I remember as a young child reading The Upstairs Room, an autobiographical fiction book about two young sisters during the Holocaust.  They are separated from their family and are hiding first in the attic of one family and then a small room of another family.  This book struck a cord in me.  Of the hundreds of books I have read, this one—that I read back in 4th grade—I remember vividly.  Remembering this book makes me think a lot about forgiveness.  I’ve always thought that forgiveness is hard.  It’s particularly hard to teach forgiveness when we are constantly running up against a world that does not teach forgiveness.  In fact, this world teaches us that “eye for eye” thinking is right thinking.  As Christians we know it’s not.  As citizens not only of this country, but also of this world, we are taught over and over that people should be punished for their actions.  Our religion and our world collide.  Like oil and water, “retribution” and being a Christian do not go together.

Of course, it’s easier for me to say this, considering that neither my family nor I have experienced something as drastic as the Holocaust.  Who among us, though, has not struggled with forgiveness?  I would venture to say that every person in this room has struggled with forgiving someone.  That gives us at least a small taste of the difficulty of forgiveness.

I can turn on the television any day of the week and see images of what happens when we fail to forgive.  At the top of the list in recent news is, of course, Iraq.  This ongoing civil war between the Sunnis and Shi-ites is hard to miss.  The conflict is not a recent issue, though.  Muhammad, the founder of Islam, died in the year 632.  At least his first four successors were his descendents. With the fourth successor, Ali ibn Abi Talib (who was Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law), things got messy.  Those who supported him eventually called themselves the Shi’ites.  There were those, however, who did not support Talib becoming the successor, so they assassinated him.  These people, who opposed Talib, are referred to as the Sunnis.  You see now that this conflict has been going on since roughly the mid to late 700s, when the Shi’ites and Sunnis began fighting over who was the appropriate successor to Muhammad.  We see the lack of forgiveness here in the fighting that has been going on ever since.  The retaliation of the Shi’ites against the Sunnis only results in the retaliations of the Sunnis against the Shi’ites.  And this goes on and on. 

The conflict between the Jews and Palestinians is one based in religion.  We see both Jews and Palestinians retaliating, resulting in the death of more and more people, more and more children of God’s creation.  We see people dying in the Sudan because of the need to retaliate.  Myanmar, a country formerly known as Burma, was owned and controlled by the British.  They put one ethnic group, the Karin, in charge.  Now that the British are gone, that group is highly persecuted by another ethnic group, the Burmese, who are now in control of the country. 

We, of course, as Americans are not immune to this retaliation.  We did it to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 with the Atomic Bomb.  We can reason that it was a quick way to end the war, but don’t you think that kind of grotesque retaliation was only tolerated because of what happened at Pearl Harbor?  I know that many of us in this church disagree on the use of the death penalty.  Even I go back and forth on this issue.  But isn’t killing someone for killing someone not also retaliation?  Is that not “eye for an eye” thinking?  Our religion and our world collide.  We live in such a place where what Jesus teaches us to do and what the world teaches us to do…collide.  Oil and water.

And I ask us again: Who among us has not found it difficult to forgive?  Who among us has not found it easier to retaliate?  I see this so often not only among different countries, religions, and ethnic groups, but also within families, friends, and church members.  Who among us has not found it difficult to forgive?  Who among us still has some forgiving to do?

In today’s gospel, from John, we find many of the disciples hiding from the Jews, locked in an upper room.  Jesus appears to them and says, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  Then Jesus breaths on his disciples and says, “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.”  The disciples later see another disciple, Thomas, who was not among them in the room, and tell Thomas what they have seen and heard, that they have seen the Lord!  Thomas says, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in [Jesus’] hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”  A week later, as the disciples are hiding in the upper room, Jesus once again appears to them, saying “Peace be with you.”  He then turns toward Thomas and says, “Put your finger here and see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it in my side.  Do not doubt but believe.”  And without putting his hand in Jesus’ side, Thomas proclaims, “My Lord and my God!” 

When I first read the passage, “If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained,” I was appalled.  If I forgive the sins of any, then they’re forgiven, and if I don’t, then they aren’t forgiven?  That doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.  After all, forgiveness is found only through God.  Only God can ultimately grant forgiveness.  I was missing something very important in that reading, however.  Before Jesus says this to his disciples, he breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

We are called, as Christian people, to forgive.  If we try through our own strength, however, we will fail.  Prevost, a French author and novelist, writes “How difficult it is to pick up a little strength when one has made a habit of one’s weakness, and how much it costs us to fight for victory when for long past one has found it sweet to yield!”  Just look at the world around us.  How often have we succumbed to our weaknesses?  So much so that it has become a habit.  Retaliation is our weakness, our habit.  How much easier it has been for us to yield to retaliation, than to fight for the victory of Christ.  Jesus’ command here: if you forgive the sins of another they are forgiven; if you retain them, they are retained.  This is not a command to take it upon ourselves to choose who is forgiven and who is not.  Remember first that Jesus breathes on his disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  Jesus gives his disciples the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of discernment, “enabling them to know what kind of life a man should live; to recognize what things are wrong and evil, and what are worthy and right: to determine when repentance is genuine, and when it is only an empty sham.”[1]  We here are called to receive the Holy Spirit, a decision which must be made daily.  We do not receive the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and then have it always.  We are daily praying for the Holy Spirit to come upon us, inspire us, and give us a discerning heart.

Towards the end of this Gospel story we see Thomas, first doubting, then believing.  Thomas, upon seeing Jesus, makes one of the most passionate testimonies in all of the New Testament.  He says, “My Lord and my God.”  Others have said, “My Lord,” referring to a person higher than a rabbi (a teacher), but certainly not God.  Here Thomas says, “My God!”  Though Thomas was not present for the receiving of the Holy Spirit the first time in the upper room, it’s clear that he does receive it here.  What else would account for such a passionate testimony?  Only when Thomas has received the Holy Spirit can he proclaim with such exuberance, such passion, “My God!” 

We are commanded here to call upon the Holy Spirit so that we, as followers of Jesus, can forgive.  We are commanded her to call upon the Holy Spirit so that we, as followers of Jesus, know the difference between right and wrong, know the difference between true repentance and empty repentance.  Above all, we are called to receive the Holy Spirit so that in right living, with a discerning heart, we can passionately cry out, “My God!”


[1] The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 13, book 8 (New York: Abingdon Press, 1952) 798.