God Revealed (sermon, June 12, 2011)

John 20:19-23

A few weeks ago, as I was getting ready to leave the office
I couldn’t find my church keys.
I looked everywhere, but they were gone.
I figured they’d eventually turn up, so at first I didn’t replace them.
The problem was, I kept finding myself
locked out of rooms I needed to get into.
Which got me to wondering...why are churches so obsessed with locks?

At our last property meeting we talked about
installing a new system for the back door
so that it can be unlocked at the touch of a remote button,
rather than having to walk down the hallway.
But wouldn’t it make more sense
just to leave the door unlocked to begin with?

Well, no. If someone is alone in the building, it’s probably just not a good idea
because you just never know who might try to come in...
or why.
But locking the doors of a church ought to be something we do,
at the very least,
with a great deal of reluctance.

The same is true with my office.
Why does it need to be locked?
I have some books in there, sure,
but frankly, I’d be thrilled if you went in
and picked out something to read.
And as far as all the files full of session minutes and financial reports,
well, if you want them, by all means...!

The truth is, although we may have some good reasons for locking our doors,
we often do so at first based on a healthy sense of fear
but eventually, keeping things tightly locked up
becomes an unbreakable habit.

The reason the disciples locked themselves away after Jesus’ death
is quite clear in the text: they were afraid of the authorities --
which is what is meant here by “the Jews” --
so they hid themselves away
in a top floor,
in a back room,
behind a door closed and locked.
Fortunately, no locked door
or flight of steps
or fearful hearts
can keep Jesus away.

That first Easter night,
as the disciples
are ashamed
and confused
and wondering how on earth they are going to go back
to their friends and family
now that Jesus is dead,
Jesus appears to them
gives them peace,
unlocks their hearts,
and offers them a new way forward.
And he does all this with the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus shows the disciples the wounds in his hands and his side
nail-wounds
the very marks of the forgiveness
granted to them by his death.
Then, he gives the most astonishing gift of all
He makes them the church.
“He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

This is the only time this particular Greek word for “breathe”
is used in the New Testament.
It is the same word
used to describe God breathing life into the first human being
in the book of Genesis.
The gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of new life.

Twenty years ago, Magic Johnson heard words from his doctor
that would change his life forever:
HIV positive.
No one would have been surprised if Magic
had abandoned his career
gone behind closed doors
and hidden away in shame and fear
waiting to die.
Instead he went before television cameras
and told the world about his diagnosis.


It was 1991. There was still a huge stigma surrounding HIV.
But when Magic Johnson called his family
to tell them the news,
they didn’t shame him
or hang up on him
or lock the doors to their houses and hearts
to keep him out of their lives forever.
They booked plane tickets.

This is how Magic remembers it:
“My mom hung up the phone with me and got on a plane to come out here.
My dad got on a plane,
my brothers and sisters got on a plane to come be with me.
My aunts, my cousins--they all were getting on a plane.
That’s love, that’s support,
and that makes a world of difference in how well you fight the virus.
I know that’s a large part of why I’m still here today.” (1)

When we think of Pentecost,
we usually have the story from Acts in mind.
Loud wind...
Flames of fire dancing on people’s heads...
Miraculous ability to speak and understand different languages.

This text from John, the other place where the disciples receive the Holy Spirit
is much more subdued.
Like the Acts passage,
it is also about sending the disciples out
to share the gospel
but in this text we discover the
core of this good news.

It turns out that the gospel isn’t just about
Jesus coming to us,
through our locked doors
to where we are hiding with our shame and fear
and forgiving us.
The gospel is about the gift of the Holy Spirit,
and with the gift of the Holy Spirit
Jesus is entrusting the disciples
entrusting us
with the ministry of forgiveness. (2)

Hugh Hollowell pastors a congregation
largely made up of people who are homeless.
Several years ago, while speaking to a secular audience,
he mentioned that he ran a faith-based organization
which helped homeless people.
In that talk, as an aside,
he used the example of gay marriage as a way
that relationships change how we feel about “the other.”

After the talk, while washing his hands in the bathroom,
a young man stood by the door, staring at him.
After a few seconds, the man spoke.
“Are you gay?” he asked Hollowell.
Hugh told him he was not.
“But homeless people who are gay, you help them, right?”
“Yes, I do,” Hugh answered.
“And you’re a Christian, right?”
“Yes.”
The man looked Hollowell in the eye and said,
“I didn’t know you could be a Christian and help gay people.”

Then he explained
how his family had disowned him when he came out to them
how they are very religious
and how, because of them, he no longer wants
anything to do with the church.

“I hate the church,” he said.
“After everything they have done to me and my friends,
I can’t stand their hypocrisy and self-righteous attitude.”

Hollowell said he didn’t blame him a bit.

With tears in both their eyes,
the man hugged Hollowell and thanked him
for being willing to help everybody, including gay people.
He turned to leave, but then stopped and said,
 “You know, it’s strange.
I hate the church.
You can’t pay me to go back there.
But I really miss Jesus.” (3)

With the gift of the Holy Spirit,
God makes us the church.
It is a huge responsibility.
As the church, we can lock people out with our judgments
our hypocrisy
our self-righteous attitude.
Or we can remember the forgiveness Jesus offered us
and we can be the church
by showing people how forgiveness sets us free.

The Greek word for forgiveness used here also means “to set free.”
To forgive someone is to set them free
and to set ourselves free from grudges and anger.
As Lewis Smedes once said,
“When you forgive you set a prisoner free.
And then you discover that the prisoner was you.” (4)

In 1993 Osheah Israel was a teenage gang member.
One night at a party, he got into a fight
that ended when he shot and killed
another teenage boy.
Oshea was sentenced to prison for second-degree murder.

The mother of the boy shot and killed that night is Mary Johnson.
Twelve years after the trial that put Oshea in jail,
Mary went to visit him at Stillwater Prison.
She wanted to see if he was in the same mindset
that she remembered from the trial when she had wanted to hurt
the boy who had killed her boy.

But Oshea wasn’t that same boy.
He was a grown man,
and to her own surprise,
Mary decided to talk to him about her son.

When it was time to go, Mary broke down and started to cry.
In their own words, here’s what happened after Mary broke down:

“The initial thing to do,” said Oshea
“was to just try and hold you up as best you can --
just hug you like I would my own mother.”

“After you left the room,” Mary responded,
“I began to say, ‘I just hugged the man that murdered my son.’
And I instantly knew that all that anger and animosity
all the stuff I had in my heart for twelve years for you,
I knew it was over,
that I had totally forgiven you.”

“Sometimes,” said Oshea,
“I still don’t know how to take it,
because I haven’t totally forgiven myself yet.
It’s something I’m learning from you --
I won’t say I’ve learned it yet --
because it’s still a process that I’m going through.”
“I treat you as I would my own son,” said Mary.
“And our relationship is beyond belief.
We live next door to one another.”

“Yeah,” Oshea said, “so you can see what I’m doing, you know, first hand.
We actually bump into each other all the time
going in and out of the house.”
“Well,” said Mary, “my natural son is no longer here.
I didn’t see him graduate,
now you’re going to college.
I’ll have the opportunity to see you graduate.
I didn’t see him getting married.
Hopefully, one day,
I’ll get to experience that with you.”

“Just to hear you say those things, Mary,
and [for you] to be in my life in the manner you are
is my motivation.
You still believe in me.
And the fact that you can do it
despite how much pain I caused you
it’s amazing.”

“Oshea, I know it’s not an easy thing
to be able to share our story together.
Even with us sitting here looking at each other right now,
I know it’s not an easy thing.
So I admire that you can do this.”
“I love you, lady.”
“I love you, too, son.” (5)

Jesus has given us the Holy Spirit which, it turns out, is not only the key
which unlocks the doors to the church
so that all may be welcomed in,
It is also the key to unlocking the doors to our hearts
that we might receive and extend
God’s most precious gift: forgiveness.
Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Allison Samuels, “Magic Johnson: I Survived.” Newsweek, May 16, 2011, pp. 64-5.
2. Craig Barnes, “Crying Shame,” The Christian Century. April 6, 2004, p. 19.
3. Hugh Hollowell, “The Gift of Tears,” on the Red Letter Christians weblog.
4. quoted in Craig Barnes' article referenced above
5. Heard on NPR’s StoryCorps project. Listen and read more here.