Sermon Tone Analysis

This forgiveness Jesus speaks of, the forgiveness he gives us the authority to speak or withhold, is a real thing, a tangible thing, as real as the wounds of Christ, the dead body of Christ, and the resurrected, living body of Christ.

Jesus illustrated this to Thomas.

Thomas rejected Jesus’ resurrection.

“Until I jam my fingers into the wounds and dig around in them, I won’t believe.”

Jesus answered in kind, “Thomas, dig around in my hands.

See if they aren’t real.”

Jesus made tangible and touchable what he moments before spoke, “Peace!”

This explains why Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit onto the disciples, though that’s unnecessary.

Jesus can simply give them the Holy Spirit.

But he doesn’t, he breathes and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Just as on Pentecost the disciples don’t just begin speaking in tongues.

A sound like a wind blows, tongues of fire appear on their heads.

Jesus has no problem making visible that which is invisible.

Forgiveness doesn’t have physical weight.

You can’t buy a box of it at the store or measure it on a scale.

Neither does peace.

Yet what do warring nations do when they seek an end to fighting?

They sign documents.

Neville Chamberlain waved that document after Munich saying, “Peace in our time!”

Jesus makes visible and tangible peace and forgiveness, that refreshing Peter spoke of.

Jesus foreshadowed it as he healed.

With a deaf and mute man Jesus puts his fingers in the man’s ears.

He spits and touches the man’s tongue.

He speaks a word, “Be opened!”

With a blind man, Jesus makes mud, puts it on the man’s eyes, and tells him to wash.

Jesus takes a dead girl’s hand and says, “Get up.”

Though Jesus did not need to do those things, he did them.

For us and for our salvation.

Go back to the Old Testament for another example.

Naaman comes to Elisha with a problem: leprosy.

His captured Israelite slave girl says, “This man can help you.”

Naaman comes to him, and Elisha says, “Go wash seven times in the Jordan.”

Naaman balks at this. “The water’s dirty.

I thought this shaman and holy man would do some dance, wave his arms around, chant and sing, or at the very least give me some medicine.

But this….”

To which Naaman’s servant replies, “If Elisha gave you some arduous task, you would do it.

Do this simple thing.”

Naaman does; God cleanses his leprosy.

Why?

We can’t believe without seeing.

Jesus said that to Thomas.

“Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

We are, by nature, empiricists.

We must see and experience.

By definition, the Holy Spirit can’t be seen.

And when he’s experienced, we’re sometimes left to wonder, “Have I experienced him?”

Imagine it in the disciples’ case, if they always had to wonder, “Do we have the Spirit?

Was that the Spirit?”

As Jesus said in John 3, the Spirit is like the wind.

We can’t catch or trap or see him, only where and when he blows.

And feeling and sensation notoriously have their way with us.

We feel the Spirit today.

Tomorrow we don’t.

We’re convinced of God’s forgiveness today.

We can’t find it tomorrow.

We trust in God now.

We wonder about him in tomorrow’s dangers.

It is a dangerous thing to thrust ourselves upon our feelings.

Not that it’s wrong to have feelings or emotions.

We’re human, that’s who we are, that’s what we do, nothing wrong with it.

But sin corrupts our feelings and emotions.

So God gives us something to point to: a laying on of hands, a commissioning, an ordaining, an installing.

The disciples don’t have to say, “We decided” or “We felt like this was the best thing to do.”

They say, “Jesus breathed on us,” “We saw the tongues of fire,” and “Jesus said, ‘I am sending you.’”

In those ways, God instituted a ministry, a service, within his Church, a ministry and service with one goal, one task, one job, one effort: to dismiss sins, to forgive sins.

This is the continuous, uninterrupted work in which the Church and her ministers, her pastors and teachers, engage: “I forgive you your sins.”

Likewise, for us, God gives us moments to point to, to hold on to.

That blind man, that deaf man, those weeping, parents, Naaman, none need wonder if it was coincidence that they got better in Jesus’ presence.

Nor do they have to wonder what God intended.

He made it clear: “I am fixing, cleansing, and dismissing your problems.

I am resurrecting you from the dead.”

When God dismisses something, be it sickness or sin, it is dismissed.

And we believe it, even though we can’t always “see” it.

As we say in the Creed, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.”

God gives more.

He gives a baptism for forgiveness.

He gives a communion for forgiveness.

He gives preaching for forgiveness.

He gives confession and absolution, the mutual consolation of brethren, a written, spoken, and heard word for forgiveness.

We don’t talk about forgiveness, but we give it, distribute it, do it to each other.

We confess and absolve, not just counsel or console.

We say “I forgive you,” instead of “It’s ok.”

Like Thomas, though, it may not seem enough.

He behaves like a petulant child, doesn’t he? “I will never, ever believe these things about Jesus?”

Is he mad?

Does he feel left out?

“I wanna see Jesus too!

Gimme Jesus!

Whaaaa!”

Jesus did this intentionally.

He appeared to the Ten without Thomas.

He disappeared for a week.

On purpose.

Imagine chewing on that.

Did Thomas get angrier?

Did he spit out “I told you so’s” and “You guys imagined it all!”?

Then Jesus appears with Thomas around.

“Do what you wish, Thomas.

Dig around inside me.”

Within words of rebuke are words of love, just as that same love resides within our words, “I don’t forgive you, I can’t forgive you, you are excommunicated.”