October 01, 2023
• Rev. Mindie Moore
Forgiveness Week 1: What The World Needs // Rev. Mindie Moore
John 20:22-23; 1 Corinthians 13:12; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19
One thing you should know about my husband is that he can be very particular with certain things in his life. And in our old house, we had a huge yard that Zack was very meticulous with. It was this huge yard, lots of stuff to take care of and he had it just so. He would mow it with his riding mower, he bought this aerator attachment for it, he would do this overseeding thing and had a whole watering plan.
And everything was going great, Zack was enjoying his lovely, well maintained yard...until one day we looked outside and saw something we had never seen before. Our next door neighbor was cutting his grass. Now, this isn’t a weird thing, it wasn’t an overgrown lawn situation next door, but what WAS weird is that this neighbor for the whole time we had lived there, had always had a lawn service do it for him.
Very quickly it became obvious that this, the neighbor mowing his own lawn, was going to be a problem. First of all, they also had a giant yard, and he was using a push mower that plugged in. So this was the first red flag that maybe he did not know what he was getting into. But as we watched him- and look, our kitchen looked right into our shared side yard, we’re not creepers, but we kind of were in that moment, but we could see him mowing...and he was doing it like this. Moving the
mower back and forth like a vaccum. I’d never seen anything like it.
And later, when we went outside, we found this: (SLIDE)
So...Zack was not pleased. And for a few weeks, every time our neighbor would go out to mow, the mood in our home would get a little tense. He would look out the window. Comments would be made. Until finally, the other residents of the home (it was me) could take it no more and encouraged him to go have a talk with the neighbor about how typically it’s helpful to create a straight line between yards.
Church, how do you think my dear husband felt about going to talk to another adult man about the how to’s of mowing his yard?
You know, when I asked Zack if I could tell this story, he was not only receptive, he was maybe a bit eager. He even said “Yeah and I’ve got some pictures you can show!”
Look friends, forgiveness is hard.
It’s hard for us as individuals, but it is also hard for us to practice as a collective culture. The Fetzer Institute did a study called “Love and Forgiveness in American Society” and here’s what they found (SLIDE):
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62% want more forgiveness in their lives
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83% want more forgiveness in their communities
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90% want more forgiveness in America
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90% want more forgiveness in the world
So these are great ideals that we are carrying around as people. We see there’s a problem, we want it to be better. There’s just a couple tiny barriers.
Because (SLIDE):
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58% believe there are circumstances where no one should be forgiven
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60% believe that forgiveness depends on the offender offering an apology or remorse for their actions
And I don’t find those statistics super surprising. You just have to look at our world and we see this in action. We live in this really interesting and kind of tense social climate where people are canceled for making mistakes very regularly. We have a world where every tweet, post, or comment is catalogued and available for social scrutiny when the time is right. We’ve seen an unprecedented number of leaders and people in power get caught for doing things that are not ok and they’ve had to publicly face the consequences. As a culture, we’re at this weird intersection of justice and mercy and it feels like a really complicated moment in time to be talking about forgiveness, both inside the church and out in the wider world.
And I think it’s our job as The Church to live in that tension. Because on one hand, accountability is GOOD. It’s right, it’s necessary. But on the other hand, our world has almost started canceling people for sport. We watch people fail, and fail
publicly, and then it’s more than news, it’s almost entertainment watching them get ripped up. The New York Times did an article on cancel culture and made the point that the word “cancel” comes from the same root as the word “cancer,” and it questioned if our cancelling others is actually becoming cancerous for us. If it’s changing who we are and how we relate to each other in some really difficult ways. And it asked the question- Is our need for something that feels justice, that feels like appropriate consequences taking over our other very real need to be people who give and receive forgiveness?
So that’s our tension. And I don’t know where you are in this conversation today. Depending on your experiences, what your own journeys of forgiveness have looked like, this might be an uncomfortable one to sit through. And I’d guess there are people here who have been on the side of needing to forgive, but also who have needed to be forgiven. And, the truth is- NEITHER ONE IS EASY. No matter if you’re giving it or receiving it or even witnessing it, (SLIDE) Forgiveness comes with a cost.
And I would say that probably no one knew that better than Jesus. We’re living in this tension, but this is one of those things that was absolutely true in Jesus’ world as well. You know we in the Church today, we talk about Jesus’ words of love and forgiveness and I think we’ve made that into this really gentle, docile thing. I always joke that we have created this image of Jesus where he’s got the flowing hair and the glow and he’s like
carrying around a lamb or something and he’s all “peace be with you.”
But what we have to understand is that what Jesus was doing here, what Jesus was teaching, what he expected his people to carry on once he was gone- none of that was in any way gentle or passive. In fact, that kind of teaching and practice had the potential to make a lot of people really upset.
When Jesus would show up and say things like “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” that wasn’t just a nice cross stitch saying that you could put up in your living room- that went against all the social and religious norms of the time. And worse than that-the things that he was saying seemed to contradict Scripture. If you knew your Hebrew Bible back then, you might have listened to Jesus and thought he was an outright liar. You would have said, “Who do you think you are? That's not what God said to do. You disrespect what thousands of years of tradition has valued. You are undermining the very rules that make our lives work!”
So I don’t want you to think that Jesus was teaching about forgiveness in a nice pretty peaceful bubble. That was not the climate. But even though it caused controversy, even though it was hard for people to understand, this was a critical piece of Jesus’ ministry.
Look at all the ways forgiveness is woven into his life and his teaching:
(SLIDE) Jesus forgave people. First of all, that Jesus himself forgave people. This was radical. The teaching at the time said that no one but God can forgive sin. There was a whole process around it with atonement and sacrifice, and all that. But Jesus did something different- he took forgiveness from just being about what happens between us and God and brought it into the context of human relationships. He said this is not just God’s work to do- but it’s OUR Work to with each other.
(SLIDE) Jesus taught forgiveness. He taught parables like The Laborers in the Vineyard that radically challenged what fairness and justice mean and The Prodigal Son. He taught things like, “blessed are the merciful…” and “He who has been forgiven much, loves much” These were stories and lessons that would have left people probably scratching their heads. He was changing the narrative about how people could relate to each other. He’s painting a new picture of what restoration looks like.
(SLIDE) Jesus forgives when it feels impossible. He told his disciples to forgive not just 7 times but 70 times 7! At the Last Supper with his disciples, sitting next to Judas who was a friend who was about to become an enemy, he said that his blood was “poured out for the forgiveness of sin.” He wasn’t keeping track of right and wrong in that moment, he was extending grace that wasn’t deserved. And somehow on the cross he could look at people who had harmed him, who wanted him
dead, and he could say “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”
So Jesus makes forgiveness a central part of what he taught and what he did and practiced. But here’s the important thing- (SLIDE) forgiveness doesn’t end with Jesus. Forgiveness continues with us.
In one of the Scriptures that we read today, from the book of John, we see Jesus after the resurrection come to his disciples and give them the gift of the Holy Spirit. He’s about to leave them, he wants them to carry on his ministry, and I don’t know...it just seems like there are so many things I would expect Jesus to give through the Holy Spirit. Power! Miracles! Healing! Something really cool like that!
But here’s what Jesus says to them. He says- you've got the Holy Spirit, now go forgive people. And he says: (SLIDE)
“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; and if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
He looks at this group of his followers and he says- not only do you have the power to forgive, but you have the responsibility. It matters that you do this work. The world needs you and the world needs US to do this work.
That doesn’t mean the work is going to be easy. It doesn’t mean the work is going to be met with universal appeal. But the work still matters.
One of the most famous examples of this work was led by (SLIDE) Desmond Tutu, the former South African archbishop. After the fall of apartheid, he became a huge advocate for establishing what was called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He and other leaders said they must learn the lessons from places that had gone through large scale conflict before, like the Balkans, where corrections against tribal abuses and evils became opportunities to retaliate once power and control shifted hands. They didn’t want that kind of society where one wrong was righted just to lead to a million more wrongs. So for the people involved in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, punishment couldn’t be the end of the story. Tutu and others wanted to create a future for South Africa in which former enemies understood that somehow reconciliation COULD be possible and that they had a human interconnected need for each other.
Now this was beautiful work. So many books have been written on this, it’s really hard to talk about a culture of forgiveness without talking about this, and there are some absolutely powerful stories of forgiveness that have come out of it. But it was also INCREDIBLY controversial. And people are still asking questions about it- was this the right was to move forward? Was it actually effective? Did social structures really change the way they needed to in the long run? And maybe the most burning question of all- was justice truly served?
I think that is the question that can make forgiveness feel so impossible. We want things to be right. We want wrongs to be punished. We want to know that people or groups don’t just get away with whatever “it” is. But the challenge for us, is that even if we think we have accomplished what feels like justice, what feels like righting the wrongs, it can still be hard to see the whole picture.
This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 (SLIDE), “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.” There are some things that we cannot see clearly in this life. We can work for understanding, we can try to do the best we can and get it as right as we’re able, but there’s a mystery about how this forgiveness and justice thing works. And I just don’t know that we’re going to fully resolve that in this life. But I do believe, that our God is a God of restoration and reconciliation and that one day, we’re going to experience that in ways that we can only just imagine now.
And the thing that I think is encouraging to us – and maybe it’s a little bit challenging too- is that we don’t have to wait for all that mystery to be cleared up to start putting that into practice. Jesus disciples? The early church? They didn’t have all the answers, but it was a key part of how they lived out their faith! Because here's what Paul reminds them of in that 2 Corinthians passage we heard (SLIDE):
You’ve been forgiven. Now go- forgive.
Go- transform the world.
This is our call. This is our mission. To be people who engage in something that is bigger than just letting it go or getting even. Our call is to engage in actual transformation that only comes from true restorative work. From deep forgiveness. From a type of love that doesn’t let go of justice, but maybe wants MORE.
You know, a couple months ago, I got summoned to report for jury duty. And yes, even the pastor felt the deep sense of dread when that yellow card came in the mail. And I will admit to you, when I was in the selection pool, I was trying to keep a low profile and NOT get picked...but apparently I seemed normal and unfortunately I had to disclose that I was a pastor and studied ETHICS in seminary, so I don’t think I really stood a chance of getting dismissed. In fact, every lawyer I’ve talked to about this said, “oh you’re an IDEAL juror!”
And this jury experience taught me so much about forgiveness and restoration in action. It was a murder trial, and when I told so many people that after the fact the big question I was asked repeatedly, with almost a sense of excitement, was “did you convict them?”
And that question made me feel so uncomfortable. Because we didn’t. We found the person on trial not guilty due to self-defense and it was an absolutely agonizing decision. It was some of the most emotionally taxing three days of my life. There was so much at stake, there was a family who had lost a loved one, there was the heaviness of what either verdict would bring.
But I think the thing that broke my heart the most, and taught me the most, was the attitude of a couple of the jurors, who while they thought that not guilty was the right verdict, were really bothered that it didn’t feel like justice. And I will never forget, one of those jurors saying, “I just hope they wake up every day and feel horrible about what they did.”
And all I could think was...I hope they don’t. I hope they don’t, because my call as a person who follows Jesus is not to hope for this person to live in misery. My call as a person who follows Jesus is not to aim for vengeance. That’s not the state of our hearts that God wants for us.
My call- our calls- as people who follow Jesus is to pray for healing and hope and something better. And in the inevitable grief and hurt that we’re going to experience in this life, we can still want that. We can be a community of people that tells a different story. A story where transformation happens and where we live out the ministry of forgiveness that Jesus asks us to fulfill.
And we can do this...because we are people who have experienced that forgiveness.
(Transition into Communion)