The Great Transfer: Forgiveness of Sins

Studies in the Gospel of John #17
"The Great Transfer: Forgiveness of Sins"

The flight landed at Cleveland, OH airport. An announcement was made, “All through passengers to Newark International please remain seated.” The flight attendant then went on to list the different gates for destinations other than Newark International. The flight crew left the plane with passengers still sitting there and a new crew came on which we all assumed was flying us to Newark.

After other passengers had boarded the plane, the safety measures were given and we took off. It was only after we had been flying for 30 minutes that the new flight attendant announced: “The skies are clear and we should arrive at the Harrisburg airport in 20 minutes.” Passengers began to look around at each other. The 120 passengers who had gotten on at Cleveland took no notice. That’s because they had gotten on with the express purpose of flying to Harrisburg, PA.

Our worst fears were confirmed during the landing, as we saw the lights blinking on the four cooling towers, which surrounded nuclear reactors TM1 and TM2, on the tract known as three-mile Island. This was ominous for two reasons. In the previous year, 1980 the worst radioactive meltdown in America's history had occurred, and no one knew the extent of the nuclear contamination in the 10-mile area around it, which included the Harrisburg airport. So we were flying into danger because the airport was only two miles from the shut down reactors.

Secondly, of course, it meant that we were in Harrisburg and not Newark. Most passengers took the money offered and the promise of getting to Newark the next day. But since six of us had to be in Newark that evening, the Allegheny Airlines paid ground transport fees of $350.00 to be driven to Newark International. We should have been instructed to transfer planes in Cleveland, but the flight attendant had made a mistake that sent all 95 Newark bound passengers to Harrisburg.

Without making the proper transfer, we ended up in the wrong destination, and a dangerous one at that. We thought we were going to the right place as we took off. Only upon landing was it confirmed that we were not only going to the wrong destination, but a dangerous one.

The Psalmist gives praise to God who is known to Israel as REFUGE, STRENGTH and HELP in time of trouble. A woman had been presented to Jesus. She had been taken in the very act of adultery. In accordance with what Moses taught in Deuteronomy 22:22, she should be put to death by stoning. Ezekiel 16:40 implies that this unfaithfulness to one’s husband required” “They were to be stoned and hacked to pieces with swords.” 

Aren’t we glad God sent Jesus?

The scribes and Pharisees probably thought, “We’ve got him now. If Jesus said, “Stone her,” he would be stepping outside the character of the divine love that made him the Christ of God—the Word made flesh. The Word made flesh means as the writer of Hebrews wrote in chapter 4:15, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way as we are—yet he did not sin.”

The eternal Christ was made perfect through what he suffered. What did he suffer? He suffered living in this world, controlled by the power of the Prince of Darkness, as a human being. The plan of deliverance for us, of salvation for the human race, was not possible until divinity could take on the pain of humanity, and thereby restore us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of love and light. Jesus could not be made complete without the incarnation.

He could not have accomplished God's great work of salvation had he not become human. He had to have a mother, a father, brothers and sisters who ridiculed him and did not believe in him, neighbors who watched him grow up and could not possibly see him as anyone and anything other that the eldest son of Joseph and Mary--"the Carpenter's son."

He needed to be tempted to abandon God, as we are, for the sensory delights that so easily draw us away from our full spiritual relationship with a loving God. And he had to experience separation from God, as the Christ, in order to take on the humanity necessary to accept and forgive our sin. Sin is indeed, separation from God. That is all that it is, no more, no less. Through Christ we enter into that relationship and resume our place as Children of God and heirs of light, love and life.

If Jesus had said, “Do not punish her,” he would have become for Israel morally irrelevant, relaxing the ethical demands of the Law of Moses. Yet Jesus said he had not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. By fulfilling it, Jesus indeed made the law irrelevant, because its many restrictions and taboos would no longer be binding.

It would no longer be used as God’s yardstick to measure who was out and who was in. Indeed the dictum from the Psalmist and the Prophet Isaiah would become reality through the Christ, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” And Jesus demonstrated that truth in what he did next.

We do not know what Jesus wrote on the ground as he stooped down, but I would venture he wrote something like this, “Piddly didly—self-righteous buffoons, majoring in the minors as usual. Missing God’s grace totally: condemning rather than comforting, rejecting rather than rescuing. Nevertheless they continued to ask him: “Well, what do you say Jesus?”

Raising himself up he said to them, “The sinless one among you should cast the first stone.” Only if you are perfect should you be throwing stones, criticizing others, gossiping about other people’s actions, judging the behavior, the motives, and the lifestyle of others.

And if you do believe you are perfect, you have sinned because you are calling God a liar. And if you are not perfect, then why on earth are you focused on someone else, why on earth are you minding someone else’s business, why on earth are you running point on someone else’s faults?

Jesus asked in his great sermon on the mount, “Why are you so skillful at finding the small splinter of wood in your sister’s/brother’s eye, and cannot see the large wooden beam going through the center of your own head?

All of us need to transfer flights if we would reach God’s final destination for us. Some of us will need to transfer many times, but be assured, for every man and woman born to this condition called life, there are no straight non-stop flights.

Life is like a mountain railroad, with an engineer
that’s brave; you must make the run successful, from
the cradle to the grave. Watch the curves, the fills,
the tunnels, never falter, never fail; Keep your hand
upon the throttle, and your eye upon the rail.

Blessed savior, thou will guide us, till we reach that
blissful shore, where the angels wait to join us, in thy
praise forever more.

Where are those who condemn us? Nowhere Lord. Who are those who have the right to criticize others? No one Lord. Who are those who have not tried and failed because of the human condition? Only Christ, the incarnation of God. Christ encouraged her to leave her life of sin. While we have been set free from sin and free from the Law through Christ, Jesus was saying to her and to us: 

Yes, it is true that I came to forgive, to transfer
You to the road of life, to take your sin on myself
So that you might through faith, inherit God’s
righteousness—forgiveness—holiness, but “DON’T
BREAK MY BACK.”

And God continues to make that offer to us. Not that we will stop sinning, but that we through faith may find strength to face what is too frightening, that in the midst of life’s challenges and tragedies we may yet find a Savior—a deliverer, one who will rescue us from the circumstances of life, the dysfunctions of our personality formation, the pains and scar and wounds of others.

YES, that we may find the savior, who in the midst of life’s crises will transfer us from the flight of doom to the pathway of life—through the forgiveness of sins, which is our only claim to fame, and our only source of victory. 

God has indeed rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Through faith the realization of this new life emerges in us and among us. Amen.