We are Forgiven

Anecdote/Intro

At some point in their life, every christian encounters the question why did Jesus have to die? If you ask a random person on the street, they will likely give you some version of “Jesus died for their sins” if they don’t just look at you like you are crazy and walk away as quickly as they can. Early in my faith, the more I wrestled with this statement, the less sense it made. How can something as amorphous as “forgiveness” possibly outweigh the good jesus was doing in his ministry. He seemingly was making a utopia that obliterated social distinction, cured sickness, and overcame oppression. By many modern metrics, the society of his believers seemed perfect, yet God had claimed to have some higher purpose? Clearly I was missing something. There were actually two major points I was missing. First, whether we know it or not, we all need forgiveness. Second, it is only through this forgiveness that we can find true reconciliation. Reconciliation to each other, and most importantly to God, is priceless. There is a somewhat infamous family story about my brother and I that illustrates this point. The house we grew up in had a screened in porch for sitting outside in the summer. Eric and I spent many afternoons building small contraptions, running around, and generally making havoc. One day, for reasons that are now lost, Eric decided to drive several large metal nails into the floor of the porch. Our parents inevitably found out and we were banished to our room with a stern talking to. Indignant at this outrageous overreaction, we decided to get even. After the nails were removed, Eric snuck back to the porch and circled each nail hole with a permanent marker as an eternal reminder of our mistreatment and defiance.

The most remarkable part of the entire endeavor is that years later, we can sit over dinner and laugh about the entire event. This is because, at the end of all of this, we had recieved forgiveness. Not the kindergarten level “go apologize to your sister” kind of forgiveness but the true, anger cast aside, hard feelings dissolved, all encompassing kind of forgiveness. Without this the weight of our past actions, our past sins, we could move on.

Acts 3:12-19

Now stupid childhood acts are ultimately fairly easy to forgive. But what about seemingly “more” serious things. In our passage from Acts peter gives a sermon that addresses exactly that. First lets set the stage of what is happening. In a remarkable parallel to Jesus, Peter and John have just healed a crippled beggar near the entrance of the Temple in Jerusalem. The people in the temple see the healed beggar walking and surround them. Peter, recognizing an opportunity to share the Gospel, stands up to speak. But he doesn’t say nice things. He says to them:

The New Revised Standard Version Peter Speaks in Solomon’s Portico

you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you,

15 and you killed the Author of life

Now we may do some crazy things in our life, but hopefully we never manage to literally kill the author of life. But we can hardly deny the spirit of the accusation. We all need forgiveness.

We have all stared pointedly ahead at a stoplight while a homeless man begs on the corner next to us. We have all stayed silent about what is right when we can tell the tone of a room is against us. As we will confess later, “We all have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.”

If the sermon ended here, it would be a tragedy. But this is not where Peter ends his sermon. Instead, he calls them his friends. For Peter knows that despite all we have done, despite peters literally denial of Jesus, God has not abandoned us to our ways. God has done so much more. With Easter, God has used our sins to his own purpose.

Peter says

The New Revised Standard Version Peter Speaks in Solomon’s Portico

In this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiahf would suffer.

Peter tells us that even in our ignorance, God is using us to work towards something better.

Gospel

So is it any wonder that the first words out of Jesus’ mouth in our Gospel reading today are “Peace be with you”? At this point peace had to be the farthest thing from the disciples minds. They have witnessed the crucifixion, they have denied Jesus, and all their ministry seems wasted. Yet here is Jesus, reminding them yet again that no act of human frailty, no act of doubt, can stand in the way of the forgiveness of God. Because God does not rely on the actions of humankind to reconcile the world to himself.

The New Revised Standard Version Jesus Appears to His Disciples

Thus it is written, that the Messiahn is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day,

47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

This radical new forgiveness transcends any forgiveness that came before. On Easter the promise of God’s forgiveness was expanded to include the whole world, including us sitting here today. On Easter, the Law came to be replaced with repentance. And on Easter, God brought us into relationship with him forever more.

Conclusion

Why, again, is forgiveness better than utopia? Because utopia without forgiveness is not a utopia. Because of our forgiveness we can confidently engage with each other, comfortable in our knowledge that wrong can and will be moved past. Because of our forgiveness we may stand tall in the face of our insecurities. It is because of forgiveness that we can never be defined by our failures but by our intent behind our failures. In the stress and exhaustion of the final two weeks of semester we will fall short of Christ. As Fleming Rutledge says “The line between good and evil runs through each person.” There is a little kid in each of us, spitefully waiting with a sharpie to circle all those holes they put in the porch. Being Christian is not never falling short, it is recognizing that we have fallen short and accepting God’s transformative action to make us the men and women he desires us to be. On the first Sunday of Easter we celebrate the victory of Jesus over Death. On the second Sunday we celebrate the fact that God comes to us even in our darkness and our doubts. Today let us celebrate the forgiveness and love of God that remains with us always.

Amen