Whitney Houston Barbie
I tried to put the Whitney’s head back on her body…and do you know what happens when you try to do that? It looks like this (demonstrate)
I’m sure I said ‘sorry’ 100 times… Like by saying the words would fix the hurt, right the wrong, undo the did? But that’s sorta what some of us were taught as kids… we grew up hearing, ‘forgive your sister’? or ‘say you’re sorry’. ‘say I forgive you.’?
And so, forgiveness has become something to us that it was never meant to be. We cheapened it. Made it seem easy, something we say rather than something we do.
But it’s not. Far from it. And let’s be honest, wouldn’t have matter how many times I said ‘sorry’ to my sister for breaking the head off her Whitney Houston Barbie. She was always going to look like this. (demonstrate)
Several years ago, an Amish community in Pennsylvania made the news not only because of a tragedy that happened in their community, but because of how they responded to it.
In this quiet community, a man who knew the community and they knew him, walked into the school with a gun, killed several students and then himself. In the aftermath, as families were planning funerals for their children, the community was keenly aware that a widow was also planning a funeral for her husband who had committed the violent act. But it didn’t end in just an awareness, it’s what the victims’ families and their community did with it that awareness that changes everything.
Our lent series has been about the prayers Jesus prayed. So far, throughout this series we’ve contemplated Jesus’s prayers of discernment, praise, last week was about the ‘actual’ Lord’s prayer, and the prayer we are looking at today is a simple prayer for forgiveness….or is it?
Let’s read a portion of the scripture together again.
Luke 23:32-34 Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place called the skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing.
Note something about jesus saying this out loud…he didn’t have to say it out loud – there’s no question that God would’ve forgived them – and the next line – they are gambling over clothes
I think at first glance, at first read, it’s easy to sort of gloss over the power of what Jesus is doing in these verses. I mean, I’m gonna be honest, I’ve read this passage or have had it read to me 100s of times in my life and have seen them as a lesson Jesus is leaving us with about forgiving those who harm you, hurt you, are doing wrong to you.
According to Taylor Swift, ‘forgiveness is a nice thing to do.’ And that’s what it sounds like Jesus is doing here. Like, oh….that’s a nice thing to do. And of course Jesus says that….HE’S JESUS.
But what’s the passage NOT saying? What’s the unspoken that may be just as powerful as the spoken?
Luke 23:32-34 Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place called the skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing.
Can I tell you what silently screams at me? No one is actually asking for forgiveness. Jesus just forgives. It’s one thing to forgive someone who asks for it. It’s an entirely different thing to forgive someone who doesn’t. Like, that doesn’t follow the steps we were taught as kids.
Step 1: say sorry
Step 2: say I forgive you
Step 3: move on
And it doesn’t make any sense….Jesus forgiving someone who doesn’t ask for it…as he is dying. But Jesus didn’t come to abide by the old law, did he, he came to turn it all upside down… sometimes don’t you think that when jesus says something that feels or seems confusing, that’s when we need to lean in…jesus is saying something profound
I mean, it feels impossible to understand. There is seemingly nothing to be gained for Jesus by offering forgiveness. It’s not like Jesus is going to live much longer and be tempted to hold a grudge or daydream about revenge. Justice wasn’t suddenly going to be served because he forgave them
…I mean that’s what’s unspoken in the rules we were taught about forgiveness as kids…saying the words somehow is supposed to equal justice?? So we want forgiveness to equal justice. We want forgiveness to right the wrongs. But that’s not what Jesus is showing us here, is it?
(you remember whitney?)
And this isn’t an ‘us’ thing….this has been true about humans for thousands of years.
If we look back at the story of Jonah in the Old Testament, this is exactly what we see. Jonah was called by God to go to Ninevah…to preach and tell the Ninevites about God.
The thing about Ninevah is that it’s the most powerful city in the Babylonian empire. And you know what the Ninevites were famous for? Their brutal methods of torture. And you know who they tortured? Jonah’s people.
So, obvs, Jonah doesn’t want to go and tries to flee and literally gets on a boat headed in the opposite direction. A storm comes, Jonah knows it’s because of him, he tells the sailors to throw him overboard, they do, a big fish swallows him up, and after 3 days in the fishes’ belly, the fish spits him out on shore and Jonah heads to Ninevah.
Guess who wasn’t looking for or asking for forgiveness? The Ninevites
Guess who, upon hearing the truth of God, changed their lives?
Jonah 3:5: And the people of Ninevah believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
And when Jonah saw this, the Bible tells us… Jonah 4:1-3 But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? …for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
For most of my life, I read this verse as a tantrum. But not anymore. I get it, don’t you? The Ninevites had done unspeakable things to Jonah’s people. WHY should they be offered forgiveness? They weren’t even asking for it.
Before I joined the staff team at St. Luke’s, I worked at a large church north of Indianapolis. I was hired in as their Children’s Pastor and about a year in, I was asked to hold a dual role as their children’s pastor and the Faith Development Pastor and as a result, I was now around a higher leadership table. I knew I was the first woman to sit at that table and in my own optimistically hopeful self, I was naïve to what that might actually mean.
It meant that I would walk into a room and the senior pastor would ask me to get coffee. I was called girl and hun and kiddo more times than I care to think about. I was uninvited from meetings and meetings I needed the senior leader or other leadership at, they were no shows. I started to feel unworthy, like I was making mistakes…like I was a mistake.
It meant that I could stand on a stage and address the congregation, but always had to have a man next to me. I was called names, jeered and heckled by the senior pastor when I was presenting in meetings. Meetings with the Senior Pastor were full of promises that he never intended to keep and also always ended with some weird question about if I liked to cook and if I was sure to make my husband’s favorite food, and if I kept our house clean. It was humiliating. I began to believe my voice didn’t matter. That maybe my call to ministry and leadership was a mistake….maybe I’d misunderstood God.
It got so bad through Covid, I went to the elder board, which was this church’s governing body…the group of men who were supposed to hold the senior pastor accountable. I went twice, a year apart. In that year, nothing had changed and I was returning to talk to the same elders with escalating experiences of unprofessionalism, verbal abuse, and threats.
It had gotten so bad, I was going to leave ministry…I nearly convinced I wasn’t enough, that I couldn’t hack it ‘like the men could’, that I didn’t have what it takes.
And even though 18 other people came forward after I did, the narrative that the senior pastor started was that I had spread lies about him. Part of the congregation started a hashtag #istandwith________. I was blasted on facebook. People I knew. People whose kids I had baptized, grandparents who served with me…eventually the senior pastor was asked to resign, but the elder body allowed him to continue to define the narrative. He made videos that didn’t call me by name but that named my position and said I had taken the church down a dark path. I was devastated, humiliated, and so SO angry.
When I decided to resign, I was asked not to tell anyone…they didn’t want to cause a stir. I desperately didn’t want to hurt the church, and they told me I would if I did. So I didn’t. On my last Sunday, no one knew I was leaving. I couldn’t say good-bye and I stood in the lobby as the final song played of my final service and silently cried and could feel the anger consuming me as the senior pastor got up and said what great things were ahead for the church.
And to be clear, he nor anyone has come to me to apologize. No one. Not even those who know the truth.
Do you think when Jesus prayed this prayer, it was his first time forgiving someone? Jesus was fully God and he was also fully human…Jesus had practiced forgiveness over and over. He’d forgiven people of their sins, he told stories of undeserved forgiveness, hours before this he forgave friends who betrayed him…he washed Judas’ feet. And I wonder, Jesus being fully human, if that was the step toward forgiveness he could take then…knowing that full forgiveness would happen on the cross.
He’d practiced forgiveness. He knew what it felt like and what it looked like. He knew it didn’t make sense and wouldn’t make sense to onlookers. But he knew without it, nothing would change. And with it, everything might.
This wasn’t the first time I knew I needed to forgive either. Sadly, I know I’m not alone. Most of us have long lists of people who have hurt us in small and big ways, we bear scars from the wounds people have given us. For a while I would look at these wounds from this experience and hold tight to the anger and bitterness….I would pick the scabs, refusing healing, knowing I had the right to be filled with rage and I’m ashamed to admit I wanted to hold it, letting it go felt like I was letting him win and I couldn’t stomach it. But here’s what God did for me, here were the steps for me towards forgivness...
First God reminded me of my call to ministry. God reminded me who I am. And God reminded me that no human person has the power to change that.
Second God reminded me of the life I wanted to live. A life that wasn’t filled with hatred and bitterness. I looked at the scars from other very painful experiences in my life and I could see God’s redemptive story in the healing.
Third God invited me into a redemptive chapter that could only happen through forgiveness. This is a part of that. You are a part of that. St. Luke’s is a part of that.
Remember the Amish community I talked about at the beginning, the thing you need to know about the Amish is they have a way of living that actively seeks forgiveness to prevent grudges and bitterness to deteriorate their community. So, when a wrong has been done against them, no matter how big or small, they practice forgiveness. They identify the wrong, name what full forgiveness looks like, then takes small steps to get there. They don’t get there in one big step.
So, when this unspeakable, unforgiveable horror happened, what they had relied on, practiced, began carrying them through. They sought counseling. They identified what forgiveness for the man who killed their children could look like, and saw how it could be lived out through how they treated his surviving family.
And in solidarity with the family of the man who did the unthinkable, the unforgiveable, they stood at the graveside next to his widow, arms around her. A year after the tragedy, the community gave the surviving wife and children of the killer a large financial gift. This doesn’t say the pain, the fear, the nightmares are gone, this doesn’t even say the community has fully forgiven, but they are taking steps toward it, refusing to live in the darkness of revenge.
“Tragedy changes you. You can't stay the same. Where that lands you don't always know. But what I found out in my own experience if you bring what little pieces you have left to God, he somehow helps you make good out of it.”
What Jesus showed us in this prayer is that forgiveness doesn’t mean earthly justice is served but it does mean freedom. When Jesus forgave the soldiers, maybe it wasn’t for his sake, it was more for theirs, for ours…an invitation into a redemptive story with the pieces we have.
I grew up with a prayer and forgiveness practice called restitution. It has deep roots in the Amish community, it’s the practice that guides their pursuit of forgiveness. The practice of restitution is connected to communion. The idea is in the weeks/days leading up to communion, we position ourselves before God to reveal offenses you’ve committed to others that you need to seek forgiveness for AND for God to reveal to you the people you need to forgive, whether or not they seek forgiveness. Because when communion is served, we are sharing a holy meal together and isn’t it better to sit across from someone in peace?
As the band comes up to play, I want us to spend the next minute or so, asking God to reveal those people to us. Remember this is a process, and the goal is to take a steps toward forgiveness, one step at a time. This is the first step.
Pray