The Pentecostal Imperative
John 20:19-23
The prophets of old had foretold that this day of Pentecost would come. In the story from the book of Acts Peter reminds the crowd what it would be like in this new age – in this new world of grace – this world that would not occur until hundreds of years after Joel’s death. Joel foretold a time when the age of the Law would be over. The worldview through the lens of the Law was over. Grace was now the key way in which God was revealed to the world.
Joel describes what this world would look like. He says first of all that God’s Spirit would be poured out on all flesh, not just the ones who always claimed to be chosen. He also says that a variety of persons, male and female, young and old, Jew and Gentile, would become spokespersons for the Spirit. How different that was from the former age where only elderly men were considered appropriate spokespersons of the faith. Luke is trying to show us in this passage, by using Joel’s prophesy, that the new age of Grace has broken in – that the people of God are being reconstituted.
It’s amazing to think that this event happened over 2,000 years ago and yet people still have problems believing it or seeing it as the hand of God. We say Pentecost is the birthday of the Christian Church and yet we still see Christians who have not understood the age of Grace – that God could choose women to be in leadership, for instance, or that greatly diverse people can worship together as a community or that all of the old labels used to separate and divde us no longer work. It is sad sometimes to think how little of the vision was captured. Still, Pentecost marked the final stroke in God’s pattern in moving from Law to Grace. When we look closely at the scriptures and what that means for us, it is truly a marvelous stroke.
You see, the age of Law removed our responsibility. Grace requires us to be responsible people. That is just the opposite of what many may have assumed.
In the gospel lesson, Jesus tells the disciples, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Do you see the responsibility that this places on you and me? I can no longer throw it back on the Law. “I can’t forgive you, sorry, you broke the Law.” In the Older Testament the Law said that if a child talked back to the parent, the child should be stoned. (We’re talking rocks here, not reefer.) So people had to stone their children because the Law said they could. The Law was responsible, not me. Pentecost means that we are responsible for how we treat people. We are responsible for people discovering forgiveness. We have the ability to free people from that which binds them and if we don’t do it, it won’t be done. If we forgive, they are forgiven. If we retain forgiveness, it is retained. That is some responsibility.
But doesn’t that sound an awful lot like playing God? Well, it can degenerate to that. But hopefully what we take from this lesson is that, like Jesus, we must learn how to use the power of forgiveness. I think there is a lot of confusion about what forgiveness is. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that people aren’t held accountable for their actions or their attitudes. It simply means we freely give up our right for revenge.
It is a wonderful gift to give because it is so completely unexpected.
Forgiveness is not letting people get away with evil – it is offering the gifts of grace and hope to those who do wrong.
Several years ago when I was the pastor of MCC Nashville, we put on a fundraiser event called, “The Prom You Always Wanted.”
One of the local clubs allowed us to use their space for this event and a young man named Ken who was fairly new to the church was instrumental in making the event a huge success. A week after it was all over, the treasurer of the church called me to see if I knew anything about what happened to the money we had raised at the Prom. I called the owner of the club to inquire and he told me that Ken had stopped by one day and told him that he was there to pick up the money for the church. Since Ken had been so involved in pulling off the event, the club owner didn’t think it odd to give Ken the money. Of course, Ken had not been seen since. I left several messages on Ken’s home phone and finally received a call from Ken a week later from another state. I asked him why he stole the money and he denied it at first. Finally he confessed that he was having money problems and didn’t see any way out. I told Ken that we could work something out but that what he did was wrong and he needed to come back to Nashville and face what he had done. He didn’t think he could do that so I told him that if he didn’t come back or pay back the money then we would be forced to put out a warrant for his arrest. Ken gave me every excuse imaginable why we shouldn’t do that but since he would not take responsibility for his actions, there was no other choice for us. The warrant was issued and we never saw Ken again.
About ten years later, I was greeting people after worship at Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, where I had been pastoring for several years at that time. Someone pulled me aside and said there was a young man in the reception area that wanted to talk to me. I went into meet him and he asked if it was OK for him to be coming to Cathedral. I said, “Of course. Everyone is welcome here.” Then he asked if I had been the pastor at the MCC in Nashville and I told him I had. It was Ken but I didn’t recognize him. He finally broke down and told me and then poured out the shame and guilt he had carried all of those years because of his theft. He was so afraid that I was angry with him. He asked for my forgiveness. I tried to explain to Ken that I was disappointed with what happened but that I had forgiven him years ago. However, the only way he was going to escape the shame of what he did was to take responsibility for making it right. He did. He worked extra hours and eventually returned the money he had taken to the Nashville church.
Some thought it was un-Christian for a church to issue an arrest warrant. But without responsibility, forgiveness has no power for the one who needs to be forgiven. Forgiveness releases those of us who have been wronged, but only by taking responsibility for one’s actions and doing what it takes to restore the relationship can the one who is guilty be set free.
The Nashville church was ready to welcome Ken back into their family at any time. His own shame over his actions separated him from us and kept him caught in his guilt for years. He had been forgiven but if we did not hold him accountable, he would have never had a way to forgive himself.
Not only do other people need your and my forgiveness, but also we need to forgive. It is the Pentecostal mode of relationship – it is being Christ-like. It is the only way to heal badly damaged relationships.
Under the Older Testament Law, crimes were punishable with severe penalties. Under the reign of grace, we discover the only way to heal broken relationships is through forgiveness. That’s why I call it the Pentecostal Imperative. That’s what I mean when I say, “If we are going to be the church in the fullest sense of the word, then we must be Pentecostal.”