D. BENSON MAY 21ST, 2017 – 6th Sunday of Easter The Power to Forgive: John 20:19-23; Luke 7:36-50; Matthew 18:21-35

Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it’s a constant attitude. Martin Luther King Jr.

Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It’s about letting go of another person’s throat. William Paul Young, the Shack.

Dumbledore says that people find it easier to forgive others for being wrong than for being right. J.K. Rowling – the Half-Blood Prince

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. C.S. Lewis.

Forgive and forget – everyone.

I’m sure we can all think of some pithy quotation that someone famous said about forgiveness. But for the most part, in the world we live in, we have come to think of forgiveness as some kind of a moral transaction which (sometimes) involves an apology and then not holding a grudge against someone who has wronged you. Or perhaps we think of forgiveness in the ‘forgive and forget’ sense, and pretend that nothing bad ever happened or that we were never hurt or offended in some way by another. Or perhaps we think that forgiveness is taking the moral high ground when we have been wronged by thinking we can be the better person and just let it go.

Several weeks ago when we were reading our Easter scriptures, one in particular stood out for me. After is raised from the dead, he appears to his disciples and he brings them his peace and then he breathes his Spirit on them and says to them, “if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:19-23). And I got to thinking about this power to forgive that Jesus had just given his disciples. And then I got to thinking about all those other instances in the where Jesus talks about forgiveness, usually to the great insult of the who continued to claim that Jesus had no right to absolve people of their sins – especially the really rotten sinners like the woman who crashed the dinner party at ’s house. And then I got to thinking about how often forgiveness and healing are linked in Jesus’ ministry. The vast majority of the time that Jesus heals someone, he doesn’t tell them that they are ‘healed’, he tells them that they are forgiven. And somehow that healing and forgiveness is extended to Jesus’ disciples – how often are we supposed to forgive others?

Forgiveness is one of the most important things that the Christian community needs to get right because it is the foundation of all our relationships with God and with one another. And it is the fundamental starting point for our entire ministry. It isn’t

1 D. BENSON MAY 21ST, 2017 – 6th Sunday of Easter coincidence that the first words out of Jesus’ mouth after his resurrection, as he is empowering his disciples to continue his work, are about forgiveness.

In the Hebrew, the word for forgiveness really hasn’t anything to do with forgetting or not holding a grudge. The concept of forgiveness for God’s ancient people was formed around the idea of lifting sin up and bearing it away (see Lev 16:20-22). One of the mnemonics we were given to remember the Hebrew word, nasa, was to think of NASA and rockets blasting off and carrying sin off and away: essentially removing it completely and forever. It means to pick up and carry, to bear the burden of another. This is why the Psalmist can say with such confidence that as far as the east is from the west; so far does God remove your sins from you (Ps 103:12).

For a tangible image of what that forgiveness looks like, think of the story that is told in the of Luke about the four friends who bring the paralyzed man to Jesus (:17-26). The quite literally bear him on his mat, carrying him through the streets and then lowering him down through the roof of the house so that Jesus can heal him. They bore the guilt and shame of this man’s condition for him, they carried the burden. And when Jesus pronounces healing on the man he says that it is the faithfulness of his friends that effects his healing. This man is released, freed, healed, set free to get up and walk because his friends (community) bore him to Jesus for healing.

When we think of our own forgiveness we can’t think of it in any terms other than as the profound healing of our sin-riddled humanity that Jesus effected by his death and resurrection. Through Jesus resurrection, we are remade, renewed, restored, re-created. Our sin isn’t just nailed to the cross but it is removed and born away so that we can be free and healed. Isaiah spoke to this when he said that ‘by his wounds, we are healed’ (Isa 53:5).

The effect of God’s forgiveness is God’s healing, and this means that we become more that the sum of what we have done or our mistakes or of all the things that limit and imprison us. We become children of God. We become holy. We become again God’s faithful image-bearers who are the evidence of the reality of God’s presence and kingdom in the world. And the result of that is lives that are full to overflowing of love and gratitude for all that God is and all that God has done.

Think again of the sinful woman who crashed Simon’s dinner party. [On a side note, let’s not assume that she was necessarily a prostitute or an adulterer –as if committing sexual sin was the only way for women to sin in those days… All we know is that she was known in the community as a sinner.] She cannot contain her gratitude and love for what Jesus has done for her that she bursts into the house where Jesus was eating makes a very embarrassing public spectacle of herself. To those who had gathered for dinner, this was just shame heaped upon her already considerable guilt and shame. But Jesus receives her with love and pronounces her forgiven. Jesus has released her from her shame and guilt so that she is free to love without condition or worry about judgment from the community or embarrassment.

2 D. BENSON MAY 21ST, 2017 – 6th Sunday of Easter This woman became more than a ‘sinful woman’, more than the talk of the town, more than the warning that mother’s would give their children (you don’t want to become like so-and-so). She became dearly beloved. And the result for her was a new life marked by gratitude and love.

But this isn’t always the result of the grace of God in Christ Jesus. For others, Jesus’ forgiveness and healing of others is a character flaw, a sign that he wasn’t pious enough because he didn’t judge those who quite clearly deserved judgment. For those who have no understanding of the depth of their own need, forgiveness and healing of others merely leads to further judgment and callousness – which means thicker walls and sturdier bars on their own prisons. When we see those who are stingy in their love and gratitude and forgiveness, there is a sure sign that they haven’t yet to become aware of the depth of their own guilt and shame and need, and have yet to experience the vast and expansive love and mercy of God in Jesus Christ.

The good news in all of this is that a whole new world of relationships opens up to us when we think of forgiveness in terms of healing instead of in terms of screwing up the willpower and courage to not hold a grudge, or to ‘forget’ that someone has hurt us or been offended by us (or vice versa). We often say that the true mark of the Christian community is love –which it is. But that love is manifest, at least in a significant part, in forgiveness. We can’t love one another if we don’t forgive one another. And that means bearing one another’s burdens just as surely as Jesus has born our own. That means lifting one another up into the presence of Jesus for healing, just as surely as the paralyzed man’s friends carried him to Jesus, bearing his guilt and shame with him. That means offering one another the Spirit-given opportunity to be healed and restored and lifted up into God’s loving, gracious, and healing presence. When Jesus tells his disciples to forgive, he isn’t telling them to forgive and forget, or to just let the offense go and pretend that it doesn’t bother us anymore. He is telling them (and us) to get involved in the muckiness of human life and bring it, bear it to Jesus so that it can be healed and transformed. And that, friends, takes work. And it often means that we get dirty. And it’s exhausting to carry each other to Jesus. And sometimes we resent the burden.

But there is good news for that as well! We have been given everything we need to do this work – the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit enables us to see the depth of our own need, as well as stir up compassion and love for the need of others – especially when they hurt or offend us or do something we think is horrible.

So, friends, how might our relationships with one another in this community, in our own families, and with our neighbors change if we were to think of forgiveness in terms of bearing a burden together, bearing it away to Jesus, and offering it to Jesus for healing? How might our relationships change if, when we are hurt or offended, we don’t just ignore it, cover it up, or take the moral high ground and pretend that we have let it go, but instead we enter into deep and loving relationships of gratitude with those who hurt us, so that we can walk that road to Jesus’ healing

3 D. BENSON MAY 21ST, 2017 – 6th Sunday of Easter together? How might our relationship with ourselves change if, when we feel guilt and shame ourselves for all of our shortcomings and failures, instead of becoming imprisoned by guilt and shame, or of lashing out in anger, or of focusing on the faults of others so that we can feel better about our own, we asked for the courage to allow the community help carry our guilt-laden selves to Jesus for healing?

Forgiveness isn’t a moral obligation. It is the necessary work of the Christian community as a sign of our gratitude and of our love for God and his people. Forgiving is one of the most practical, life-restoring, community building, kingdom of God things we can do with and for one another. Hear the words of Jesus, “your sins are forgiven, be free, be healed, love with abandon, and forgive one another”.

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