Readings: Matthew 5:23-24 (Click here), Matthew 18:21-22 (Click here), Luke 17: 3-4 (Click here), Luke 23:34 (Click here)
I have a confession—I suppose a perfectly good place to begin a sermon on forgiveness. Well, here it is—by Tuesday of this week I was seriously sorry for having listed forgiveness as one of the spiritual disciplines I intended to preach on this Lenten season. I anticipate that a few of you are not so crazy about the topic either. To that end, let us pray…God, open our minds and our hearts to what you have to say to us tonight. Remind us that it is for the forgiveness of the world that You sent Jesus to walk among us and die for us. Even when spiritual learning is hard, we hear Your call to follow you. And it is in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, we pray. Amen.
Jesus said, before you lay your gift at the altar, go make things right with your friend or brother, or sister in my case. I have a twin sister—for whom I have never been particularly grateful nor has she been grateful for me. Many of you know that our mother died last fall and with her death came the last remaining reason to even pretend to like each other. Things were said, lines have been drawn, and it isn’t pretty. So, my friends, as I lay this sermon on the altar as my offering to God, I had a problem. And so on Wednesday morning, I sent an email. Doesn’t matter that she will neither respond nor think that I am any less crazy than she already believes me to be. I did what I had to do, and, so, now, I can speak to you of forgiveness—not as a person with everything all tied up neatly, but as a real, live, struggling Christian who sometimes has the courage to do the right thing (and sometimes does not).
As we heard in our readings, Jesus was relentless in His expectation that we will forgive. Forgiving is such a complex topic that it would require a series of sermons itself and, maybe, we will do that before long. Today, however, I want to look specifically at the discipline of forgiving—the constant attention to resolution between us and others. And the constant attention to the spiritual price we pay for refusing to forgive each other and, yes, even ourselves. We sometimes wear our hurts as a garment that shrouds us from the lighter, brighter sides of life. As I contemplated what Jesus said about forgiveness, I also thought about what Jesus DID about forgiveness as spiritual discipline is as much about doing as it is about feeling or thinking.
Let me ask you a question: Does your inner picture of Jesus after the resurrection include the crown of thorns placed on His head by the soldiers at the time they were crucifying Him? I thought not, so I began to wonder why we get so invested in carrying our hurts with us as constant reminders of our pain and suffering. Let me be clear here: It is important to remember that the resurrected Jesus did carry the scars of the crucifixion on His body. The holes left by the nails in His hands and feet, and the gash in His side, remained after the resurrection. But there is a difference in the healed, or sometimes healing, scars that change our bodies, our hearts, and our psyches forever and the humanly placed ornaments of ridicule, scorn, or deliberate wounding. We know that Thomas, in particular, wanted to see proof that this was his Jesus and Jesus did not hesitate to show Him his scars—but the derision and hatred symbolized by the crown of thorns was redeemed by the resurrection and replaced by victory over all the forces of evil in the world. So how does this relate to forgiveness?
There are all kinds of sayings about forgiveness. I had a cynical great-uncle who used to say: “To forgive is highly unlikely and to forget is just plain stupid!” For many of us, something akin to that is our heritage regarding forgiveness. There is a book that I have read in pieces over the past five years and the older I become, the more the book speaks to me. Perhaps at some point, we may want to do a book study around the book. It is called “The Second Half of Life”. It is not a specifically Christian book, but it is a profoundly spiritual book. In it, Angeles Arrien, a cultural anthropologist, talks about forgiveness and the necessary role it plays in our graceful and healthful moving through life. She, quite wisely, includes the conversation around forgiveness in her discussion of relationships. For is this not the context of all our need for forgiveness—in our relationships with others, with ourselves, and with God? Her book focuses on the beauty of aging with health and grace, and invites us to look at three aspects of forgiveness and I invite you to do the same:
• “Forgiving ourselves for participating in self-deception or abandoning ourselves to win acceptance and approval.
• Requesting forgiveness from those we have hurt, which requires us to do reparation work and make a commitment not to repeat the mistake.
• Forgiving those who have hurt us, and demonstrating to them our willingness to let go of past hurts, resentments, disappointments, and betrayal”
Whew!!! I think I’ll sit down now…fortunately, we know that we have guidance and intervention from the One who taught us how to pray, how to forgive, and how to live. Let us look one at a time at these three categories from the perspective of Jesus’ teachings and practices on forgiveness.
I believe that Jesus’ principles of forgiveness can be summed up quite simply: always, always, always forgive. The number 7, when used in scripture, is usually equated with infinity— so don’t bother to do the math—always, always, always forgive. Jesus says that we must make right with our neighbor before we can love or worship God. And when Jesus speaks about our neighbor, He always does so in the context of the second commandment—“you shall love your neighbor as yourself”. Therefore, Jesus calls us to be right with ourselves as well as with our neighbor. And, so, my friends, when Jesus says we must always, always, always forgive our neighbor, He means that we must always, always, always forgive ourselves as well.
Returning then, to three avenues of forgiveness: In the first place, I suspect that there are few among us or few in our community or ‘family’ at large that have not engaged in self-deception or abandoned our true selves in order to gain acceptance and approval. You may be in a situation even now where that is happening. Authenticity, prized by many, but experienced by far fewer, is particularly difficult for those of us for whom complete authenticity can come with a terrible price. Nevertheless, the choice to be less than authentic or self-revealing also comes with a price. I believe that Jesus would have us practice His principle of unending forgiveness towards ourselves when we find ourselves in such a place. Nevertheless, we owe it to ourselves to look for ways to embrace our authenticity and to change our circumstances to enable us to find ourselves in places where we can be who we really are. Many of us are here tonight because this MCC church or another MCC church first allowed us to be our whole selves in the family of God. Praise God, indeed!
Secondly, we need to honestly ask forgiveness from those we have hurt. We all know how to do this and it’s hard. For me, the telltale sign that I need to ask for forgiveness is when I begin to justify what I did and attempt to convince myself that I had “the right” to say what I said, or do what I did. That’s the clue, and Jesus calls me to make it right so that I can worship God aright and be in right relationship with my neighbor and the world.
Finally, we have a need to forgive those who have hurt us—and truly we will spend some more time in conversation about this. Jesus told us that God would forgive us in the same measure that we forgive others. There are times in my life when that is just plain scarey…more importantly, at those same times when I hold on to my hurts with every ounce of strength that I have, I am out of sync with the person God called me to be. Imagine the resurrected Jesus walking around holding the crown of thorns tightly down on His head rather than allowing it to fly off in the breeze of God’s redeeming act of resurrection.
We are not finished on this topic—that ‘s the good thing about coming back together. Let’s make a pact to face squarely Jesus’ call to forgive…and start tonight bringing our thoughts to the need for forgiveness in our lives. If I pray for you and you pray for me, we will have begun a wonderful work in our hearts. Amen and Amen.
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