To Be Right, or To Be Forgiven

Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 150; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

The gospel reading today is a direct continuation of the gospel reading on Easter Sunday. The disciples are gathered together behind locked doors – the disciples who have already been to the empty tomb and seen the graveclothes, the disciples who have already heard from Mary Magdalene that she had seen the Lord. And yet they are hidden behind locked doors, still filled with fear. When suddenly, Jesus is there in their midst. He does not stand knocking at the locked door, he barges in uninvited and makes his presence known.

Jesus has a way of doing that, you know. Of showing up precisely at the moment when, in our fear, we have locked our doors to his presence. In the simplest and most ordinary of places, at the most unexpected and inconvenient times. Like the checkout line at the supermarket, for instance.

I still haven’t gotten used to our new plastic bag tax at the supermarket. I know it’s been four months now, and I have some big reusable bags in my car, but I am absent-minded enough that when I get to the supermarket, I forget to bring the bags into the store with me. Then when I get to the checkout line, I remember, and it’s too late to go back to the car and get the bags.

A couple weeks ago I went to the supermarket and realized that I had forgotten the bags – again. I had only a few things and, rather than have to confess my forgetfulness to the cashier, I figured I’d use the self checkout line. I rang up my items, pressed “Proceed to pay,” and the computer screen asked how many store bags I had used. Sheepishly I pressed “2,” and put my credit card in the machine. And nothing happened. Nothing. So I called the clerk over and she hit some buttons, and the computer went back to the “Proceed to pay” button. She pressed it, and again it asked me how many bags I had used – two – and again I put in my credit card, and this time it worked.

“You have to press the ‘Proceed to pay’ button,” the clerk told me. But I did press it, I told her. She looked at me skeptically. I said, Look, it charged me for four bags – two the first time I pressed ‘Proceed to pay,’ and two the second time. So you see, I did press it the first time. She sighed and reached into her apron to give me a dime, to pay me back for the extra bags. It’s not about the ten cents, I said, it’s that I did press ‘Proceed to pay’ the first time.

And then I caught myself. What in God’s name am I doing? I’m arguing with this person trying to prove to her that I didn’t do what she accused me of – I did remember to press the ‘Proceed to pay’ button – and for some reason I really want her to know that. But why? What does it matter? Who cares whether I am guilty of failing to remember to press the ‘Proceed to pay’ button? What difference does it make whether she thinks I pressed that godforsaken button or not? What am I doing? Arguing with this poor woman who I’m sure doesn’t get paid nearly enough to deal with cranky customers like me all day long, and over what?

So I apologized to her, took the dime, collected my two plastic bags of groceries, and headed out to the car where my reusable bags were waiting for me, silently accusing me. And I remembered something a pastor that I really respect and have learned much from shared with me recently, that one of his big breakthroughs came when a friend was brave enough to say to him, “You would rather be right than forgiven.”

You would rather be right than forgiven. For me, that’s true. I was arguing with the supermarket clerk because I was right, because I had not forgotten the thing she accused me of forgetting, and I wanted her to know that I was right. I had forgotten other things, true, but not the thing she said I had forgotten, and suddenly it was the most important thing in the world to convince her that she was wrong and I was right. When in reality my being right was the least important thing in the world. Certainly not important enough for me to get into an argument with a stranger who no doubt had enough problems without having to deal with my baggage.

The truth is, it’s great to be forgiven, but really I would prefer to have gotten it right the first time and not needed to be forgiven. To be forgiven requires someone else to choose to forgive us, and it feels so much better to have done it right the first time and not to have to rely on someone else’s decision. And so, even on the most inconsequential of subjects, we – well, I at least – want to be right, and want everyone to know that I’m right. Sometimes I even surprise myself with how strongly I want to insist that I’m right, as if everything – my value and worth as a person, my right to exist and take up space on the planet, depends on my being right. Given the choice, I’d rather be justified by my works than by the grace of forgiveness.

Well, in the gospel story today, the risen Christ did not give that choice to his disciples. They knew they had done him wrong, they knew that they had abandoned and even betrayed him. They had heard the wild tale of Mary Magdalene that he had been raised, and when they locked the door of their hideout, they were probably just as afraid of seeing him again as they were of the religious authorities. And then Jesus was there, in their midst, greeting them with peace. Showing them his hands and his side, showing them his wounds, showing them without question how he had been done wrong – how they had done him wrong. And offering them, not judgment or condemnation, but peace and forgiveness. They could not have even tried to argue with him that they had been in the right, as they stood around him looking at his hands and side. The only thing they could rely on was his forgiveness, and forgiveness is what he offered them.

Then, the gospel text says, Jesus breathed on them – just as God gave the breath of life to Adam in the Garden of Eden, Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into them as sharers of the new creation. And it is only then that Jesus entrusts the disciples with the authority to forgive sins themselves. The other gospels record Jesus giving the disciples this authority earlier in the story, but John puts it on Easter Sunday for a reason. Because people who would rather be right than forgiven can’t be trusted with such authority. Only people who know that being forgiven is their only choice, only people who have come to believe that they are justified by grace and not by their works, only such people can be trusted with the authority to give God’s forgiveness to others.

And we see this at work in the story in today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Not long after Easter, the apostles are arrested for speaking about the resurrection of Jesus in the Temple. They were brought before the Sanhedrin, the same body that had convicted Jesus and sentenced him to death. And the high priest tells them, We have ordered you not to speak publicly about this Jesus – you are trying to get the people to blame us for his death!  You’re not going to pin this one on us!  What about Herod, what about Pilate?  What about all the provocative things Jesus himself said and did that week in Jerusalem – what did you expect was going to happen?  Don’t blame us.  We did what we had to do, it’s not our fault.

To which Peter replies on behalf of all the apostles, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. So we insist on saying: the God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed, that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.” In other words, yes, your excellency, yes it was your fault that Jesus died. But Jesus accepted this death freely so that all of God’s faithful people might have the opportunity to repent and be forgiven. But Your Excellency, apparently, you would rather be right than be forgiven. Because just as the risen Christ bestowed on us forgiveness and the Holy Spirit, so we willingly bestow forgiveness and the Holy Spirit on you – if only you would be willing to accept it.

Learning that it’s better to be forgiven than to be right is very difficult. It is very difficult for me, I hold on to being right very tightly, and perhaps it’s difficult for you too. How often in marriage do we argue with our spouse and insist that they admit that we are right and they are wrong, and how much damage do we do! How often, like the Sanhedrin, do we refuse to take responsibility for our complicity in the world’s injustice – how strong is the desire to point the finger at someone else, anyone else, than admit that we have been wrong? How quickly do we feel the need to insist that we are right – because we cannot bear to imagine the consequences of admitting we are wrong and need forgiveness.

But the Lord waits patiently for the time when we are forced to admit that being right is no longer an option we can choose. Then, and only then, the Lord offers us the gifts of repentance, forgiveness, and the Spirit. As gifts, not as rewards that we are entitled to by our rightness. And having received forgiveness as a gift, we are able to share that same forgiveness and that same Spirit with others. To invite them to let go, as we are trying to learn to let go, of our desire to be right, so we can all learn together the joy of being wrong and forgiven.

The final verse of the final Psalm, Psalm 150, which we read together today, sums up all the Psalms, the book of the prayer of God’s people: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord, hallelujah! The breath of life was given to all of us as a gift, none of us earned it, it was given to us without our consent and without our having done anything to deserve it. And the breath of resurrection life, the breath of the Spirit that Jesus gives his disciples on Easter, is also given to those who have come to recognize that they have done nothing to deserve it either. And so we pray: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Alleluia!