Peace Be With You: Love and Forgive

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
May 24, 2026
Pentecost, A
Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
John 20:19-23

“Peace be with you,” Jesus said to his disciples when he appeared to them after being resurrected. Jesus had been killed. In the process of being killed, he prayed God to forgive those who were killing him. Then after being dead from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning, Jesus was raised from the dead, appeared to his disciples, and said, “Peace be with you.” 

He could have gone with, “Hey guys, I’m back. That death thing that the Romans did to me, it didn’t really take, so let’s go bust them up now,” but no. Jesus let them know that the whole forgiveness thing that he prayed as he was being killed, he really meant it. They tried to kill Jesus, very ineffective; it didn’t really last, but the forgiveness, that part stuck. 

“Peace be with you,” Jesus said, followed closely by, “Forgive.” Jesus’ last command to his disciples before he was killed was to love, and his first command to his disciples after he was resurrected was to forgive.

Love people and forgive people. “As the Father has sent me, so do I send you,” Jesus said. Jesus was sent to love and to forgive, so he told his Church, to love people and forgive people. In the upper room where he had had his last Passover meal with his disciples, he appeared among them and breathed on them saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He sent them as he had been sent, to heal the hurts of the world through God’s love and forgiveness. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit for the whole Church to continue his work of healing the hurts of the world through God’s love and forgiveness.

Now, when he commanded his disciples to forgive on that first Easter day, he seemed to know exactly how hard it can be to forgive others, and so he reminded them of how harmful and damaging it can be to hold on to someone’s sins and not forgive. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them,” he said, “if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” At first listen and with centuries of church practice under our belts, it may sound like Jesus was giving certain people in the church the power both to forgive people’s sins and to hold people’s sins over their heads and prevent God from forgiving them. 

“If you retain people’s sins, they are retained” may sound like “if you don’t forgive people, God won’t forgive them,” but that’s not the case. Look at Matthew 6:9-15, where Jesus taught his disciples to pray what we call “The Lord’s Prayer.” He taught them to ask for forgiveness in as much as we forgive others. “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Our prayer is that if we do not forgive others, we are asking God not to forgive us. In fact in Matthew 9:15, Jesus said just that. If we do not forgive others, neither will God forgive us. 

So, “if you retain the sins of any, they are retained,” means just that. If you hold on to the sins of others and don’t forgive them, then you truly have held on to them, and they will be yours to deal with. Those sins that you hold onto will be yours to fester and rot within you. What happens when we hold on to people’s sins? Aside from festering rot, we get resentments. We get anger and hate. Resentments against people have best been described as drinking poison, hoping the other person will die. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. If you choose to drink the poison of resentment, hoping to kill your enemy, then yes, you really will be harmed by drinking that poison. If you choose to hold on to people’s sins and not forgive people, then yes, God will hold on to your sins and forgive you just as much or as little as you have forgiven others. If you retain the sins of any, they will be retained, and you will be stuck with their sins, rather than with new life of love and forgiveness.

So, Jesus was warning his disciples of the great harm that is caused by not forgiving others. Heal the hurts of the world by love and forgiveness. That is Jesus’ mission for his church. That is the reason he sent the Holy Spirit to strengthen us and guide us, so that we could share with others God’s love and forgiveness, just as Jesus did.

We are a people of resurrection life, and that resurrection life is lived through love and forgiveness. Not an easy task, and not for only a select few.

When the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples at Pentecost, what we call the birth of the church, they suddenly began speaking in many different languages so everyone who was there heard and understood exactly what they were saying. Jesus’ mission of love and forgiveness wasn’t only for one particular group of people. God’s love and forgiveness are for all nations, all tribes, all peoples. God’s love and forgiveness are for every human being, ever.

That sounds great until we each get to the people we are quite certain do not deserve God's love and certainly don’t deserve God’s forgiveness. The best we can do with some of those people is, “Well God, you may love and forgive them, but I certainly never will.” 

Living and sharing God’s love and forgiveness with others may be one of the hardest things we will ever do. In fact living and sharing God’s love and forgiveness is pretty much beyond most of us or all of us in those really difficult situations, so Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit. We don’t have the strength on our own to live and share God’s love and forgiveness, and we aren’t meant to do it alone. We live and share God’s love and forgiveness with the strength and guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

Perhaps that’s part of why Jesus’ first words to his disciples after he was resurrected were, “Peace be with you.” This is a monumental task I’m about to give you to do, but you won’t be doing it alone. So “peace be with you.” “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Peace be with you. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” so that you may live and share God’s love and forgiveness with others. Peace be with you. Do not drink the poison of resentment, certain that you are right and they don’t deserve forgiveness. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t, but you will all suffer if you hold on to those sins and drink that poison. The world will suffer if you hold on to one another’s sins and drink that poison, so forgive. 

As Jesus’ church, we get to love and forgive. Let Jesus worry about whether or not someone deserve love and forgiveness. Love people and forgive people. That is the way of the church. When you know you can’t love and forgive someone, that’s when you know the Holy Spirit is saying to you, “Peace be with you. Now, breath me in, and let me do what you can’t.” Receive the Holy Spirit, breath it in, and then love people and forgive people.

It Isn't Just a Flesh Wound

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
June 8, 2025
Pentecost, C
Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
John 14:8-17 (25-27)

 

Our bishop has said, “God has a mission, and God’s mission has a church.” Well, God’s mission is to unify humanity with God and with one another, and we are God’s church. God has formed us to live out God’s mission of unity and reconciliation. More accurately, we are part of God’s worldwide, one church, which God has formed to live out God’s mission of unity.

Anglican, Episcopal, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Mennonite, Church of Christ, and countless other church groups, we may argue amongst ourselves, and some of us may say others of us aren’t really Christian, but despite our objections, we are one church throughout the world. We are one Body of Christ, all formed to live out God’s mission of unity and reconciliation.

Of course, we believe that the unity of God and humanity happened a couple thousand years ago when God became human with the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God united physically with every aspect of our lives, so that we are fully united with God, and nothing can change that. Nothing can separate us from God because God has become human in Jesus Christ.

So, since that mission unity with God is done, accomplished, and finished, what is left for the church to do? Well, as I said before, God has formed the church to live out that mission of unity. God has formed the church to live the truth that we are one with one another and with God.

When we don’t live into that truth, when we don’t live as though we are one, we are deceiving ourselves.

In the movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur is on a quest to search for the Holy Grail, and in his travels, he comes across a fearsome knight who picks a fight with Arthur. It wasn’t the best idea, Arthur makes quick work of him and when the knight won’t yield, Arthur cuts off the knight’s arm. Then, when the knight claims it’s just a scratch, Arthur cuts his other arm off. Then the knight starts kicking Arthur, and Arthur says, “You’ve got no arms left.” “Yes, I have,” the knight replies. “It’s just a flesh wound.”

Eventually, Arthur cuts off both of the knight’s legs as well (because he still kept trying to fight Arthur), and the knight says, “Alright, we’ll call it a draw.”

So, the knight saying that his arms being cut off was just a flesh wound, that was nuts. Even more nuts was that he seemed to actually be trying to convince Arthur that he still had arms. He seemed to actually believe his own lie, but alas, saying that he still had arms didn’t change the fact that they had both just been cut off.

In a similar way, when we deny that we are one with one another, we are lying to ourselves. When we say this part of the church or that part of the church isn’t really the church, then like the knights, we’re cutting off our arms and legs and claiming it’s just a flesh wound. This goes beyond the church as well. When we harm or dismiss any human and claim that it doesn’t hurt us, we’re like that crazy knight. 

We can think that we can harm others without harming ourselves, but those lies we tell ourselves don’t make the harm any less true. The arm being cut off will never just be a flesh wound.

We are meant to live and acknowledge the truth that we are one. Anything else is a lie.

So, how does the church live out God’s mission? Well, we stop lying to ourselves. We stop pretending that we aren’t unified. We may not like other parts of the church, but as Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 12, that’s like a human body where the mouth tells the eyeballs they don’t belong. That’s a pretty stupid thing for the mouth to say, almost as stupid as one denomination telling another they aren’t really a part of the church.

I mean, I get the mouth not liking the eyeballs. To a mouth, eyeballs are just really weird. No teeth, no tongue, strangely spherical, and to eyeballs, I’m sure the mouth is equally strange. Wet without being sad, smelly, can’t see a damn thing. It’s like the Baptists and the Catholics; the two could hardly be more different, but either one saying the other doesn’t belong, well, that’s just dumb.

And, one part of the church telling another part it doesn’t belong is a lie, denying God’s mission of unity, rather than doing the hard work of living out God’s mission of unity.

Now, why do I think God’s mission of unity is hard? Well, a cross, three nails, and a crown of thorns. God’s mission of unity ain’t easy. Easy is seeing the people we don’t like and just giving in to our disgust. Easy is letting anger turn to hate. Easy is saying, they’re weird, they’re different, they’re sinners, and they’re going to hell. The lie that we aren’t one is easy. The lie that God is angry with them but not at us is easy. The lie that we follow Jesus, each one of us for our own personal salvation, and not as a part of one another, that lie is easy, as easy as saying my arm is still here when it has clearly been cut off.

Realizing and trusting that our own personal salvation has already been accomplished and that we are now meant to live out that salvation in and through one another, that truth is harder than the lie, but that truth also gives life. Just like Jesus dying on the cross was hard, but his death gave life.

So, to help us with the hard work of living out God’s mission of unity and reconciliation, God sent the Holy Spirit to unite us, to guide us, and to strengthen us so that when we don’t have enough to live God’s mission, God’s Holy Spirit can work for us, strengthening, guiding, and uniting us as one, because that is what we are. That is the work Jesus accomplished. That is the mission of God’s church which we are invited every day to live.