UNDO #1 Unleashing the love of God in the worlld

UNDONE(#1)

 Forgiveness Unleashing Divine Love

RUMC 1/23/11

(Slide 1)

UNDONE- I am finally preaching the series I have wanted to preach for a year now.  I haven’t preached it before now because frankly as hard as forgiveness is to practice, I think it is even harder to teach. 

·         Who am I to stand here to teach you about forgiveness?  Robyn is able to move past a wrong 5 times faster than I am.

·         Who am I to stand here to teach you about forgiveness?  Some of you have forgiven errant spouses, abusive parents, chronically addicted loved ones and maybe worse.

·         Who am I to stand here and teach you about forgiveness?   I have not walked in your shoes, or felt the hurt you have felt.

Who am I to stand here and teach you about forgiveness?  I am no one.  Except I too have struggled with forgiveness.  Like some of you, I have struggled to let go of past wrongs.  Like some of you I have fought my way back from hurt and anger and entrenched grudge-holding to find that forgiveness is a better answer.

I said a better answer, not an easier one.  One pastor with a little more guts than I have; trying to illustrate how hard forgiveness is; and how forgiveness really runs against the tide of normal behavior in our culture; named his sermon series on forgiveness “the F word.”

I think “UNDONE” will be just fine for us.  I call it “undone” because what most of us really need is some assurance that even if we can’t undo the wrongs we have done-or the wrongs that have been done to us; we need to know that the damage that has resulted from our sins can be undone.  And at the risk of spoiling the end of the series for you let me assure you it can but only with God’s help.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First we need to understand what forgiveness is, and why it is important.

I started by searching for the first examples of forgiveness in the Bible.  Unfortunately, the very first story in the Bible, the creation story, turned out to be a forgiveness story. Right off the bat Adam and Eve sin. They suffer the consequences; being ejected from Eden.  And God forgives.

·         God does not keep digging up the apple thing to throw it up in their face?

·         God does abandon them?

·         God does not continue to punishing them?

·         God does not hold a grudge?

·         God just forgives.

What about the consequences you ask?  How can it be a forgiveness story when they were punished by being evicted from Eden?   

The first lesson we learn about forgiveness is that it does not exempt us from consequences.   Consequences are a natural or legal result of our behavior. 

·         They did the crime; they have to do the time.

·         They ate the fruit they got kicked out.

Adam and Eve suffered the consequences of their behavior, but the relationship between God and the earth man and his wife remained intact.  God still loved and cared for Adam and Eve.  The consequences and the forgiveness are completely independent issues.

·         If you break the law, you go to jail; and forgiveness is a separate issue.

·         If you recklessly injure someone, the insurance company may sue you; even if the victim forgives you.

·         If you betray a trust, you may not be trusted as you were before; but forgiveness can still happen.

So, the first lesson is forgiveness does not erase consequences. (Click slide)

The second story of forgiveness I found is a very interesting one about forgiveness between siblings.  Actually twins.  Jacob and Esau were twins.  Esau came out red and harry his whole body was like a fur coat. (I don’t make this stuff up read Genesis Chapter 25)  Jacob came out right after him holding on to his heal.

Jacob was a crafty fellow.  He managed to trick his older brother out of his birthright and then again by trickery, got his father’s blessing which rightly belonged to Esau. Esau vowed to kill his brother for his trickery.

Years came and went before the two would meet again. Jacob was blessed with many wives and flocks and much wealth.  Jacob knew about his brother’s vow to kill him.  He probably knew that he deserved it.  He sent an offering of half of his flocks and servants ahead to try to please or appease his brother.  With great fear the two brothers neared one another- and   do you know what happened?  Esau reached out and . . .  embraced his brother.

There was no apology.  There was no payback.  There was no accusation.  No strings. No grudge.  Nothing . . . just pure forgiveness.  That is because the way God defines forgiveness is pure grace- a pure gift. 

On the one hand I said forgiveness does not remove the consequences.   On the other, forgiveness does not wait either confession or punishment. . (Slide)

If Esau had waited for his brother to ask forgiveness or pay the price for his deception, he might still be waiting.

Sometimes if we wait for punishment to be exacted, or a confession to be offered we will never get around to forgiveness.  But that’s OK because we don’t have to wait.  Christian forgiveness does not depend on anything but love.  It does not depend on anything but Grace.

Finally I came to the story of Joseph.  Most famous for his colorful coat, you should now that his brothers were jealous of him.  They threw him in a pit and told their father that he was dead:  killed by a wild animal.  The truth was that they sold him in to slavery and his owners took him to Egypt.  There he spent years in slavery, years in prison and was finally released from prison and given an important job on the pharaoh’s cabinet- in charge of all the land of Egypt. 

When a famine came in the land of Israel, Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt for food but did not recognize Joseph.  After messing with them a little Joseph makes a decision.  He calls them back into his presence, sends out the Egyptians and reveals to them who he is. They are afraid, but he embraces them, accepts them and cares for them. 

You notice I said he made a decision. (Slide)  I said that very intentionally, because forgiveness is a decision.  It is a decision to absorb the injustice.  It is a decision to accept that wrong was done but not exact a penalty.

·         If a banker decides to forgive a loan it means the borrower does not have to pay his debt.  It also means that the banker has decided that the bank will absorb the loss of money. 

·         If a governor pardons a criminal rather than letting him be imprisoned, someone has still suffered the wrong that the criminal did. 

A pardon does not fix the wrong that was done.  Neither does forgiveness.  Someone has suffered for that wrong.  Someone has suffered for that sin.  But to forgive is to decide that we will absorb the wrong that was done.

Joseph could have enslaved his brothers selling him into slavery.  Joseph could have imprisoned them to get back at them for the years he spent in prison.  Instead he decided to forgive.  He decided to accept that wrongs had been done; and like a sponge he would simply absorb it.

Forgiveness is deciding to put relationship ahead of the wrong that was done, relationship ahead of the injustice, relationship before the pain.  Soaking up the wrong the injustice and the pain like a sponge and deciding to forgive anyway.  Deciding to love anyway.

Not letting our brains, or our knotted up guts, or our vengeful spleen do our thinking for us- but letting our grace filed  hearts make the decision for forgiveness and relationship ahead of all else.

Of whom does that remind you?  God?   When we practice Christian forgiveness in this way . . .

·         Accepting consequences

·         Not waiting for confession, punishment, or revenge

·         Deciding to put relationships first. . .

When we practice Christian forgiveness we unleash the love of God in our lives and in our world. (Final slide) When we practice Christian forgiveness we are reflecting of the light and love of our graceful God.

You see, all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and deserve eternal destruction.  But God loves us so much that he sent his only son to die that we might have eternal life. 

·         God does not release us of the consequences of our sin here on earth. 

·         Nor does He exact punishment for our sins. .

·         He chose to bear the price of our sin in Jesus Christ on the cross.  He soaked up all the evil, cruelty, injustice, inhumanity, and insanity we could offer, and in exchange offered perfect forgiveness for those who believe.

Simon Wiesenthal wrote a book entitled THE SUNFLOWER.

As the book opens Wiesenthal is a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp on a work detail. As they work they come across a graveyard containing the remains of German soldiers.  On each grave lay a sunflower. Wiesenthal writes

I envied the dead soldiers.  Each had a sunflower to connect him with the living world, and butterflies to visit his grave.  For me there would be no sunflower.  I would be buried in a mass grave, where corpses would be piled on top of mine.  No sunflower would ever bring light into my darkness, and no butterflies would dance above my dreadful tomb.

 Later, while working in a field hospital Simon was ordered by a nurse to follow her.

He was taken to the room of an SS agent named Karl Seidl.  Karl was dying and he wanted to confess his atrocities to a Jew.  Simon sat and listened.  He said not a word but listened.  He brushed the flies from Karl’s face and listened.  He gave Karl a drink of water and listened.  He actually knew some of the people whose tortures and deaths Karl described and he said nothing, he just listened.  He held Karl’s had as Karl requested, and said nothing, but just listened.

The man was seeking forgiveness.  When he finished telling his story, Simon got up and walked out still saying nothing. 

Karl Died that night and miraculously Simon survived the war.   98 people in his family were killed by people like Karl.

Simon ends The Sunflower with a haunting question. “Ought I to have forgiven him?  Was my silence at the bedside of the dying Nazi right or wrong? (Then he asks us to) change places with (him) and ask (ourselves) the crucial Question.  What would I have done?”

I don’t know what I would have done.  I cannot presume to say.  Eloise sent me a quote, however that I think illuminates the question.  Bonnie Thurston writes in the current issue of "Weavings"  "In the reality of this bad-unfair-unjust-tragic-painful (you fill in the blank) situation, HOW am I to respond? How can I be as much like Jesus as possible in the midst of this awfulness?" 

How can we be as much like Jesus as possible in the midst of the hurts of life?   In doing that, God’s love will certainly be unleashed into our world and into our lives.