St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, January 30, 2005

You are Forgiven – Rev. David Mundy

Ephesians 4:25-32 Matthew 26:20-29

I was driving along the beautiful St John river valley on a summer day in 1999 when I tuned in to the program on National Public Radio, the American equivalent of the CBC. That part of New Brunswick is not far from the state of Maine so it’s possible to pick up NPR. The broadcast that caught my intention and made a lasting impression featured a Vietnam War veteran who had travelled back to that Asian country earlier in the year, along with a group of others who had served there during the nineteen sixties and seventies.

This was not a nostalgia trip, or a tourist opportunity. These former soldiers had gone back to Vietnam to address their part in a nasty war (is there any other kind?) in which many innocent people were injured and killed. They visited villages that had been military targets and spent time at a special community for children who suffered the effects of Agent Orange and the weapons of war. It was a deeply emotional journey for men who had lived with the burden of guilt and remorse for decades for their part in the war.

One of the most significant moments for this vet was not on the agenda for the group. While in the city of Hanoi he ended up in conversation with a street-vendor as he was purchasing some food. The vendor was curious as to why the middle-aged American was in the country, so he explained that he and others had come on what they hoped was a journey of reconciliation.

The merchant told him that his own family, his wife and children had been killed by an American bombing raid. His loss had been devastating but he had come to terms with it over time and harboured no ill-will toward Americans. With limited English he encouraged this former soldier of an occupying army to let go and move on. For the veteran it was a breakthrough moment in his healing. Here was a total stranger offering what amounted to forgiveness and reconciliation in what was a chance encounter.

During worship these past few weeks you have been hearing about forgiveness – perhaps more than you have cared to hear! The first Sunday I spoke about the complex nature of forgiveness and how “unforgiveness,” the inability to forgive, can be detrimental to our physical and emotional health. The second message focussed on forgiveness as an ongoing spiritual practice, a way of being rather than an occasional act. The third Sunday looked at the powerful dynamics of forgiveness within families and how deeply that affects us. In each instance the emphasis was on our choices, with God’s grace, to forgive others. But what about desiring forgiveness for the harm we have done to others and receiving forgiveness?

It is a tremendous gift to say to someone else, “you are forgiven.” Just as important are those times in life when we hear “you are forgiven” from another person or from God.

Again today we turned to scripture for guidance, drawing on the dozens of passages in the Old and New Testaments which help us to understand the importance of forgiveness for our spiritual health.

The first passage we heard may have been new to you. It is taken from what was probably a general letter of encouragement and instruction to congregations in Asia Minor. The city of Ephesus, which gives us the name Ephesians, was in what is now the country of Turkey. As is so often the case with these letters, this one asks the early Christians to put aside their quarrels and differences for the sake of the gospel. They are told that it is okay to be angry, but not to sin – a fascinating thought. At the conclusion they are instructed “to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Extending forgiveness to others is often difficult, but it connected with being forgiven by God.

The gospel reading today also reminds us of the forgiveness we receive in Christ. On the night before he was executed, Jesus shared a highly symbolic meal with his followers. The Passover or Pesach was an annual reminder of God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery under one of the pharaohs of Egypt. The sacrificial shedding of blood was essential to Jewish identity. These disciples of Jesus were also his friends and daily companions through several years. They had eaten hundreds of meals together, some the equivalent of picnics at the side of the road and others such as this one which had deep religious significance.

The experience of this meal was certainly bittersweet. One of these supposed friends, Judas, would betray Jesus, and another, Peter, would deny him. All of them would fall asleep in his most agonizing moments of soul-searching. We might say that what they did was unforgivable, but that it not the message Jesus offers as he breaks bread and raised the cup at the table. He tells them that his body will be broken and his blood shed to bring forgiveness to all who desire it.

You are forgiven. Three simple words which are often difficult for us to comprehend. Do we have to earn forgiveness from others and from God? If forgiveness is God’s gift to us in Christ, why do we sometimes struggle to experience it, even if we are truly contrite – if we are genuinely sorry for our mistakes? There are times when our guilt threatens to overwhelm and consume us because we feel that we are beyond forgiveness.

You may have noticed that during these weeks we have been considering forgiveness we have included a Prayer of Confession in our worship, which is a way of saying “sorry” for our actions and inaction which leads us out of right relationship with God. At the conclusion there are words which say that we are forgiven and loved. Accepting that we are accepted is not always that straightforward.

Unfortunately the Christian story of forgiveness and new life has been portrayed along these lines: God is angry with us, like a parent who hears children acting up in the family room and yells the warning “don’t make me come down there!” There is the threat of punishment, perhaps for eternity, but somehow Jesus calms God down with the assurance that we are really sorry for what we have done wrong.

The British theologian, Herbert McCabe encourages us to frame the story in a different way.

The truth is that when God forgives us he doesn’t change his mind about us. Out of unconditional, unchanging, eternal love for us God changes our minds about God. It is God’s loving gift that we begin to think of repenting for our sin and of asking for God’s mercy. And that repentance does not earn God’s forgiveness . . . The gift, of grace, of contrition just is God’s forgiveness.

We don’t speak of repenting of our sins very often anymore, the language which McCabe uses here, but most of us appreciate that there are choices we make in our lives, and even unwitting or unintentional mistakes which are destructive. We can act as though they don’t matter, or cower before a wrathful God, or find ways to make our peace with others and with God and with ourselves.

Early in my ministry I was approached by a woman who urgently needed to speak with me about something that had happened in her life. It turned out that a few months before our conversation she had discovered that she was pregnant. It was not happy news for her. Even though she was quite comfortable financially, her other two children were already in school and she and her husband assumed that their family was complete. In addition they had planned an international vacation which was a few months in the offing and this pregnancy might have resulted in the cancellation of their trip.

So she decided to have an abortion and made all the necessary arrangements. It was as she headed into the room for her procedure that she suddenly felt that what she was doing was terribly wrong, but it was too late to change the course of things. At first she was upset that the United Church didn’t say more about the moral implications of abortion. I got the feeling that she was rather angry with me for not putting the appropriate warning label on a situation which I couldn’t have known would transpire.

Then the tears came, and it was evident that she was overwhelmed by guilt. She was convinced that God could not forgive her for what she had chosen to do. I tell you this, not as any sort of comment on abortion itself, one way or the other. It was what she felt, her guilt and shame that had to be addressed because she was in tremendous turmoil over what she had done. During the next few months we met a number of times to talk about what forgiveness meant for her. As a young minister I learned a great deal in those conversations. What I came to realize was that forgiveness had to move from the head to the heart for both of us. I also

It may be that we need to seek out ways to repair what is broken in our relationships as a way toward healing. The woman I just told you about eventually made the decision with her husband to get pregnant again. While I assured her that God didn’t expect this from them, they went ahead and never regretted the decision. For years afterward, long after I had moved to other communities, she sent a photograph each year of the son born following this traumatic time.

Our bridge-building toward forgiveness is important but always we can look up to see God building the bridge toward us, no matter what has happened.

This past week we watched the solemn commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland sixty years ago. It was a reminder of the human ability to be inhumane to a chilling degree. Surely what happened there and elsewhere could never be forgiven. Yet Hannah Arendt, a Jewish philosopher who wrote some of the most insightful reflections on the evil of the Holocaust once offered this

Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to a single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer's apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell.

The encouragement to all of us today is not to be imprisoned by the past, whatever has occurred. The God who formed you in the womb, as one of the psalms tells us, loves you and always will. And our faith story tells us that God did come down here. The Christ who walked dusty roads with his friends, and ate with outcasts, and died a criminal’s death, loves you and always will. In Christ God has broken the spell of darkness and sets us free.

And here is the resurrection promise. You are forgiven, today and always. Thanks be to God!