Materials
Living In The Way
Of Jesus,
#2
Forgiveness
John 20:19-23
by R. Todd Bouldin
Three weeks ago we began a sermon series that will occupy us
for the rest of this month until Advent. The first sermon was on the
subject of letting go, and I said then that the first step towards
following Jesus is to deny yourself – to live life in a way
that does not operate constantly out of the perspective of I, me
and mine. To deny self is to acknowledge the existence of Others
and Otherness – and to let go of the need to possess, control
and force one’s way in the world. Such a perspective begins
to open us up to many possibilities for healing and wholeness. One
of the possibilities is the opportunity to forgive and to be forgiven.
Prayer -
Lord
God, we will never be able to forgive until we first believe that
we are forgiven. So break through our locked defenses, and free
us to serve as Your grateful priests pronouncing forgiveness to those
dying of shame so that we ourselves may find freedom from our own
guilt in the Presence of the One who loved us and forgave us. In
His Name, Amen.
The
disciples of Christ had been hiding in a house with a locked door
because they were afraid. Apparently they had been there for
three days since the crucifixion of Jesus – ashamed, afraid,
angry, alone – hiding behind a locked door.
Locked doors have
a way of creating all kinds of feelings for those inside and on the
outside. This past week, my bedroom door shut and
locked me outside of my own bedroom. I couldn’t get to my phone
(the worst tragedy of all for me), and I had to sleep in the living
room until the next day when I could obtain a ladder to climb into
the room from a balcony. I kept returning to the door again and again
because I felt excluded and I hoped that the ghost that had locked
the door would also open it. We often lock ourselves in a room because
locked doors make us feel that we are still in control of life and
that we won’t be harmed. The benefit of locks is almost all
emotional. You turn a key or a couple of levers, and you feel a whole
lot better and much safer.
Just like these disciples, we keep our
hearts behind doors with a lot of locks because there is something
outside that makes us afraid.
If you try to get into someone’s heart before you have been
invited, especially someone who has been hurt before, you’ll
find that the door is locked tightly. The evening has been nearly
perfect – the conversation was good, the dinner was great,
and the chemistry was electric. A woman tells her date, “The
evening has been nice. It feels like we are getting close.” He
says, “Thanks”, turns the key and never calls again.
What’s he afraid of? Intimacy. Being hurt again. Some pain
from the past. Who knows.
A father asks his teenage son how school
is going. “Fine” as the boy walks away, and you can hear
the door shutting. A married couple spend an evening at home. But
he sits in his chair, and she in hers, and they hardly spend the
evening together. Each has collected so many hurts from the other
one that they might as well be living in two locked rooms. A conspiracy
of silence and resentment eats away at their relationship as they
try to survive the night locked away behind emotional doors. We all
understand locked doors.
When the risen Savior finds His disciples
in their locked room, He responds to their fears by making two unusual
announcements to
them. He calls on them to forgive the sins of others, and then tells
them to receive the Holy Spirit. How interesting. Jesus does not
try to explain their fear, nor does He invalidate their fear (“Oh,
all things work together for a purpose” or “Get over
it.”) He just calls them on a mission to forgive sin. Why?
It isn’t because Jesus needs us to complete His work for Him.
On the cross, God forgave all of the sin that separates us from Him.
But He calls us to forgive sin so that we might experience forgiveness
and freedom ourselves. You announce the forgiveness of God to others
by giving your own forgiveness to others. Then you are free. Lewis
Smedes writes this, “When you forgive, you set a prisoner
free. And then you discover that the prisoner was you.”
Locked doors don’t really protect us that much. They certainly
don’t lead us to freedom. We thought we were locking out the
things that would hurt us. In reality we only were locking ourselves
in a room called hurt. We thought we were “retaining” in
the words of this text, the sins of those who hurt us. The anger
felt good, and we savored our resentment. As long as you are in the
locked room, you can play the victim of other people’s actions
towards you. But eventually you discover that the locked room is
just keeping you prisoner. You are locked in the small room of your
wounded heart. The only way you will find freedom is to forgive.
The
New Testament Greek word “to forgive” is aphiemi,
and it means to free. We think forgiveness is a heroic act because
we are freeing the person who hurt us. But it is really our own freedom
that we are gaining. Forgiveness frees us from the power of the hurt
we have experienced, frees us from the always imprisoning way of
living life based on seeing others only through the lenses of ourselves.
Forgiveness frees us to come back to life again. To live in the
way of Jesus is to let go of the need to control life and others – and
this begins with the ability to let go of the way that I perceive
them, and the way that they have wounded and victimized me. To let
go of this is to be free.
That is why Jesus taught us this principle
throughout His ministry. He told us in the Sermon on the Mount to
turn the other cheek. This
is not meant to get you off the hook from your anger. Turning
the other cheek is an act of freedom. Turning the other cheek
is an act of freedom, even an act of defiance that claims, “I
will not be a victim. I will not be diminished by your cruelty. I
will not
let my heart collapse around this hurt.” But it’s not
just about my ability to triumph. It is really about my decision
to not place my own perspective or hurts at the heart of our relationship.
Most
of us know that forgiveness would free us. What we do not know is
how to forgive in a way that seems appropriate to the circumstances.
Forgiveness often feels like we are letting someone off the hook,
that we are overlooking the real problems, or that we may be opening
ourselves up to being rejected by the one that we forgive. Forgiveness
is none of these things; but there is no doubt, forgiveness is hard.
Forgiving is counter-intuitive to our need for self-protection. It
runs against our sense of justice. We have been taught, not to get
rid of our anger, but to manage it. Our favorite technique for anger
management is not to say anything about the hurts we experience,
but to keep a secret accounting of it.
Do you remember Green Stamps?
I remember as a child, and this truly dates me, that the grocery
store would give customers green stamps
that they could place in a book with blank pages. When you had collected
enough stamps and filled the pages, you could go to a S & H Redemption
Center and redeem your books for household items. I remember filling
my mother’s green stamp books, page after page, until the book
was complete and we could redeem it. That reminds me of how I see
our failures in giving forgiveness to others. Saying nothing is not
the same as forgiveness. When we ignore hurts and just remain silence,
we add a few stamps to our book. We keep a little private record
of the offense.
A colleague at work is late for a meeting, and you
are upset. You add a stamp. You go to lunch, and you pick up the
tab. You add another stamp. You were counting on his support for
your proposal, and he doesn’t give it. Add another stamp. He
tells a joke, and you’re the brunt of it. Another stamp. None
of these things in and of themselves were so bad, but it was the
collection of all of them into your little book that is causing you
to lock the door. So one day he is talking loudly on his cell phone
outside your office, and you can’t concentrate, and you go
out to him, and scream, “Would you pleeeeeeeeaase be quieter!!?” And
you just redeemed your book.
The best colleagues at work, the best mothers and the best fathers, the best
church members, have short memories of failures. They do not ignore them or
erase them. They do not keep secret records. They just forgive.
There are several
impediments to our ability to forgive. One is our sense of fairness and justice.
The refusal to forgive often results
from insisting that you are the standard of absolute justice and
perfect morality. You see the situation perfectly, and the other
person does not. It’s all their fault, and none of your own.
Forgiveness requires the denial of self – the denial of our
standard of fairness – and to trust in the justice and fairness
of God.
We also have difficulty forgiving because some hurts we experience
run very deep, and they are no small thing. Parents who never told
you that they loved you, a spouse who is unfaithful, a parent who
is abusive, the person who robbed you of something that can never
be returned. How do we forgive those who have wounded us deeply,
and find freedom from a life of resentment?
Jesus helps us with this. He does call us beyond the locked doors
to a ministry of forgiveness to others. But He does not do so while
leaving us to our own power. Before Jesus gave them the ministry
of forgiveness, He first showed them the scars from the cross that
remained on His hands and side. Those wounds remained even after
the resurrection. The wounds of Christ remind us that the wound
does not go away. The hurt does not disappear. But by the power
of God, it is the wounds that offer the possibility of freedom.
You are not asked to create or produce forgiveness. God would really
be asking too much of us if He asked us to produce forgiveness.
The only way you can give forgiveness to others is to first
of all know with all of your being that you yourself are forgiven. And only Jesus can give you that forgiveness. Once you know that
forgiveness – how broken you are yourself, how desperately
you need forgiveness, how lavish God’s forgiveness has been
for you – can you then forgive others. I believe that most
of our struggle to forgive is rooted in our struggle to believe
that we ourselves are forgiven.
We have been given the ministry
of forgiveness. If you are having a hard time forgiving someone,
start by claiming the forgiveness
of Christ for yourself and then for them. Your own forgiveness of
them will start to happen. If you are tired of being a victim,
start being a priest. Refuse to live in a world where things
and people are happening to you. Live above it. Take the high road.
Announce
to them, “In Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.” If you
do that, you will find yourself able to forgive even the most difficult
of persons.
There is even more help here. After showing the disciples
the scars from the cross, the marks of His own forgiveness, Jesus
then gave
the disciples the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit binds us into unity
with Christ, allowing your life to be so commingled with Christ’s
life so that as you draw closer in union with Christ you will find
that you are not just announcing His forgiveness but participating
in it. The Holy Spirit will so bind you into the life of God
that you will find the resurrection power of Christ to forgive others,
even those who have abandoned you and crucified you. That is what
it means to be a Christian, to follow after Christ.
Isn’t it time to throw away the locks, and open the door
to your heart? Isn’t it time to leave the prison of hurt, fear
and silent grievances? Isn’t it time to be free?
Behold the
wounds of Jesus. Receive the Holy Spirit. Release. Forgive.
November 6, 2005
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