Sermon based on John 20:19-23 and Acts 2:1-21
Peace (John 20)
The Bible is full of promises, and we know that God keeps his promises! Jesus promised that he would beat death and he did. After he died on the cross he came alive again. He wanted the world to have peace. The disciples were all together in a locked room for fear of being arrested, and they didn’t really feel the peace of God at all! Then suddenly Jesus was with them! He appeared in the room and spoke to his followers. Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you’, and greeted them all. Then he went on to offer them peace again, before breathing on them and imparting to them the Holy Spirit.
Two weeks ago we read of Jesus’ promise to send the Holy Spirit to his followers. John’s gospel includes much of Jesus’ teaching about the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist introduced Jesus in John 1:33 as “the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” Jesus himself said that his ability to give the Holy Spirit “without measure” would offer proof that he is from God and speaks the words of God (3:34). He promised that “rivers of living water” – a metaphor for the Spirit – would flow from his innermost being (7:38-39). Further, Jesus said that this is “the Spirit of truth,” who dwells with believers forever yet cannot be received by “the world” (14:16-17). It is the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, who will teach Jesus’ followers everything and remind them of all he told them (14:26; cf. 16:13). It is the Spirit, whom Jesus sends “from the Father,” and who testifies about Jesus and equips people to offer testimony about him (15:26-27). This Spirit glorifies Jesus (16:14). It is He who can “prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment” (16:8-11). As Jesus departs from this earth he leaves his disciples well set up to continue his work. In the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ followers receive nothing less than the fullness of the glorified Son. Their lives (ours, too) can therefore accomplish ends similar to his life’s, insofar as they reveal God.
Jesus came to the world to bring peace, and that’s not just about an end to big wars! With the help of the Spirit, we can all do our part to live peacefully with others, to think of others rather than ourselves, and to bring peace into friendships and relationships.
Power (Acts 2)
It was a few weeks later, and the disciples had continued to worship and pray together, trying to hold on to Jesus’ promise of peace. They chose leaders, and gathered often to worship and talk about how to bring God’s peace to the world. What they needed was some power… and that’s what they got!
The Old Testament promises that the arrival of the kingdom would be accompanied by a fresh outpouring of the Spirit (see Ezekiel 36:26,27). With the fulfilment of these promises at Pentecost, we have further confirmation of the presence of the kingdom. With the coming of the Spirit, people are empowered in new ways. A group of disciples, who only a few weeks ago had been hiding away in fear, are now out on the streets, telling of the wonders of God’s salvation. Peter, who a few weeks earlier had denied knowing Jesus, is now standing in front of a large crowd explaining who he was and what God was doing through him. The change is remarkable! They see things in new ways and they are enabled to speak out with new courage and authority.
As they prayed they heard the sound of a wind blowing through the room, and then they saw what looked like flames landing on their heads. They were confused and possibly even a little afraid, but they soon discovered that they had a new Power through the Holy Spirit. This power meant that they were able to talk in the many languages of the crowds that filled the city of Jerusalem for the Pentecost celebration. They also had the power to speak up about Jesus in a way they hadn’t before.
The power that the followers of Jesus received from the Holy Spirit changed their lives.The Holy Spirit can give us power too. He can give us the strength to speak out and share what we believe with our friends and others who don’t know Jesus as we do. His power can help us pray for other people. That power is given by God, and is part of God’s purpose.
Purpose
As I said earlier, Jesus had taught his followers a lot about the Holy Spirit before he went back to heaven. In John 20:23 he said, “If you forgive people’s sins they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” I’ve read that the word translated as ‘forgive’ is better translated as ‘release’ or ‘set free’.
It is imperative that we make sense of this verse in light of what Jesus has already said about the problem of “sin,” the role of the Holy Spirit, and the nature of his ministry. Jesus is not appointing the church as his moral watchdog; nor does he commission it to arbitrate people’s assets and liabilities on a heavenly balance sheet.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus talks about sin as unbelief, the unwillingness or incapacity to grasp the truth of God manifested in him. To have sin abide, therefore, is to remain estranged from God. The consequence of such a condition is ongoing resistance. Sin in John is not about moral failings; primarily it is an inability or refusal to recognize God’s revelation when confronted by it, in Jesus. (Note what Jesus, says, concerning the world, in John 15:22: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.” Cf. John 9:39-41).
Consequently, the resurrected Christ tells his followers (all his followers) that, through the Spirit that enables them to bear witness, they can set people free from that state of affairs. They can be a part of seeing others come to believe in Jesus and what he discloses.
Failure to bear witness, Jesus warns, will result in the opposite: a world full of people left unable to grasp the knowledge of God. That is what it means to “retain” sins (“retain” is the opposite of “set free”). Jesus is not – at least, not in this verse – granting the church a unique spiritual authority. He is simply reporting that a church that does not bear witness to Christ is a church that leaves itself unable to play a role in delivering people from all that keeps them from experiencing the fullness that Jesus offers.
Jesus sent his followers out with the instruction to release people from sin and in the power of the Spirit. But before we assume that all will therefore be easy, we need to see that Jesus is the model for the way we go into the world: with power (yes!), with authority (certainly) – but also in weakness and humility, to live lives of service and to identify with others in their pain, loneliness, suffering and need. Into such situations we bring peace – which is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of a positive sense of well-being. To those separated from God we announce the forgiveness of sins, or the release from sin. We embody the good news of Jesus to those for whom there is little good news. And we do it because we are agents of the kingdom of God, marked by the outpouring of the Spirit.
So, a couple of points about the Holy Spirit.
One: the Holy Spirit does not come to solve all our problems. If the Spirit had not come the disciples could have gone back to their day jobs and lived happily ever after in obscurity on the back side of Palestine. But the Spirit came and gave them a new problem. Watch this video:
Our society is obsessed with self-fulfilment but most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling. The same is true of a community. Our congregations will not discover themselves until they give themselves away. No amount of time spent on developing a mission statement or devising new member campaigns can substitute for looking around one’s neighborhood and asking, “Who needs us?” and “What can we do with our resources to bear God’s love to this part of the world?” Which is what we continue to do.
The other thing about the Holy Spirit is that it does not guarantee success or make us immune from failure. The Holy Spirit invites us to find fulfillment and victory in and through our setbacks and failures. Living, as we do, in a success-obsessed world can lead us to forget that ultimately it’s neither about us nor up to us. God is the creator, sustainer, and redeemer of this cosmos, and only God can bring the kind of redemption we long for and need. Our job is to partner with God’s work wherever we can discern it. If the cross teaches us nothing else, it teaches that success will not always look like success, and victory may often come disguised as defeat. The question isn’t whether we’re successful, but whether we’re faithful. Or, as Cornell West once said, “Sure it’s a failure, but was it a good failure.”
This perspective grants a measure of freedom to throw ourselves into lost causes, to place ourselves on the side of those who are most vulnerable, and to take great risks and dare great ventures. Why? Because we trust that whatever the immediate results of our efforts, both our hopes and our future are secured not by our abilities but by God’s good promise. Resurrection, we need to remember, only and always follows crucifixion.
We Christians tend to be cautious folk. Too many churches have locked their doors to a vibrant understanding of the Holy Spirit’s role in their midst. We don’t know how best to bear witness to Christ in a world populated by multiple religions and plagued by ecclesial hypocrisy. Maybe it would inspire us to bold and creative witness if we saw the risen Jesus miraculously pass through our barricaded doors. But probably all it takes is a preacher who can help us see that this same Jesus is already present, dwelling within us and eager to enlist us to carry on his work of setting people free.