April 23, 2017
On
March 28th of 2010, Conor McBride shot his girlfriend of three
years. Conor and Ann had been fighting
for over 38 hours and he simply broke.
He immediately regretted it and turned himself in. When her parents were
notified, their first question was whether Conor was with her in the ICU where
she struggled for her life. They were
shocked to learn that the boy they considered a son, was the one who shot her. When Ann’s father (Andy) sat with his dying
daughter, he felt her say, “Forgive him.”
He said “No,” but he kept hearing the voice of his daughter telling him
to forgive the man who shot her. After
four days on life support, her parents realized they would have to let her go. Her father later said, “I realized it was not
just Ann asking me to forgive Conor, it was Jesus Christ, and I hadn’t said no
to him before, and I wasn’t going to start then. It was just a wave of joy, and
I told Ann: ‘I will. I will.’ ”[1]
As
Andy described what happened, he mentioned that the wounds on his daughter
reminded him of the wounds of Jesus Christ.
Apparently she put her hands in front of her face when her boyfriend
raised the gun, giving her wounds on her hands and her head. The author of the Gospel of John reminds us
of the scars that Jesus bore when he appeared to his disciples after his
resurrection. He showed them his hands
and his side. The scars on his hands were from the nails. His side bore the mark of the sword that pierced
him. There is no reference to scars on
his head, but we know that his head was undoubtedly wounded when the crown of
thorns was forced onto his head. Even if
those scars were not present, the disciples would have seen them in their
mind’s eye as they looked at the risen Christ for the first time.
The
Gospel of John says that the disciples were hiding for fear of the Jews. I have a hunch that they were hiding from
more than just the Jews. Remember that
when Jesus appears to them this first time, they have already found the empty
tomb and Mary Magdalene already reported that she spoke to the resurrected
Christ. What do you think they were more
afraid of, the fact that he was dead and gone, or the possibility that he was
alive and they would have to face him? The
disciples had not performed very admirably in the last days of Jesus’ life. Peter had denied him. Most had abandoned him. To make matters worse, instead of combing the
streets looking for Jesus, they were now hiding in a locked room. Yes, they were hiding from the Jews. They were the Jews and they were hiding from
their own shame.
Suddenly,
Jesus appeared in the room. Before anyone had time to react, he proclaimed,
“Peace be with you.” With those four
words, he showed them his hands and his side.
Then he breathed on them. Normally,
I am not too keen on people breathing on me, but this was not just any
breath. This was the breath of God, the
Holy Spirit. With it came joy, hope, and
forgiveness. “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.” With this
breath and these words, Jesus was not only forgiving them, he was giving them
the authority, the responsibility to forgive others. All of that makes sense to me. What does not make sense is the part about
retaining sins. Did Jesus mean that the
disciples could withhold God’s forgiveness?
Ann’s
parents did more than just forgive Conor, the man who murdered their daughter. They visited him in prison every month. They worked with Conor’s parents and the
district attorney to minimize the sentence that was given to Conor using a
model called “restorative justice.” This was not easy for anyone, but they felt
that was what Ann would have wanted, and what God was asking of them. When asked about it, Ann’s mother said, “Conor
owed us a debt he could never repay. And releasing him from that debt would
release us from expecting that anything in this world could satisfy us... I
think that when people can’t forgive, they’re stuck... Forgiveness for me was
self-preservation.”
The
disciples weren’t just literally stuck in a locked room. To some degree, their hearts were locked,
buried in a place that was so deep, it was only the breath of God, the
forgiveness of God that could bring air to their suffocating lungs. With the forgiveness of Jesus, they could
start coming up for air. However, it
could not end there. Jesus was forgiving
them, so that they could proclaim that forgiveness to others. Being forgiven only got them half way
there. They might have come up for air,
but if they wanted to truly open their hearts, they would have to forgive
others.
We
often think that in forgiving others, we are making some sort of sacrifice, or
giving them a gift. Yet that’s the thing
about gifts, they are only good if you release them. Furthermore, we do not own this gift. It is
God’s gift. He just asked us to share
that gift with others. A theologian wrote, “When you forgive you set a prisoner
free. And then you discover the prisoner was you.”[2]
I
believe that is what Jesus meant when he said, “If you retain the sins of any,
they are retained.” If we choose not to
forgive someone, we then take on their sin.
And unlike Jesus, we cannot absorb sin without having it affect us. Another word for forgiveness is “to free” or
to “let go.” In giving us the power to
forgive, Jesus gave us freedom, from not only our sins, but the sins of
others. If we don’t use that gift, we
will find that while we might not be stuck in a locked room, we might as well
be. Because when we hold on to all of
that sin, all of that shame, all of that anger, then our hearts are locked. Do you think the disciples stayed in that
room after they received the Holy Spirit…the breath of God? No, they opened
that door and they claimed their freedom.
I think that most of us have little locks on our hearts. We have them to protect us…but really they
are just imprisoning us. It’s time to
open the doors. It’s time to claim our freedom.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/can-forgiveness-play-a-role-in-criminal-justice.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
[2]
Lewis Smedes (from article by Craig
Barnes called “Crying Shame”)
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