Retaining Sin

Retaining Sin

Retaining Sin
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

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Audio from worship at the 10 AM Worship Service April 7, 2024
at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Carson City, Nevada

edited from a flawless transcription made by edigitaltranscriptions all errors are mine.

Acts 4:32-35 ⟡ 1 John 1:1-2:2 ⟡ John 20:19-31

 

Sermons also available free on iTunes

Welcome to Mirror Easter. Last week, who was here last week? No one. Okay, a couple people. All right. So last week, the varsity team was up front, and the spectators were in the pew. All right. So this week, the spectators are up front leading the service. You all coming here on the second Sunday of Easter? You’re the varsity team. You show up the second Sunday of Easter where the substitute for the substitute is leading the service. Ah, commitment. Thank you very much. That’s right, Christy has risen. Is that blasphemy? I don’t know. He’s not here. And we’re all surprised, just like, you know, the other guy. Okay.

I know every one of you read the scripture before you came to church today. You’re probably waiting for a doubting Thomas sermon. Those are great. I love those. Not having a church for a while, I’m always preaching second Sunday of Easter. In fact, I looked at the prayer book earlier. My marks from last year were still there. Second Sunday of Easter. And if you want to look at that sermon, Cathedrals and Measles, on the website ExtraChristy.com, go look at that great sermon, Doubting Thomas. Woo boy, good.

Not today. This is a varsity group here. We’re going to get a varsity sermon. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take that little bitty crazy scripture that’s in the gospel. That you probably just went over, because I don’t want to think about it, but we’re going to think about it. You know the one? The one with your namesake, the Saint Peter one? If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. What in the world does that mean? Is there some kind of ginormous ATM? Can we log in on our web and say, I would like to deposit some sins, and I’d like to withdraw some sins? What in the world are they talking about?

Now some people say, well that means that, you know, if you’ve been gluttonous or wrath – oh, let’s read them off, I have my list here. Sermon notes: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth. So some people say that if you have any of those, you can get them forgiven. But why in the world would we want to retain them? Okay, maybe gluttony. Rest. What is this? This is a strange scripture on a strange Sunday. Bizarro Mirror Easter Sunday, where the varsity people are in the pews, and the spectators are upfront.

It only makes sense if you know that it is plural. That’s right, it’s not singular sense, not just you and me, itty bitty, 10 Commandments, four spiritual laws, kind of individual, you and me, God, we’re here, checklist, I got whatever I want. It is plural. If you all – I used to translate Greek, you all. I got in trouble in seminary all the time, and I argued with them. But if you all retain the sins, they are retained. And if you all forgive the sins, they’re forgiven. Okay, so it’s a community thing.

So we get along and get together like Presbyterians and have a committee and vote whether or not someone sinned? I don’t know. That doesn’t sound right, either. But I want to tell you something, this is John. This is the Gospel of John. We even got a little bit of 1 John over there. And for John, that list of sins, not sin, not at all. Sin is not individual moral failings. It is not characteristics. It is not individual behavior. That is not sin. Sin is when you don’t do what God wants you to do. And that’s your whole life. That’s not just in moments of temptation in front of that cookie drawer. Or special magazine. Or website. I guess I should update.

But for John, sin is corporate and communal. J.B. Phillips back in 1953 had a book that was really important when I was growing up called “Your God is Too Small,” and every now and then people rediscover it, and it blows their mind. But I want to tell you that it’s not just your God is too small, your sin is too small. We’re not talking about little bitty sins. This is the varsity group. We can handle it. We’re not talking about individual sins on individual Sundays and individual days. We’re talking about great corporate. And, you know, this makes more sense for 1 John. Did you listen to 1 John? Was anybody else upset? You are all sinners? What kind of scripture is that for church? You are all sinners. And you say, “Well, no, I’m not,” and it comes right back. And if you say you’re not, you’re a liar. Oh, I’m a sinner and a liar? How come we didn’t all get up and leave? Were you listening?

I’ll make it more homely. You’re racist. And if you say you’re not racist, you’re a liar. Now we’re getting some of the feeling back. I’m not racist. I don’t say the N-word. I have not fired anyone on the basis of their race or creed or color. I don’t have any slaves. I’m not racist. We’re back to that, are we? Back to the individual understanding of sin. Back to the me and God and nobody else. When it’s plural, when it’s corporate, when it’s John, and when things aren’t right in the world, that is the sin, not what any individual may do.

I had a good childhood and upbringing. Middle-class life. We didn’t want for anything. Had a big house. Even got air conditioning when it came in. That was a big deal. My parents both had college educations and good jobs. Their parents were able to work in Akron, Ohio, in the rubber companies and got good pay and good money so that they could send their kids to college so that I could have a better life. Well, what’s that about racism, Christy? My grandpa, Christy Ramsey, had to join the Ku Klux Klan to get a job at Goodyear. Because only the Klan members worked in the rubber company. You see the difference between I’m a racist and racism? I’m a benefit of that. I’m benefiting of racism. That got my family out of the West Virginia hollows and into colleges and nice middle-class home in the Highland Square area of Akron. See the difference? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t benefit from racism. John knew that. Now you do.  

What are we to do? What are we to do? We’ve got to quit thinking that sin is something we do in private. It’s just between me and God or go in a box and confess it, and we’re good to go. Because sin is communal, sins in society.

Let’s talk about my parents again. My parents both went to college. Books cost 10 bucks for their semester. Ten dollars. They went to a state school, a university school. Remember back then when the governments actually paid for higher education, actually supported higher education? It’s flipped now. Now the individuals have to pay and not the corporate. And now because it’s an individual choice they have to compete for students and get those out-of-state tuition bucks in there, so they have to put the rock climbing walls and have the sous chef and the other chefs in the back and raise their tuition so they compete against the market pressures on that because the government says we don’t have the money for higher education.

And yet people say, “I paid for my college education. Why don’t those young people pay their loans?” You didn’t pay for it. The state paid for it. The government paid for it. Our taxes paid for it. But that has changed and flipped around. Eighteen year olds, we do not allow them to choose to have an adult beverage because their minds just aren’t ready for it. They can’t handle that kind of responsibility of getting a beer. But we let them sign up for a $100,000 debt that’s going to haunt them the rest of their lives. I’d rather risk a beer on them. You hear the sin?

In my tradition, every Sunday we say forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Gets really quiet. About half the congregation drops off at that point. Come back for the next one. Corporate sin. That’s not God’s will. John would say, there’s sin right there. We got racism, we got sin. But that savior guy we follow. Remember him? Came back from the dead last week. Big news. Remember? You know, you know he was born in a homeless shelter. There was no room for him. There was no inn. There was no place for him. Public camping was outlawed back then. He was born homeless. It wasn’t too much longer he had to be a political refugee, fleeing across borders against a government that wanted to kill him. Have you read that in the paper lately? Have you seen it on the web? Got to update my notes.

They’re sin. That is the sin. And we’ve got a choice. Now you can see the choice. Before it made no sense. But now you see, yeah, we have a choice whether we’re going to fund public education or put our kids into generations of debt. We have a choice. We can retrain that. Or we, what, forgive debt? It’s our choice. Okay? You’re forgiven. That’s the way it’s going to be. It’s up to you, Christians. You can have homeless, or you can house people.

What kind of society have we constructed just in my lifetime? That we have revised the tax code and the way we reward people for the work. And that it used to be when they grew up, if you were making a million dollars, every dollar you made at that top end was 90 cents to the government, 90% to the government, we had, oh that’s wrong, take it on down. Now we’ve got millionaires that can go to outer space, while we got millions that don’t have space to live for the night. If you forgive the sins of any, or if you retain them, they will be retained. So when you look around, and you say why does God do this? Why does God do this?

Jesus told us. Second Sunday of Easter, varsity team was there, but not everybody. Wasn’t a packed church. He said, you know, it’s up to you. You’ve got a choice. You can retain sins, or you can forgive them. Now, some people listened to him. Some people decided that we ought to try this. You know, Jesus. We heard about it today. People sold their houses, brought their money and gave it to those that need. 100% capital gains taxed? Agh! Right there in the Bible. Right there in the Bible. But I already paid the taxes on the house. If we read a little bit more in the scriptures, we’d find out that that impressed the community so much the community grew and grew. People looked at them and said, wow, those Christians have got something going on there. Look at how they take care of each other. Look at how much they love each other. Look at how much there’s no one in need among them. What kind of craziness is this? It’s Christianity. That’s what it is.

You know, when it was time to get us straightened around, God didn’t send us down the checklist. He didn’t send us down the Ten Commandments and saying “Don’t do these things and you’re cool.” He doesn’t send down and say that these are the seven deadly sins, don’t do them and you’re good with me. He didn’t even send down four spiritual laws. He didn’t send down the sinner’s prayer. None of that stuff. Zero paperwork, obviously. I’m afraid God is not a Presbyterian or there would have been more paperwork involved. He sent a person. He sent a person to show us how to live, how we should live with one another.

Did you know that Jesus healed people with preexisting conditions? How un-American! I hate to even ask if they were employed, and if it was an employer’s plan or not. He healed people that didn’t deserve healing. He healed the Roman servant, the occupier. Because guess what? It’s not God’s will that anyone suffers from lack of health care. And that’s up to us. We can retain that sin in our society, or we can get rid of it. Other countries have. Are we worse than other countries? I think we’re better than everybody because I was born here so obviously we’re best. Why can’t we get this done?

You know, we’ve just got used to children dying in massacres by guns. By mass shootings. Remember when we used to be all upset, and we prayed at church, and we stopped church, and we had special prayers and services. And now it’s just another one. Because we decided to retain that sin and not get rid of it. Again, other countries have. Other countries had one, one mass shooting and said, that’s it, everybody brings in your gun. They go, well, yeah, of course, you know, because why? Because guns don’t die, children do. And they brought them all in, turned them all in. Said no, we’re not going to retain that sin. We’re going to forgive it. We can do it. Or we can pray, oh, please, mental health people, not be mental healthy, little individual sins on individual people who, why doesn’t it stop? Unh-unh.

That’s not for this varsity group. We can take on the big game. We can say we’re going to get rid of sin. We’re going to make it safe to go to the mall, go to school, without being in a fortress. It’s our choice. Jesus said that. He came back from the dead to tell us that. We should listen. That wasn’t an easy trip. I think it was something important he had to tell us. Oh yeah, I forgot about the sin thing. I’ve got to go back. And he comes back, and he tells us, and what do we do? Um, I had lustful thoughts. I had an extra cookie. I murdered. Okay, that one. Don’t murder people. That’s a bad thing. But maybe not make it so easy to murder people. He came as a person, and people kept wanting lists from him, and rules. And he kept showing them how to live, over and over again.

Remember that woman caught in adultery? That’s in John, too. I’ll go over there. Remember they brought her. This woman was caught in adultery. Okay, time out, time out. Caught in adultery? Where’s the other person? I don’t know. I don’t want to get graphic. Family show. But it should be two people. So there’s a woman caught in adultery, and with some reason the other person’s gone. Don’t know what happened there. But here it is. Let’s stone her. Let the one without sin throw the first stone.

What does that mean about our punishment system, our penal code? What does that mean about cash bail? Why do we have cash bail? Only rich people get to get out of jail. Poor people, you go right in jail, and we’ll get around to you someday. It doesn’t have to be that way. Some states have abandoned cash bail. And guess what? Everything’s fine. Most people show up, same as much as cash bail. But think of this, not in terms of politics, but in terms of retaining sin and forgiving sin.

And another good thing about this, you know with the individual sin you can feel bad about yourself and be all upset and say, “Oh, oh, I’m just a weak person. I’m not a good person. I’m a sinful person. I’ve done these sins.” But if you’re understanding sin as like understanding that, if you’re a fish, you’re wet. To say we’re without sin is like a fish saying, what’s water? I’m not wet. It’s all around us. At one time it is comforting, and the other time it’s also challenging. And we’re just the people to meet that challenge.

Imagine, if you would, if people would look to us and say, “Look at those Christians, how they take care of people. Look how they’re doing nights off the streets. Look how they’re doing that.” Why can’t we be more like that as a society and say no. No one sleeps outside. No. And I’m not telling just pass the law saying it’s against the law to sleep outside. And it’s fair because, you know what, rich and poor are both banned from sleeping under the bridge. Fairness, American style.

What do we do? Acts gave us a taste. Acts gave us a taste of what it meant to care and love one another. Imagine people giving up their homes to make sure everybody had enough to eat and a place to sleep and a place to live. Imagine that. It can be that way. We’re so wrapped up in the sin, we can’t even see it. Like that fish in the water doesn’t realize they’re wet. Like me, who doesn’t understand that my privileges come from racism going back generations, when only white people were allowed to have good jobs.

But we don’t have to stay that way. We can’t give up. Jesus Christ offers us a way out. We celebrate that in communion. We say that the difference of sin, the way to get out of sin is to live a different way of life. To live in community. To live in love. Christ upon the cross. He looks down. He sees his mother Mary, and he sees who’s going to be destitute, and he sees the beloved disciples. And he said, “Behold your mother. Mother, behold your son.” What does that say about how we take care of the poor and elderly in our country? It says we take care of them like they’re our own because they are.

Way back in the Old Testament, in Leviticus 19:33, it’s a scripture. Look it up. It’s actually in the Bible, and it says you shall treat the foreigner in your soil as if they were native-born. Right there in scriptures, 19:33. If you don’t like a little rule thing, and you want a story, read Ruth. “Your people shall be my people. Where you go, I will go.” What does that say about immigration and refugees? It says a lot about what you believe are the privileges and rights of the native-born. There are responsibilities, not just rights.

Jesus comes to tell us how we live. And only by living in love, only living in community can we ever hope to get out of the sin that we all swim in, that’s been forced down to us by the institutions and the generations and the choices of others throughout time and space that’s made our society the way we are. They have chosen to retain sin instead of to let them go. But we don’t have to do that. We can be different.

There is a TV series, “Fargo.” I beg you do not watch it. It is terribly awful, violent. Don’t do that. I love it. And this, I’m going to spoil the ending for you. Because I would love if this was a spoiler for our society, too. We have the killer, the one that has been pursuing her all the whole series, the one that kills and maims without remorse or hesitation, with efficiency so cold it will give you nightmares, who comes into her house to kill her. And she invites him to dinner.

MAN: But the food was not food.

WOMAN: What was it?

MAN: It was sin. The sins of the rich. Greed, envy, disgust. They were bitter, the sins. But he ate them all. For he was starving. From then on, a man does not sleep or grow old. He cannot die. He has no dreams. All that is left is sin.

WOMAN: It feels like that, I know, what they do to us. Make us swallow like it’s our fault. But you want to know the cure? You’ve got to eat something made with love and joy.

Retaining Sins

One of Twelve

How We Count People and Sin

One of the Twelve
a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey

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Audio from worship at St Paul’s Lutheran Family, Carson City, NV on April 11.2021

John 20:19-31

Sermons also available free on iTunes

One of the twelve. Did you catch that? There’s a lot going on in the scripture. But in the 24th verse, the first line of the second paragraph of the reading, we read this: “One of the twelve.” I caught my breath when I read that this year because I realized there wasn’t twelve. Judas was gone. Eleven. Thomas is not there. He’s absent. Ten. What about that young man that ran away in Mark? Nine. How about that rough old fisherman that denied Jesus three times? Eight. “One of the twelve.” How do you count in a fearful time? How many people are here today?

In my day job, I’m the clerk of the Presbytery of Nevada. All the Presbyterian churches in Nevada, a couple lost souls in California we took pity on and a couple others, report to me how many people came to worship last year on average. And they were calling me and say, “What are we going to put down? What’s the right answer? We haven’t met since March. Our average is zero in worship.”

What do we put down? Does Zoom count? How about if there’s two in the little boxes? What if there’s just a strange picture of Wonder Woman every week? Is that really a person? And YouTube views. Does that have to be on Sunday? Or what if we took the whole count? And then there’s Facebook. And then sometimes people do all three at once. I don’t know how they do it, but they do it. How are we going to count how many are a part of us in a fearful time?

If Jesus, and I’ve asked him, came in and could tell me the number, what would he say? What would he say here? What would he say there? How many are in the room? Scriptures, the author of John seems to think all of them were there. “One of the twelve.”

Gallup has something to say. If you know George Gallup and his organization, he’s gone, but the organization goes on. Have you seen the study that just came out? For the first time in the history of this nation church membership is below 50%. The most common membership of church, United States is “none” for the first time ever. Well, we’ve been seeing it coming. It’s been sliding on down. And it’s not just those avocado-eating, toast-eating young people. Even the greatest generations, their percentage has gone down. Every age group, boomers, you name it, everyone, church membership has gone down. We’re at 47%. 1999, not so long ago, we were at 70%.

“No religion” is getting a boost. They’ve gone from 8% up to 21%. Others are kind of in that fuzzy crazy thing of, yeah, I’m with you, but I’m never there kind of thing; you know? I don’t know, you know, you don’t have to worry. I’m not a Lutheran. But in Presbyterian church, half of people who claim they’re Presbyterian aren’t. We have no record of them. One out of two Presbyterians aren’t Presbyterian. So there’s those people.

Now, you may tell me, Christy, no one joins anything anymore. The Book of the Month Club is way far away. People aren’t joiners. They don’t sign up for things. They don’t go to clubs. I mean, look at the Grange. You know, that used to be great. Not so much anymore. Look at the Masons. Look at all the fraternal and lodges, Odd Fellows, the Moose, all those things are all having trouble. And I said, well, okay, maybe. But are you a member of Amazon Prime? That seems to be doing pretty well. Have you heard about this thing called Facebook? I think they’ve got more members than there are people in the world, sharing their lives, encouraging or discouraging one another, making connections, building up, tearing down. Sounds like something we used to do.

Heck fire, even Best Buy is rolling out a membership plan. I don’t know exactly what that would mean, but I’m signing up. And political parties? I don’t know about you, but it seems like a lot more people are joining up political parties. And youth sports. Is there any youth that isn’t a member of two, three organizations? My goodness. So I don’t think we can just say, well, no one’s joining nothing. I don’t think so.

So how do we count? You know, this Sunday we skipped over – did you notice there’s two Sundays in the scripture? It’s really unfair for a preacher to have two Sundays in one Sunday’s reading. I mean, you should separate them out because we forget about that first Sunday, and we look at the second Sunday. You know, the one about the proof and the doubt and the goriness that if we weren’t used to it would be rated “M” on the graphic novel; you know? There’s going to be some hand in the side. Ugh. We skip over that. We talk about the proof and the denial and the doubt and the faith and all this other stuff. There are plenty of sermons on that. I got a couple on the Internet, if you’re really desperate.

But I want to talk about the first Sunday after Easter. You know, today. Where the Bible says one of the twelve wasn’t there. Well, then there wasn’t twelve there, was there, Bible. Bible knows that. Bible knows that Judas is gone. Bible knows that Peter’s not out in the open. Bible knows that one of the disciples ran away. Yet the Bible still says twelve. What happened that first Sunday with the twelve? Jesus came back, and the sermon went something like this. You might recognize it. There was peace. Peace. There was ritual actions. There was joy. And there was a message.

Did you catch it? It closed the service, sermon at the end, classic structure. Jesus said, if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. Of all the things to say the Sunday after Easter. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. Of all the things Jesus could tell them, coming back from hell, rising from the dead, triumphant over the worst the empire could give him, he says about forgiving sins of any, but also warns them about retaining sins of any.

Now, immediately, what did we do as a church? We immediately took this little scripture, and we made a huge big patriarchal power structure, hierarchical, ecclesiastical, with all sorts of penance and potions and indulgences and wherefore and courts and censors and discipline and all this. I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind this first Sunday after Easter. He didn’t think that we were going to make some kind of religious industrial complex out of forgiving and sinning and forgiving and penance and rules and what you have to do to get back right.

And look who was there that first Sunday? Look who was not? A denier, deserter, doubter, and all of them despairing. And to this group he says “peace.” There’s no peace, Jesus. Rome is after us. The Jewish, our own people are after us. We’re hiding here. But you see, peace isn’t the peace we think of, absence of war, safety from conflict. Peace is much, much more than that. Peace is everything is where it should be. Everything is in its place. Everything is fitting. Everything is cozy. Everything is the way that God wants it to be. Peace, peace. The twelve are here because God’s peace is here, and all is where it should be. Peace.

But if you think of peace as the way God wants the world to be, where everything is fitting, where everybody has what they need to live, where everything is cozy, if you will, then you can understand sin. Sin is not some morality play, some purity test, some list of morals or do’s and don’ts. It isn’t about a dress code. It isn’t about a date code. It isn’t about what you pledge to do or not do on a certain time and place. Sin is not doing God’s will. If you are not conforming, if you’re going against what God wants you to do, that is sin. Which is the opposite of peace. Peace is what God wants the world to be like, what relationships should be. Sin is when we don’t do that, when we rebel. When we don’t do what God wants. When we do things for selfish things. When we don’t have our place in society and with people.

And you could think of that first Sunday. You think this is a tough worship service? Mass? Social distancings? No coffee? No hugs? Imagine those people back then. That was a bad Sunday. Jesus dead. Doors locked. Fear of the authorities. Peace. To this he says “peace.” To them he says the world. Let’s not talk sin. Let’s talk about it. If you forgive the way the world is not like what God wants, if you can forgive the way people are not the way God wants them to be, well, then they are forgiven. And I think there were some uncomfortable looks around the room. Was a denier there? Did people kind of look to the side? Say that guy, that guy we have to forgive? God wants peace between me and that guy who couldn’t even say he was with us the time we needed him? Was there a couple people? You know there was. That looked at that empty chair where Judas always sat, you know, that’s where he was. He was just there last week. One of the twelve. That guy. I hate him. You tell me to forgive him? Our things will still be broken.

Or the guy who ran away, not named, in Mark. Was he there? Was the guy who locked the door, oh, we’ve got to. You never know, things are coming to get us. You know who this is. Conspiracy theory guy. He’s everywhere. Even back then. We’ve got to make up with him? What about Thomas? Thomas. He didn’t even show up. We haven’t seen that guy. He’s given up. I hear he went back to work. Him? If you forgive, that’s a lot more tough than some kind of purity test or some kind of moral law, to hear Jesus say you get right with the folks that aren’t the way God wants them to be. And that will fix things.

And then there’s judgment. He warns those folks because he knew. He could read a room. He looked around, and it’s, oh, geez, I’m going to come back next week. You guys got some homework. If you don’t do this, if you retain, if you keep this up, if you keep acting like this, the way God wants the world to be will continue to be broken. The world will continue to be in sin, meaning not the way God wants it to be. If you want to save the world, you can’t keep going after the folks and the things that don’t measure up to God, God’s will.

How do you get rid of sin? We might say repent. We might say get on the right course. We might say penance, depending on our tradition. We might say confession. We might say a lot of things. But the Bible today says the way to get rid of sin is to forgive. To forgive. And are forgiven. And if you don’t forgive, if you retain, if you’re still mad at Peter, you’re still mad at Peter for not having the guts to stand up and support you, if you’re still mad at Thomas for not showing up on Sunday like he’s supposed to, if you’re still mad at Judas, well, then, guess what? Sin’s going to continue. The world’s not going to be the way God wants it to be. And there will be no peace.

And I’ll be here next week and see how you’re doing. Somebody was listening. Somebody took it to heart. Somebody went out to Thomas. You know, they didn’t say Thomas, oh, you really missed something, Thomas. Shame on you for not showing up. Thomas, we have seen the Lord. We have seen what God wants for the world. We have seen Jesus. Here’s our faith. I know you don’t have any. Here’s some. And even though he was a jerk about it, and don’t raise a hand, but how many people you talk to are jerks about things now? Yeah, they’re out in force. Even though he was a jerk about it and says, well, I ain’t calling you a liar, but you’re lying. Unless I see it, it didn’t happen. You still invite that guy to church? They did. They listened to Jesus. And the next week the doors were shut. They weren’t locked. At least they didn’t say they locked. They were just shut. Progress, not perfection.

You know, Jesus answered him, asked him, have you believed because you’ve seen me? I wonder what Thomas would say? Because you know what, he didn’t actually, we don’t have actually that he didn’t actually poke Jesus like he said he had to. He didn’t actually slide his hand in there. At least it’s not in the Bible that he did that. I’m wondering if Thomas said, well, not because I saw you. I’m here because of these guys. Even after me being a jerk and abandoning them, they came and got me. And I didn’t see you. I didn’t poke you. I didn’t look at your wounds before I came to church.

I’m glad you’re here. But the reason I’m here, the reason I’m being faithful is because of these people around me that told me I didn’t have to be perfect, that they forgave me when I abandoned them. That they forgave me for being a jerk and not believing them. And that’s what healed me. Nothing that I did. But the love and forgiveness that the other people have shown to me, that’s what got rid of it. You know, if they didn’t go after Thomas and tell him and invite him, if they retained his behavior that God didn’t want, I wonder if the Bible would say eleven instead of twelve.

Friends, we’ve got some work to do. Going to be a tremendous adjustment as we come to something else other. Already, you’ve already done that, I applaud you. Are we retaining sins or forgiving them? Are we forgiving that things aren’t the way God wants them to be and pronouncing peace? Everyone has a place, and you fit in here somehow. We’re going to make it work. Or are we going to retain the brokenness and the way things God doesn’t want to be? Seems like it’s up to us which way we go, whether we have peace, where everyone is forgiven and loved, or we don’t have peace, where everybody is separated and not counted.

There’s a poem by Ruth Etchells, found it on Facebook. You know, that membership thing.

The Ballad of the Judas Tree

by Ruth Etchells

In Hell there grew a Judas Tree
Where Judas hanged and died
Because he could not bear to see
Hs master crucified

 Our Lord descended into Hell
And found his Judas there
For ever hanging on the tree
Grown from his own despair

So Jesus cut his Judas down
And took him in his arms
‘It was for this I came’ he said
‘And not to do you harm

My Father gave me twelve good men
And all of them I kept
Though one betrayed and one denied
Some fled and others slept

In three days’ time I must return
To make the others glad
But first I had to come to Hell
And share the death you had

My tree will grow in place of yours
Its roots lie here as well
There is no final victory
Without this soul from Hell ‘

So when we all condemn him
As of every traitor worst
Remember that of all his men
Our Lord forgave him first.

From the Church of Scotland website for Easter Day

The audio and transcript are from the Saturday version. Here is a YouTube of the Sunday Service

One of the Twelve: Counting People and Sins