The Mission - 1 - Forgiveness

Scripture: John 20:19-23

John 20:19–23 NIV

19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. 21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

5/24/2026

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Graduate Presentation

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Standard

Graduate Presentation and Prayer

Opening Prayer:

Holy Spirit, we confess that we resist Your powerful work in our lives. We fear the changes You bring, and we fail to trust Your power and grace. Forgive us, we pray, and renew within us Your transformational presence. We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Call to Worship

Leader: How manifold are Your works, O Lord! In wisdom You have made them all.

People: When You send forth Your spirit, they are created, and You renew the face of the earth.

Leader: The Spirit of God has been poured out on all flesh.

People: We come to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.

Leader: Come, let us worship the Lord who renews and empowers us.

All: Alleluia! The Spirit is here!

Pentecost: Forgiveness

The Hiding Place

We spent a lot of time in the upper room this Easter season, discovering the difference the resurrection of Jesus makes in our lives. Today, we celebrate Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. However, in lieu of the traditional reading of Acts 2, we’re looking at the moment in John’s Gospel where the Spirit first comes — the same Spirit poured out at Pentecost in Acts.

So come back with me to our scripture passage today, back to Easter Sunday, where the disciples are hiding in the upper room. It was the place where Jesus gathered them together, loved them with all he had and all he was, washing their feet, celebrating the Passover meal with them, teaching them in ways that were more than they could understand in that moment, and praying for them. It was a room filled with His love and blessing, and it was the room where they said goodbye to Jesus.

After the death of Jesus, the disciples scattered, but somehow they all eventually made their way back to this room. They were hiding in fear for their lives, holding their breath, not knowing if they would be arrested and crucified next. They were hiding in their grief and guilt, thinking of all the ways they had abandoned Jesus in his hour of need, denied being his disciple, and perhaps even wondering if they had played small roles that led to his betrayal. They were also hiding in confusion because earlier that morning, the women had gone to the tomb and found it empty and came back saying that an angel of the Lord told them Jesus had risen from the dead, just as he said he would.

We too often hide when we are afraid, when we feel loss or guilt, and when we are confused. Sometimes those feelings bleed into each other, and it is hard to tell which one we are feeling, making it feel hard to breathe. I want you to think for just a moment of where your hiding place is. It may be a room in your house, your office or workplace, or your car.

Where do you go when you are overwhelmed?

Now they were about to meet the risen Lord Jesus in that same room. The doors were locked. Jesus didn’t even bother opening them. He came and stood among them. They were full of fear, sadness, grief, and confusion, but Jesus knew right where they would be. He met them right there in the middle of it all and said, “Peace be with you.” The very air around them began to change as he breathed those words of life and forgiveness among them.

When we are with Jesus, we breathe forgiveness.

The Wounds

After breathing peace into the room around them, Jesus showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. This proved to them that this was not an imposter. It showed them He was still the one who washed their feet just a few nights before. But it also showed them that he carried the marks of his suffering in his resurrected body. It showed them that even when they did not choose him, in his hour of need, he still chose them, just as he had from the beginning.

Many of you have heard me say at our funeral services that the hurt we feel in loss and grief is real because the love is real. Perhaps there is no place this is more true than in the hands and side of Jesus, who felt that hurt because of his love for us.

I don’t understand it all, but I think Jesus kept those marks on his resurrected body to remind us not only that the love was real, but the forgiveness was too. He could have healed those scars away, as if the cross never happened. Think about that. He could have made the wounds as if they never were. But in choosing to wear them, he chooses not to forget them. And because he remembers the wound, he remembers the love, and he remembers the forgiveness. Our Lord does not forget the wounds; he remembers them rightly.

The disciples had been holding their breath, but now they let it go and breathe, and they rejoice around him. Their savior had defeated death and come back to them. That first initial moment helps us breathe a little easier and come out from the places we hide in fear, knowing our Lord and Savior can stand against anything, that his love is unstoppable.

But those marks on his hands spoke to them long after that day—the proof in his hands and in his side, the proof of his love and his forgiveness. It continued to speak to them in those places of grief. It reminded them that Jesus did more than rise up from the grave on that third day. It reminded them that he came back to find them and offered them the forgiveness they needed to join him in his mission.

The Breath

Again, Jesus breathed out and spoke, “Peace be with you,” and the peace that it carried was doing more than filling the room. It was filling the disciples. Jesus told them, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you,” and he breathed on them, filling their hearts and minds with the Holy Spirit, like the wind fills the sail of a sailboat. “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit is always moving around us, working out God’s will in the world. But there are moments when we receive that Spirit and invite it to come live within us, to guide us, remind us of God’s Word, and empower us to serve with him. Jesus received the Holy Spirit at his baptism, and it filled him and sailed him out into the wilderness. It gave him the strength to defeat the tempter and then empowered him to begin his ministry. It was his intimate connection with God the Father as he led his disciples and laid down his life on the cross, and it was the same Spirit that raised him from the dead three days later. Now the risen Jesus was breathing the same Holy Spirit into his disciples to lead and strengthen them in the days ahead. It would be their constant connection to Him and to God the Father. But listen to what Jesus says next:

"If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven;

if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."

Last week, Jesus opened up the scriptures and entrusted them to his disciples. Today, he entrusts them with forgiveness. The mission that God had planned from the beginning of creation, the mission that Jesus lived and died for, is handed over to a bunch of disciples who are still hiding away in their fear, grief, guilt, and confusion.

No strings attached. No transaction. No threat of taking it away if they make a mistake.

Jesus gave his disciples the power to forgive sin… or to let sin remain.

Does that make you feel uncomfortable? It should.

(pause)

Wounded Witnesses

When we are with Jesus, we breathe forgiveness. That becomes much more important when we realize the task of sharing forgiveness is given to us. We did not pay the price for forgiveness. Only Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, could pay that price. But we are his witnesses. We choose who hears about that forgiveness from us and to whom we keep forgiveness hidden.

We are meant to be the choir of Jesus, amplifying that forgiveness with our many voices, all singing as one. We are not a backup choir, just adding pleasant sound behind a soloist, be it a preacher, teacher, or Jesus himself. This song belongs to the choir because Jesus gave it to us, and every voice counts.

Every single witness counts. That is how forgiveness works. There is enough forgiveness for everyone, but every bit of it was bought with the precious blood of Jesus, and every drop matters. He does not call us to go out and blast a message of forgiveness into the open air, hoping anyone and everyone will hear it. Forgiveness is meant to be applied to the wounds caused by sin.

That is what makes our witness trustworthy and believable. You wouldn’t trust someone with advice for surgery who had never been through surgery themselves. You would want to hear from someone who has been wounded by sin, found healing from it, and can show you the marks that the wound and the healing left on them. That’s why a choir of voices can get our attention, but we won’t trust that forgiveness until we can hear and see it in the life of a real person. We all need to know someone in that choir to hear it clearly and know the message is meant for us personally.

Jesus chooses us as wounded witnesses to share his forgiveness in the same way he did: by receiving the Holy Spirit and sharing it through those healing wounds of our own. The Holy Spirit at work in us may be the ultimate testimony of God’s forgiveness in our lives and in the world. In order to do that, we have to be able to acknowledge the wounds we carry ourselves and be witnesses of the ways God’s forgiveness is working through them. The first person we need to apply that forgiveness to is ourselves, and we find where and how to do that by recognizing and admitting those wounds.

So we start with our wounds. The ones we bear ourselves and the ones we know we have caused. Sometimes they hide from us. Sometimes we hide them from ourselves. But that is where we start.

What wounds do you carry with you?

(pause)

What wounds have you caused?

(pause)

Naming a wound is not safe. Receiving forgiveness for a wound caused is not easy. But this is the place where Pentecost starts, because we cannot offer forgiveness if we have not received it ourselves. That can leave us feeling stuck, hiding away from the world, and perhaps trying to hide away from our own wounds. The answer is not fixing ourselves. The answer is recognizing that Jesus is here in our hiding place with us, and he is showing us his wounds and offering us forgiveness for our part in their existence. He is showing us that our sin against him did not get the final say. His love covers a multitude of sins, and his forgiveness redeems a multitude of wounds. And he wants you to show him your wounds as well.

When we are with Jesus, we breathe forgiveness. Do you believe that? Are you willing to experience that?

As we let him breathe into us, his breath fills our sails like the wind and sends us as wounded witnesses, carrying his forgiveness to all we meet.

I want to invite you to close with me in that breath prayer I shared with you at the beginning of this month. We inhale and say “Lord Jesus Christ” and then exhale and say “You are with me.”. We are going to pray this three times, allowing Jesus to breathe over and into us, showing us where our wounds are, and breathing his forgiveness over us, into us, and through us.

Let’s pray that breath prayer, three times, slowly.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus Christ

You are with me.

Lord Jesus Christ

You are with me.

Lord Jesus Christ

You are with me.

Amen.