Forgiveness and Repentance: (Second Sunday pf Easter: 27th April 2025)

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Acts 5. 27-32; John 20. 19-31

“God exalted him … that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.”

On Good Friday, I heard an interview by the Rev’d Kate Bottley on Radio 2 with Esther Ghey, the mother of Brianna, the teenaged victim of a particularly brutal murder in Warrington two years ago, a murder carried out by other teenagers and motivated at least in part by transphobia. It was emotionally intense and at times profound, especially when Mrs Ghey said she had befriended the mother of one of her own daughter’s murderers, having witnessed her genuine distress at the trial and realising as a result that they shared a depth of woundedness that few mothers do. Such extraordinary empathy is rare and is often those who have been deeply wounded themselves who are capable of it.

Mrs Ghey was very clear that she wasn’t religious herself. Yet at the same time, she also reported seeing vivid sunset skies far more often since her daughter’s murder. As pink was Brianna’s favourite colour, she interpreted this as Brianna letting her family know she was OK from wherever she was now. The two things that jumped out at me are, firstly, if it needs to be said again, we Christians have no monopoly on goodness and Jesus Christ never said we would; and secondly that, although most people in this country now seem to think of themselves as having left Christianity behind, their attitudes are still saturated with Christian concepts which over dozens of generations have soaked into the psychological soil of this country and continent. By and large, people still believe there is something more than this life, although they may be reluctant to define what that “something” is.

The final words of this morning’s Gospel reading want us to believe in something very definite—“that Jesus is … the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

As Christians, we must always ask what it means for us to have life in Jesus’ name. This morning’s first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, presents two things lying at the heart of Christ’s mission on Earth repentance of our own sins and forgiveness of the sins others have done to us. These are two of the central acts of life lived in Christ’s name. Practising them as a habit carries us gradually closer to the nature of Jesus Christ, like pushing down on opposite pedals of a bike; they are intimately linked and each sustains the other. When we forgive others, we learn how it benefits us to repent of our own sins; when we repent, we learn how it benefits us to forgive others, even when it’s hard, even when it hurts. Sometimes forgiveness we offer at great emotional cost is thrown back in our face, or taken for granted. Yet we meet in the name of Jesus Christ, who forgave his tormentors as they put him to death. Putting his teachings, which went so far as to command us to love those who hate us isn’t easy. Yet it is towards this goal that we must aspire if we are followers of Christ, even if we only live out those aspirations for brief moments.

I often hear people say they do things “as a Christian”. Often, they are talking about doing very good and praiseworthy things; indeed sometimes people do forgive the seemingly unforgiveable in the name of Christ; sometimes, sadly, people also use “as a Christian” as a crutch for their need to feel superior to others, or as a vehicle for some sort of cultural or political agenda.

Let’s be clear, I do everything I do as a Christian. Being a Christian is who I am, not a sort of psychological costume I put on when I come to church or put my dog collar on. That means I don’t just do the stuff I’m proud of “as a Christian”. As a Christian I snap at people who have only tried to be kind to me; as a Christian, I get distracted by nonsense on the Internet and run out of time for the visit to a housebound person I know would be greatly appreciated; as a Christian I finish the bottle late at night instead of putting it back in the cupboard. As a Christian I have flaws. As a Christian I commit sins.

Being a Christian, or becoming a Christian, isn’t like flicking a switch that suddenly makes you good. Being a Christian is more like making a decision to aim one’s journey through life towards Jesus Christ. That journey will have hard parts, and wrong turns, and probably involve some dark and cold nights. It might be a trip one abandons for a time, or even forever.

On the first Easter Day, the disciples locked themselves in their house in Jerusalem, fearing reprisals. Then Jesus appeared among them, risen from the dead, and gave them the Holy Spirit. You’d have thought that would change everything for them.

But the following Sunday they were shut up in the same house; still hiding, still afraid. Poor old Thomas gets all the attention whenever this reading is set because he doubted his friends when they told him they’d seen Jesus risen from the dead. But can you blame Thomas for remaining sceptical? For people who claimed to have witnessed someone as earth-shattering as seeing a friend risen from the dead, there seems to have been little change in Thomas’ friends’ behaviour.

Or, at least, that was the case at first. Yet some sort of direction had been set. The timing of Acts isn’t very precise, but it’s likely that it’s a matter of months rather than years between those post-Resurrection appearances of Christ in our Gospel reading, and the speech by Peter in the reading from Acts. It’s set when the apostles, having found themselves escaping from prison thanks to a literal miracle, went straight back into The Temple to preach the Gospel – something which had been banned – and found themselves immediately rearrested. They are forced to explain themselves before same religious authorities in Jerusalem who had Jesus put to death and whom the apostles had once feared so much. Look at how their attitude has changed: full of confidence, even though the next verse tells us that some of the people hearing them were so “enraged” they “wanted to kill them”.

Having set their compass on Christ, they seem to have made much progress on their journey. They don’t respond in kind to the aggressive harassment of the religious leaders; instead they proclaim the Resurrection of Christ from the dead, that he might give repentance and forgiveness.

What happens when we lose that compass point of Christ, collectively as a society? We forget what the world was like before Christianity. The Romans were sophisticated and clever, with magnificent art that wouldn’t be equalled for a thousand years, and they bForgiveness and Repentance: (Second Sunday pf Easter: 27^th April 2025)rought order and prosperity—but they were also brutal, as many things beyond Christ’s death demonstrates. Will we start reverting to that sort of brutality as generations of Christian experience slowly leaches from our cultural soil?

Of course there are good people of many faiths, and extraordinary acts of holiness by people of different faiths. Esther Ghey didn’t need to be a Christian to show Christ-like empathy for someone many people would have hated. But I wonder what happens to those of less notable moral character if the Christian belief system that slowly led us over many centuries to a more forgiving and less violent social order starts being forgotten? I just wonder.

Christianity should lead to redemption in both this world and the world to come. We proclaim both that Jesus Christ in rising from the dead opened the way to eternal life for us, and also that following His teachings leads to a fuller, richer, life in this world, and “that through believing you may have life in his name”. May we be worthy to share that life with our neighbours of all faiths this Eastertide.

Now thanks be to God the Father, who has given us the victory through Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Top image: The Western Wall, the Last Remnant of the Second Temple in Jerusalem © Gerry Lynch, 20 November 2022.