The Mission of Forgiveness

 John 20: 19-31  Easter 2  April 12, 2026

 

Jesus Christ and His Apostles
Nicholas Martinez Ortiz

The Resurrected Christ pays a visit

to the disciples this week.

They are hiding together behind 

a locked door in fear.

And Jesus enters their locked room.

 

We read this gospel lesson almost every year on

the second Sunday of Easter 

and most of the time

we focus our time on Thomas and his doubt.

Now, I happen to like Thomas.

He left that locked room when no one else would.

He went out to get everyone coffee or lunch

or to try and find Jesus or whatever he was doing.

He was obviously the brave one in the group.

He just happened to miss all the action.

And for the record, I don’t have a problem with his doubt at all.

I think doubt is perfectly normal in the course of our faith life.

 

But we can talk about him another year.

Because we do talk about him most every year.

And in all the hubbub about Thomas, we often of miss

a very important thing here:

The resurrected Jesus came to the

disciples and gave them a mission.

He says it plainly to the disciples,

“Peace be with you, As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

 

Jesus has returned to give

the disciples peace in their fear,

to give them the presence of the Holy Spirit

And at this point in the narrative,

he also gives them a clear mission:

 

If you forgive the sins of any,

their sins have been forgiven them;

if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.

 

 For a long time the church has believed-and acted  –

as if Jesus gave this mandate to the church

in order for the church to be the arbitrator of

who gets into heaven and who does not.

It has preached morality: a list of dos and don’ts

and if you fail at this list, then you need forgiveness

formal forgiveness that is meted out by the church

and if you didn’t get to church, or you didn’t follow the right steps,

or if you aren’t properly sorry enough,

or you broke one of the big or hot-button sins,

then you’re not a candidate for the church’s forgiveness

and therefore not a candidate for heaven, or salvation

or God’s love or whatever the pinnacle

of the church’s spiritual quest is for that era.

 

The Roman Catholic church had an extremely overt 

and systematized version of this, especially for the first couple

millennium of the church,

but the protestant church has developed its own

covert more sneaky versions of this.

But the result is the same.

Forgiveness is doled out by the institution in limited,

reserved ways.

The church put itself in charge of personal morals

and makes itself the gatekeeper to heaven.

 

Is that what Jesus meant?

Is forgiveness about giving the church authority

over controlling people’s eternal fate?

 

Or did Jesus mean something else?

What if forgiveness is less about the authority of the church

and more about restoring relationships?

What if forgiveness is about dealing with the ongoing sin

and fights and disagreements and conflicts that this world

understands and knows all too much about and

finds it so easy to become a part of.

 

 Maybe the mission of forgiveness is about leading the world

in reconciliation instead of destruction.

Of understanding instead of contempt.

That seems more like a mission that risen Christ

would give the church: to practice and to model, and teach and

aid in restoring relationships.

 

On this second Sunday of Easter, we and the disciples

are sent to the world to tell it of God’s forgiveness.

We are sent to act out own forgiveness of others.

We are sent to forgive.

And why?  Because we believe in the Resurrection.

Not just in the stark fact that Jesus was raised from the dead.

But we believe that the Resurrection of Jesus was one big example

of the forgiveness that God offers the whole world.

 

God came to earth in the life of Jesus,

and humanity killed him in one of the worst ways possible.

But God didn’t respond with hatred or punishment.

God was not counting up how many sins were broken

and reaping revenge on those who would do this.

God responded with resurrection.

Reconciliation between God and the world.

Resurrection is forgiveness.

 

And resurrection tells us that no matter what has taken place,

There is hope. God can and will create New Life.

God will forgive the old and make the new.

No matter how bad it has gotten, God will redeem the world.

 

That is what the church is sent out for.

Because we believe that Christ is risen,

we believe that redemption is possible in all situations.

  

Now sometimes wounds are too deep

to jump to forgiveness too quickly.

Sometimes people expect people who have been hurt

to just forgive and forget, to brush their wounds under a rug

and move on as if nothing happened.

But Jesus said:

If you forgive the sins of any,

their sins have been forgiven them;

if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.

 

What if retaining sins, wasn’t holding a grudge,

or condemning people eternally.

• What retaining sins meant working for justice?
• What if it meant naming the harms that were done
• What if it meant understanding that real healing

requires accountability?

What if retaining sins meant actually working towards forgiveness

until forgiveness was possible?

 

What if Jesus followers actually spent time on this over the last two thousand years. 

What if we were in the business of forgiveness,

instead of being in the business of the condemnation,

or fanning the flames of hate and division?

Or instead of being in the business of counting how many angels

danced on the head of a pin,

What if the church was in the business of forgiveness,

instead of in the business of business and making money,

What if we worked on the business of forgiveness 

as much as we worked on the business of worship  (oh my, did I say that?)

 

The work of forgiveness is hard.

In our personal lives and as communities and as nations.

What if the church were actually in the business

of doing the mission that Jesus gave his first disciples?

What if the church had been doing that for the past

2000 years instead of what it’s been doing?

What if we could start doing that now?

The church could radically re-shape the world we live in.

There have been segments of the church

who have led communities in the difficult

work of forgiveness after horrible situations.

In South Africa for instance.

 

For decades, people suffered under the

horrible racist oppression of Apartheid in South Africa. 

The white government sanctioned stiff segregation, kidnappings,

killing and torture for anyone who rebelled against it.

 

After being released after 30 years in prison, once in power,

Nelson Mandela did not call for retaliation and 

uprising against the white government oppressors.

Although no one could have blamed him.

He didn’t even call for a Nuremburg type trial

like after WW 2 that ended in multiple hangings –

although they may have deserved it.

With the leadership of Episcopal Bishop Desmond Tutu’s

Nelson Mandela called for what they called the

Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

 

In this public commission, which was a court-like body

people who committed human rights crimes

would admit to being a party to the oppression,

they would account their crimes and abuses,

then they would listen to the stories and testimonies

of the effects that abuse as told by their victims.

This would create a permeant record of the events.

In turn, the guilty people would be forgiven.

The objective was not punishment, but

reconciliation of the community.

 

 This commission did its work for two years.

It hasn’t been perfect in South Africa,

after decades of oppression, there is still

rampant inequality, poverty, and as a result, crime.

 

But there has been a noticeable absence of bloody,

civil wars which have arisen in other places in Africa.

There has not been an attempt at ethnic cleansing

which certainly could have happened.

And  there is a presence and a path to justice.

And there is an effort at dismantling the racism that still exists.

Black people and white people are working together

towards that. Where there could have been destruction

there has been ongoing forgiveness. There is hope there.

 

Bishop Desmond Tutu, said this:

“Forgiveness is an act of much hope and not despair.

It is to hope in the essential goodness of people

and to have faith in their potential to change.

It is to bet on that possibility.

 

Forgiveness, is not opposed to justice, especially if it is not punitive justice, 

but restorative justice, justice that does not seek primarily to punish the perpetrator, 

to hit out, but looks to heal a breach,

to restore a social equilibrium that the atrocity or misdeed has disturbed.

Ultimately there is no future without forgiveness."

 

To believe in forgiveness, to work towards forgiveness

sincerely believes in the humanity of every person,

To believe in forgiveness recognizes every

person as a child and creation of God

Forgiveness believes in the possibility of

redemption for everyone and every situation.

True forgiveness is the way to peace.

 

When we truly believe in forgiveness and resurrection

there is no room for war. No room for bombs or tanks or guns.

There is no room for genocide or threats of genocide.

 

With the hope of forgiveness we are open

to a way of life that restores and transforms,

instead of one that kills and destroys.

If we really believe in the Resurrection,

then we believe in hope, redemption, and restoration.

Any nation that thinks itself a Christian nation

would resort to the hard work of forgiveness and not war.

 

Jesus has come into the room. The pain is still visible,

the crucifixion has not been forgotten and swept under the table.

The wounds are still there for Thomas to see and put his fingers in.

And Christ comes into that room with a word of forgiveness:

“peace be with you.” Jesus says. “As God sent me to forgive you,

you also forgive others.”

 

Forgiveness is what we were sent out to share with the world.

God’s forgiveness and our own forgiveness.

Forgiveness is new beginnings. Forgiveness is hope for the future. 

Forgiveness means that the past won’t hold us back.
Forgiveness means that relationships can start again.
Forgiveness means that life can start again.
Forgiveness is hope for all of God’s people.

When we share forgiveness with a friend or a relative

or with a stranger, or an enemy,

or with those who have done us harm –

it is the Resurrection of Christ made real to the world.

It is the hope and promise of New Life.

 

Resurrection is God’s gift to the church,

and resurrection is forgiveness.

And forgiveness is our business.

Violence of Love

 John 11:1-45  March 22, 2026

 

Like the woman at the well,

Resurrection of Lazarus
Leon Bonnat

The story of Jesus raising Lazarus

only appears in the gospel of John.

 

Miracles for John are always more than just 

miracles,

they are signs of something larger.

They point to something about Jesus and

they are there to show us something about the activity of God

and the Holy Spirit in our world.

John actually calls them “signs”

 

So what is this miracle showing us?

Jesus brings resurrection and life, obviously.

But not just that, there’s more to it.

To decipher it, we have to review the story a little.

There are a bunch of different details to look at,

but I specifically want to look at Jesus

interaction with Martha.

 

So Jesus is in another town and he gets word

that his friend Lazarus is very ill.

Now , you think he might go quickly to see him and help him.

It says Lazarus and Mary and Martha were special friends of Jesus.

Jesus had gone to help other people,

you might expect that he would have made

a special effort to go and help Lazarus. But no.

Jesus takes his time and stays a while longer wherever he was.

 

So it’s four days after Lazarus is dead,

for four days Mary and Martha were grieving over their brother.

And when Jesus arrives at Bethany,

you can kind of feel the anger in the air.

Martha meets Jesus on the road and says,

“If you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.”

I mean she’s seen him cure so many people before,

so many strangers, he could have come and helped his friend.

So Jesus tells her “Your brother will live again.”

And Martha tells him:

“I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.”

 

Now, Jewish people at that time believed

in the resurrection on the last day, life after death

It was what the Pharisees were teaching,

So Martha is giving this line back of normal rote stuff

everyone would have been taught in their

religious education classes.

“Yes, yes, he’ll rise on the last day. I know eternal life.”

She may have even been annoyed by Jesus religious response.

 

And I can completely understand that if she was.

When someone dies, lots of people’s inclination

is to tell the person who is grieving

“It’s okay, your loved one is in heaven now”

or “God needed another angel” or some other platitude like that.

But telling someone those things are not as consoling

as people think they are.

 

Especially when the death is unexpected, or the person is young,

their loved ones still have to remain here,

and deal with the pain and loss,

and pay the bills, and live alone,

and raise the kids by themselves.

Practically speaking, saying to someone,

“Your brother, or husband, or wife, or child is in heaven”

is not usually comforting, and sometimes its offensive.

 

But it’s apparent that is not what Jesus meant.

That Lazarus would be raised on the last day.

Jesus doesn’t quite correct her, but he says,  

 “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Jesus is saying, while I’m here, new life is possible.

Jesus way is the way to life. Following Jesus way leads to life.

He’s not talking about the after-life

He’s talking about resurrection here and now.

And that’s exactly what Jesus does.

 

Jesus calls to the previously dead man:

“Lazarus come out” and Lazarus walks out,

his body still wrapped up in the cloths

he was buried in, and Jesus tells the rest of the people to

“Unbind him and let him go”.

 

And that is the sign that this miracle points to in John’s gospel.

Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

Not only in some point in the future, or after death,

but right here and right now. 

That doesn’t mean that Jesus is literally bringing

dead people to life these days, that’s never

been a ministry of the Christian church,

but the gospel of the unconditional love and forgiveness of God

has the ability to bring people, communities, and the world

back to life, right here on earth in this realm

in real time, all the time.

 

And when religion doesn’t get in its own way,

the community of Christ can be part of that.

It has been part of that.

Jesus’ gospel of love and forgiveness has the power

to give life to the world and bring about resurrection.

That is IF religion doesn’t get in the way of that.

 

A lot of Christianity only sees that Jesus power

of resurrection happens in the after-life.

That following Jesus way is only about claiming Jesus

as our savior and getting  to heaven after we die.

That God’s peaceful inclusive kingdom is only a reality

in the after-life. That is a very safe story to tell.

 

If God’s kingdom is just future thing after we’re dead,

then we can keep running the earth our way.

The powers of this world can control everything here,

like they have been.

 

We don’t need to adopt Jesus way of love, forgiveness,

abundance, and sacrifice NOW,

we’ll get that later after we’re dead.

For now we can still say we worship Jesus and keep holding

on to our greed, contempt, suspicion, coercion, and violence.

This theology is not disruptive at all to the status quo.

It actually serves the powers of the world.

 

But this sign of the raising of Lazarus  points to the fact

that Jesus is telling us that God’s kingdom is not just

for after we die. Jesus means to bring God’s kingdom

to the here and now. That means disruption, that means change.

And that is upsetting to the status quo.

 

And according to John’s Gospel,

the raising of Lazarus was the very last straw.

This was the thing that pushed the religious leaders

over the edge.  This was the moment, that convinced them

that Jesus needed to die. It reads (from the message)

 ^45-48 That was a turning point for many of the Jews who were with Mary. They saw what Jesus did, and believed in him. But some went back to the Pharisees and told on Jesus. The high priests and Pharisees called a meeting of the Jewish ruling body. “What do we do now?” they asked. “This man keeps on doing things, creating God-signs. If we let him go on, pretty soon everyone will be believing in him and the Romans will come and remove what little power and privilege we still have.”

^49-52 Then one of them—it was Caiaphas, the designated Chief Priest that year—spoke up, “Don’t you know anything? Can’t you see that it’s to our advantage that one man dies for the people rather than the whole nation be destroyed?”  

From that day on, they plotted to kill him.

 

This is how the world reacts to resurrection and new life.

This is how people react to God’s presence in the world.

It’s controversial, it’s dangerous, it’s a scandal, it’s a threat.

When the church remains safe behind its doors,

talking just about the after-life, everyone is fine with it.

 

Even when the church spews condemnation and

hate, and violence, and holy wars there is

a level of comfort with that.

 

But when the body of Christ comes out of the

safety of the church with words of empowerment

and new-life for the previously bound,

when we preach good news to the poor

and release to the captives, recovery of sight to the bind

and letting the oppressed go free,

then there’s trouble.

Then powers of the world get upset.

 

You think it would be the opposite.

A society that was aligned with Jesus would

be aghast at contempt and violence and

celebrate compassion and empowerment.

But we are not that society yet.

 

We are still far more comfortable with death

than we are with life.

In the name of faith and religion,

we justify violence and war much quicker

than we do compromise and forgiveness.

We, as a country, feel justified spending billions

on bombing, but object to spending money on

healthcare or food stamps.

  

We have some American Christians today who seem

delighted with the new violence of war in Iran.

Even with all the deaths of service people and Iranians,

people we claim to be trying to help.

Some Christians are even saying that this violence

will make Jesus return again.

Our Defense secretary was telling the troops that

before they shipped out.

 

But our violence won’t ever bring about the Kingdom of God.

Jesus didn’t ever say that or behave like that.

 

And it’s not just this administration.

This is our habit as a country throughout our existence.

Out of its 250 year history, the US has been

at war in some sort of military conflict for 233 of those years.

That’s only 17 or so years of peace in our

whole lifetime as a country.

 

And during this time, most of our elected leaders

and all of our presidents have identified themselves

as Christian. And this is at a time when a majority

of people in the US identified themselves as Christian.

 

That represents a serious disconnect between the

faith that we espouse and the actions we follow.

 

Jesus never used violence to advance or defend

his mission. When Peter tried to do it at his arrest,

he rebuked him and said those who live by the sword

die by the sword.

It is an ironic truth, but in many ways, since we are so

used to it, violence is comfortable, but love and

forgiveness and empowerment feels like an affront.

To many, the gospel of love feels like violence,

because it interrupts the narrative that we’re

used to living by.

 

Just like Jesus narrative interrupted the narrative

that the religious leaders were living by.

They thought it was best for one person to die

because they thought that Jesus way

would destroy their whole system.

 

And our world still follows in their footsteps

kills the prophets that have worked for

freedom and liberation like Lincoln, Ghandi,

Martin Luther King Jr., and others like Oscar Romero.

 

Bishop Oscar Romero was the bishop of

El Salvador who lived and worked with the

poor and spoke out against the government

violence in that country for years and was

assassinated while saying mass 26 years ago this week.

 

Romero called this alternative narrative

“the Violence of Love“ which he said feels

like violence because it upsets the status quo

and the social order of things. 

“It is this love“, he said, “Which left Jesus nailed to a cross.“

 

Romero wasn’t talking about empty platitudes

of love and peace. Or just thoughts and prayer.

He meant the work of resurrection, he meant the

very real interruption

of new life into this world of death

which is messy and political and is dangerous.

But no matter how dangerous, he said we

should keep doing it.

 

He said “Let us not tire of preaching love;

it is the force that will overcome the world.

Let us not tire of preaching love.

Though we see that waves of violence

succeed in drowning the fire of Christian love,

love must win out;

it is the only thing that can.”

 

Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

Jesus is the interruption of life in a world of violence and hate.

And the gospel of love, forgiveness, justice, and reconciliation

that he brings has given strength and brought back

to life countless souls.

 

And on that day in Bethany Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead,

brought him out of his tomb, and had him rejoin life

with his sisters and his friends. And with that,

Jesus took the stench and sting of death away.

 

He took away the fear of death,

and the threat of death,

and consequently, the biggest weapon

that oppressors have against people.

 

And as Christians, we are called to believe in

that resurrection and that new life

that has come into our midst.

 

And even though it might upset some.

we – the church of Christ – are privileged to be

called to be a part of sharing this resurrection and

new life with the world

and one day, we will be a people

that supports life instead of death.