus’ words and realise that something apparently simple and free that we puny humans do on this planet can have a corresponding effect in heaven, however we define heaven … Consider also that if forgiveness is the normal and natural behaviour of all of Jesus’ followers, then the only way we and heaven can retain sins is if we actually FAIL in our task to spread and practise the good news of forgiveness.

Seen in this light we have an action – forgiveness – that is unquestionably consonant with Jesus’ message and behaviour from beginning to end – even on the cross, which may be the most powerful exposition of the message Jesus ever made. When we retain sins – when we do not forgive – then, far from exercising a rightfully-given power, we are actually and very illegitimately confounding and preventing the good news and the kingdom from operating.

It is only by making the authority to forgive universal, in other words, allowing all followers to access, exercise and participate in the spreading of this good news, that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection make sense and can begin to move towards accomplishment. When the authority becomes part of the power-package of a discrete sub-class then it defeats the purpose of Jesus and mangles the message something terrible.

Who in our lives, who on those streets out there, in Westfield and beyond, needs to hear a message of authentic good news today? Something to ponder deeply; something to offer prodigally. The authority is ours: let us use it with love in all places, at all times, for all people!

THE TRUSTWORTHY GOD OF LIFE: Easter Sunday C

8th April 2007 : EASTER SUNDAY : Year C
9:30am Westfield
Acts 10:34-43 : 1 Corinthians 15:19-26 : Luke 24:1-12

A few days ago I watched the DVD film The prestige, which is about two magicians in Victorian England. The one, Algier, is the consummate showman; the other, Borden, is a gifted illusionist but a relative dullard when it comes to doing what we would call today "marketing" his act. Through various twists of plot and mind they become, as the saying goes, "bitter rivals", although the rivalry is more on Algier’s part than Borden’s.

The title of the film is a reference to the basic structure of a magic trick, or illusion. The first part is called "The Pledge", in which the magician sets up the trick – "I shall now make this caged dove disappear". It creates an expectation; our curiosity is piqued; we dare and demand the magician to fulfill the promise. Part Two is the "The Turn", in which the magician provides that fulfillment – the dove apparently does disappear.

The audience admits the cleverness but is ultimately unimpressed because, as the Michael Caine character observes, that’s not enough. A good trick must conclude with "The Prestige". The Prestige is where the magician makes the dove "reappear" from another place, perhaps from a coat pocket or a nearby hat. And so the audience is enthralled and captivated.

The Pledge, The Turn, The Prestige.

It almost sounds like the basic structure of the resurrection story. We certainly find The Pledge in Jesus’ various announcements of his impending fate in Jerusalem. The incredulity of the disciples is understandable because this is a whole new ball-game, a world away from making a dove disappear!

The Turn comes when the terrible things Jesus has foretold DO happen – and they’re arguably far worse than anyone expected. The religious establishment and the Roman occupiers arrest, try and execute him on a Roman cross.

Well … ho and hum … Getting the Romans to brutalise and torture to death a Jew-boy from the country was probably not a real clever trick in 1st Century Judaea. The audience turns and leave in a mutter. Some demand their money back. Seen it all before …

Until we get to the Prestige. As we know, The Pledge wasn’t just, "I’m off to Jerusalem to suffer and die." Jesus’ Pledge was, "I’m off to Jerusalem to suffer and die AND [drum-roll, please] rise again on the third day!!!"

And this is what the most consummate of all magicians, the Living God, achieves. This is the ultimate Prestige: God raises Jesus from the dead on the third day.

Except for two things. It’s too big, too overwhelming, too beyond that part of human conception that realises it’s all a trick, too far beyond the audience’s psyche that willingly suspends its disbelief in order to allow the magician to override the audience’s logic.

And so The Prestige doesn’t quite happen. People doubt. Even Jesus’ closest friends and followers can’t believe it. No matter which gospel account we read, the closest of Jesus’ friends do not believe that God has pulled off the greatest Prestige of all time.

Because of course it isn’t a magic trick at all. That’s the second problem. The resurrection of Jesus demands far more than a willing suspension of disbelief, far more than an amiable willingness to go along with it.

From beginning to end the resurrection demands nothing less than our total, absolute, committed faith, and when we look back at The Pledge and The Turn we find that this same demand of faith is present. We find also that few of Jesus’ followers – certainly among the men – possessed that faith. At any time.

And no matter how many magicians, illusionists or peripatetic wonder-workers wanted to know "how God did it", they would never find out. Equally, no matter how many believers or non-believers want to know how it happened, we will never discover the secret. And all over the Anglican Communion, in every denomination, and likely in fish-and-chip-loads of newspapers preachers and the press will offer explanations and even proofs that resurrection happened that morning in Jerusalem.

But the mythical 60 Minutes or CNN team were never present. We have no eye-witness account of the event itself because resurrection happens in isolation, unseen, unheard, in the blackness of earliest morning.

And I think God does this deliberately. …Because it ISN’T a trick; because God is not trying to impress the audience. Enthrall and amaze, yes, I think so. But God is not trying to impress anyone because ultimately resurrection is not The Prestige but the outworking and making real of God’s yearning to draw humanity and all Creation back from the brink of self-created disaster by showing – quietly and without fuss – that even after humankind does the very worst we can do, the Living God, the God of the Living, the God of life, is still in control.

We waste our time, perhaps willfully, because resurrection is too large for logic, asking the wrong questions about it. We want to know, we demand the satisfaction of knowing WHETHER it happened, but as Richard Rohr points out in his spiritual commentary on Luke’s gospel if God is the God we claim God to be then something like resurrection ain’t no great shakes. Of course such a God can raise Jesus – or any of us – from the dead. This God created the universe. Not just our tiny planet but the entire universe. What’s resurrection compared to that?

No; the resurrection of Jesus shows us that we CAN trust this God. Remember, it was part of The Pledge, part of Jesus’ To Do list: Go to Jerusalem (tick); Suffer (double-tick); Die (treble-tick); AND Rise again on the third day. Four ticks and several exclamation marks.

That’s what Jesus told us God would do. And God delivered. And if God delivers in this pretty amazing thing then we can trust God to deliver in all the other things that God promises us. Resurrection tells us that we CAN trust this God. …Because, as Paul points out, if God didn’t do it, if God did not raise Jesus, then our faith is in vain and if we trusted Jesus in this matter and God did not raise him then we deserve the terrible pity reserved for the severely delusional.

Now, snuggling as we are into the 21st Century we have an immense advantage that the first disciples lacked. As I sed before doubt flows across all four gospel as the first reaction to the resurrection. We hear in Luke that the group of women who find the empty two and see the whiter-than-white vision of angels report this to the remaining eleven apostles, who dismiss it as "an idle tale, and they [do] not believe them". Peter at least is curious enough to check it out and is "amazed at what had happened".

But Peter’s amazement is ambiguous. We don’t really know whether he believed the resurrection at that point. We DO know that those who first believed – typical of Luke – were the poorest, the littlest, the least significant, the so-called anawim – the ones with whom Jesus consistently conversed, the ones so destitute and marginalised that they had nothing to lose, the ones to whom he gave that most precious gift of hope, the ones who socially or economically, had, to use the title of Richard Fariña’s ’60s novel, "been down so long it looks like up to me".

These women remembered Jesus’ words of promise that the angels happily remind them about. Not just a recollection, not just a biological, physiological, electric transaction of the brain, but a transformative moment in which they realise that the promise is made real – that Jesus’ words were trustworthy, that they can trust, have faith in the Living God.

But let’s not be too surprised, and certainly not judgmental, at the male apostles’ lack of faith. Like the overwhelming majority of men they operate at the level of brute logic. If it’s broke, honey-bunch, I’ll fix it for you. I’m sure part of their despondency following the crucifixion arose from their inability to find anything in their spiritual tool-boxes to fix this major problem.

Few things in life are sadder than the face of a man whose power tools won’t work …

More than that, they lack the one thing that ultimately allows us all to come to the grace of faith – the Holy Spirit. The women already remember Jesus’ words – which is precisely one of the gifts of the Spirit. The Spirit helps us, as John’s gospel reminds us, to remember what Jesus sed and did.

And the reason we need to remember is not so that we can go around converting and dragging in legions of unbelievers – that’s God’s work, thank goodness – but so that we can realise, again and again and again, that what Jesus sed is trustworthy, we CAN believe it, we CAN believe the Living God, we CAN, ultimately, surrender ourselves sufficiently to this God to enable God’s transforming power to shape and re-shape us, time after time.

And when we take our pain and doubt and spiritually-carcinogenic feelings to the Living God for transformation we CAN, in an authentic way that all people recognise, really begin to do Jesus’ work right here, right now.

But that’s enough from me. In a moment we are to witness the manner in which the Living God offers us this gift of the Holy Spirit – through baptism. Tyrone and Cahill will receive the Spirit in what, despite our flouncy and wordy theological fumbling, is quite a simple divine-to-human transaction, using very simple elements – water and oil and light.

This is the same Spirit given to all who are baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who reminds us of Jesus’ words, and gives us the ability to see beyond logic so that we can trust everything that God promises, so that whether we ultimately stand alone, puzzled or terrified, we can indeed have faith that the Living God stands beside us and brings us through to the other side – not of death, because death is defeated – but of life!