Your Turn

Over the last month, we have been talking about forgiveness. We began with a look at forgiving and remembering and looked at a modern application by the Truth and Reconciliation Council of South Africa. Next, we move to the habitual nature of forgiveness and its daily impact on our life, examining the hard work of forgiving even the most egregious offenses, like the Nazi concentration camps. Last week, we pondered the radical way of that the forgiveness of the Amish is lived out into concrete actions. And today, it is our turn. Today, after looking at how others have heard the words of Jesus and applied them in radical ways, we examine our own lives and look at who is Jesus calling us to forgive?

Jesus speaks and demonstrates forgiveness. We have this wonderful story in John of a woman who is brought to Jesus as an example. The scribes and Pharisees bring this woman to Jesus, claiming she has been caught in adultery and inviting Jesus to exact the full strength of the law against her. They sit back and wait for him to do their work. However, Jesus, who never misses an opportunity to teach, does not exact the Mosaic law of stoning upon this woman. He turns the law on its head, inviting those present to stone her, if they themselves have not sinned. Not having considered their own life in reference to hers, you can almost hear the pin drop as the connections are made. The crowd drops away when their holiness is wrapped up in hers. There is none, but Jesus who can stand up to that level of scrutiny. Jesus urges her to go home and change the ways of her sin. Forgiveness that offers a different way home.

Paul writes to the church at Colossae and tells the people what church looks like. Church, Paul says, looks different. It looks like compassion and kindness, gentleness and patience. The church of Jesus Christ looks like forgiving one another, again and again and again. The imperative is clear – you must forgive. Through the Bible, many of the writers touch on forgiveness. In fact, forgiveness is mentioned 116 times in the Bible, more than other topics that we give a lot more attention to.

As I prepared for this series, Betsy and I had multiple conversations about how many church resources include music, prayers, inspiration about Jesus’ forgiveness of us. AND how few resources include the imperative to forgive others. Somehow, the hardness of forgiving others has shied us away. We are not always sure that we are ready to let go of resentment and the desire to exact punishment. Even though we are forgiven, we are often not sure we want to forgive. To forgive and remember, do forgive over and over again, and to forgive radically and visually.

Many of you remember on my first Sunday here, that I shared the long view of my personal testimony and piece of who I am. On that day, I shared that my grandfather sexually abused me as a young child, from the age of 5 to 10 years old. At the time, I had no idea as he always told me that this was how a grandfather shows his granddaughter that he loves her. It was only later when sharing my experience with other children that I realized something was terribly wrong. For years after as my parents assisted me through legal challenges, we did not see my grandfather.

As my grandfather was dying, my father wanted to take his family to see his father. It was Christmastime when we visited. The house was filled with family, aunts and uncles, cousins and others. The warmth of good food, eager conversations catching up with family, and children playing underfoot was lost on me as I tried to figure out where I belonged and how I could be back in this house.

As I stood in my Babcia’s kitchen, something within me, moved. My fifteen-year-old self had no words for the feeling or the compulsion. I later understood that the Holy Spirit moved within me urging me beyond myself. All I knew was in that visit; I asked to talk to Pop Pop alone. My parents looked at me sideways as I went back to talk to my grandfather. My grandfather had begun the process of dying. It would be approximately 3 weeks until the date of his death, but the physical process had begun. He lay in his bed looking like a mere shadow of his former self. I offered him the quilt I had made. He received it with both hands. As he received it, I said the words, “I forgive you.” He nodded slightly and held the quilt. He was weak, and he was not able to hold his head up, let alone had words actively or regularly pass through his lips. I left the room quickly, almost trembling from the experience. It was less than three weeks later that he died.

Now, I must be authentic. There was no magical moment in the verbalized forgiveness of my grandfather. I still had to work through naming the many hurts of abuse and deal with the surprises that uncovered themselves as I got older. However, there was a freedom in retelling the story instead of reliving the story. There was a freedom in disconnecting the hurts of the experience. There was a freedom and gift in offering forgiveness to him and in giving it to myself. I did not stop being hurt –years of therapy, self-awareness, and spiritual direction did that part. But I did change the path I was walking on, from one of being driven by the path of abuse to seeking hope and light of redeeming a painful experience. I offer this not as path forward for each of us, but as a model of one way to live forgiveness, even in difficulty.

We have discussed forgiveness for a month now, and today is your turn. God has been working on many of you. I know because you have generously shared that with me. God has been softening your hearts, so that you might offer forgiveness. Let us walk through together how we forgive.

I am going to invite you first to bring to mind someone who God is calling you to forgive. Pause a moment and ask God to bring someone to mind. Even if there are multiple people who come to mind, chose one. It may not be easy to hold that person in your mind, but I ask that you do it, considering Paul’s reminders to the Colossians of compassion, kindness, humility, and patience. This person is also made in the image of God. This person is also a blessed child of God, complete with calling and gifts, created and loved into being, as you were.

Next, take the post-it note found in your bulletin. While this person is a child of God, this child of God has hurt you in some way. They have angered or upset you. They have violated or impressed upon you. Name one of the hurts from that person. What is one of the ways the person who you are forgiving has hurt you? For me, as I continue to forgive my Pop Pop, one of my hurts has been that he betrayed the trust of a young child, me. In naming the hurt, we remember and redeem by making meaning. Write one hurt on the post-it note.

In just a few moments, I will invite you to come forward and bring your hurt to the cross. In placing the post-it note on the cross, you are offering the named hurt to Jesus. Jesus who loves us and cares for us, who wants the best for us. Jesus who redeems and heals us. In placing the hurt on the cross, Jesus will redeem hurt, making meaning out of scars and pain. You may consider pausing at the cross.

As you place your hurt on the cross, there are hearts below the cross. These are plantable hearts. They are made of paper seeds that you may plant. Instructions are up front. As you place your hurt on the cross, pick up the heart of Jesus. I invite you to offer that heart to the person whom you are forgiving. Tell them the story of forgiving and remembering; tell them the story of forgiving again and again; tell them the story of radical concrete actions. Offer them the heart of Jesus in this plantable seed heart. As they plant the heart, I pray that your relationship with them may be changed as well – growing into a new healthier, redeemed way.

Now for some of you, giving your heart to the person you are forgiving is an impossibility: the person is deceased or beyond contact. In that case, please still take the heart and plant it yourself, remembering the call of Jesus to forgive others. I am going to offer us a time of prayer and after that time, invite Janis to play some music for us as each of us, as we feel led, puts our hurts on the cross and accepts the gifts of forgiveness.

Merciful God, you created us in your image. You created us to be like you, to love like you, to treat others as you do, and to forgive like you. We have sometimes gotten in our own way of living as your people. We have rejected the humanity in others and preferred division over relationship. We have chosen easy disconnect over the everyday work of forgiving. Forgive us, we pray. Move our hearts and turn them back to you. As we draw in our minds, the face someone we are being called to forgive, keep us faithful to remember and redeem the pain caused in the relationship. May we open ourselves to be conduits of your love and forgiveness. Open our hearts, now to the movement of the Holy Spirit. In the forgiving name of Christ, we pray Amen.

Old Testament Lesson: Colossians 3:12-17
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.  And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Gospel Lesson: John 8:1-11
Then each of them went home, while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.  Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them.  The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.  Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”  They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.

When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.  When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.  Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”  She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”