Choosing to forgive, choosing to live

I know what Jesus says, but the truth is this: there are times when I don’t want to forgive! I want to get even. I want my day in court. My pound of flesh. I want everyone to know I’ve been wronged, and I want the one who hurt me to get what’s coming.

That’s the truth. And I know I am not alone. The problem of course, is what happens when we organize our lives around our injuries— when I start to build my living around all the ways that I have been denied my due, and all the ways I have been injured—then it becomes quickly apparent that my life will bear the fruit of anger, of fear, of resentment. And that’s why Jesus says what he says about forgiveness.

Forgiveness happens when we choose to no longer organize our lives around the things and the people who have hurt us.

What the late Presbyterian pastor and religious writer, Frederick Buechner said of the deadly sin of anger applies to forgiveness as well:

“Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

The kind of anger that Buechner spoke of is grounded in an inability to forgive.

But it is not magic. Forgiveness doesn’t come with the snap of a finger. Forgiveness is a journey and a discipline.

I remember an example of this from 17 years ago, when five Amish schoolgirls were killed and 11 others were wounded by a gunman in Pennsylvania in 2006. What made this stand out from the rash of school shootings that have infected our country, what stood out the Amish community not only comforted the shooter’s wife and children, but they also forgave him. They even took in and cared for the mother of the killer as she struggled with his crime. As astounding as that was, you want to know what was even more astounding.? It was the anger and the revulsion that the Amish received in their community, in the media, and even in pulpits, because they forgave even as they mourned the death of their own innocent children.

A more startling example happened in 1948. Pastor Yang-Won Sohn’s two teenage boys were shot for being Christians by a rioter in Korea. Yang-Won not only forgave the shooter, but arranged his release from prison and adopted him as his own son.

Were these people crazy? How can people forgive such heinous crimes against innocents? It messes with our minds. Yes, Jesus said forgive, but there must be a limit, and these crazy people crossed it.

But Jesus said, forgive not seven times, but 70 times seven. OK, let’s count it up; we must be way beyond that limit now. But if we’re honest, we know when Jesus said “70 times seven” he was using it to mean “always.” Jesus teaches us that there is no limit to forgiveness, either to the number of times we ought to forgive and to the power of forgiveness. 

And then Jesus told a parable about the wicked slave who is forgiven a huge sum by his master, but then goes out and throws a fellow slave in prison for being owed just a fraction. We hear that the wicked slave then gets his just punishment. “Good,” we may say. He surely deserved that! We might forget that he was punished not because he owed money, but because he did not forgive. Jesus is very serious about this forgiveness thing.

The Apostle Paul reminds the Romans about another side of forgiveness. His take on it was about how we treat each other because of our differences. Some eat anything, others are vegetarians; they must not despise each other. Well, that’s easy enough. We can do that.

Some may worship God on one day, some on another; do not despise one or the other. Another easy one – we can do that! To each his own, we say!

But then the Apostle Paul asks, “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?” meaning, why do we pass judgment on everybody else? Perhaps because we so often see immense hurt and evil in our world and we want to see justice done. We cannot imagine why people maim and kill innocent people. We cannot understand the sickness of domestic abuse, trafficking of young men and women and children, the horror of genocide. These evils need to be dealt with. They need to be eradicated from the earth and humanity deserves to live in peace and safety. Forgiveness? Was Jesus being naïve when he said “70 times seven?” Probably not. Remember that even as Jesus was being executed he prayed that God would forgive his tormentors and executioners “for they don’t know what they are doing.”

So, how do we start? We might look once again at the Amish. Their ability to forgive came from the center of their theology, which is the Lord’s Prayer. They believe it when they say, “…As we forgive those who trespass against us….” Over and over, Amish leaders tried to explain that to journalists and others who could not believe the parents of the dead little girls could forgive. The Amish in that community made quite clear that forgiveness did not take away the pain of the death of their children. It also did not take away the requirement that the perpetrator be held accountable. They were choosing not to build their lives around hatred for the person who caused that pain.

So forgiveness doesn't say, "Act like it never happened" -- that's amnesia.

And forgiveness doesn't say, "well, nobody could have expected you to do any better" -- that's condescension.

And forgiveness doesn’t mean that there one who injured us is freed from accountability. That’s, well, unhelpful.

Forgiveness puts demonizing the other person out of bounds. When we demonize another person we deny their moral agency, as well as their fitness for being loved. In suggesting that the others are incapable of moral action—by turning them into monster-- we lets them off the hook.

The truth is that when we are hurt and we want to hit back and we want to make the other person suffer, but choose not to—when we make the hard choice to stop organizing our lives around the injury, we are freed from the shackles of living in the past, feed from the fetters of living the injury over and over again, freed from the prison of rehearsing the hate.

You see, forgiveness doesn’t let the other person off the hook. Forgiveness frees us to continue to live faithfully and ethically, because we have chosen to forgive and because we have chosen to no longer organize our lives around life's injuries that have afflicted us either intentionally by other persons, or the disappointments that have inevitably occurred as life has unfolded. 

In a few minutes, just after we recall Jesus’ gift of himself on the cross and just before we break the bread which is also his body that will feed us, his body, we will pray the Lord’s Prayer. And we will all say “as we forgive those who trespass (sin) against us.” As you let that prayer marinate in your heart, think about what the Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said  about forgiveness:

“The simple truth is, we all make mistakes, and we all need forgiveness. There is no magic wand we can wave to go back in time and change what has happened or undo the harm that has been done, but we can do everything in our power to set right what has been made wrong. We can endeavor to make sure the harm never happens again.”

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Bulletin for Worship for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, September 17, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost, September 17, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on September 17, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on September 17, 2023.

Dust

Think about dust.

We think about dust as something you clean up. If something sits around too long, it gets dusty.

My grandmother kept a really, really clean house. Not spec to be found anywhere. And I can remember that even in her house, on a bright sunny day, when the rays of light just poured into the room, I could see little bits of dust floating around in the air. I was little, so I didn’t get it but when I would point this out, she was not a happy woman. To her this was bad news, these little points of light floating around. To me, it was wondrous.

Think about dust.

It’s everywhere. Not just on our bookshelves but in the air. Have you ever seen a forest fire or a brush fire? What one notices is the smoke rising in the air and eventually the wind dissipates that smoke, but the ash and the unburned material in that smoke is blown about and goes everywhere.

Archeologists can look at layers of rock and find whole epochs that change from one era to another. And those dividing lines in the dust are defined by layers of ash.

It is said that the very building blocks of life might have arrived on this planet as dust that hitched a ride on some comet or meteor that then struck the earth. The meteors and comets themselves are nothing more than the dust and debris from the big bang itself.

When you think about dust, the image in Genesis of God forming us out of the dust of the earth and animating us with the breath of life is not so hard to imagine. We really are made of dust.

Typically on Ash Wednesday, Christians put ashes on our foreheads. But not this year. Everywhere the drawing of ashen crosses on foreheads is discouraged because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In some places, people are sprinkling ashes over the head and shoulders of penitents (in manner once done in the middle ages), in other places the celebrant draws the cross on her or his own forehead on behalf of the people, and in still other places, people are given little containers filled with ashes to impose on themselves.

I am kind of taken with the last choice. It seems to me that if we are going to sit, even for a day in the ashes of our truth, then it seems right that we should own it and do our own smudging. 

But the idea of dust raining down on us puts me in mind of that cosmic dust ball that may have caused life itself to spring up, and this intrigues me, too.

Ritual notes for this day aside, putting on ashes is an old custom. At one time, not everyone in the Christian congregation placed ashes on their head, but only those who were acknowledging and confessing egregious sins. They made public their confession with these ashes. But in the Middle Ages, it became the practice for every Christian to submit to the ashes. The season of Lent became a time of public penitence for the whole church.

Today, the ashes mean these things, but many more. The ashes are a reminder of our origin from the earth. “Remember,” we say, “that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We are not the self-assured, comfortable, live-forever people that we try so often to look like. We are going to die, all of us; we know that. Ashes are a sign of that ultimate reality.

The ashes are also, of course, a sign of sin. We are tainted, stained, by our constant falsehoods and wrong actions. We are a people who know better, but who make wrong choices. It was not someone else who made us do it. It was not the fault of Satan. We were not possessed by demons. It was not the fault of our parents. It was not the fault of society. It was not our peer group or the culture around us. It was us.  

We are responsible. We have sinned by our own fault in thought, word, and deed; by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

But today, I propose another meaning for these ashes. Out of these ashes, these signs of our mortal nature, comes something else. Once we recognize our own responsibility for wrongdoing, once we acknowledge our mortal and dusty nature, the ashes also become a sign of fertility.

If we are truly repentant, and truly cleansed, and open to the reality of God around us, then we are also fertile, ready to give growth to greatness.

When fires rage through a forest, everything is devastated. After a bad fire, everything is ruined. But over time, something miraculous happens. Trees that were thought to be dead sprout branches. Ground thought to be dead, brings out flowers and ferns and mosses and animals and birds. Soon a forest or a grassland devastated by fire becomes even more fertile and prosperous than before. The very ash makes for a richer soil. What was destroyed becomes the food for new life.

Ash Wednesday and Lent are, likewise, the burning and clearing of our Christian lives. We enter a time for confession, for penitence, for realization of our earthly nature. But this is also a fertile day, a time for self-examination and self-preparation. Today is getting us ready for something.

Just as ground is prepared in the Spring for luscious growth, today the ground of our lives, the soil of our souls, is being prepared. Maybe through our confession and mortal acknowledgement, we are emptied, opened, made ready for something. We will mark our lives with ashes, but they also point us to the resurrection we are preparing for this season. These ashes point to death. They also point to new life.

We are preparing our souls for the presence of God. We are going to do that by walking with Jesus to Jerusalem, by sharing in His passion and death, by sitting in the darkness of the tomb, and we will prepare for the new life to come.

But it takes time. It takes cultivation. The dense forest of our complicated lives is too thick. It is time to burn it away and make ready the fields for new growth.

Our God awaits our openness, our fertile ground. God comes into our lives with forgiveness, with deep love. Christians walk to the altar twice on Ash Wednesday.  Once when we receive ashes, signs of our mortality and penitence. And Christians receive bread and wine, the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands, the signal and presence of Christ who has risen from the dead. We receive the sign of our mortal nature, but we also receive the sign of fertile and abundant life.

Asserting My Rights

Asserting My Rights

Ash Wednesday, 2021

What is it about Lent and me?
I just can’t give up.

When I give up coffee, I eat more chocolate.
When I give up fast food, I watch more TV.

When I put my loose change in the mite box,
I expect the box to be grateful.

Every Lent, I am an errant driver in a field
Striking the tree that I was determined to miss.

Forty days seem like forty years
When I know I will fail in forty seconds.

So this Lent, I am going to give up giving up.
Instead, I will assert my rights.

I will focus wholeheartedly on my rights.
I will hold closely to myself the things that I know are mine.

I will have a good time this Lent
because I will take on what I know to be true.

But, knowing my track-record in past Lents,
I will start with the right to keep my expectations low.

I will insist on the right to be wrong.
For forty days I think I can live with not always being so right.

I will assert my right to flawed.
Do you think for six weeks, I can be free of seeming so terrific?

I will ascent to my right to be uncertain
For a month, perhaps I will discover faith.

I will claim my right to be ignorant
After a season of knowing less, maybe I will know mystery.

I will act on my right to be weak
And, for a moment, I won’t pretend I own what strength I have.

I will revel in my right to be foolish
And catch a glimpse of how I am seen.

I will rest in my right to be a creature
And enjoy for a second my part in the creation.

I will exercise my right to surrender
and live, for now, in my right not to be God.

Forgiveness is the beginning of reconciliation

Maybe it's me. But that parable we just heard Deacon Fran read in today's Gospel doesn't sound very Jesus like. You know what I mean? 
In truth, people have been trying to figure out what in the world Jesus was talking about in this Parable of the Dishonest Manager ever since he first spoke it! As far as this story in Luke 16 goes, the Lord works in mysterious ways!

Let's recap.

There are two characters in today's Gospel, a rich man and his manager. The manager has been embezzling funds and taking kickbacks, so the rich man is about to fire him. The manager catches wind of this, so he gets to work. He goes to his master’s clients and he reduces their bills. They are grateful both to the manager and to the rich man who suddenly so generous.

Now let’s be clear here. The manager is not a hero for fixing a problem that he himself created! And you might think that when the rich man found out that his manager had cheated him—again!—he would call for the tar and feathers. But no! Jesus, who is telling this story, said that the “master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” Why? Because “the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” And it gets weirder when Jesus says, “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”

Uhm. What?

Are you baffled? I am! Jesus words just don’t seem to line up. I mean, there’s nothing in the Sermon on the Mount like, “Blessed are the shrewd, for they shall make eternal homes by means of dishonest wealth.”

Remember, just as Jesus’ parables about farming are not really about farms, neither are his parables about business really about business. At least not the Wharton School sense.

So just what did the manager do that was so terrible? He forgave the clients’ debts! Well, that sort of rings a bell, doesn’t it? How does “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” sound? Yup. That's right! This parable is about forgiveness!

But you know, if I could give Jesus just a little suggestion, it would be this. You know, Jesus, if you wanted to talk about forgiveness, why didn’t you just say, “There was this guy who had a lot of people owing him money. He could have been a jerk about it, but he said, OK, you guys don’t have to pay, and everyone lived happily ever after.”

Because our God is a God who doesn’t let us get away with easy answers. And forgiveness in real life is rarely neat, easy, or simple.

Think of the ways that our relationships can sometimes get all tangled up and snarled. Like the times you’ve been between a rock and a hard place, knowing that any decision you make will hurt someone. Or the times you’ve been driven by circumstances to a place where compromising your integrity seems like a small price to pay if it will just get you out of this mess.

Now Jesus’ story of the Dishonest Manager begins to sound more real, if not more sensible.

Through Jesus’ life, death, and life, God offers forgiveness openly, freely and without restraint. There is nothing we can ever do that will cause us to earn God’s love and, at the same time, nothing can take God’s love away from us! There is no way we will ever be anything less than God’s most cherished children, no matter how many mistakes we make or people we hurt. We are forgiven even before we know we are going to do wrong, because Jesus loved us even unto death.

And knowing that forgiveness is ours for the asking at every step of the way, how can we not want to try it out ourselves?

“Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” That’s what happens in this parable. The dishonest manager is forgiven even as he forgives others.

 It’s not neat and tidy and clean cut. There are still loose ends and ethical questions and uncertainty. That’s because forgiveness is the beginning of ethics, not the end.

Thank God that we are not God. We are human, and our motives are always mixed. We do not love perfectly. And we mess up even when we’re trying to do the right thing. But holiness of living doesn’t come from never messing up. It comes from depending on God and acknowledging our limitedness and brokenness even as we gradually master the habits of faithful living.

If we waited to forgive each other until we had perfect charity in our hearts, we’d be here until the apocalypse. Jesus says don’t wait till your perfect, just do it. Forgive. Forgive people even if you know they’re wrong. Forgive people when you know you’re wrong. Forgive people when you don’t feel like it, when they aren’t talking to you, when you aren’t talking to them, when you don’t have time. Forgive people you’ve never met, forgive atrocities so big you are afraid to forgive them, forgive faults so small you are ashamed that they bother you. Forgive even if you’ve done it a thousand times; forgive even if you’ve never forgiven before.

Seriously, right now, where you’re sitting, think of someone who is just making you furious or at the very least driving you batty. It could be the guy who cut you off in traffic; it could be your son or daughter who is “throwing their life away.” It could be your spouse who never remembers to take out the garbage. It could be the sibling or friend who hurt and betrayed you so badly that you haven’t spoken in years. Just do it! In your mind, say to that person , “I forgive you.”

Feel better? That's okay. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel anything. Maybe you felt an overwhelming rush of love and grace, or maybe you still feel cranky and self-righteous or just plain mad. Or maybe... meh, nothing! It doesn’t matter. You’ve taken the first step.

You see, isn't a feeling. It's a decision. Forgiveness is the decision to stop organizing your life around another person’s injury to you. It doesn’t mean something bad never happened or that there are no consequences. It doesn't mean that history gets rewritten or that the relationship going forward will suddenly be hunky-dory. Forgiveness means that the injury will no longer be the organizing principal of your life.

When you say, "I forgive," alongside whatever else is in your heart right now – anger, fear, disappointment – there is also a little seed of forgiveness that has sprouted, especially when you begin to realize what it means that God has forgiven you through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus . This is how the Holy Spirit has been gracefully going before you making you ready to forgive and know forgiveness.

There’s a bit of the Dishonest Manager in all of us, wheeling and dealing in front of God and trying to “manage” other people’s feeling. Jesus tells us today that he sees right through all of that and right through us to where "all desires are knows and (where) no secrets are hid" – and forgives us anyway!

Let’s face it. We cannot comprehend God’s forgiveness. But in Christ, we are—against all odds—forgiven! And the grace is that God forgives us even when we can’t forgive others with the generosity and grace that we long for. Taking hold of that unimaginable grace changes us and the way we see others… which is how we can start to forgive others as we’ve been forgiven.

Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13