This past Sunday I preached from John 20:19-31, and one of the things that often happens is the passage contains several powerful points that cannot all be included in a single sermon. So I thought I’d blog about one aspect that went a different direction than the sermon did this week. When Jesus first encounters the disciples in John 20, he breathes on them and tells them to receive the Holy Spirit.
“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.’” John 20:21-23
Within these three verses we have some strange things going on: Jesus breathing on the disciples and then Jesus telling them they have authority over forgiveness of sins. The first part about breathing on the disciples is weird and the second part suggesting that the disciples (and church?) have any say in forgiveness is offensive to our sensibilities. What is going on here?
Jesus breathing upon the disciples is actually a part of his sending them out. He is equipping them as his new creation community. We talked about New Creation this past Easter and how the Gospel of John makes that connection with the Resurrection of Jesus. That continues here with Jesus breathing on the disciples. That image takes us back to the creation stories in Genesis, specifically Genesis 2:7, “then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” Just as God breathed the breath of life into the first man, Adam, Jesus, the second Adam and God was breathing life into this new creation community. This was an act of new creation. We this new creation foreshadowed in Ezekiel 37:9 “Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’” Jesus breathing on the disciples is an act of re-creation. He is making dead people alive. It is as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; behold, everything has become new!”
Check back tomorrow for the second part of this article – what was going on with Jesus’ comments about forgiveness?
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