Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 17, 2007
2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15
Psalm 32
Galatians 2:15-21
Luke 7:36-8:3
Three nights ago the evening news featured the most extraordinary story of forgiveness. Perhaps you saw it. The story was about a mother and father who intervened in a murder trial in which four young men were convicted of murdering their daughter. The particular circumstances of this case are compelling. Early in her life Amy Biehl committed herself to improving the lives of people in a small African village. It was Amy’s faith in God and the imperatives of scripture that we care for the poor which formed Amy’s commitment, and so she went to Africa to bring the Good News of the gospel to people desperate to experience the good news in their life. But Amy’s life was cut short by four young men who took her life from her and from her family.
When Amy’s parents went to Africa to intervene in the trial of these men they made an extraordinary request. The asked to have the prisoners exonerated of their crime and released from prison. They told the judge that such an action would honor Amy’s strong belief in God and belief in God’s unconditional love and forgiveness. After much deliberation, the judge gave his extraordinary judgment. The young men would be exonerated from their crime and they would be set free to live their life. But this is not the end of the story. Immediately, upon their release, Amy’s mother and father hired the four young men to serve the needs of people in communities like the one they came from. Two stayed to serve in their own communities. One became a teacher who teaches children to read. And one accompanies Amy’s parents on speaking engagements where he is a spokesperson for the power of forgiveness to transform people’s lives.
This is an incredible story of forgiveness because it meets all of the criteria for forgiveness shown to us in scripture. First, the sin was acknowledged by the young men who committed it. They were forgiven by the very people whose lives were critically impacted by it. That led to reconciliation of sinner to victim and it restored sinner and victim to new life. Being a practicing Christian doesn’t get any better than that.
It is clear that the Biehl family did not get stuck in the sin or crime of their daughter’s murder. They were not willing to wallow in the grief and sadness of their loss, nor were they willing to harbor feelings of anger and vengeance toward the young men who murdered their daughter. Instead, the Biehls took the high road of forgiving them. And they followed that road all the way to God. Forgiving the sin which separated them from their daughter was only the first step. It is the most difficult step, but it has the most rewarding results. The value of forgiveness is that it releases us from being stuck in our personal hurts and our desire for retribution. Forgiveness allows us to let go of thoughts and feelings and behaviors which keep us mired in the memory of the sin, unable to get beyond its consequences for our life. Forgiveness enables us to let go so that we can find ourselves in a new place in our life and live again. In the end, the value of forgiveness is what it can do for the person who is able to forgive. It does not matter if the person we forgive wants our forgiveness, or if he is even aware he has caused us harm. What matters is that we can forgive the person who has wronged us and move on, free from the negative consequences of sin on our life so that we can live our life in a new way.
The ability to forgive and to be forgiven is gift enough, but the Biehls are willing to take forgiveness to higher levels to achieve its highest purpose. They are willing to reconcile with the persons who commit the crime of murdering their daughter, and they are willing to allow God to work through them in restoring them to new life and restoring the life of these young men. The Biehls could just as easily have worked through their issues of forgiveness and let the courts determine the fate of these four men. They could have gone on with their life, released from the terrible consequences of the sin which separated them from their daughter, but they decided to go the whole route to complete forgiveness. But they wanted to be reconciled to these young and they wanted them to be restored to the goodness of their life and to their communities.
The Biehls practiced the highest form of forgiveness any human can achieve on this earth. Unconditional forgiveness. The kind of forgiveness we can only expect from God. The kind of forgiveness we receive every time we confess our Sin (not just sins) to God in the presence of each other during worship. The kind of forgiveness we experience when we pass the peace to acknowledge that we are in love and charity with the persons who will gather with us at this communion table, regardless of what slights or hurts they have caused us or we have caused them in the course of the week. And when we come to this table for communion we complete the cycle of forgiveness. We eat and drink the body and blood of Christ to become reconciled to him, and reconciled to each other. And we are restored to right relationship with God, with others and within ourselves. Is it any wonder Eucharist is called The Great Thanksgiving. If you have ever experienced forgiveness and the way it can change your life and your relationships, you understand why scripture makes forgiveness so fundamental to our health and hapiness as children of God and followers of Christ.
Forgiveness IS the message of all of our scripture accounts today. And in each account, we can see why humans have such difficulty recognizing sin, especially our own, and why we find it so difficult to forgive ourselves and others.
In our lesson from Samuel today we can see how difficult it is for David to become aware of his sin, no less to acknowledge it. This is the work God gives Nathan to do. But to realize how difficult Nathan’s job will be we need to imagine Nathan confronting David with the terrible sins he has committed against Bathsheba and her husband, Uriah. Imagine Nathan saying to David, “David, you are a horrible sinner. You have commited terrible atrocities against people who trusted you. Your power and privilege have made you arrogant and self-serving, and your sense of entitlement enables you to stop at nothing to get what you want. You are a liar, a thief and a murderer. And you deserve to die.”
Now, how do you think David would respond to Nathan’s charges against him. At the very least, David will become defensive. That’s what any one of us is inclined to do when someone brings an accusation against us. At the very most, David can throw Nathan in prison or even kill him to shut him up. And Nathan is no fool. He is aware that confronting David straight on could have serious consequences for himself and it would not accomplish God’s purpose. So Nathan does what he knows will work. He tells David a story which clearly implicates his sin by the actions of the rich and powerful man who steals the only lamb of a poor shepherd to serve his own purpose. On hearing this story, David, of course, is outraged, and says that the rich and powerful man deserves to die. The good thing about David’s reaction is that it shows David has not lost his moral and ethical pinnings. He can still discern right and wrong. He can identify sin in another person. The problem is he just can’t see it in himself. Nathan’s story is meant to show David his sin, but he just can’t make the connection. Nathan has to point it out to him. Nathan tells David point blank, “You are the man.”
To David’s credit, he immediately acknowledges his sin. And to Nathan’s credit, he tells David that God has put his sin away. God has forgiven David. Nevertheless, much like the sins we commit, David’s sin will have its consequences. And the child born of Bathsheba will die. But the point of forgiveness in this story is that we cannot know forgiveness if we don’t even know we have sinned or we cannot acknowledge our sin. And like it or not, sometimes we need to hear from someone else that we have fractured a relationship because of a hurt or harm we have caused someone. When we don’t even know we have sinned or when we can’t seem to acknowledge our sin, we need a Nathan. Someone who can tell us how our words or actions have damaged others and caused a relationship to become damaged or broken. Then we need to be man or woman enough to hear and acknowledge our fault in the hope that we can find forgiveness. It is only then that people and relationships can be restored to health and well-being. It is only then that reconciliation is possible.
Our Gospel account from Luke presents us with a similar story. A sinful woman comes to a dinner party so that she can wash Jesus’ feet. The host who invites Jesus to dinner, however, identifies her as a sinner and he is outraged that Jesus would let this unclean woman touch him. But this is the way Jesus forgives sin in his ministry; he touches people, literally. He tells them their sin is forgiven and then he asks them to go on their way to become the new persons God hopes for them to become. The problem with Simon is that, like David, he is able to identify the sin of another, but he cannot see his own sin. We can identify with Simon’s very real human fault; it is always easier and safer to see the sin in someone else and to judge them for it than it is to see the sin which lies in our own thoughts and words and deeds.
This is the same problem Paul deals with in his letter to the Galatians. Jews and Gentiles are trying to co-exist in this new faith community, but the Jews believe they are so much more righteous than the Gentiles because they continue to keep their Law. Again, we can identify with another common human fault. We see our own actions as right or good and the actions of others as wrong or bad. That makes us righteous and everyone else a sinner. The problem is that such black and white thinking can easily draw us into the sin self-righteousness. A self-righteous person will always justify his actions. He will always be blameless because he can always find someone else to blame. Self-righteous people are not willing or able to look inside themselves to see how their own words and actions create sin in damaged and broken relationships. Paul confronts the self-righteous Jews in his congregation. He reminds them that righteousness does not come from rules and black and white judgments about people who follow or don’t follow them. No. Righteousness comes from right relationship with God and with others. Right relationship will never lead us to become self-righteous because righteousness comes from being able to acknowledge the sin in ourselves before we address the sin of others. In Paul’s own words righteousness is demonstrated in that we no longer live for ourselves; rather Christ lives in us.
Our psalm for today, Psalm 32, makes it clear that forgiveness is necessary to a joyful life and healthy relationships. So many psalms tell us of the consequences of sin. Our lives are made miserable by it. Psalm 32 mentions the many ways we can know that sin has its hold on us. Our thoughts and feelings are controlled by anger, guilt, deceitfulness, denial, blame and stubbornness. And the only way we can overcome such negative thoughts and feelings is by acknowledging them for the sins that they are by the ways they separate us from love and relationship with God and with each other. The psalmist tells us, “Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven.” Acknowledging our own sin and forgiving others of their sin are the only things that can release us from their negative hold on us. It is only then that we can let go and begin to live in the joy of being right with God and right with each other.
Forgiveness is no easy task. But we come away from our scripture lessons today understanding the necessity of forgiveness if we are to live as children of God after the example of Jesus. The story of the Biehl family shows us complete forgiveness is possible even under the most damaging circumstances. The story of our God shows us that complete forgiveness is possible because God completely and unconditionally forgives us. Today, as we confess our sin against God and our neighbor I pray that we can know the power of forgiveness to set us free from all that would keep us from living into its promises. I pray that when we approach this altar we will know what it means to be reconciled to God and to each other and restored to new life in Christ. I pray that when we go back into the world we go in peace to practice forgiveness. Our own life and health depends on it. So does the life and health of our families, and friendships and the communities we belong to.