Sermon from March 11: "The Jesus Family Forgives Together"

Sermon for Third Midweek Lenten Service

March 11, 2015

“The Jesus Family Forgives Together”

1 John 1:5-10

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Matthew 18:21-36

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

So far in our Lenten journey as the Jesus family, we have first simply discovered that we are a part of the Jesus family because God has claimed us as God’s children.  We’ve then learned that as the Jesus family we are called to be followers together, despite what the world says about leadership.  Last week we talked about prayer, understanding that we are called to direct, honest communication with God as members of the Jesus family. 

This week, now nearly halfway through our Lenten journey, we turn to what could arguably be considered the central practice of the Christian faith: forgiveness.  We begin by acknowledging a simple fact that 1 John eloquently states for us: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”  In other words, we are broken, our relationships are broken, and our world is broken, by sin.  When we think of “sin” perhaps we only think of it in terms of our relationship with God.  Certainly our relationship with God is damaged by sin, but we also hurt one another by our sins.  Maybe it’s obvious when you hear it, but it needs to be stated, so hear it again: we hurt one another.  Sometimes it’s in relatively minor ways, sometimes in deep and lasting ways, but every one of our relationships, even those with our closest friends and family, is marred by sin.  So as we talk about forgiveness, we’re not just focusing on our need for forgiveness with God, we’re talking about forgiveness as the means by which God seeks to make the world whole again, including our relationships with one another. 

It would be nice, I suppose, if we talked about the Jesus family in a more utopian way.  It would sound better to say, “In the Jesus family, we don’t hurt one another.”  But that’s not reality.  If your expectation is that the church is a place free of sin and brokenness, boy are you going to be sorely disappointed.  I hope that’s not the image that we’re projecting to the world.  There was a sign I saw a while back that was shared by a friend that said, “This church is not full of sinners, there’s always room for more.”  So we begin by recognizing our brokenness and our sinfulness.  If we do not acknowledge this, then there’s no reason to go on talking about forgiveness, unless of course all we want to do is point fingers at those around us.  That would seem to be the impression many non-Christians have about the Jesus family.  We are self-righteous, “holier than thou” hypocrites who do nothing but run around the world telling others how horribly sinful they are.  Let us stand firmly in opposition to this view of Christianity.  When we speak of brokenness and of sin, let us speak first of our own, as a church and as individuals. 

What are we to do with this brokenness then?  We see how it infects every relationship of our lives.  We see how much harm we do to one another.  We cannot delude ourselves into believing we will somehow create a utopia free from conflict.  The key question, then, is how will we respond?  Clinically speaking, there are two basic responses that our bodies have when someone hurts us.  One is to harbor resentment, to become overcome with anger, and even to seek vengeance.  This can be simplified with the phrase “holding a grudge.”  We know this feeling well.  It includes a measurable physiological response: our heart rate and blood pressure increase, we feel a flushing in our cheeks and a tightening of our muscles, and even the conductance of our skin goes up, giving us a warm, tingly sensation or causing the hairs on our arms and necks to stand up.  All you have to do is recall someone hurting you to draw out these responses.  These are natural feelings, built into the “fight or flight” response system of our bodies.  But there is a lot of psychological and medical research that shows that living in this state for long periods of time is detrimental to our health and wellbeing.  People who tend to hold grudges for months and years are more susceptible to heart problems, anxiety, and depression.  The Mayo Clinic also lists these possible effects of holding a grudge:

You might “bring anger and bitterness into every relationship and new experience.  Become so wrapped up in the wrong that you can’t enjoy the present.  Become depressed or anxious.  Feel that your life lacks meaning or purpose, or that you’re at odds with your spiritual beliefs.  Lose valuable and enriching connectedness with others.”

We know that staying in such a state of unrest is unhealthy, but still we persist, mostly because we believe that revenge or seeing the other person brought to some kind of justice will give us satisfaction and make us whole again.  The problem is, revenge is not so simple.  The Chinese philosopher Confucious said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”  Too often, seeking vengeance ends up doing as much harm to ourselves as it does to the offender who has wronged us in the first place, and even when we do get some kind of revenge, it never satisfies us in the way we originally thought it should.  Psychological studies have shown that when there are two groups of people, both who have been wronged, and one is given the opportunity for revenge and the other is not, the ones who get revenge end up less happy than the ones who didn’t.  The crazy thing is that the ones who don’t get revenge think they would have been happier if they had been given the opportunity for revenge.  The data suggests exactly the opposite.  Researchers believe this is because those who seek revenge are dwelling on the situation more in their minds.  In other words, they were ruminating on the wrong.  When not seeking revenge, participants in the study were able to trivialize the situation and dismiss it more easily, moving on to more positive emotions. 

So if brokenness is bound to happen, and we know that holding grudges and seeking revenge are unhealthy practices, what alternative is there?  There is no over the counter or prescription medication for this condition.  The diagnosis is simple and is the alternative response to when someone does wrong to us: we can practice forgiveness. 

I suppose I could simply go on and list the health benefits of forgiveness that the Mayo Clinic gives:

“Healthier relationships, greater spiritual and psychological well-being, less anxiety, stress and hostility, lower blood pressure, fewer symptoms of depression, stronger immune system, improved heart health, and higher self-esteem.”

And we could leave it at that.  You should forgive because it’s healthier for you.  But as the Jesus family we have a deeper reason for practicing forgiveness than simply to be healthier people.  We are called to practice forgiveness because forgiveness is precisely what we have received in Jesus.  The parable of the unforgiving slave that we heard is powerful in its hyperbole.  The first slave has been forgiven a debt so large that he would have no hope of every repaying his master.  It is by pure grace that he has been released from that burden, and yet when it comes to extending forgiveness to his fellow slave, he turns again to the path of grudges and vengeance.  The point is clear: because we have been graciously forgiven, we are to be forgiving toward one another.  Failure to do so is an affront to God’s grace.  It turns forgiveness into yet another sinful and selfish thing that we love for ourselves, but refuse to our neighbors. 

Let us not kid ourselves, however.  Forgiveness is not easy.  It sounds nice for the pastor to stand up and say, “We need to be more forgiving.”  The truth is, it’s costly and it’s hard.  It’s hard because it means acknowledging that we hurt one another.  It by no means trivializes the harm that we do to each other.  It does not mean we shrug off the things that hurt us.  Quite the opposite, it means recognizing the pain and mistrust and brokenness that are all around us.  It means seeing that in this very room are relationships that have brought pain into our lives. 

Forgiveness is costly because it means letting our guard down, putting aside our desire for vengeance, and relinquishing the role of victim.  It means coming to a place where a relationship with another person means more to us than getting revenge.  It means at some level learning to accept the hurt that has been done to us, yet deciding to put aside the role of victim so that the other person might be restored to us. 

This can take time.  There is often no quick path to forgiveness, especially when others are continually harming us.  There is some brokenness in our world that will never be healed, and there are hurts that should never be tolerated. 

However, what the church stands for, what the Jesus family holds as its center, is a symbol of brutal vengeance and revenge that has been transformed into a sign of forgiveness.  It stands to remind us of how costly God’s forgiveness is.  We take the cross as the symbol of our faith to tell the world that God has spent everything, even God’s own precious Son, on repairing the brokenness that our sin has created.  God has done this because God’s desire for a relationship with God’s creation is deeper than God’s desire for revenge, and the only path to wholeness is through forgiveness.  When we would rather hold grudges and seek revenge, the cross stands to remind us that the price of forgiveness for our sins, the sins of our neighbors, indeed the sins of the whole world, has already been paid.  The path we are called to walk is the path of forgiveness, not simply because it’s healthier for us, but because it’s the path that Jesus is leading us along.  It’s the choice that God has made concerning our sins. 

It’s important for us to keep this as our central focus as the Jesus Family because the world is not good at forgiveness.  Television shows, movies, other media, even our legal system all seem to encourage revenge and retribution.  This is why the mission of the church is so important.  We offer something that can’t be found anywhere else.  At our recent “Equipping Congregations” event in Willmar, Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber shared this idea in a powerful way by reminding us that the church too often tries to compete with the world in other tasks.  She essentially said, “There are good, secular day cares, good health clubs, good social service organizations, but nowhere else is there an organization whose central focus is proclaiming the forgiveness of sins.”  Forgiveness is not just one thing that we try to do as Christians.  It is our primary mission and calling as the Jesus Family.  It’s what Jesus gave his life for.  That’s why we say “We don’t care what the world says about holding grudges, in the Jesus family we forgive together.”

Sermon from March 5: "The Jesus Family Prays Together"

Sermon for Second Midweek Lenten Service

March 5, 2015

“The Jesus Family Prays Together”

1 Thessalonians 5:12-18

But we appeal to you, brothers and sisters, to respect those who labor among you, and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish you; esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Matthew 6:5-13

“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

In the first week of this series, we discovered that we are a part of “the Jesus Family,” not because we have chosen or fashioned it for ourselves, but because we have been called children of God and made brothers and sisters to one another by divine proclamation in Holy Baptism.  We began to explore what it means to be a part of the Jesus Family last week by saying, “We don’t care what the world says about leadership, in the Jesus Family we follow together.”  We learned that, in a world that values leaders, we are called to identify ourselves first as followers.  The Jesus Family is not just another group or club to belong to.  It is a movement with Christ as its leader. 

This week, we turn to another aspect of the Christian life.  Ask any relationship guru and they will most likely tell you that the key to a healthy relationship is healthy communication.  Communication, at its essence, is the process of sharing information with one another.  It can be as simple as a nonverbal glance or gesture (think Robert Redford and Paul Newman placing their fingers alongside their noses in “The Sting”) or as complicated as what I’m doing right now: using a series of sounds organized into a complex pattern that we all have learned to associate with a particular meaning.  It’s incredible!   

When it comes to relationships, communication is essential because it’s how we build trust with one another.  From birth, we are wired for these kinds of connections.  Infants are the best creatures in terms of facial recognition on the planet.  One of the first skills they learn is how to recognize facial features and expressions.  Did you know this ability goes down as you get older?  I know my one year old daughter is going to be more exceptional than I am at pretty much everything in life someday, but already she’s got me beat at this!  As a parent, it’s hard to take your eyes off of this tiny child that is suddenly in your arms, but it turns out it’s not just because they’re so cute.  It’s also because we need to form connections!  As much as we change and grow over the course of our lives, these early communication skills remain essential for us, seated deep in our subconscious, unfolding without our even thinking about it or being aware of it. 

Just like human relationships require communication, so does our relationship with God.  Even as some would say that God is largely silent in our world, we know that God continues to communicate powerfully with us in a variety of ways.  Certainly we can receive messages from God through our experiences of the world around us (things like a beautiful sunset, listening to Beethoven’s 5^th symphony, or in my case, maybe even watching a train go by), but the clearest communication we have from God, we call God’s Word.  You may think that I’m referring to scripture, to the Bible, and I am, but only because it tells us about God’s Word.  We do not reverence the Bible as an object of worship.  Rather, these words (lower case w) are sacred because they reveal to us God’s Word (capital W): Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the Word of God, the divine communication sent from God to the world.  The words of the gospel are, as Martin Luther says, the cradle of Christ, but they are not Christ himself. 

We have received God’s communication and continue to receive it through daily devotion, through the Sacraments, through things like preaching and teaching. Prayer, then, is our communication to God, and it is essential for our relationships in the Jesus family  Martin Luther said of prayer, “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.”  

Prayer is not talking to our imaginary friend.  It is communicating with the deep, abiding, living presence within and around us all the time.  It is participating in the ongoing and unfolding conversation between God and the world.  It is essential for building and maintaining our relationship with God.  

Even so, we often find ourselves at a loss for how to pray.  Indeed, instructions for how to pray are as old as prayer itself, and there are many ways to pray.  The website beliefnet has an article “21 ways to pray” and it includes everything from praying while driving to praying while you brush your teeth in the morning to praying along to some of your favorite songs.  I also like Anne Lamott’s recent book “Help, Thanks, Wow”, where she divides prayer into those three basic categories: “Help!”  “Thanks!” “Wow!”  Help is that basic, desperate plea that we’ve all uttered when we’re feeling helpless.  Thanks is being grateful for a gift received, even being thankful for things it might not be obvious to say thank you for, even being grateful for difficult experiences.  Wow is when we are overwhelmed by what God has done and words almost fail us.

As helpful as all of these things can be, we also have received instruction from Jesus himself about how to pray, so it’s probably good to listen to him on the subject, too.  I could preach on the details of the Lord’s Prayer and each petition as I have done in the past.  This evening, though, there are two things I want us to see.  They are the instructions that Jesus gives his disciples before giving them the Lord’s Prayer:

First, prayer is not about putting on a show, for God or for others.  If your prayer is a performance, you’re not doing it right.  

Second, prayer is not about length or ostentatious language (like the word ostentatious).  God knows what you need.  Ask for it simply and directly. 

These instructions are good reminders for us, especially us pastors, who can easily see prayer as a performance and are prone to heaping up phrases when just a few words will do.  No, Jesus encourages direct, honest communication.  And so the prayer Jesus gives us is simple.  It can be memorized by children at an early age.  It is direct.  It doesn’t use flowery language or go on for pages and pages. 

These two instructions are also important because they address two issues that hinder us in our prayer.

 

First, we don't pray often enough.  We forget to pray, we get distracted, we convince ourselves that we should wait until we have enough time to pray properly, or we assign prayer to a particular part of our life, like only before meals or only at church.  Luther’s encouragement in a short instruction on prayer he wrote for his barber almost 500 years ago is to do it right away!  Don’t wait!  Consider it your most important task for the day and do it right away in the morning before you get distracted.  I’ll add that we ought to consider it our most important response to anything that happens during the day.  Keep the lines of communication open at all times.  Don’t worry about doing it perfectly. 

The second thing that hinders us in our prayer is perhaps even more serious, and that is we don’t know how to communicate honestly.  As great as we are at communicating, we’re also really lousy at it.  Most of us have all of the hardware in place to excel at communication from an early age, but for some reason we let all sorts of things get in the way of communicating directly and honestly with one another.  Every company and politician has a director of public relations where everything that is said by the organization gets filtered, run past lawyers, and scrutinized so closely that in the end you never really knows how much you can trust any of what they say.  

As much as we’d like to say it’s only a problem with corporations and politicians, we know that we’re not much better either.  We have our own internal filters that decide how honest we are with each other.  We face great obstacles in our lives to honest communication, and they’re only increasing in this digital age.  We communicate more frequently in short, shallow messages like tweets and texts.  Anything longer than a paragraph is met with the response of “tl;dr” (that’s "too long; didn’t read").  Yes, the age of the media soundbite has met our personal lives in a profound way.

The biggest problem we face with this is that honest communication requires vulnerability.  We see how people are torn apart on social media or in public because of one phrase that is taken out of context.  We know that being honest with someone means that we could be hurt.  As easy as communication is for us, vulnerability is incredibly hard.  We trust very few people to share the kinds of things that are in the darkest recesses of our minds and lives.  Honesty is hard because trusting others is hard.  It's easier to be closed off and guarded, unwilling to let anyone in on who we really are.  

Now I’m not saying we should start airing our dirty laundry to everyone we meet, but simply naming this as a hindrance to our prayer life.  You see, communication with God is supposed to be different.  Our prayers are not supposed to calculated and guarded.  So here’s the good news that frees us to communicate directly and honestly with God: God already knows!  God already knows more about you than even you do.  God knows absolutely everything about you. 

So “baring your soul” to God is not necessary for God, but it is necessary for us.  When we cling to the idea that we can hide something from God, we don't allow the light of God’s forgiveness and redemption into those places of our lives.  We deny ourselves the very salvation that God so desperately wants to give to us.  But trying to hide these things is a futile effort.  God already knows what you’ve done, what you’ve thought, what you’ve said.  God knows, and God has already promised you forgiveness.  God has already claimed you as a part of God's family, and that can never be taken away from you.  

You've been promised forgiveness, but it will not mean anything to you so long as you cling to parts of yourself that you'd rather God not see.  So don't hide behind the false veneer of perfection, acting as if we have it all together as the Jesus family.  We know the danger of "keeping up appearances" in our personal lives.  We don't want others to know that we're facing challenges in our marriages, or that we're struggling with addiction or alcoholism, or that we live in the shadow of depression or mental illness, or that our financial burdens are sometimes too great to bear.  This cannot be our motivation with God.  Making sure other people know that we have everything under control cannot be our goal as the Jesus family.  No, in the Jesus family we admit that we are broken people with broken lives.  We allow ourselves to be vulnerable before God.  When we do, that brokenness is taken up by Christ on the cross and in return we are given new lives of wholeness, forgiveness, and freedom.  It’s that promise of forgiveness granted in Jesus Christ that allows us to pray boldly the prayer that Jesus teaches us.  That’s why “We don’t care what the world says about direct, honest communication.  In the Jesus Family, we pray together.”