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I would like to share my take on verse 23.
Sin is legislated. Resistance is criminalized. Dissent is demonized. The merger of political and religious power predates Pontius Pilate's and Joseph Caiaphas's conjugal dictatorship.
If we read our Bibles and pray everyday, we will grow, grow, grow in this realization: sinners are, more often than not, synonymous with the poor, oppressed, and marginalized in the Gospels.
Who can afford the offerings in the temple and thus be cleansed of their sins? Who has the resources to bribe authorities and thus be declared not guilty? Who writes the law and for whose benefit?
Over and over in the Gospels, Jesus sins (against the Sabbath) and heals sinners. Over and over in the Gospels, Jesus declares sinners forgiven...to the consternation of the people who legislate sin.
In John 20:23, Jesus, after breathing on them to receive the Holy Spirit, commands his disciples to forgive and not to forgive. A better translation, echoing Matthew 16:19 and 18:18, is worded "to set free or to bind."
Jesus' command has not changed. Set free the poor. Bind the powerful who keep them poor. Friends, are you and I faithful to his command?
*art, "Pentecost," JESUS MAFA, 1973 (Cameroon), from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.
