Sermon 9-13-20
Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our
Lord and savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Our Rally Day today looks just a little bit different
than it normally does – a year ago in the parlor, adult education class was
popping in a new DVD into the TV, the Pray-ground was stocked with new crayons,
and the pews were re-populated with summer tans, fresh haircuts, and lots of
backpacks to be blessed.
Even if you are no longer a student ourselves at the
moment, we all remember what it was like to go to school for the first day of a
new year, at least in the pre-pandemic times. We remember how excited or
nervous we felt, the night before when we fretted over our outfit and set out
our backpack will all our supplies – new pencils and pens, empty notebooks and
folders to be filled with knowledge, calculators and rulers and crayons and
highlighters.
Dealing with newness and change can make us anxious. And
now, we have the added layer of trying to figure out how to navigate a new
school year in the middle of a pandemic. Zoom, Canvas, Google Classrooms,
Microsoft Teams, emails, hybrid learning, mask, and social distancing – in some
ways, we are being taught a new way
to BE taught. We are learning a new way to learn.
Teaching is also one of Jesus’s favorite things to do…
especially when the lesson that we have to learn will surprise us. In the
Gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches A LOT, and this week we hear yet another
snippet of one of his longer lesson that take up most of chapter 18. Last week,
Jesus taught how sin is handled in the community. But much before that,
at the beginning of chapter 18, the disciples ask Jesus “Who is the greatest in
the Kingdom of Heaven?” Jesus, probably rolling his eyes, bring in a child and
says “…unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the
kingdom of heaven.”
But Peter seems to be hung up on verse 15 from last week
– “If another member of the church sins against you…” Peter seems to be less
interested in the reconciliation that forgiveness would bring, and more
interested in how many times he will
have to put up with other people
sinning. So, Jesus told a story.
The first slave if you recall, owed ten thousand talents,
which is pretty much like saying ‘A jillion dollars” - an amount that no person
could POSSIBLY work off in their entire lifetimes. The other slave, if you
remember, owed the first one va very tiny amount by comparison. But the first
slave does not forgive this small amount, even after his enormous debt is forgiven. He did not forgive as he was forgiven.
I want to admit here the discomfort I have with Jesus
telling a story that involves slavery, where Jesus doesn’t acknowledge the
injustice of slavery. It is true that Jesus used what was commonplace in his
parables, the stuff of daily life – growing crops, raising livestock, cooking
meals, family relationships – and at that time, slavery WAS a given part of everyday
life. Even Jesus’s own people were semi-enslaved themselves, in a kind of “vassal”
or serf system, so they may not batten an eyelash about weighted terms like
“King” and “slave.”
The people listening to Jesus’s story in real time didn’t
hear it in a vacuum… and neither do we. WE hear these words with very different
ears, and cannot escape how the institution of slavery has been baked into the
legacy of this nation, and is the cause of deep-seated injustice that is
playing itself out in our daily news headlines.
In the wake of everything that has happened this past
summer, myself and so of my pastor colleagues have been reading books by people
of color about anti-racism work. One of the best books I read so far is called
“Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation” by Latasha
Morrison. We’ll be starting to read and discuss it as a congregation later this
month, and I hope you join us. This book weaves together our Christians ideals of
faith, confession, and forgiveness to the hard and uncomfortable work of seeing
and healing the deep racial divides in our country.
A powerful moment in this book comes when Morrison visits
a very special “Plantation turned Museum.” Whitney Plantation, a
once-operational slave camp and farm, now honestly bears witness to “the
history of slave ownership in the South and to honor the slaves who once live
[there]” (71). When she visited, Morrison was the only African American present
in a tour group of people of European descent, including the young white tour
guide.
Along the tour, Morrison received the name of a man who
had actually live there – Albert Patterson – and later each tour participate
was invited to ring the plantation bell in honor of the name they were given. The
ringing of that bell pierced her heart and soul… ringing out in the past,
present, and future. Through the sound of the bell, through her conflicting
emotions and resistance and hurt, the Holy Spirit called Morrison to this work
of racial reconciliation.
Later in this book, Morrison writes: “...only when we
make space for our emotions, when we’ve honestly evaluated them, can we move
into true Christlike forgiveness.” (108)
Unfortunately, we are not Jesus. For many of us, we don’t
even have to get to the seventy-seventh time to find this hard or even
impossible. Sometimes, one sin against us is all it takes for us to get stuck –
and here we’re are talking a “BIG SIN.” Betrayal of trust, assault, spreading a
lie, bullying or meanness, destruction of property, infidelity, violence,
threats…. Some of us have lived through some very difficult hurts perpetrated against
us by other people, sometimes even the people we love.
Does this also mean that if someone sins against me,
for any reason, I should do like the song from “Frozen” and
“Let it Go?” Even seventy-seven times? This can easily be interpreted as the
opposite being just as true – “If I do not forgive those who sin against me,
God will not forgive me.”
One of my seminary professors, Dr. Craig Koester, shared
this helpful insight: " Forgiveness is not acceptance of
the past. . . Forgiveness is the declaration that the past will
not define the future. . .” But maybe today is not that day. Maybe
today the past is far too present. Maybe you are on your
seventy-eighth go-round with a loved one. Jesus tells us to forgive from the
heart….. what happens when our hearts have been so destroyed that we just don’t
have enough pieces left to be ABLE to forgive?
Only God is in charge of when that moment
of forgiveness happens… if it is a single moment at all. Most of the time, it
is a series of little moments. One day, you are mad, hurt, and betrayed, and
the next day you are still mad, hurt, and betrayed…. But
twenty days, a hundred days, a thousand and twenty days, or a bajillion days
later, you may find that the anger and hurt are no longer there. It no longer has
you in its grip.
There is no time frame for forgiveness. There is no heart
that is too broken to be healed. You can’t keep track, and you can’t rush it.
Forgiveness can’t be counted toward, only journeyed through, felt when given a
healthy space, and built, piece by piece.
Every week we say together in the Apostles Creed, “I
believe in (among other things) the forgiveness of sins.” And, as we heard
Jesus tell us last week, “…if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask,
it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are
gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Jesus is among us, when we gather
to believe in the forgiveness of
sins, even when we can’t ACTUALLY FORGIVE YET.
Together we believe in forgiveness, even when we can’t do
it yet. Together, we are all Children of God, gathered together here to forgive,
encourage, challenge, and love one another. Together, we will stumble and fall sometimes,
but we have one another to lift us up, dust us off, and get us back on our feet,
dusty heart and all. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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