From the sound of the news this past few weeks you would think that the only thing happening on the planet had something to do with a little boy named Elian. So, it was easy to almost miss the pictures of Senator John McCain this past week taking his wife and thirteen-year-old son on a tour of the Hanoi Hilton, that notorious prison where he languished for three of the five and one-half years he was a prisoner of war after being shot down over North Vietnam in October, 1967.

Putting that in perspective on the scale of my life, John McCain was a prisoner of war, much of the time in solitary confinement and suffering indescribable torture that has left him physically disabled to this day, from the time I was starting my eighth grade year in Jr. High until I was about to finish my freshman year in college.  Beyond that, I have no concept of what he went through other than what I've read. And, there is no way that can be adequate.  Looking at the pictures of McCain walking through that prison, it's impossible not to wonder what it must feel like to revisit the place where someone else hurt you that badly.

What do you think it was like for Jesus? To be honest, I've never viewed the story we read in scripture this morning in that light. I've always seen it, myopically, only in terms of what it meant for Peter or the other disciples, especially Thomas, the one who doubted the resurrection altogether. But, what do you think it meant to Jesus to revisit the place where he was crucified three days before? The wounds were still fresh in his body. "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side," Jesus said to Thomas.  The incision from the spear, unstitched, was still open.  You can almost see him still bleeding and here is coming back to the very place where he had, literally, gotten nailed. What called him back? What made him answer that call? In particular, what made him answer it the way he did?

McCain has admitted his inability to forgive his former captors for what they did to him and his fellow prisoners, some of whom died in captivity. And, while he has some nice things to say about the Vietnamese in general, he's not shy about telling them how he really feels about the outcome of the war. "The wrong people won," he's had the audacity to say to their faces. Who can blame him?  For one thing, the most natural inclination would be to just stay away from those places. But, if you go back, who says you have to be nice to those who hurt you? Isn't it natural to still feel a kind of nausea at the thought of just seeing, much less being gracious to, the people who hurt you?

When I was a little boy my mother made cheesecakes once in a while.   Nothing fancy. Just those box cakes where you crush up graham crackers for a crust, pour in the mixture and let it chill for a while in the refrigerator. Lemon cheesecake. I can still taste it. Which is part of the problem. I didn't know my limits then and once, when my mother made a couple of those cakes, I ate too much and got sick. Today, if you offer me a piece of made -from-scratch cheesecake, as long as I didn't watch you make it, I can eat it. (You know, sometimes people knick their fingers while grating the lemon rind and it's been known for a drop or two of blood to get mixed in with the other ingredients.) But, to this day, I have no desire to taste one of those box cakes. Just the thought makes me queasy because it makes me revisit a very miserable moment in my life.

People and places can be like that, too. Especially when those faces or places recall memories of when we were dealt with unjustly.  Where the wrong people won. We all have faces imprinted in our memories that tend to recall nauseous experiences, don't we?  People we'd just as soon never see again. We all have places that haunt us, don't we? Places we just never care to revisit.  Ever.

But, here Jesus is, right in the company of the very people who betrayed him and the place where they did it. The people who should have died but who simply walked away. No question, at Calvary, the wrong people won. At least for a while. And, Jesus paid the price with his own blood. It's something of a shock to see him standing there, in the very same place he was betrayed. More shocking, yet, when he opens his mouth and the first words he says to those who walked away when he needed them most are, "Peace be with you."

Let's be sure and get this straight. The work needed to make us OK with God, was finished when Jesus died and was raised again from the grave. "Christ . . . suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God."  (1 Peter 3:18) If I was the one just coming out of the grave I would have just kept on walking, right past Jerusalem and on up to heaven. Why deal with the additional humiliation of stopping to pay anyone a visit?  Especially the very people whose betrayal caused the insult?  What's going on?

What's going on is what the Bible calls reconciliation. Two things, once separate, now reunited. More specifically, two people, once distanced by pain, reunited peacefully. And, the key word is peace. Which is what Jesus came giving. Which ought to tell us something about the way God works with us. He may have accomplished our redemption on the cross. But, the work of reconciliation was something that wouldn't be completed until Jesus got eyeball to eyeball with those who betrayed him. There are some things that just can't be done at a distance.

You may know by now that Nancy edits my sermons. It's very rare that you hear it before she's read it. I think she does that as much as anything in self-defense. But, whatever her motives, her critical eye makes a big difference. Nancy has that rare gift of being able to deliver bad news very gently. And, usually, she's very gracious. Which means that when she does have a critical remark to make, it gets my attention. Like the other day when she said, "there's something missing from your preaching lately."  I said, in full humility of course, "oh, really?" And, she said, "Yes. What's been missing from your preaching is you."  And, she was right. Her words hit a raw nerve. I think I've been hiding.

Long ago I learned that effective preaching is not something that can be done at an academic distance. Effective preaching is at least as much the confession of the soul as it is the parsing of verbs. It happens when, no matter how painful it may be, the preacher exposes his wounds and invites the audience to draw close, like David in the Psalms, and see for themselves how badly it hurts to be human. Preaching that only talks about what the Bible says, academically, is easy compared to telling how that truth is reshaping, or failing to reshape me as I interact with it.

But, sometimes that kind of self-exposure becomes draining and I find myself wishing I could just crawl, caveman-like, into some hole and just hide there. I am so afraid of what you will think if you really knew the truth. The truth that I don't know all the answers and never hope to pretend to. The truth that I struggle at the very core of my being with this Book and what it means.  The truth that I am a great sinner waiting for a glorious resurrection myself. It's so important for me, too important, to feel competent and to hear you tell me I'm competent. What if you knew the truth about how incompetent I feel?

Yet, here is Jesus, not only inviting the disciples to draw close and see the wounds they played no small role in causing, but saying something even more. "Peace be with you."  Here is Jesus saying, "I know the truth about you and what you did. But, if my death and resurrection don't mean anything else, they mean that my relationship with you will not be determined by how incompetent you may be to do what is right but how committed I am to loving you." But, then, he says something even more. "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."

Have those words ever puzzled you? Is Jesus really saying what it sounds like he's saying? That whether or not a person is forgiven their sins is something I can affect? That if I, being the wounded one, choose not to forgive someone their sin then they are stuck with it for eternity? Isn't God alone the one with that kind of power? Well, it's puzzling only if we look at sin, myopically, through the eyes of how responsible someone else is for committing it against us when they hurt us. There is another way of hearing these words. Think carefully and listen with a different ear to the words being said by the one revisiting the place where he was wounded.

Jesus came giving his peace. His pronouncement of unfailing love in the face of unspeakable betrayal. But, then, he gave his power, in the Holy Spirit, so that those he had forgiven would, in turn, do the same so that the circle of reconciliation would be complete from God to man and from man to man. "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us."  (2 Corinthians 5:19) If at any point I choose not to forgive someone who has sinned against me it is not that they retain their sin, I do. I'm stuck with it long after they walk free.

One of the most moving pictures of the last century was that of Pope John Paul II, sitting in a Roman prison cell in 1981. He had gone there to visit the Turkish gunman who just a few months before had shot him and nearly killed him. He'd gone there to tell him he was forgiven. Though he didn't have to go and visit that man it does make you wonder who would have been the one who was really in prison these last two decades had he not.

I'm not saying this work is easy. And, there is no one way to do it. For some, it may mean something as simple, though painful, as writing a letter or making a phone call. For some it may not be safe to physically go back to places where you were intended harm.  I think of victims of abuse, for example. For all of us, it will mean being sensitive so that we don't do others more harm than good in the way we seek reconciliation. When I was in high school I dated this girl named Melanie. The week after we broke up I started dating her best friend. You know, being that clueless is kind of a guy thing. Anyway, a year later, at a youth retreat, we were doing one of those things where you confess your sins to each other. Melanie came up to me and said, "I want to ask you to forgive me for hating your guts this last year." Maybe I should have, but, I didn't even know she was mad at me. If someone doesn't know you hate them what point is there in cluing them in if you can deal with your anger privately?

But, regardless of how we do it, what I am saying is that, far more than the spit and polish of beautiful buildings and programs, a church is either a group of sinners gathered in the name of Christ constantly doing the work of reconciliation or it is not the church. The first work of someone who has been resurrected from the grave of his own spiritual death is to extend to others, in the power of the Holy Spirit, the same forgiveness that made that resurrection possible in the first place. The most effective and genuine evangelism we will ever do is when we find ourselves embracing those who broke our hearts and saying to them, "Peace be with you."

One of the first signs that we are making progress in the work of forgiveness is that we become capable of revisiting the places where others hurt us without feelings of revenge or anger predominating.  And, one of the signs that we are becoming more like Christ is that, when we revisit those places, we do so bringing the blessing of peace to those who brought us harm.

You know, I'm glad I don't have any places to revisit like John McCain. A place of torture so severe that he tried to kill himself twice and when he failed his captors beat him even more.  I'm glad I didn't have to go through what he did to get where God has called me. Yet, we cannot deny what this scripture has told us of Jesus and those who follow him. The first thing Jesus did after he got out of his grave was to revisit those people who helped put him there and offer them the peace of God his cross made possible.  The second thing he did was empower them to go and do the same.  Which all goes to say that, if we really believe what we celebrated last Easter Sunday, the day of Jesus' revisitation, then it may well be that this week it's time to turn our attention to those places we must revisit.

What do you think?