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From Neighbors to Family

July 6, 2016 by Leave a Comment

Neighboring

 

 

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From Neighbors to Family
Sycamore Creek Church &
Mt Hope United Methodist Church
Valhalla Park June 26, 2016
Tom Arthur

Peace family!

Today we’re baptizing many people.  What exactly is baptism?  In our baptism we move from being neighbors to being family.  Baptism is more than just a public profession of faith.  Baptism is entrance into the family of God.

Peter, one of Jesus’ closest friends, was preaching to Jerusalem shortly after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension.  He apparently preached a pretty good sermon because this is how it ended:

Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you, to your children, and to those far away—all who have been called by the Lord our God.” Then Peter continued preaching for a long time, strongly urging all his listeners, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation!”

Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all.
~Acts 2:38-41 NLT

Those who were baptized that day were “added to the church.”  They became part of the church.  The Church is the community of friends who are together following Jesus.  The church is the family of God.  Let’s unpack how the waters of baptism join us to the church, the family of God.

  1. Water = Family/Community

What do these cities have in common: Lansing, Grand Ledge, Portland, Ionia, Saranac, Lowell, Grand Rapids, Grandville, and Grand Haven?  They all are found on the banks of the Grand River.  Water is community.  Communities of people always gather along the banks of a water source.  Whether it’s families at the beach, villages around a well, or towns along a river, water is community.  And the waters of baptism are where the community that is the family of God gather.  When you are baptized you enter into the family of God.

  1. Water = Birth into a family

Water also plays a significant part in birth.  Think about the waters of the womb or “water breaking.”  I asked my mom friends on Facebook when their water broke.  Some had it break in the hospital.  Others had their doctor or midwife break their water.  Some in the bathroom.  Some in bed.  One was at an MSU basketball game on senior night at halftime!

At some point all of us, whether we’re moms or dads or not, were born in water.  In the waters of our mother’s womb.  The waters of the womb provide nutrients necessary for babies to grow.  They include stem-cells which develop into different parts of the body.  The waters in our mother’s womb allowed movement and development of skin, muscles, and bones.  The waters increase in volume as the baby grows.  They keep the baby at the right temperature.  The waters of the womb provide protection and cushion for the baby.  In the same way that we were all born in the waters of our mother’s womb, each of us is born into God’s family through the waters of baptism.   You might call baptism the “womb of God.”

In baptism we begin to receive what we need to grow in love.  In baptism we begin to find our part in the body of Christ.  In baptism we begin to develop into all that God has called and created us to become.  In baptism God’s grace begins to grow to meet us where we are.  In baptism we are protected.  As Ryan Chorpenning said when he was baptized, “I’ve been a licensed life guard since age 16.  I’ve always guarded other people. I now need someone to guard me.”

Baptism is the “womb of God.”  In baptism we are born into the family of God.

  1. Water = Cleansing & Forgiveness

Family is a nice idea, isn’t it?  Well, yes and no.  Families are kinda messed up, aren’t they?  Everyone wants a family, just not the one they’ve got.  My family is kinda messed up.  I’m part of the problem.  All of us are.  I have a brother who my family hadn’t seen in many many years.  Maybe fifteen years.  He had gotten into drugs and alcohol and generally had a hard time making life work.  He left the family.  A couple of months ago I began to feel really convicted that we weren’t trying to find him.  So I began to look.  Through a unique series of events, we found him and reconnected with him.  When I met with him last, he grabbed my hand and looked me in the eye and said, “Tom, I’m sorry for not being a very good brother.  Forgive me.”  Of course I did.  Then I looked him in the face and said, “Dan, I took too long to seek you out.  Please forgive me.”  It was a beautiful moment of forgiveness in the midst of the mess of family.

Forgiveness is the glue that holds families together.  Forgiveness has two parts: confession and forgiveness.  My oldest son broke a serving spoon while using it as a drumstick with his drums.  He brought it to my wife and said he was sorry.  He kept saying he was sorry.  Then eventually he added, “I forgive you.”  #micahsayings.   He intuitively understood that confession and forgiveness go hand in hand.  We confess.  Then we forgive.  Kids are so instructive in the basics of family life.  I have another younger son, Sam.  He and Micah had this exchange one day.

Sam: Micah knocked down my chocho train.
Micah: I was angry.
Me: It’s not a good idea to knock things down when you’re angry.
Micah: I’m sorry Sam.  Will you forgive me?
Sam: Yes…You knocked down my chocho train!
#samsayings

Sam had the mechanics down of what to say, but not quite the spirit of the whole thing.  Confession and forgiveness go hand in hand.  There are two kinds of forgiveness that we all need: forgiveness between people and forgiveness between God and people.  Both include confession and forgiveness.  When we confess to God, God forgives us.  No matter how messed up we are or how messed up our actions are.  Sister Helen Prejean, spiritual advisor to Elmo “Pat” Sonnier who was convicted of rape and murder of two teenagers, said, “Everyone is worth more than the worst thing we’ve done.”  One of the people I baptized in the past was struggling with his past and some of the things he did while in the military.  He said at his baptism, “After 41 years of trying to figure out why God would forgive me when I can’t forgive myself, I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter what I think.  It only matters what God thinks.”

We all know what it’s like to wash our hands and bodies in water.  I go to the gym and come back all smelly.  I jump in the shower and stand under the water.  I come out clean and new.  My kids play in the dirt (why can’t they just play in the sand).  They get dirt everywhere.  Fingers.  Toes.  Hands.  Face.  We go inside and wash it all away with water.  Water cleanses us.  The waters of baptism cleanse us too.  In baptism we bring all our messiness and all our dirt and God washes it away.  We confess to the ways we haven’t lived up to our own standards let alone God’s.  And then God receives that confession and forgives us.  He forgives us because of what his son, Jesus, has done for us.  In Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection we are freed from our bondage, healed of our brokenness, and forgiven of our guilt.  We are washed clean.  Baptism is washing.  Baptism is forgiveness.  Baptism is the forgiveness of family.  God’s family.

Friends, today those who are being baptized are no longer just our neighbors.  They are our family.  They join the family of God.

To the parents and candidates
Tom: Do you seek to avoid evil and do good?
Parents/Candidates: I do.

Tom: Do you confess Jesus as Savior and Lord in community with the church?
Parents/Candidates: I do.

Tom: Will you stay in love with God?
Parents/Candidates: By God’s grace, I will

Tom: Do you believe in God?
Parents/Candidates:
I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

Tom: Do you believe in Jesus Christ?
I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day He rose again.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Tom: Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting. Amen.

To parents
Tom: Will you along with the church nurture these children by teaching and example guiding them to accept God’s grace for themselves when they are able?
Parents: I will.

To the church
Tom: Do you as the body of Christ, the church, reaffirm your own desire to avoid evil and commit to Christ by doing good?  If so, say “We do.”
Church: We do.

Tom: Will you nurture one another, these children, teenagers, and adults in the Christian faith and life, and surround them with a community of love and forgiveness?  If so, say “We will.”
Church: We will.

Confirmation (for those reaffirming their faith) & Anointing with Oil
When they come up out of the water…
Tom: NAME, the Lord defend you with his heavenly grace and by his Spirit confirm you in the faith and fellowship of all true disciples of Jesus Christ.
or
The Lord bless you, and keep you;
The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
and give you peace. Numbers 6: 24-26

Congregational Remembrance
Tom: Friends, remember your baptism and be thankful.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: , , , ,

Terminator: Genisys – Endings & Beginnings

July 13, 2015 by Leave a Comment

GodOnFilm

Terminator: Genisys – Endings & Beginnings
Sycamore Creek Church
July 12/13, 2015
Tom Arthur

 

 

I’ll be back!

Have you ever tried to stop doing something?  It’s hard.  Maybe you’re trying to stop eating sugar or greasy foods.  Or stop staying yes to everything.  Or stop watching too much TV.  Or stop smoking.  Or stop telling white lies.  Or stop looking at porn.  Or stop criticizing your spouse.  Or stop raising your voice at your kids.  Or stop worrying.  Or stop spending money impulsively.  Or stop speeding.  Or stop texting while driving.  Or stop posing.  The habit just keeps saying “I’ll be back.”  What in your life do you need to terminate?

Homer Simpson says, “Trying is the first step toward failure.”  Trying to stop something is hard.  That’s why the first step toward termination is dying.  Paul, the first missionary of the church and the author of many of the books of the Bible said:

Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism.
~Romans 6:3-4 NLT

Today as we celebrate the baptism of many in our church we continue in this series, God on Film, with the movie Terminator: Genisys.  Each week we’re looking at a theme the summer’s blockbusters evoke.  This week I’m struck by the irony in the title.  Terminator implies ending.  Genisys implies beginning.  So as we move toward baptism today I want to explore two things that we terminate in baptism and two things that begin in baptism.  You can call them our “to stop doing list” and our “to do list.”

2 Things that Need to be Terminated: Shifting Allegiances

If you’re not that familiar with the Terminator movies, let me give you a quick recap.  Skynet is an Evil Artificial Intelligence that launches an attack to exterminate humanity on a day called “Judgement Day.” John Connor is the Tech-Com human resistance leader.  Sarah Connor is John Connor’s mom.  Kyle Reese is a Tech-Com lieutenant sent back to save Sarah from Skynet’s plan to kill her through time travel.  The Terminator is played by Arnold Schwarznegger, but there are more than one terminator.  There’s the T-1000, T-X, T-800 are other future Terminator Models.

Some version of the terminator is always trying to, well, terminate Sarah or John Connor or some other key person to the future human resistance.  In the first Terminator movie (1984), Arnold Schwarzenegger is a bad guy.  He’s out to kill Sarah.  But in Terminator 2, Judgment Day (1991), Schwarzenegger changes allegiances and is a good guy. He’s out to save Sarah.  In Terminator 3, Rise of the Machines (2003), Schwarzenegger’s Terminator alternates allegiances between good guy, bad guy, good guy.  Then  Schwarzenegger takes a break from 2003 to 2011 to be the Governator and Terminator 4, Salvation (2009) comes out and Schwarzenegger is rendered in CGI.  Then this summer we get Terminator 5, Genisys (2015), and Schwarzenegger is once again the good guy protecting Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese from, the last person you expected to be the bad guy, John Connor, Sarah’s son!  Talk about shifting allegiances.  Back and forth.  Flip flop.  Good guy.  Bad guy.

Paul knows that we’re tempted to shift our allegiances back and forth and so he tells us:

Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?
~Romans 6:1-2 NLT

Sin is a force inside us that causes us to miss the mark, intentionally and unintentionally, and we keep flip flopping our allegiance back and forth with it.  This causes our external allegiances to be constantly shifting.  What’s really worth our allegiance?  What determines our allegiances?  Sometimes we form allegiances based on where we were born: Neighborhood, City, State, Region, or Country (“I pledge allegiance to the flag…”).  Or we base our allegiances on our education: High School, College (Spartans vs. Wolverines), or Grad School (Blue Devils).  Or we base our allegiances upon politics: Republican, Democrat, Green Party, Natural Law, or Independent.  In our culture our allegiances are often to price:  Sales, Deals, and Coupons or advertising and marketing: brand and celebrity.  Or novelty: the latest tech, ideas, or fads.  Or maybe we base our allegiances on our family: spouse, parents, grandparents, or kids.  All the while God is asking for our full allegiance.  Yet our allegiances are cyclical.  Self – God – Self – God

We keep telling God: “I’ll be back.”

Today, those being baptized are making a choice to TERMINATE shifting allegiances.  That’s the first thing to stop doing.

2 Things that Need to be Terminated: Sin’s Control

The second thing that is on our “to stop doing” list is sin’s control over our lives.  Paul says:

Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires.
~Romans 6:12 NLT

Remember, sin is a force inside us that causes us to miss the mark, intentionally and unintentionally.  It has control over us.  We give it control.  We succumb to its control.  Yet Paul tells us to not let sin control the way we live.  Yet we often feel helpless against the power of sin within us.

Today those being baptized are being given a new power to TERMINATE sin’s power and hold over us. The new power is the Holy Spirit!  The Holy Spirit is God’s presence and power at work in us.  It’s not that God isn’t at work in you before you are baptized, but that in baptism you’re fully submitting to participate and cooperate with God’s Presence, the Holy Spirit’s work in you.  This is why we anoint with oil after baptism.  Oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

So does this mean that we never sin again after we’re baptized?  No.  But as John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church says, “Sin remains but it does not reign.”  Tide of the war is won, but battles remain.  Daily we have to “repent” or turnaround from the ways we’re heading away from God and turn toward God.  And yet, something significant changes.  I’m reminded of my son learning to ride a bike.  In the last month he’s gone to a peddle two-wheel bike with no training wheels.  He knows how to balance.  He’ll never forget how to balance on a bike.  You can’t unlearn how to ride a bike.  (Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.  The skeptics are thinking about how you can lose your inner ear balance ability.  Stop stretching my analogies to the breaking point!)  But just because Micah can’t unlearn how to ride a bike doesn’t mean he won’t fall and scrape himself up.  Sin remains but it does not reign.

Today those being baptized are TERMINATE-ing two things:

  1. Shifting Allegiances
  2. Sin’s Control

Say it with me: “Hasta la vista baby.”

2 Beginnings in Baptism: Give yourselves completely to God

So we’ve talked about what gets terminated in baptism but what about two things that begin in baptism?  The first is this: you give yourself completely to God.  No more shifting allegiances.  Complete and total devotion to God. Paul says:

Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life.
~Romans 6:13 NLT

“Completely.”  Other translations say “yield.”  One thing I love to do on water is sail.  There are a whole set of rules governing who yields to who on the water.  Motor boats yield to sail boats because they’re more maneuverable.  Smaller boats yield to bigger boats.  And everybody yields to freighters!  A freighter sometimes takes several miles to stop or turn.  You can’t half-yield with a freighter.  You can’t partially yield with a boat that takes a mile to stop.  You yield completely or you sink.  You yield ALL THE TIME: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow!  In baptism we give ourselves completely to God.

At Sycamore Creek Church our mission is to ignite authentic life in Christ and fan it into an all-consuming flame.  When we say “authentic” we mean completely or all the time.  We’re not one way today and another way tomorrow.  When we say “all-consuming” we mean not just one part of the pie belongs to God, but God is the filling throughout all the pie.

We live this mission with three values: Curious, Creative, and Compassionate.  When we say “Curious” we mean that your questions are welcome.  You don’t have to have it all figured out to join in.  You will never have all your questions answered to give yourself completely to God.  Curiosity is welcome.  When we say “Creative” we mean that we experiment with new ways to reach new people.  And when we say “Compassionate” we mean that no matter who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve done, or where we meet you we’ll do our best to show you God’s compassion, completely.

Those being baptized today are BEGINNING a life of giving themselves completely to God.

2 Beginnings in Baptism: Live a New Life

The second beginning in baptism is BEGINNING to live a new life.  Paul says:

For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.
~Romans 6:4 NLT

We live new lives by choosing a new master.  Do you know that we all serve something?  Paul reminds us of this:

Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey?
~Romans 6:16 NLT

Bernard Shaw says that “Hell is where you must do what you want to do.”  Or as another writer has said, we are all struggling with the “tyranny of our own desires” (Willimon & Hauerwas, Resident Aliens).  We are slave to our desires, to our stomachs, to our sex drives, to our emotions, to our fashion, to our philosophy, or to our group.  Yet in Christ, Paul reminds us that something new begins:

Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living.
~Romans 6:18 NLT

“Slave to righteous living”?   What does that mean?  I think it means that we’re now serving a new master and that service leads to the life well-lived.  You become fully who God has called and created you to be. Irenaeus, a second century church leader, says, “The glory of God is a human fully alive.” Who is the most fully alive human?  Jesus was the most fully alive human.  He lived with complete allegiance and devotion to God.  Sin had no hold over him.  His perfect life gave the most glory to God!

But who is Jesus?  Christians believe that Jesus was not just a great guy.  He was not just a “fully realized” human being.  Jesus wasn’t just a prophetic voice.  Those being baptized today will confess an ancient creed, a set of statements about what they believe and who they trust.  The Apostles’ Creed has three parts:

  1. I believe and trust in God
  2. I believe and trust in Jesus Christ, God’s only son.
  3. I believe and trust in the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was fully God and fully human.  Humans were the ones who were stuck in the power of sin and God was the only one who could break the power of sin.  So God became a human in Jesus.  Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection heals, forgives, and sets us free.  Jesus is able to heal, forgive and set us free because of who he is: the Son of God.  When we are baptized we join in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

To understand how baptism works and what baptism is, let’s think about water for a moment.  What is water?  Water is death.  People die in water.  Today those being baptized die to multiple allegiances.  Water is birth.  We think about the waters of the womb.  Baptism is rebirth and new life.  Water is cleansing.  We wash our bodies in water.  Baptism is a washing and cleansing and forgiveness.  Water is a renewal of life.  We can go three weeks without food but only three days without water.  Baptism is renewal of life.  Water is protection.  We build motes around castles to protect us from danger.  You can only go three hours in a harsh environment without shelter.  Baptism is the protection of the Holy Spirit.  Water is fun.  We play in and with water.  Baptism is joining God’s fun adventure.  Water is community.  We always build cities by or near water.  Baptism is the door to the church, the family and mission of God.

When we are baptized we terminate our changing allegiances and sin’s control over us dies.  When we are baptized we begin giving ourselves completely to God and living a new life.

I want to invite those being baptized or reaffirming their baptism to come forward and join me in making these commitments:

To the parents and candidates
Tom: Do you seek to avoid evil and do good?
Parents/Candidates: I do.

Tom: Do you confess Jesus as Savior and Lord in community with the church?
Parents/Candidates: I do.

Tom: Will you stay in love with God?
Parents/Candidates: By God’s grace, I will

Tom: Do you believe in God?
Parents/Candidates:
I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

Tom: Do you believe in Jesus Christ?
I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day He rose again.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Tom: Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting. Amen.

To parents
Tom: Will you along with the church nurture these children by teaching and example guiding them to accept God’s grace for themselves when they are able?
Parents: I will.

To the church
Tom: Do you as the body of Christ, the church, reaffirm your own desire to avoid evil, do good, and stay in love with God?
Church: We do.

Tom: Do you commit to connecting with God and one another, growing in the character of Christ, and serving the church, community and world?
Church: We do.

Tom: Will you nurture one another and these new partners and members of the family of God in the Christian faith and life, and surround them with a community of love and forgiveness?
Church: We will.

Confirmation (for those reaffirming their faith) & Anointing with Oil
When they come up out of the water…
Tom: NAME, the Lord defend you with his heavenly grace and by his Spirit confirm you in the faith and fellowship of all true disciples of Jesus Christ.
or
The Lord bless you, and keep you;
The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
and give you peace. Numbers 6: 24-26

Congregational Remembrance
Tom: Friends, remember your baptism and be thankful.

 

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: , , ,

Magnificat*

December 17, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Christmas2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The First Carols of Christmas – Magnificat*
Sycamore Creek Church
December 14/15, 2014
Tom Arthur

Merry Christmas friends!

Have you ever sat in the back of a police car?  Anyone want to claim that one?  I will.  I’ve only sat in the back of a police car once.  It happened one night when I was in high school.  Some friends and I decided to try to impress some girls one night by taking them to what we called “The End of the World.”  “The End of the World” was a local quarry of some sort.  There was a kink in the fence that we would sneak through and hang out near the “edge” of the world.  As we finished up and were walking back to the car, we saw lights flashing and found police officers at our cars.  We were questioned about what we were doing and when they found that we were not drunk or high, they let us go home on our own.  I found out later that the company that owned the quarry was considering pressing criminal trespassing charges, but through my dad’s intervention, they dropped the charges.  We deserved the charges.  We had done the crime, but we were all shown some mercy that night.

Today we’re talking about mercy.  Mercy is not giving or getting something bad that you deserved.  This is in contrast to grace which we talked about last week.  Grace is giving or getting something good that was unearned.  A classic moment of grace is found in the movie, Les Miserables.  Jean Valjean, a paroled convict, steals silverware from a bishop who offers him hospitality. When he is caught, the bishop shows him an amazing mercy.

 

 

So when was a time you received mercy?  I asked my friends on Facebook about this and one friend, Tiffany, told of a time when she ran out of gas.  She called her dad expecting to be berated for her mistake.  Instead, he came and helped her saying, “We’ve all done it.”  The mercy her dad showed her in that moment has informed all of her own parenting since.  Another friend of mine, Marilyn, told the story of working in a high stress cancer clinic, having to do medical procedures and diagnostics she was not completely comfortable with.  She was patiently helped by a more experienced and knowledgeable colleague who never seemed to get upset or impatient with her lack of knowledge.  Another friend, Gretchen, told about a time when she was driving fifteen over and got pulled over.  The cop only gave her a ticket for five over which saved her from getting points on her record.

Of course, the right mix of mercy and justice is not always clear.  The struggle between mercy and justice is evident in places like Ferguson, Cleveland, and New York City where Michael Brown was shot by Darren Wilson, Tamir Rice was shot by Timothy Loehmann, and Eric Garner was put in a chokehold and strangled by Daniel Pantaleo.  Then there’s protests that have followed, most of which have been peaceful but the ones that get media attention turn violent.  There’s a problem we all face: We are quick to demand justice for others and mercy for ourselves.  Portia, in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice says, “In the course of justice, none of us should see salvation.”  One thing we can all agree upon is this: The world is broken.

Enter the Christmas Story…

Today we continue in a series called The First Carols of Christmas.  We like to sing Christmas Carols at Christmas but do you know about the first carols?  The book of Luke is one of four books that tell the story of Jesus’ life.  Luke’s telling of the birth of Jesus reads like a musical.  People are talking normally and then all of a sudden, they break into song.  There are four songs in Luke’s telling of Jesus’ birth and one scene that was later turned into a song.  Last week we looked at the scene of the archangel Gabriel telling Mary she would be pregnant that was turned into a song, the Ave Maria.  Today we’re looking at the song sung by Mary: The Magnificat.  “Magnificat” means to magnify, expand, or make great.   In the Magnificat, we’re going to learn about God’s mercy.  We’ll learn two things:

  1. God uses his power in merciful ways.
  2. God is merciful by using his strength to humble the powerful and lift the lowly.

Mary is one of the lowly. She is a young girl who is probably twelve or thirteen years old.  In ancient days, girls married and had children much younger than today.  Mary lived in Nazareth, the low income housing of Galilee.  Nazareth had a population of about a hundred.  God chose to come to a girl in Nazareth rather than Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee four miles northwest.  In Nazareth we find the most affordable housing option on the market: caves.  Mary was likely visited by Gabriel in a cave.  Ten days before Mary sings the Magnificat, Gabriel shows up and says, “Hail Mary, full of grace…”  You’re going to become pregnant and have a child.  Mary has not been sexually active so she is a bit befuddled by this declaration.  So Gabriel says God is going to cause her to become pregnant.  Now this is a detail of the story that is so familiar to us that it loses its impact on us.  Thomas Paine, one of the great founding fathers of America was a deist and skeptic of most things religious.  He wrote in his book, The Age of Reason, “Were any girl, that is now with child, to say, and even to swear to it, that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be believed?”  No. She’d be locked up in a mental institute.  But back then she more likely would have been stoned by Joseph, her fiance’s family.  Mary is terrified and goes to Elizabeth, her old cousin, who also has had a surprising pregnancy in her old age.  Elizabeth lives a hundred miles away.  It is not unrealistic to think that Mary’s family is attempting to cover up Mary’s unwed pregnancy.  Mary comes to Elizabeth hoping to get some clarity on whether she is crazy or should be put death.  Elizabeth is filled with God’s Spirit and tells Mary that she’s not crazy.  Instead Mary is blessed.  At this point, having Elizabeth’s confirmation, joy finally grips Mary and she breaks out into song—The Magnificat.

Now the Magnificat is not just a touching and beautiful little song.  If you think that, you aren’t paying close attention.  The Magnificat is a very dangerous song.  It’s so dangerous that Kathleen Norris tells us that during the 1980s civil war in Guatemala, the military regime banned the reading of the Magnificat in public.  It is said that elsewhere in Nicaragua peasants carried copies of the Magnificat during similar repressive regimes.  The Chris Tomlin Song, My Soul Magnifies the Lord, a great song built on The Magnificat, cuts most of this dangerous stuff out.  So now that you know the context of The Magnificat, let’s read it:

Luke 1:46-55 NRSV
Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

I think we can learn at least two things from The Magnificat.  First, God uses his power in merciful ways.  Second, God shows mercy by humbling the powerful and lifting up the lowly.  In other words, God shows mercy to those without power, which in comparison with God is all of us.  If we go back to Portia in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, we see the same sentiment:

Earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy season justice
~Portia (Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice)

Last week I asked this question: are you more grace-full this year than you were last year.  Today I ask you this question: Are you more merciful than you were last year?  I’d like to offer you three tips on nurturing mercy in your life.

1.     Forgive
Forgive those who have hurt you.  Let me give you a very small example from my own life.  Several years ago Sarah and I had a Subaru Legacy wagon that had served us quite well over the years.  It had nearly 200,000 miles on it and was rusting out in several places.  There were literally holes in the body of the car.  One day someone hit our car and put a dent in one of the body panels that was all rusted.  Technically, it was my right to have that panel replaced.  But this would have likely caused his insurance to go up.  The car was already rusted.  It had another dent in the hood from the time I hit a deer.  It wasn’t worth it.  So I just told him to forget about it and we went on our way.  I used my power in that moment to extend mercy rather than exact justice.

I’ve spoken a lot about forgiveness in the past.  Today I want to focus on one very practical indirect step: go watch the movie coming out on Christmas day, Unbroken.  You don’t have to go on Christmas day, but go see it or rent it when it comes out.  Unbroken tells the story of Louis Zamperini, a WWII POW in Japan who forgives his captors even after horrendous torture.  Louis Zamperini is a real person and the story is based on his life.  Few of you have faced harder situations of forgiveness.  You can learn powerful lessons about nurturing mercy through forgiveness from his story.

Become more merciful by practicing forgiveness in your life.

2.     Advocate for those who have less power.
Second, nurture mercy in life by advocating for those who have less power. Recently I had the opportunity to meet Nate Aquino, a staff attorney at Legal Services of South Central Michigan.  Nate’s job often consists of seeking mercy for others.  Legal Services advocates in civil lawsuits for those who can’t afford to pay for an attorney.  I learned that Nate could make a lot more money working elsewhere, but he likes making a difference and using his life’s privileges to serve those who haven’t had the same privileges.  If Nate was a lawyer during Jesus’ time, it is likely that he would have been an advocate for Mary or her neighbors, because he does a lot of affordable housing legal work.  One example of seeking mercy for the poor is in subsidized housing.  Technically, someone who receives subsidized housing is not allowed to have anyone else live with them, but following this rule is not always as easy as it sounds, and if you are caught with someone else living with you, you will not be allowed to receive help with housing again.  Nate advocates for people in this situation and is motivated by the bigger picture of showing mercy to those who don’t have as many resources in life.  Nate’s work encourages me to be merciful by advocating for the poor.

I came across another moment of mercy when I was reading about the protests in Ferguson.  Several black residents defended a gas station from looters that was owned by a white man.  Of course, the white man was in the minority in that particular context, and his black friends used their power of being in the majority to defend their friend.  While it may not be obvious from the media coverage, the peaceful protests outnumber the ones that turn violent.  These are moments when people of all colors come together to advocate for those who have less power.

If you’re a supervisor, advocate for your employees.  If you’re a husband, use your power to serve your wife rather than abusing her physically, verbally, or emotionally.  If you’re a parent, advocate for children.  If you’re in the majority, advocate for the minority.  If you’re rich, advocate for the poor.

Become more merciful by using whatever power you do have to advocate for those who have less power.

3.     Christmas Gifts
One last way to become more merciful is tied to how you celebrate Christmas.  Every year I challenge you to give away as much as you spend at Christmas.  This may seem a strange tie-in to mercy, but by nurturing a willingness to give up something (a gift a Christmas) to give something (a financial gift to a need), you nurture mercy in your own life.  You are in essence, using the cultural power of Christmas gift giving to make a difference in our world.  This Christmas season we’ll be receiving a special Christmas offering all the way through December, and especially on Christmas Eve, that will go to three things: our medical missions in Nicaragua, local emergency needs such as utilities and rent, and the Imagine No Malaria campaign of the United Methodist Church.  Pauley Perrette from NCIS used her own celebrity power to advocate for Imagine No Malaria:

 

 

This year Sarah and I decided that it was time to change the way we celebrate Christmas going into the future for good.  We wrote a letter to our families letting them know that we wanted them to no longer give us gifts for Christmas, but to give to our church’s Christmas offering whatever they would normally spend on us.  So this week Sarah’s parents gave me my Christmas present, a check to our church for the Christmas offering.  Together we all get the chance to become more merciful by giving Jesus a present on his birthday.

So three ways to nurture mercy in your life:

1. Forgive those who have hurt you.
2. Advocate for those who have less power than you.
3. Give away as much as you spend on yourself at Christmas.

A Community of Mercy
Imagine with me for a moment, a church full of people who were becoming more merciful.  Imagine with me for a moment a church that was a training ground for forgiveness.  Imagine with me a church that advocates for those on the bottom of society.  Imagine with me a church where everyone gave away as much as they spent on themselves at Christmas.  If you can imagine that, then you can imagine a church that blesses the community and region around us with God’s mercy.  While we are not perfect, I believe we are a church that is on the mercy road.  Why not extend an invitation to your friends, family, co-workers this Christmas to join us on that road of mercy?  This Christmas Eve we’ll be one church in two locations over three days celebrating Christmas Eve with four services.  Can’t make it on Christmas Eve because of family events?  Come on the Eve of Christmas Eve.  Can’t make it then?  Come on Monday to Christmas in a Diner.  Bring a friend and you both get a free $10 Christmas dinner.  What three people can you invite to Christmas Eve this year?  Would you spend some time praying about who you can invite and praying that God would open the door for you to invite them?  Imagine with me a church twice our size helping more and more people to be more merciful this year than they were last year.

Here’s a favorite prayer of mine that speaks to God’s power and mercy.  May it be true of us too.

O God,
you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity:
Grant us the fullness of your grace,
that we, running to obtain your promises,
may become partakers of your heavenly treasure;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

 

*This sermon is adapted from a sermon originally by Adam Hamilton.

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Getting Past Your Past – Apologizing to Those You’ve Hurt

May 23, 2014 by Leave a Comment

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Getting Past Your Past – Apologizing to Those You’ve Hurt
Sycamore Creek Church
May 11/12, 2014
Tom Arthur
Matthew 5:23-24 

Sorry Friends! 

Today we’re continuing this series about getting past your past with some thoughts on apologizing.  How do we get past our past hurt by initiating reconciliation?  Today is mother’s day and probably most of us need to think about way we need to apologize to our moms!  “Mom, I’m sorry I took 36 hours to come into the world and in the end you had to have a c-section to get me out.”  “Mom, I’m sorry that when I was an infant I cried and cried and woke you up and when you finally got up and nursed me, I gobbled it down so quick that I threw it all back up again and immediately fell asleep in your arms.”  “Mom, I’m sorry that you gave up your career, wearing anything other than yoga pants and sweat shirts every day, and basically lost all sense of being an adult for the first five years of my life.”

When you apologize you never know what will happen.  I came across this “prank” video the other day that has a unique twist on an apology.  Here it is:

 


My own experience in a similar situation wasn’t quite as fortunate for me.  One summer as I began my first job as the youth director at the Bay View Association, I backed into someone’s car.  At first I wasn’t sure that I had hit the car.  I thought about just driving away.  Then my conscious got me, so I put the car in park and examined the situation.  I had hit them and put a small dent in their bumper.  I looked up and around.  I’m not sure if I was looking around to see if anyone had seen me so I could drive away undetected, or if I was looking around to see if the owner was near to talk to.  No one apparently saw me, and the owner was nowhere around.  So I left a note.  Eventually I got a call and found out that I had hit a brand new car!  I apologized and thankfully my insurance took care of the dent.

If I asked the question today: “How many of you have been hurt, betrayed, wounded by someone?”  I’m pretty sure that everyone’s hands would go up quick!  If I asked the question: “How many of you have hurt others doing the same thing?” I’m pretty sure that each of us would have to think about it before we were willing to put our hands up. We’re all quick to claim the victim but slow to claim the offense.

When I was in Jr. High I was going out with this girl named Michelle for about two weeks, and then I wasn’t really interested in going out with her.  The honorable and honest thing to do would have been to simply tell her and break up.  But I chose a more subtle route.  I just quit returning her phone calls.  I know.  What a schmuck!  About a week or so into this silent treatment I got a letter from her friend that basically used every curse word known to man to describe what a jerk I was.  I kept that letter all the way until I got married.  I’m not sure where it is right now, but you know, she was right.  I was a jerk.  So Michelle, wherever you are if you ever listen to this message, “I’m sorry.  I was a jerk of the worst kind.  Please forgive me for contributing to all those issues of insecurity you had to deal with as you continued dating and now deal with as an adult.”

Worship and Apology
Today I’d like to look at some basic biblical principles and practical tips for apologizing.  There’s an interesting teaching of Jesus’ about apologizing.  Jesus says:

So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you,leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.
~Jesus (Matthew 5:23-24 NRSV)

This is to my knowledge the only place in the Bible where God tells us to do something else before worshiping God even to the point that we should interrupt our worship of God to do this before we finish worship.  Why is that?  What’s so important about apologizing and reconciling?

Perhaps an experience I had the other day can help clarify.  For several months now our house has been a daycare on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  We’ve been sharing a babysitter with another family in our church who has a little girl named Eva.  The other day Micah and Eva were picking up the living room because I asked them to do so.  I asked Micah to pick up some blankets and put them in the ottoman.  In his eagerness to please me he grabbed the blankets, held them like a football, and sprinted for the ottoman.  There was only one defender in his way: Eva.  He easily barreled her over and she crashed to the floor crying.  Now did I appreciate Micah’s desire to please me?  Yes!  Did I want him to do it in that way?  No!  I wanted to say to Micah, “Micah, I’m so glad you want to please me, but you can’t bowl people over in the process.”  In Jesus’ teaching we just read it’s as if God is saying, “Don’t come in and do your little religious worship thing when you’re not working hard to reconcile your relationships.”  There is something that takes priority to worshiping God!  Reconciliation.

A little before this passage Jesus says:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
~Jesus (Matthew 5:9 NRSV)

Notice that Jesus says peacemaker not peacekeeper.  A peacekeeper avoids conflict to keep the peace, and doesn’t acknowledge the problem.  A peacemaker embraces confrontation to make peace.  Do you know that the most successful marriages aren’t those without conflict?  The most successful marriages are those who have learned how to do conflict peacefully and lovingly.  The greatest enemy to peace making is pride.  The greatest friend to peacemaking is humility.  A relationship with tension probably means that there are two proud people.  They each say, “If you didn’t then I wouldn’t and I’m certainly not going to apologize first.”  But in almost any conflict there are always two people at fault.  Paul, the first missionary of the church and the author of many books in the Bible, tells us:

If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
~Paul (Romans 12:18 NRSV)

If you are only at fault 1%, claim it.  (On a side note, don’t actually bring percentages into the conversation!)   I’ve heard a lot of relationship problems over my five years as the pastor at Sycamore Creek Church and the funny thing is that I always talk to the innocent person!  Humility means owning a part of the problem.  Humility lowers oneself and elevates the relationship.  Humility says, “I love this person more than I love being right.”

Back when Facebook was just getting going I had a friend post something about me on Facebook that I had done wrong to them.  There it was, out there for all the world to see.  The worst thing about it was that he was partly right about what I had done.  I had made a mistake.  But my mistake was pretty small compared to the mistake of posting it on Facebook for all the world to see!  What I wanted to do was call my “friend” and give him a piece of my mind: “How could you!  You’re a jerk!  I can’t believe what you did!  Let me quote some Bible verses at you and let you know just how crappy of a person you are!”  But God’s Spirit humbled me and instead I called my friend and apologized for what I had done.  Guess what happened?  He apologized for putting it on Facebook and deleted the post.  Do you think that would have happened if I came in with all guns firing?  No way!  Apology leads to apology.

Apologize with Integrity
So let’s turn our attention to how to actually apologize and make it a good apology.  There is a right way and wrong way to apologize.  Here’s the wrong way: “I’m sorry if I did anything to hurt you” which isn’t really an apology at all.  Or “I’m sorry you got your feelings hurt” which is really just saying, “I’m sorry you’re such a weak miserable person that you were hurt by what I said.”  There are five parts to a good apology.

First, admit to specific actions and attitudes.  If you want to say to me, “But I didn’t do anything” then apologize for not doing anything.  There is such a thing as a sin of omission.  A sin of omission is not doing something when you should have done something.  For example: I’m sorry I didn’t protect you or I’m sorry I didn’t prioritize our relationship or I’m sorry I didn’t emotionally engage with you.

Second, don’t make excuses.  Don’t blame your wife for porn addiction.  Don’t blame your husband for your spending habits.  There is a time and place to explore why you did what you did, but the apology comes long before all of that.

Third, accept the consequences.  If you lied to someone, it’s going to be a long slow process to regain trust.  If you drive drunk, then your parents will take away the car for a very long time.  If you have had an affair, then your spouse might not want you to travel out of town, even if your job depends on travel.  Get a new job.

Fourth, change your behavior.  One of the worst things people do in an apology is to simply say, “I’m sorry” but do nothing to change their behavior.  Don’t apologize and then do it again.  Here at SCC we talk about the Role Renegotiation Model.  When you have a small broken expectation in a relationship it’s called a pinch.  When you have a big broken expectation in a relationship it’s called a crunch.  When someone pinches or crunches you the best thing to do is go back and tell them you were pinched or crunched and then renegotiate the expectations.  The worst thing they can do is to just apologize without any renegotiation of expectations.  For some offenses, you may need extra outside help to do this kind of renegotiation.  You may need a counselor or you may need a small group of people to hold you accountable.  That’s one reason why small groups can be so powerful.  Where do you find the kind of people you can ask to hold you accountable if you’re not meeting regularly with a group of people that are seeking these kinds of friendships?  One small group we’ve got coming up this summer to help people who are really struggling with getting past their past is a group called Healing the Heart.  This would be a great place to find like-minded friends to help you along the way toward changed behavior.

The last part of a good apology may seem obvious but it’s easier said than done: Ask for forgiveness.  Don’t just say I’m sorry, “I was wrong.  Will you please forgive me?”  Ask the person to forgive you.

I’d like to give you a great example of someone who gave a great apology to someone we often don’t think about apologizing to, our children.  This past week I was listening to an interview with Dave Stone, a pastor and author of the book, Raising Your Kids to Love the Lord. He tells of a moment when he embarrassed his ten-year-old son, Sam (ironic that my son’s name is Sam too!).  Here’s what happened:

One night I was down talking to about ten of the guys, and Sam was down there with me before we started.  I said something about a girl that he liked, and I made a joke about him.  Everybody laughed.  And ughh, it was funny.  And I saw Sam who was usually very effervescent with a great sense of humor; I saw his face turning red.  I saw him gradually slide out of the room in the course of the next few seconds.  We started the Bible study about five minutes later, and I started teaching my lesson.  I stopped and said, “You know.  I need to take care of something.  I need to go apologize to somebody.  Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be right back down.”  So I stopped the Bible study and went upstairs.  I went to the second floor where my son’s door was shut.  As I said he was about ten years old at the time.  I knocked on the door.  No response.  I opened up the door.  He had his head buried under the pillow.  I walked over to him and said, “Dude, I am so sorry. I got carried away, and I wanted to laugh, and I’m sorry I got it at your expense.”  He pulled his head out from under the pillow.  You could tell his face was red.  He had been crying.  He still was crying.  He said, “You made them all laugh at me.”  I said, “Yeah, I’m so sorry.  I won’t do that again.  Will you forgive me.”  He threw his arms around me, and said “I forgive you.”

Later in the interview, Dave Stone mentioned why it is so important for parents to apologize to their kids.  He said we are modeling for our children the humility of confessing and apologizing to God. Who do you need to apologize to today?  Maybe you even need to walk out of the worship service right now and go make it right with someone.  Perhaps the best prayer today to close this message is the one that Jesus taught:

Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.

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Getting Past Your Past – Forgiving Those Who Hurt You *

April 30, 2014 by Leave a Comment

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Getting Past Your Past – Forgiving Those Who Hurt You*
Sycamore Creek Church
April 27/28, 2014
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

We’re into week two of this series Getting Past Your Past, and I’ve heard how God is working in many people’s lives already.  I am really excited about how God is going to continue to work in each of our lives to help us get past our past and move into God’s future for us.

Last week we talked about breaking the labels that bind.  Next week we’re talking about getting unstuck from your past.  My personal therapist is our guest speaker next week.  No, he won’t be sharing about me.  But he will be sharing how he sees people get stuck in their past over and over again.  The following week we’re looking at apologizing.  How do you really deliver an effective apology when you’ve been the one who has hurt someone else?  Then we’ll look at getting past your past money mistakes.  And we’ll wrap up the whole thing with forgiving the one who is hardest to forgive: ourselves.

Today we’re exploring a particularly difficult theme: getting past your past by forgiving those who have hurt you.  Have you been hurt by someone?  Most of us have. Sometimes it’s just a misunderstanding, but it still drives a wedge between us.  Other times it’s outright betrayal.  That person meant to hurt us and they did.  Right now it is likely that at the front of your heart is a wound, and it’s still fresh and still hurting.  We bury it and act like all is OK.  Then something steps on that mine and it explodes into our consciousness again.  We have a rush of negative emotion all over again.

Back when Micah was born I got an unexpected Facebook message from someone I had not thought about for many many years: my dad’s second wife.  I didn’t even know she was on Facebook, but she saw a picture of Micah and sent me a brief compliment on how beautiful he was.  Now, this was a woman that my dad had an affair with and that affair ended my parents’ marriage.  My dad married this woman and it lasted for a year or so and then they got divorced.  It all happened when I was in elementary school, and while I have wrestled with and forgiven my dad for his mistakes, I had never even thought of his second wife and her culpability in the situation until I got this Facebook message.  Here’s the irony of the timing.  I was in the middle of writing another message about forgiveness!  As I was trying to tell other people how to forgive, this little Facebook message brought all this negative emotion up in me.  It was like I was being tested by God.  Would I just be speaking about forgiveness or would I forgive?

Some of you have walked into a divine appointment today.  You thought you were just coming to worship, but God is going to work in you today and begin to break you free from your past hurts.

Whenever I preach on this topic of forgiveness I almost always get some pushback.  It goes something like this: “You don’t know what so and so did to me.”  They gossiped about me.  They lied about me.  I was taken advantage of.  They betrayed my innocence.  My spouse cheated on me.  My parent abandoned me.  Sometimes it’s harder to forgive someone who hurt someone you loved rather than just forgive someone who hurt you.  So you’re right, I don’t know what so and so did to you.  Although many of you have told me stories over the five years that I’ve been your pastor.  And while I don’t know what it has been like to be you, I do know that I have been hurt too.  I have had to forgive too and sometimes it seemed impossible.

God, may what is impossible with humans be possible with you today.

I want to look at two big things today: why should you forgive and how do you forgive.  First, why? Why should I forgive someone who hurt me?

Unforgiveness Hurts Me
You should forgive others who have hurt you because all you’re doing with unforgiveness is continuing to hurt yourself.  The author of the book of Hebrews in the Bible says this:

See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and through it many become defiled.
Hebrews 12:15 NRSV

Unforgiveness is a bitter root that we live with.  We try to learn to function with a grudge, but the grudge always pulls us down.  But we’re told elsewhere in the Bible that “love keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:5).  Unforgiveness is like grabbing broken glass and squeezing it.  Are you familiar with the game Angry Birds?  It’s this crazy game where some pigs steal the eggs from the birds and the rest of the game is all about angry birds trying to destroy the pigs again, and again, and again, and again.  It never stops.  It’s worse that the Hatfields and McCoys.  Anne Lamott says, “In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die” (Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith).  Forgive because unforgiveness only hurts you.

I Will Need Forgiveness Again
Forgive those who have hurt you because some day you will need to be forgiven again too.  Jesus says:

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Matthew 6:14-15 NRSV

We all have fallen short of God’s standard for our lives.  All of us have done unloving things.  All of us have missed the mark of God’s will for our lives sometime intentionally and sometimes unintentionally.  All of us have participated in injustice in some way or another.  All of us are broken wounded people who have hurt and wounded other people.  We all need forgiveness.

And yet, I tend to embrace God showing me mercy in my own life and in my own brokenness and woundedness, but we are each slow to embrace others being forgiven.  We tend to come up with a rather nuanced description of our own motives and mitigating factors, and we tend to be pretty black and white when it comes to others.  I deserve to be given a mulligan.  He deserves to be held accountable to every detail of his mistake.  I deserve to be forgiven.  She deserves to rot in hell.

Each of us has been forgiven, and each of us will need to be forgiven again.  Our standard of forgiveness, Jesus tells us, will be used to measure our own sinfulness.  Forgive others, because you will need to be forgiven again.

How?
So I’ve convinced you.  You say to yourself, “I should forgive that good for nothing flea bag of a husband/boss/co-worker/teacher/classmate of mine, but I don’t know how.  I just can’t make the forgiveness thing happen.  How do I do it?”  Good question.  Let’s look at the mechanics of forgiveness and how it works, or at least two aspects of forgiveness.

Pray
Begin forgiving by praying for those who hurt you.  But what do you pray?  Maybe you could pray the Psalms.  There is a whole genre of psalms called the cursing psalms.  Many people want to skip over those psalms and get on to the happy psalms, but I think God put those cursing psalms in there for a reason.  Here’s a little sample of them:

Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the grave.
~Psalm 55:15 

O God, break the teeth in their mouths.
~Psalm 58:6 

May they be blotted out of the book of life and not be listed with the righteous.
~Psalm 69:28

May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
~Psalm 109:9

Ouch!  Is that really in the Bible?  Yes it is.  Here’s one thing to notice about each one of these prayers.  All of them put the ultimate outcome in God’s hands.  If you want the person who hurt you to die, just be honest with God about it.  Then let God deliver the verdict.  Often times when people pray these psalms, they find that they are able to let go a little bit and move on.

Maybe a further step of prayer would be what St. Augustine, a 4th and 5th century church leader, says we should pray: “They should pray, not that their enemies may die, but that they may reform; then the enemies will be dead, since being reformed they will be enemies no longer.”  Wow, that’s a rather bold thing to pray, that our enemies would reform their ways, turn from their past injustice, confess it, make restitution, and become our friends.  Wow!

Or maybe we could pray as Jesus prayed when he was hanging on the cross: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  That’s how Jesus taught us to pray when he said:

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Matthew 5:43-44 NRSV

But you say to me, “I don’t feel like it.  It’s not a sincere prayer.”  Sometimes right actions have to come first to trigger right feelings.  Actions and feelings are connected.  If you do what is right, you will slowly but surely begin to love what is right.  So start with a simple prayer: Bless him/her.  Maybe you can’t say this sincerely, but you pray it anyway.  Then you pray with a little more sincerity, “Bless him/her.”  And then a little more sincerity and a little more until you really mean it.  Your prayers for the person who hurt you may not change that person, but they will begin to change you and that bitter root of unforgiveness will begin to be uprooted, and slowly but surely you’ll stop drinking that rat poison you’re drinking trying to kill the rat.

Forgive as You’ve Been Forgiven
Lastly, forgive the same way that you’ve been forgiven.  Jesus forgave you completely and constantly.  Do the same with others.  Paul, the first missionary of the church and the author of many books of the Bible said it this way:

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.
Colossians 3:13 NRSV

One time Peter asked Jesus, how many times should we forgive?  Three strikes and you’re out, right?  Peter thought he would improve on the three times and you’re out rule and suggest to Jesus that we should forgive seven times.  Compared to the three strikes and you’re out rule, seven times is pretty generous.  But Jesus’ forgiveness is gratuitous.  Jesus responded, “Forgive seven times seventy times!”

Now hear me out.  If you are in an abusive situation, if your husband is beating on you, get out of the house and forgive from a distance.  Tell someone at church.  Tell me.  We’ll find you a safe space to go.  There are some men in our church who are barely saved, and they will do anything their pastor tells them to do.  Just kidding.  Sorta.  This is the power of being in a community.  This is the power of having a faith community that stands with you.  This is why the church matters.  Because sometimes it is very hard to discern alone what you should do.  Together we can discern God’s will forward when it comes to tricky forgiveness situations.

The Point
Just in case you’ve missed the point of this whole message here it is: The forgiven forgive others.

After receiving that random Facebook message from my dad’s second wife, and experiencing all the rush of negative emotions it triggered within me, I decided that I need to forgive her.  So I wrote her a letter.  I told her how her actions and decisions had hurt me and my family.  I told her that I had made mistakes too and had needed forgiveness.  I told her that I had been forgiven by Jesus for my own contributions to the brokenness of this world.  I expressed a hope that she would know Jesus’ forgiveness too.  And I forgave her.  If it were just up to me and if the situation had only involved me, I probably would have sent the letter to her.  But after talking to my dad, he felt it was best not to send it to her, so I honored his wishes.  But you know what, the letter still worked.  Forgiveness had come, and the bitterness was gone.  When you forgive others you can say, “On the day I forgave _____, God set a prisoner free, and that prisoner was me.”

God, help us to forgive others as we have been forgiven by you.  In the Spirit of Jesus, amen.

 

* This series and this sermon are based on and inspired by a sermon series originally by Craig Groeschel

 

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Baggage Claim – Family Baggage

February 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment

baggage-claim-big-300x168

 

 

 

Baggage Claim – Family Baggage
Sycamore Creek Church
February 10 & 11, 2013
Tom Arthur
2 Samuel 13:1-22

Peace Friends!

Today we begin a new series called Baggage Claim.  That begs the question: What is baggage?  I suspect if we ask everyone in the room what “baggage” is, we’d get a lot of different answers, so let me begin with some thoughts on what I think baggage is.

Baggage is a lot of things and most of them have something to do with sin.  Baggage can be unconfessed guilt from past sin.  Not all guilt is bad.  Guilt that leads to confession is good guilt.  Baggage can also be persistent guilt left after confession of sin.  Guilt is not always good.  Sometimes it is the inability to receive forgiveness from God.  Baggage can also be painful memories or scars from sin committed against you, things your memory just won’t shake, feelings of worthlessness, or feeling alone.

We all accumulate baggage.  Every saint has a past but, every sinner has a future.  This series is about the fact that while you can’t change your past, Christ can change your future.

I recently met an artist who takes old stuff that people have thrown away and turns it into art.  He told me that a good part of his motivation is in repurposing things and using them in a way that their maker had not originally designed it for.  My imagination was sparked.  While our maker did not design us to accumulate baggage, perhaps there is some art that  can be created from it.

So what I want to do in this series is to help you not accumulate baggage in the first place, but if you already have it, to know what to do with it.  I want you to be able to name clearly what the baggage is, and to have a clear path forward for how to receive God’s grace to dump it and live a new baggage-free life or to have it created into some new piece of artwork.

This not a series of condemnation and judgment, but it is a series of truth telling.  Truth telling and compassion, mercy, and grace are not mutually exclusive.  Actually there is no true compassion without truth telling.  Jesus models truth and mercy together when he encounters a woman caught in adultery.

John 8:10-11 NRSV
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.”

Family Baggage
We’re going to look at divorce baggage the next two weeks, and end the series with sexual baggage.  But today we’re looking at family baggage.  There’s a great movie called How to Train Your Dragon that is about a father and son that have different expectations about the role for the son.  Will he be a dragon slayer or not?  Here’s two short clips to set the stage:

Here’s the problem that we all run into: We all want a family, just not ours (sometimes).  All our families are broken. Broken from divorce, abuse, a distant parent, an over involved parent, addiction, and on and on.  There is no perfect family.  And when our families accumulate baggage we tend to deal with the baggage with one of two extremes: severance or silence.  We sever the relationship.  We kick the offending family member out of the family.  We excommunicate them.  Or we are silent about it.  We pretend it never happened.  Or we simply never talk about it as a family.  Toward which extreme do you or your family tend to err?

Today I want to take a look at a pretty extreme case in the Bible of a family accumulating baggage.  If you’re a guest here this morning, this story may perplex you.  You may even wonder why it’s in the Bible.  Here at Sycamore Creek Church, we look to the Bible for practical guidance, but the Bible doesn’t always tell us what to do.  Sometimes it only reports what happened.  It gives us a story to chew on together as a community.  That’s what we’re looking at today with the story we’re about to read. It’s not a story that describes how we’re supposed to behave.  It probably tells us a lot more about how not to behave, unless we want to accumulate serious baggage.  But it clearly illustrates how baggage tends to push us to one of two extremes: severance or silence.  Watch for those two extremes as you hear the story of the rape of Tamar.

2 Samuel 13:1-22 NRSV
Some time passed. David’s son Absalom had a beautiful sister whose name was Tamar; and David’s son Amnon fell in love with her.  Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her. 

But Amnon had a friend whose name was Jonadab, the son of David’s brother Shimeah; and Jonadab was a very crafty man.  He said to him, “O son of the king, why are you so haggard morning after morning? Will you not tell me?” Amnon said to him, “I love Tamar, my brother Absalom’s sister.” 

Jonadab said to him, “Lie down on your bed, and pretend to be ill; and when your father comes to see you, say to him, ‘Let my sister Tamar come and give me something to eat, and prepare the food in my sight, so that I may see it and eat it from her hand.'” 

So Amnon lay down, and pretended to be ill; and when the king came to see him, Amnon said to the king, “Please let my sister Tamar come and make a couple of cakes in my sight, so that I may eat from her hand.” 

Then David sent home to Tamar, saying, “Go to your brother Amnon’s house, and prepare food for him.”  So Tamar went to her brother Amnon’s house, where he was lying down. She took dough, kneaded it, made cakes in his sight, and baked the cakes. 

Then she took the pan and set themout before him, but he refused to eat. Amnon said, “Send out everyone from me.” So everyone went out from him.  Then Amnon said to Tamar, “Bring the food into the chamber, so that I may eat from your hand.” So Tamar took the cakes she had made, and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother. 

But when she brought them near him to eat, he took hold of her, and said to her, “Come, lie with me, my sister.”  She answered him, “No, my brother, do not force me; for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do anything so vile!

As for me, where could I carry my shame? And as for you, you would be as one of the scoundrels in Israel. Now therefore, I beg you, speak to the king; for he will not withhold me from you.”  But he would not listen to her; and being stronger than she, he forced her and lay with her. 

Then Amnon was seized with a very great loathing for her; indeed, his loathing was even greater than the lust he had felt for her. Amnon said to her, “Get out!”   But she said to him, “No, my brother;for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other that you did to me.” But he would not listen to her.

He called the young man who served him and said, “Put this woman out of my presence, and bolt the door after her.”  (Now she was wearing a long robe with sleeves; for this is how the virgin daughters of the king were clothed in earlier times.) So his servant put her out, and bolted the door after her.

But Tamar put ashes on her head, and tore the long robe that she was wearing; she put her hand on her head, and went away, crying aloud as she went.  Her brother Absalom said to her, “Has Amnon your brother been with you? Be quiet for now, my sister; he is your brother; do not take this to heart.” So Tamar remained, a desolate woman, in her brother Absalom’s house. 

When King David heard of all these things, he became very angry, but he would not punish his son Amnon, because he loved him, for he was his firstborn.  But Absalom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad; for Absalom hated Amnon, because he had raped his sister Tamar.

Sometimes in other churches after the Bible story is read, the person reading the Bible will say, “The Word of the Lord.”  And the people respond, “Thanks be to God.”  If I was in one of those kind of churches and heard the story read, I’d be inclined to say, “No thank you, God!”  This is one seriously messed up family.  They are severing relationships and remaining silent in all kinds of crazy ways that just accumulate more and more baggage.  So let’s unpack this story and see what we can learn.

Amnon, David’s eldest son and heir to the throne, rapes Tamar, his half sister and Absalom’s full sister.  David does little to nothing.  He gets angry, but anger isn’t enough in the face of such horrific injustice.  Absalom, Tamar’s full brother, and David’s second eldest, takes vengeance for his sister and eventually kills Amnon, putting himself in line for the throne.  David’s sons are playing out a familiar story of violence in David’s own life.  If you are familiar with David as a king, you will remember that David saw a good looking woman he wanted named Bathsheba, but she was married to one of his elite warriors, Uriah.  After getting Bathsheba pregnant, he has Uriah killed on the front lines of battle.  David’s own violence begat the violence of his sons, and David has the opportunity to break the cycle but does not.  He and almost everyone in this story resort to one of two extremes: severance and silence.

Absalom’s resort to severance is extreme: kill his half-brother.  David’s initial response to Absalom after Absalom kills Amnon is also severance.  Absalom is cast out of the family and stays away for three years.

Absalom also tells Tamar to remain silent about the injustice.  He attempts to silence the victim.  But Absalom learned this from his father, who is silent about Amnon’s great injustice.  Absalom also speaks neither “good nor bad” to Amnon.  He doesn’t confront him, he remains silent about it either way.  There is a conspiracy of silence against Tamar.  Don’t talk about it.  That hurts.  It puts our family in a bad light. Let’s just be quiet about it and pretend it never happened.  It hurts too much to talk about it.  David also remains silent in the long-haul about Absalom’s murder of Amnon.  While Absalom is cast away for three years, when he finally is allowed to come back, David says nothing about the past circumstances.

Interestingly enough, Tamar, the victim in the whole story does neither.  She is neither willing to sever relationships nor remain silent.  When it comes to severing the relationship with Amnon when he tells her what he wants, Tamar uses one of the few cards her culture of the day gives her to play: she suggests that they get married.  She suggests this both before and after the rape.  In our culture that affords women equal rights as men, it is hard to imagine Tamar offering to marry the man who violates her in this way.  But in her mind, the other option in her day was complete disgrace.  She chose the lesser of two evils.  But when Amnon discards her, and Absalom tells her to be quiet, she does neither.  She privately and publicly laments.  Tamar is unwilling to sever relationships or to remain silent in the face of baggage.

My family has its own accumulation of baggage.  My father had an affair that effectively ended the marriage.  My parents were divorced when I was in elementary school. They and my step-parents have gotten along in various spurts that go up and down.  It is hard to talk about such things within one’s own family.  It is easier to remain silent or to get out of the family all together.  But that’s not the best way to handle baggage.  It’s really not claiming it all.  Baggage in families is best claimed and then dealt with through forgiveness, not the forgetfulness of severance or silence.  Here’s the whole point of this message: Family requires forgiveness, not forgetfulness.  Family baggage requires forgiveness, but forgiveness doesn’t mean no consequences.  Forgiveness is a kind of ability to remain in a relationship even with tension, seeking open and honest truth while also seeking mercy and compassion.

I navigated this with my own dad by spending a year in counseling during my sophomore year of college.  That year of counseling culminated in my dad spending a weekend with me at college going to see my counselor with me.  It was the turning point in our relationship.  We turned away from severance and silence and toward claiming the accumulated baggage and forgiving one another.  You may think it odd that I say, “forgiving one another” but over time I have come to see that in my own woundedness, that I had wounded those around me.  Confession and forgiveness had to work both ways.

If you’re wondering how in the world you’d break the silence within your family around something painful, let me offer you a way forward: a “fierce conversation.”  I was first introduced to a great book by Susan Scott titled Fierce Conversations by John Savage, a mentor and coach of mine over the years.  A fierce conversation is not a status update or tweet.  Those are not appropriate or helpful forums for dealing with family baggage.  A fierce conversation happens face to face.  It is fierce because it is honest.  Scott suggests several steps in a fierce conversation, but I want to mostly focus on the beginning.  A hard fierce conversation often begins with a carefully crafted sixty-second statement.  This statement has seven parts:

  1. Name the issue.
  2. Select a specific example that illustrates the behavior or situation you want to change.
  3. Describe your emotions about this issue.
  4. Clarify what is at stake.
  5. Identify your contribution to this problem.
  6. Indicate your wish to resolve the issue.
  7. Invite your partner to respond.

This conversation is requested ahead of time, and this statement is practiced ahead of time (even in the mirror).  Let me give you an example of an opening sixty-second statement.  I’ve taken my own relationship with Sarah, exaggerated it a bit, mixed in some of the issues that I’ve heard from you, and created an opening sixty-second statement from Sarah to me.  She would ideally have asked for this conversation ahead of time and practiced this opening statement.  So here it is:

[Name the issue:] Tom, I’d like to talk to you about the effect your actions have been having on our family lately.  [Examples:] Tuesday morning while we were sitting at the breakfast table, you snapped at me saying, “Can’t you see I’m reading the newspaper.”  On our drive to Ann Arbor Friday night you spoke very few words to me.  Sunday night you sat in your chair surfing the internet without interacting with Micah or me.  [Describe the emotions:] I’m getting really concerned about the possible consequences this is having on all of us.  I feel distant from you in these moments.  Sometimes I feel numb or even a little scared.  [Clarify what is at stake:] There is a lot at stake here: the long-term thriving of our marriage and our family, and your role in helping Micah learn healthy ways of interacting with his family as he grows up.  [Identify your contribution:] I think I have contributed to this situation myself.  Sometimes I am very critical of you, or don’t respect when you need some silence.  Other times I don’t know what the right questions are to ask you to help begin a conversation.  I’ve also not brought this up at helpful times before.  [Your wish to resolve the issue:] I’d like to work toward resolving these issues.  [Invite response:] I want to understand what is happening from your perspective.

Her next move is to be quiet, and listen. Let me offer three tips for moving forward in the conversation that follows.  First, institute the Three Question Rule: ask three questions before you make a statement.  When you ask for a response, it is likely that you will begin to feel threatened.  Be patient with your partner by asking clarifying questions.  This will help your own natural defensiveness subside.  Ask questions like, “Tell me more about…Help me understand what you mean when you say…I’m not fully understanding how this is making you feel.  Can you clarify…”

Second, substitute “and” for “but.”  When you follow a statement someone says with “but” you’re saying their statement doesn’t matter.  When you follow it with “and”, you’re saying both statements matter.  For example: You want me to complete this project by tomorrow, BUT I’ve got two other projects I have to get done first, is very different than You want me to complete this project by tomorrow, AND I’ve got two other projects I have to get done first.  Or here’s another one: You want me to watch the kids this afternoon, BUT I need some quiet time to finish reading my training manual, is very different than You want me to watch the kids this afternoon, AND I need some quiet time to finish reading my training manual.  “But” tells the other person that what they said doesn’t matter.  “And” invites shared ownership of the problem and shared brainstorming for a solution.

Third, when you want to make a statement, try this approach.  Describe the statement as a thought or theory running through your mind that you want input on.  Say, “This thought was running through my mind. What do you think of it?”  I used this approach recently in a very sticky and delicate situation.  I had a working theory in my mind of why someone was doing something that they were doing, but if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t sure my theory was right.  So I said, “I have a theory, but I don’t know if it’s right.  Here’s my theory.  What do you think of it?”  Instead of that person getting defensive, I got some extra information from them that convinced me that my theory wasn’t right, and it all happened without either of us getting defensive.

One of the best ways to help discern how to have a fierce conversation that leads to forgiveness and reconciliation is by running your conversation ideas by others.  At Sycamore Creek Church, we try to create environments where friendships can thrive that help you have partners in the process of learning how to forgive your family and work through the baggage accumulated in your family.  We call these environments small groups.  They’re a group of three to twelve people who meet regularly to guide one another in loving God with everything you’ve got and loving your neighbor and your family as you love yourself.  What fierce conversation in your family do you need to have this week or next?  What small group of spiritual friends do you have that will help you prepare for that fierce conversation?

Imagine with me for a moment having true and honest conversations with your divorced parents about the where-to-stay-or-visit dilemma when you come to town.  Imagine having a fierce conversation with that abusive family member who treats you like a verbal punching bag at family get-togethers.  Imagine finding forgiveness for that distant parent that never suggests you get together for anything.  Imagine figuring out how to not sever the relationship with that over involved parent who regularly calls you offering advice you’re not looking for and haven’t requested.  Imagine not remaining silent in your family about the addicted family member who is always missing commitments because of their addiction.  Imagine neither severing these relationships nor remaining silent about the pain in them.

Jesus sets the example for this in himself.  Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17 NRSV).  In Jesus, God was neither willing to sever the relationship with his creation or remain silent.  And Jesus came showing us what grace and truth look like when they exist together in the same person, in the same family.  In the family of God, there are no carry-ons.  Lay your baggage at the foot of the cross.

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Mission Drop

June 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Amazing Stories - Wrestle Mania

Amazing Stories – Mission Drop
Sycamore Creek Church
Mark 1:1-11 & Acts 2:38-41
Tom Arthur
June 24, 2012 

Peace Friends!

What’s your life mission?  Are you on a mission?  Or are you just plodding along each day reacting to whatever comes your way?  Being on a mission adds a deep sense of purpose to your life.  Many of us wander around aimlessly because we haven’t signed up for a mission.

I remember the first deep sense of mission I received in life.  I was in a class in college called “African American Experience.”  We were watching a Dateline undercover investigation of racism in Chicago. Not the deep south.  North. Chicago. Midwest.  Big city.  Two guys, one black and one white, went around town with hidden cameras and interacted with the same people and situations.  They both went to a used car salesman.  The white guy was given a “rock bottom” price $1500 cheaper than the black guy.  They both went to a department store.  The white guy was given great service.  The black guy was followed around the store by a sales associate who didn’t talk to him.  They both went to rent the same apartment.  The landlord was courteous to the black guy who went first, but when the white guy asked about the neighborhood, the landlord said, “It’s OK, but it’s going downhill.  I showed it to ‘one of them’ earlier today.”  I came out of that class furious, with a righteous anger I had never experienced before.  In that moment God signed me up for a mission: to make right the injustice I had just seen.  Later on I gave that mission a name: racial and economic reconciliation.

What’s your mission?  Today we’re in the middle of a series called Amazing Stories.  We’re looking at some of the lesser known but still amazing stories in the Bible.  There are a lot of different stories in the Bible about being on a mission.  Today I want to look at a story of the beginning of Jesus’ mission.  And it’s a mission that we all can join.  It’s the amazing story of baptism.  Let’s read it.

Mark 1:1-11 NLT
Here begins the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.
In the book of the prophet Isaiah, God said, 

“Look, I am sending my messenger before you,
and he will prepare your way.
He is a voice shouting in the wilderness:
‘Prepare a pathway for the Lord’s coming!
Make a straight road for him!'”  

This messenger was John the Baptist. He lived in the wilderness and was preaching that people should be baptized to show that they had turned from their sins and turned to God to be forgiven.  People from Jerusalem and from all over Judea traveled out into the wilderness to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. His clothes were woven from camel hair, and he wore a leather belt; his food was locusts and wild honey. He announced: “Someone is coming soon who is far greater than I am — so much greater that I am not even worthy to be his slave.   I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!”

One day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and he was baptized by John in the Jordan River.  And when Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens split open and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven saying, “You are my beloved Son, and I am fully pleased with you.”

Here we see Jesus joining the mission of God.  Have you ever seen one of those spy movies where one spy drops a case or bag or box or envelope in one spot for another spy to pick up and run with the mission?  That’s kind of what’s happening here.  John the Baptist is making a mission drop with Jesus.  Jesus is picking up the package (or going under the water) and running with the mission.

Now this story by itself doesn’t tell us much about the amazing character of this mission.  For that we have to look elsewhere.  One great place is in a sermon that Peter, one of Jesus’ fellow “spies”, preaches after Jesus has ascended (it’s the same sermon that Gaelen McIntee preached on a couple of weeks ago on graduation Sunday).  Let’s take a look at parts of that sermon and we’ll see that the character of the mission of God is closely related to the character of water itself.  Maybe that’s why baptism is done with water.

Death: Acts 2:38 NLT
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Water is a dangerous thing.  Water can mean death.   This past week I took my 19-month-old son to the tot swim at the Holt Jr. High. He had never seen or been in a pool before.  He was naturally anxious and nervous as we stepped down into the pool.  For about the first thirty minutes he had a choke hold on me and wouldn’t even consider letting go.  He had a healthy respect for the dangerous situation he was in.  Should he let go, I think he instinctually knew that things would not turn out well (of course, as his daddy, I would do all I could to never let that happen).  Water is death.

When we sign up for the mission of God by being baptized, something in us has to die.  We have to turn from our sins.  This is called repentance.  You have to give up every other mission you’re on to join this one. It’s no good to think you can be on two missions.  You can’t.  If you’re going to join God’s mission, all other missions in your life must be put to death in the waters of baptism.  This doesn’t mean that you no longer care about other things.  It means that you now see all things you care for through the lens of the mission of God.

The mission of God is characterized first by dying to self, repenting, and turning toward God.

Cleansing: Acts 2:38 NLT
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

One of the important uses of water is to clean dirty things.  This past week I had drywallers working in my basement.  I was amazed at the speed with which they worked.  They put up seven rooms of drywall and a hallway in a day and a half.  One time I went down to see how things were going, and one of the guys was putting screws in a piece of dry wall on the ceiling while a fine dust was showering down on top of him.  Later that day when they left, he said to me, “I’ll give you an ‘air’ hand shake because my hands are so dirty and dusty.”  I looked at his hands and was glad he didn’t want to shake my hand.  He was dustier than I had seen anyone in a long time.  I’m sure when he got home he immediately jumped in the shower to wash away all that dust, and when he got out of the shower, I’m sure he felt like a new man.  Water cleanses.

When you sign up for the mission of God by being baptized, you die to the sin in your life and you are cleansed from it.  The mission of God is characterized by forgiveness, God’s forgiveness of our sins, and our forgiveness of others’ sins against us.  Just as water cleans the hands after a long day of working, so too does baptism clean our souls and make us pure before God.

The mission of God is characterized by the forgiveness of sins.

Life – New life through Union with Christ: Acts 2:38 NLT
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Water is life.  Have you ever run out of water and been unable to get water for an extended period of time?  There’s an amazing survival story about a guy named Aron Ralston that’s told in a movie titled 127 Hours.  Aron was hiking by himself in slot canyons out west when a boulder fell on him and pinned his hand to the side of the canyon.  He was pinned there for 127 hours before freeing himself by cutting his own forearm off.  Public Service Announcement: The biggest mistake he made in this whole ordeal was that he was hiking by himself and he hadn’t told anyone where he was going.  So how was he going to survive?  Almost miraculously there was no bleeding, so Ralston really had to confront one major obstacle: how could he stay alive until someone found him.  What’s your number one problem in this situation?  Besides staying warm, it’s water.  You can live for days or weeks without food. But you can only go a fraction of that time without water.

Water is life, and the waters of baptism give you new life in Jesus.  If we die in the waters of baptism, then we die with Jesus.  But when we come up out of the water, we also join in the resurrection of Jesus.  Our dead dry bodies are given new spiritual life.  We are in a very real sense, reborn.

Life – Holy Spirit: Acts 2:38 NLT
Peter replied, “Each of you must turn from your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

There’s another sense in which we are given new life in the waters of baptism.  We are given the gift of the Holy Spirit.  What exactly is the Holy Spirit?  The Holy Spirit is God’s presence working in you (transformation) and through you (ministry to others).  God’s love being made real in your life.  God’s friendship helping you to learn new habits and continue to turn from all those old ones.  Because even though we’re cleansed and forgiven of our sins in the waters of baptism, those old habits continue to intrude on the mission of God.  They’re like old enemy spies that keep showing up at inopportune times.  Except the difference is that God’s presence, God’s love, God’s friends, God’s Holy Spirit walks with you in a new and powerful way helping you to overcome those old habits and sins.  As one preacher has said, “Sin remains but it does not reign” (John Wesley).

The mission of God is characterized by new life in the waters of baptism.

Community – Acts 2:41 NLT
Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church — about three thousand in all.

What do all these things have in common: soda, tea, coffee, beer, wine, juice?  There’s probably a lot of things that they have in common but here are two that are pertinent to our discussion this morning: they’re mostly water, and they’re best shared with friends.  Water is something that community gathers around.  We gather around it when we choose where to live.  We gather around it at the table, in a restaurant, at the café, in a coffee shop, and around the communion table in worship.

Water is community, and in the waters of baptism you join the community called the church.  Baptism is the door to the church.  Now the church gets a lot of negative press in the world these days, some of it earned, but at its most fundamental level, the church is the community of friends seeking to follow Jesus.  It’s a community on a mission, and that mission is best done with spiritual friends.

The mission of God is characterized by the community you join in the waters of baptism.

So there’s only one question left for you today:

Will you join the mission of God?

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Amazing Stories – Wrestle Mania

May 29, 2012 by 2 Comments

Amazing Stories - Wrestle Mania

Amazing Stories – Wrestle Mania
Sycamore Creek Church
May 27, 2012
Tom Arthur
Genesis 32

Peace Friends!

Today we begin a new series called Amazing Stories.  Whether you’ve read the Bible or not, you know the big stories of the Bible: Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark, Moses parting the Red Sea, David and Goliath, Jesus’ death and resurrection.  These are all amazing stories. But there are many more amazing stories in the Bible that aren’t as well known.  Over the next several weeks we’re going to explore those not-so-well-known-yet-still-amazing stories.  In the end, I think you’re going to find that all the amazing stories in the Bible will help you live into the amazing story of your own life.  Today we begin with a story about wrestling.

Who or what do you wrestle with?  And I suspect that the wrestling has played a large part in defining who you are today.  Probably one of the biggest wrestling matches I’ve had over my lifetime is with my dad.  Boys wrestle with their dads in a way that defines them.  My dad and I have a lot of things in common, but there are some significant ways in which we are different.  I’ve wrestled with him about decisions he’s made in the past, mistakes he’s made, and differences of opinion about what the right thing to do is.  Sometimes that wrestling has been obvious: we argue.  Most of the times it’s not obvious.  I wrestle with my dad in my thoughts.  Wrestling with my dad has been significant in defining who I am.

Then there’s the wrestling I did with friends growing up. I wanted to find acceptance and fit in.  I wrestled with being funny (or not).  The person who made everyone else laugh was always well liked.  And one of the key ways to make friends laugh was to be in the know about the funniest TV shows, movies, music, or jokes.  These made up the currency of our conversations.  So being in the know was important to being accepted and fitting in.  Sarcasm was also a key to fitting in.  You couldn’t take anything at face value.  Then there were girls. Who had the prettiest girlfriend?  Who had the most girlfriends?  Who had the coolest girlfriends?  On all of these fronts, I was no where near the top.  I wasn’t the funniest.  Most of the time I didn’t have a clue what was going on in culture.  I wasn’t naturally sarcastic.  And my friends tended to think my taste in girls was a little off.  Wrestling with my friends has been significant in defining who I am.

Then there’s the wrestling with myself.  If you’ve gotten to know me you know I’m a perfectionist.  I have very high standards for myself, and I rarely if ever live up to them.  I’ve got an internal dialogue always going on, and it’s not always pretty.  It sounds something like this:  You should try harder at that.  You should be better at that.  You need to make sure you don’t make that mistake again.  Don’t mess up.  If you do that, they won’t love you.  You’re not doing everything God wants you to do.  This wrestling with my own perfectionism has been significant in defining who I am.

I’m not alone in wrestling with others or myself.  I asked my friends on Facebook how they are defined by wrestling with people, things, or situations.  Here are some of the responses I got:

About my struggles that define me…probably my low self esteem and my depression, and people pleasing.

As a child I had a parent with a substance issue and she was able to mask it in public for a long time. She was a pretty mean drunk, I protected my sister, and she focused on me. I learned to stand up for what is right, that sometimes you are going to pay a price for doing that, but that it is always worth trying to do the right thing.

I grew up as the youngest child and a Christian in a non-Christian home.  I got made fun of for being a Christian and always had to hide my faith in my home.  It has led me to not being very willing to be open about my faith as an adult.

Hear any common themes?  People wrestle with themselves, with the ones they love, and with the broader culture.  This weekend is Memorial Day weekend.  Perhaps this weekend as we remember those who gave their lives fighting for our country, you wrestle with having lost a loved one.  Or maybe you wrestle with your own memories of war.  Or maybe you wrestle with the enemies you fought against.

We all wrestle with people, situations, and things, and this wrestling tends to be very significant in defining who we are.

One of my favorite movies Nacho Libre, a monk, played by Jack Black, wants to be a wrestler.  But first he needs a partner.  He finds an unlikely partner, but first has to wrestle him into submission and a new understanding of who he is and who he might become.

We’re not the first people to wrestle with those around us.  The Bible tells the story of a famous wrestler named Jacob.  Jacob was constantly wrestling with others preparing for his big showdown with God.  When Jacob was born he was a twin. He came out wrestling with his brother, Esau:

Then the other twin was born with his hand grasping Esau’s heel. So they called him Jacob.* Isaac was sixty years old when the twins were born.
Genesis 25:26

Notice the * in the text.  It points you to a footnote in your Bible which tells us that Jacob means “he grasps the heel”; this can also figuratively mean “he deceives.”  The name “Jacob” is a play on the word “aqeb” which means “grasp.”  Jacob’s name is literally defined by his wrestling with his brother!  Their battle is epic and eventually leads to Jacob stealing Esau’s birthright from their father and then hightailing it out of Dodge.

Jacob runs to his uncle Laban’s house where he meets his daughter, Rachel, and falls in love with her.  He has to work seven years for Laban to pay to marry her.  On their wedding night, Laban tricks Jacob by marrying off his eldest daughter, Leah, first. We read:

So Laban invited everyone in the neighborhood to celebrate with Jacob at a wedding feast. That night, when it was dark, Laban took Leah to Jacob, and he slept with her…But when Jacob woke up in the morning — it was Leah! “What sort of trick is this?” Jacob raged at Laban. “I worked seven years for Rachel. What do you mean by this trickery?”
Genesis 29:22-25 NLT

Jacob ends up wrestling with his father-in-law over his two daughters.  The deceiver is now deceived, in the bedroom!

Laban does give Rachel to Jacob as well, but he has to work seven more years.  Eventually Jacob wrestles further with Laban and sneaks out of town to go back to his homeland.  On the way there it becomes apparent that Jacob is going to have a reunion with his brother, whom he hasn’t seen since he stole his birthright.  The night before Jacob meets Esau again, he wrestles with a mysterious man which most people have interpreted as God.  Here’s the story:

Genesis 32 (selected verses)
Jacob now sent messengers to his brother, Esau, in Edom, the land of Seir.  He told them, “Give this message to my master Esau: ‘Humble greetings from your servant Jacob! I have been living with Uncle Laban until recently, and now I own oxen, donkeys, sheep, goats, and many servants, both men and women. I have sent these messengers to inform you of my coming, hoping that you will be friendly to us.'”  The messengers returned with the news that Esau was on his way to meet Jacob– with an army of four hundred men!  Jacob was terrified at the news. He divided his household, along with the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps.  He thought, “If Esau attacks one group, perhaps the other can escape.”  Then Jacob prayed, “O God of my grandfather Abraham and my father, Isaac– O LORD, you told me to return to my land and to my relatives, and you promised to treat me kindly.  I am not worthy of all the faithfulness and unfailing love you have shown to me, your servant. When I left home, I owned nothing except a walking stick, and now my household fills two camps!  O LORD, please rescue me from my brother, Esau. I am afraid that he is coming to kill me, along with my wives and children.  But you promised to treat me kindly and to multiply my descendants until they become as numerous as the sands along the seashore– too many to count.”  Jacob stayed where he was for the night and prepared a present for Esau…So the presents were sent on ahead, and Jacob spent that night in the camp. 

But during the night Jacob got up and sent his two wives, two concubines, and eleven sons across the Jabbok River.  After they were on the other side, he sent over all his possessions.  This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until dawn.  When the man saw that he couldn’t win the match, he struck Jacob’s hip and knocked it out of joint at the socket. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is dawn.” But Jacob panted, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”  “What is your name?” the man asked. He replied, “Jacob.”  “Your name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him. “It is now Israel, because you have struggled with both God and men and have won.”  “What is your name?” Jacob asked him. “Why do you ask?” the man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there.  Jacob named the place Peniel– “face of God”– for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.”  The sun rose as he left Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip.  That is why even today the people of Israel don’t eat meat from near the hip, in memory of what happened that night.

Let’s take a moment and look at a couple of key moments in this amazing wrestling match between Jacob and God.

Genesis 32:25-26
When the man saw that he couldn’t win the match, he struck Jacob’s hip and knocked it out of joint at the socket.

You cannot wrestle with God and walk away the same.  You will be “hurt.”  Something has to go.  God loves you just as you are and loves you too much to leave you there.  One of the key character traits you will walk away with from a wrestling match God is humility.  Humility hurts.  It hurts the ego and the pride.

One time early in my relationship with Sarah, I took her back home to my family’s house.  My “little” brother, Rick, was there, and he and I got into a little wrestling match.  What was I thinking?  My “little” brother is no longer smaller than me.  He’s probably easily got 50 pounds or more on me.  Maybe even a little taller too.  The short of that wrestling match was that it was very short.  He picked me up, manhandled me, and tossed me on the couch.  All this right in front of the one I was trying to impress with my physical prowess!  I learned humility that day, and it hurt.  And I never wrestled with my brother again!

Wrestle with God and you will be humbled.

Let’s look at another moment in this amazing wrestling match.

Genesis 32:29
“What is your name?” Jacob asked him. “Why do you ask?” the man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there.

What we wrestle with defines us, and when we wrestle with God, we don’t get to define God.  So often we tend to put God in the “dock” and cross examine him.  We tell God what he can and cannot do.  We tell him what is right and just and good.  Forget that he’s God.  We act like God and try to tell God how to be God.  But when Jacob tries to define God by knowing his name, he won’t give it to him.  God’s identity isn’t what’s at stake when we wrestle with God.  It’s our identity that’s at stake.

Let’s look at a third moment in this amazing wrestling match.

Genesis 32:28
“Your name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him. “It is now Israel, because you have struggled with both God and men and have won [prevail/endure].”

While Jacob wants to identify and define his wrestling partner, the opposite happens.  God defines Jacob.  Actually, he redefines him.  He gives him a new name, “Israel.”  And so Jacob becomes the patriarch of the nation ofIsrael. Israelliterally means “he who wrestles with God.”  It’s in that wrestling that Jacob finds his truest and deepest identity.  His identity is no longer the one who grasps the heel of others, who wrestles with others, but is the one who wrestles with God!  And the cool thing about this is that this identity found in wrestling with God is already present in us in some way or another.  “Jacob” can also be a play on the word “yakbal”, and in this case “Jacob” means “May God protect.”

Wrestling with God becomes the center of our life, the reference point by which all our other wrestling is defined.  Jacob’s identity changes when he wrestles with God, and so does all his other wrestling.  So here’s the main point I want you to get.  If you don’t get anything else in this message, get this: When your identity is based on wrestling with God, your wrestling with others is redirected toward reconciliation rather than rivalry, revenge, or anything else.

There’s a move in wrestling called a snapdown reroute.  It’s where you push into your wrestling partner, and when they push back you use their own energy and momentum to redirect them where you want them to go.  Here’s an example.

When we wrestle with God, we push against God, and God uses that energy and redirects it away from things like rivalry, revenge, bitterness, anger, malice, and the like and toward reconciliation.

Reconciliation

Keep reading the story and you’ll see this redirection toward reconciliation played out in Jacob’s life.  He changes.  He isn’t a rival with his brother anymore.  He seeks reconciliation.  And reconciliation means learning some new behaviors.

Genesis 33:2-3 NLT
Jacob now arranged his family into a column, with his two concubines and their children at the front, Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph last. Then Jacob went on ahead. As he approached his brother, he bowed low seven times before him.

Notice the humility here.  Before he was stealing from his brother.  Now he’s giving gifts.  Humility and reconciliation go hand in hand.

When you’re a student in a classroom are the other students rivals or friends?  Are you focused only on your own performance and your own grades, or are you helping others learn too?  Or what about when you’re in a band together competing for first chair, is the competition all there is in the relationship or are you also practicing with each other teaching your “rival” tricks you’ve learned about how to be a better musician?

How about when you find yourself liking the same girl or guy that your friend likes.  Is your rivalry for the romantic interests of this person what defines you, or does your life in God help you realize that there are many men and women that God has created that would be excellent life-long partners?

Let’s look at the workplace.  Some of us earn our living off beating the competition to the sale.  That’s the kind of economy we live in.  But is your life built around competition of this sort so exclusively that you ignore building a community where everyone can prosper?  Do you sometimes let that sale go because someone else needed it more?  Do you horde what you make or do you give generously to those around you who are in need?

Genesis 33:4 NLT
Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced him affectionately and kissed him. Both of them were in tears.

One key new behavior of reconciliation is forgiveness.  Jacob isn’t the one in the position to forgive.  Esau is.  And he does.  But Jacob helps by coming to the reunion with humility.

Do you nurse old wounds from family members who have hurt you?  Do you repeat those stories in your head and to those around you over and over, letting the bitterness come out every time?  Or do you risk the vulnerability of a meeting like the one between Jacob and Esau?

When we wrestle with God, our wrestling with others is redirected away from rivalry and revenge and toward reconciliation.  But when we approach those with whom we need to be reconciled, that reconciliation is not a forgone conclusion.  Did you notice that Esau brought 400 men with him (33:1)?   That terrified Jacob.  Reconciliation was not obvious or certain.

As well, while some level of reconciliation does happen between Jacob and Esau it is not complete.  We read that “Esau started back to Seir that same day. Meanwhile, Jacob and his household traveled on to Succoth” (Genesis 33:16-17).  In other words, while they are living closer than they have for a long time, they put some distance between one another.

We live in a world where we catch glimpses of heaven’s ultimate reconciliation with us and our reconciliation with one another, but those glimpses are not always complete.  And yet, sometimes they can be incredibly powerful.  We see reconciliation played out in Louis Zamperini’s forgiveness of Mushuhro Wantanabe, the WWII Japanese POW camp guard who tortured him (Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand).  We see it in Corrie ten Boom’s forgiveness of the German guard at the concentration camp where she and her sister were kept and her sister died (The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom).  We see it in Lloyd LeBlanc’s forgiveness of Patrick Sonnier, who killed his son (Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean).  We see it in the Amish who forgave the man who killed a school room full of Amish children.  We see it in the response of an elderly South African woman who sought reconciliation following the dissolution of apartheid in the Truth and Reconciliation hearings rather than revenge:

At one hearing, a policeman named van de Broek recounted an incident when he and other officers shot an eighteen-year-old boy and burned the body to destroy the evidence. Eight years later van de Broek returned to the same house and seized the boy’s father. The wife was forced to watch as policemen bound her husband on a woodpile, poured gasoline over his body, and ignited it.

The courtroom grew hushed as the elderly woman who had lost first her son and then her husband was given a chance to respond. “What do you want from Mr. van de Broek?” the judge asked. She said, “Mr. van de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.
(What Good Is God by Phillip Yancey)

This woman understood that when you wrestle with God, your wrestling with others is turned away from rivalry, revenge, and you-fill-in-the-blank and toward reconciliation.

Here’s a prayer I found for praying for your forgiveness in your family, but I think it could be prayed for any situation in need of reconciliation:

Sometimes, Father, we are cruelest to those we love the most.  Let my family members bear with each other and forgive one another just as you forgave us.  Help us get rid of all bitterness, and turn our offenses into testimonies of your love.  (Colossians 3:13, Ephesians 4:31-32)

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Chipped – Forgive and Remember

May 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Chipped - A Three Week Series on Forgiveness

Chipped – Forgive and Remember
Sycamore Creek Church
Matthew 6:9-15
Tom Arthur
May 8, 2011

Peace, Friends!

It’s hard to forget a moment when the windshield of your car chips, cracks, or shatters.  It includes all the senses.  You’re driving along minding your own business, and CRACK!  There goes your windshield.  A small pebble is enough to put a chip in the windshield, and of course, a big rock or even a boulder can do some pretty serious damage.

I was in a car accident back in July of last year when we were rear-ended by someone.  The force was pretty impressive.  My body was compressed into the seat.  Glass was flying everywhere.  The back windshield was in a thousand pieces scattered all over the car.  I even found glass down the back of my shirt.  It took a couple of months for my friend’s car to be repaired.

My car accident is pretty small compared to some experiences.  I found one picture of a car completely flattened by a huge boulder.  As flat as a pancake.  I don’t think that car will ever be a car again.

Our lives are like these windshields.  They get chipped, cracked, shattered, and sometimes obliterated.  Of course, the amount of repair work that is required to fix a chip is pretty small compared to the repair work to fix a shattered windshield, but in the case of our lives, all of the repair work begins with the basics of forgiveness.  No matter how much damage has been done to you or by you, nothing will be able to be repaired if forgiveness isn’t part of the equation.

We’ve been using as our text for this series the Lord’s Prayer.  The disciples came to Jesus and asked him to teach them how to pray.  This is what he said:

Matthew 6:9-15
Pray like this:
Our Father in heaven, may your name be honored.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done here on earth, just as it is in heaven.
Give us our food for today,
and forgive us our sins,
just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.

If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you.
But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.

This is Jesus’ teaching for us today.  Thank you, God!

The last two lines of what we read aren’t the prayer but are commentary on the prayer.  This commentary makes me think that perhaps that while the explicit part of the prayer about forgiveness is only two lines long, the whole prayer implicitly is all about forgiveness.

In this series we began with the first line about forgiveness: forgive us.  We each have chipped, cracked, or shattered other people’s windshields.  We need forgiveness from people who we have harmed or wounded, but even more we need forgiveness from God whose image they bear.

The second sermon in this series was about the second line: forgive others.  Many of us look through the windshields of our lives and find a lot of chips and cracks.  Some of us don’t even have anything that resembles a windshield anymore.  There’s just shattered glass strewn around our feet.  If we’re going to find healing, we’ll need to learn to forgive others.  That’s what last week’s sermon was about.

Today we look at forgiveness and memory.  “Ok,” you say, “I get it.  I’ve forgiven that jerk who so badly hurt me.  But I can’t forget about it.  I’ve tried.  The situation just keeps playing over and over in my mind.  I must not have forgiven that jerk, have I?”  Or maybe you’re dealing with the memory of what you did to someone else.  That thing you did just keeps playing on a loop in your imagination.  You can’t get the loop to stop.  You think to yourself, “I must not be forgiven.  I can’t forget that horrible thing I did.”  Today we look at memory and forgiveness, and I have a simple suggestion for you about memory: forgive and remember differently; remember well.

Human Memory

When something traumatic happens in our lives, it gets sealed in our memories in a way that is often quite disconcerting.  In the movie, Dead Man Walking, we see a scene where Lloyd LeBlanc talks to Sister Helen Prejean about the murder of his son, David.  Lloyd details the havoc that his son’s death caused on his life.  He adds that the whole thing is sealed in his memory and he can’t get it out.

Human memory is a funny thing.  Often what we want to remember we forget and what we want to forget we remember.  Sarah’s dad has taken up drinking a glass of red wine with dinner each night for health reasons.  He was reading in the paper one day about the benefits of red wine on one’s heart and also on one’s memory.  Red wine apparently is supposed to help your memory.  Later that night as he was pouring himself a glass of wine for dinner he commented to Sarah’s mom, “Now I know that red wine is good for your heart.  What was the other reason?”

Recently I was listening to a workshop on how to memorize anything.  This was taught by someone who has memorized a dozen or so books of the Bible!  He certainly knows something about memory.  The instructor said that the more senses we involve in the process of memorizing, the more effective our efforts will be.  So say it out loud.  Use motions.  Imagine various sights.  Record yourself reading it and listen to yourself in the car.  Use all your senses.  No wonder it is hard to get something traumatic out of memory.  All our senses were engaged in a way that they rarely are.

But aren’t we supposed to forgive and forget?  Isn’t forgetting what forgiveness is all about?  Isn’t that what God does?  Well, yes.  In some ways God does forgive and forget.  We read in Jeremiah, “I will forgive their wickedness and will never again remember their sins” (Jeremiah 31:34 NLT).  I’m not sure that this actually means that God completely forgets.  Can God forget anything?  I think it means that God chooses not to remember.  God puts a limit on God’s own memory.  God chooses to not remember.  But human memory is much more complex.

Sometimes the situation has passed in a way that we can’t go back to.  I have a memory that I often play over and over in my head.  When I was in elementary school, I stole something from a friend of mine named Brad.  We collected ninja “throwing stars.”  I’m not sure they were actually throwing stars.  I think they were probably just necklace ornaments, but we treated them like they were the real thing.  One day as we were walking through the woods, I saw Brad’s throwing star drop out of his pocket.  I didn’t tell him.  Later I went back and picked it up.  I hid it.  The next day Brad found it among my things.  He accused me of stealing, and I blamed a mutual friend of ours suggesting that I was set up.  Our friendship survived that fiasco, but I never really confessed or apologized to Brad.  We remained friends until his untimely death in 1996 when his Value Jet crashed in the Florida Everglades.  Now it is impossible in this lifetime to reconcile with him.  The memory of my sin against him still haunts me.

There are also situations that happen to our loved ones.  These are particularly hard to ignore.  There is something about harm done to our loved ones that affects us even more than harm done to ourselves.  One time Sarah cut open her knuckle while washing the dishes.  We had been married for several years, and by this point, I had learned not to pay too much attention to everything she said about how bad something was.  So when she first told me she cut her knuckle, I mostly ignored her.  Then she really had to get my attention to explain how bad it was.  We needed to go to the ER.  When we got there the doctor thought it was a wonderful example of a deep cut and called in several people to take a look.  Now I’ve been around a lot of blood and guts, and rarely does this kind of thing make me woozy, but for some reason that little cut, deep though it was, was enough to make me get somewhat faint.  When the doctor saw my face, he stopped attending to Sarah and started making sure I was sitting down.  I recovered without fainting, but I learned something that day.   Harm done to our loved ones affects us deeply, and harm done to our loved ones is harder to forgive than harm done to ourselves.

There are also single traumatic episodes that will never be forgotten.  When I was in high school, I dated a girl who had been raped by a previous boy friend.  This traumatic event, this sin against her body and her humanity, colored everything about our relationship.  It was impossible to ignore.  She will never forget that moment.

Then there are the kinds of situations where someone is repeated traumatized.  I recently read about one such situation in a book titled, Unbroken.  Unbroken tells the story of Louis Zamperini.  Louis was an Olympic runner who was expected to break the mile record in the 1940s Olympics when they were canceled due to WWII.  He joined the air force, and one day on a search and rescue mission his own plane went down in the Pacific.  He and two others survived and floated for forty-seven days setting a new record, but not the one anyone wants to hold.  They were eventually picked up by the Japanese navy and taken as POWs.

Louis was bounced around from camp to camp.  At one camp he met the man who would terrorize him, Matsuhiro Wantanabe, nick named “The Bird.”  The Bird took a sadistic pleasure in torturing his prisoners.  He singled out Louis for special treatment.  Daily The  Bird beat, humiliated, and destroyed Louis.  Somehow Louis survived, and when the war was over, he went back home.  It quickly became evident that he was suffering from  PTSD (although not as well understood in those days).  He got married but sank into alcoholism and abused his wife and daughter.  The Bird showed up in Louis’ nightmares every night.  He hatched a plan to go back to Japan, seek out The Bird who had gone into hiding as a war criminal, and exact revenge on him by killing him.  Louis may have wanted to forget what had happened to him, but he could not.

Given the complexity of human memory, what are we to do?

Forgive and Forget?

Let’s go back to that passage in Jeremiah and read the bigger context:

And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their family, saying, ‘You should know the LORD.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will already know me,” says the LORD. “And I will forgive their wickedness and will never again remember their sins” (Jeremiah 31:34 NLT).

If you look closely, you will see that the reason that the LORD forgets is because everyone already knows the LORD.  They have been converted.  You won’t have to teach anyone about how to know, love, and serve God because everyone will already know.  The LORD forgets because the context has changed.

In this sense, there is a kind of forgetting when justice is served, and justice at its highest is not retributive but restorative.  Justice at its highest includes confession, repentance, and forgiveness.  In that sense, what has happened this past week with Osama Bin Laden is not truly justice.  Yes, it is a kind of justice, but it is not an ideal justice.  An ideal justice would be that Bin Laden would have confessed and repented and been reconciled to those who he harmed.  This is what Martin Luther King, Jr. had in mind when he advocated the use of active non-violent resistance.  He desired reconciliation between whites and blacks at the end of the day.  He desired the possibility for friendship.  Had he used violent means to bring about civil rights, he would have put more obstacles in the place of this kind of ultimate justice, friendship between folks who were previously enemies.

Remembering Well

And so this brings us to what I think it means to forgive in the Christian sense.  It is not to forgive and forget but to forgive and remember differently; remember well.  If we look at the idea of forgiving and forgetting and take it literally, then we will end up not with forgiveness but amnesia.  We will have big patches our lives that just disappear.  Our stories will not have continuity.

The Bible presents a different way of forgiving than forgetting.  Consider Jesus’ own experience after being raised from the dead.  When he appears to his disciples after his resurrection, they are understandably stunned.  They don’t know if they can believe their eyes.  They think they may be seeing a ghost, and so Jesus says to them, “Look at my hands. Look at my feet. You can see that it’s really me” (Luke 24:39 NLT).  Why look at his hands and feet?  Because they still have the scars in them.  Even after forgiving the sins of the world, Jesus’ body still bear marks of the wounds that were inflicted upon him!  He still remembers them.  He just remembers them differently.

I have a big scar on my knee.  I got it when I was in second grade.  I was riding a little skate board down a huge asphalt hill.  As I picked up more and more speed, the skateboard began wobbling.  I decided to bail and jumped off.  The only problem was that in all my second grade wisdom, I had decided to wear my plastic baseball cleats that day.  Of course the plastic got no traction on the pavement, and I immediately found myself sliding down the asphalt on my right knee.  Did I mention I didn’t have knee pads on?  When I finally came to a halt, there was blood everywhere.  I walked the mile home with blood streaming down my leg.  When I got home, my mom was gone.  I got in bed and put a rag on my knee.  I was scared there was so much blood.  I prayed to God and made a pact.  I told God that I would read the entire Bible if he would just stop my knee from bleeding.  I got through two chapters of Genesis before giving up.  God kept God’s part of that bargain, and my knee did stop bleeding.  (I eventually did read through the entire Bible.)  I look back on that situation now and while it was very traumatic in the moment, I can really laugh about the whole thing now.  I didn’t forget it, but I do remember it differently.  It no longer hurts me to remember it.

Sara Groves has a wonderful song called Less Like Scars.  Part of the song goes like this:

Less like tearing, more like building
Less like captive, more like willing
Less like breakdown, more like surrender
Less like haunting, more like remember

And I feel you here
And you’re picking up the pieces
Forever faithful
It seemed out of my hands, a bad situation
But you are able
And in your hands the pain and hurt
Look less like scars and more like
Character.

Back to Louis Zamperini.  What happened to him?  Well, his wife decided to leave him.  That night she went to a young preacher, Billy Graham’s revival.  She decided not to leave Louis, and instead she came back and urged Louis to attend.  He did so reluctantly.  After a couple of nights of attending, he eventually gave his life to Christ.  He went home that night and threw all his alcohol down the drain.  He went to sleep that night and had the first night’s sleep without The Bird showing up in his dreams.  His life was so changed that he decided on a different scheme for his captors in Japan.  He would return and forgive him, especially The Bird.  And that’s what he did.  He traveled back to Japan, met his captors, and forgave each of them.  But The Bird was not there.

In 1998 he was invited to come back to Japan for the ‘98 Olympics.  A CBS reporter tracked down The Bird and found that he was still alive.  He attempted to arrange a meeting between Louis and The Bird, but The Bird never showed up.  Louis wrote this letter instead:

To Matsuhiro [sic] Watanabe,
As a result of my prisoner of war experience under your unwarranted and unreasonable punishment, my post-war life became a nightmare. It was not so much due to the pain and suffering as it was the tension of stress and humiliation that caused me to hate with a vengeance.

Under your discipline, my rights, not only as a prisoner of war but also as a human being, were stripped from me. It was a struggle to maintain enough dignity and hope to live until the war’s end.

The post-war’s nightmares caused my life to crumble, but thanks to a confrontation with God through the evangelist Billy Graham, I committed my life to Christ.  Love replaced the hate I had for you.  Christ said, “Forgive your enemies and pray for them.”

As you probably know, I returned to Japan in 1952 [sic] and was graciously allowed to address all the Japanese war criminals at Sugamo Prison…I asked then about you, and was told that you probably committed Hara Kiri, which I was sad to hear.  At that moment, like the others, I also forgave you and now would hope that you would also become a Christian.

Louis Zamperini

In this masterful letter, on which I based my own letter of forgiveness that I shared with you last week, Louis has not forgotten what The Bird did to him, but he does forgive him.

SubaruLouis’ life was shattered.  Like the back windshield of the car that I was in last July, shards of glass were everywhere.  You can’t piece back together something like this.  It will never be the same.  It will always bear the scars of Shard Glass Crossthe pain.  But those scars need not be open wounds.  We can remember differently.  We can remember well.  We can do this because God can reach down into our lives and take all those broken shards of glass and turn them into something new, just like God did on the cross in Jesus Christ.

It is my prayer that God would bring this kind of healing to the chipped, cracked, and shattered windshields of your lives.  Will you join in me in praying once again the prayer that Jesus taught us:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses , as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever and ever.
Amen.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With:

Forgiveness and Osama Bin Laden

May 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Chipped - A Three Week Series on ForgivenessRight now our church is in a three week series on forgiveness called Chipped.  Given the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death, I’ve been asked several questions about forgiveness and Bin Laden.  I thought I’d share a couple of thoughts on the issue.

My own initial reaction was one of celebration.  I’m not a very demonstrative person, but internally I was cheering and celebrating.  I was glad because that’s what the story-line of our culture has taught me is the right response.  Almost every Hollywood action movie has told me that this is how the story is supposed to end.  Bad guy does big time damage.  Hero goes after bad guy.  There’s a lot of chase scenes and carnage.  In the end, hero kills bad guy, preferably at point blank range.  Audience cheers.  That’s how the story goes, and that story has created a kind of habit within me that came out in that first moment that I heard that Bin Laden had been killed by a courageous group of elite American fighters.

My initial reaction did not stay for long.  Very quickly another story began to impede on the Hollywood story.  It is God’s story of salvation.  That story begins with God creating and calling it all very good.  Immediately the plot takes a twist.  What began as very good soon turns awry when Adam and Eve disobey.  The rest of the story is a wooing story: God wooing humanity back to God.  First with the Hebrew people.  Then the Torah.  Next the prophets.  And finally the author, God’s very self in Jesus Christ, stepped into the story.  The characters didn’t like the author very much and so they (or at this point should I begin saying “we”) killed him.  His perfect love was a little too much for us.  Thankfully there was a surprise ending: the grave couldn’t hold him and God raised Jesus from the dead.  This story produces some different habits in me.  Habits of forgiveness.  As the story unfolds Jesus teaches about forgiveness, forgives his executioners, is raised from the dead to show that forgiveness wins, and passes on that message of forgiveness to the community of people who follow him.

God’s salvation story is very different than the story that Hollywood tells me.  It is a story that makes me pause at the news of Bin Laden’s death.  It makes me ask some questions about how forgiveness and justice fit together.  Is justice truly full without reconciliation?  Does justice include confession?  Conversion?  I think of Martin Luther King Jr. who believed that the civil rights movement must win the day by the exceedingly courageous method of active non-violent resistance.  King used this method so that in the end, blacks and whites could be friends and live in community together.  If King had used violent means to attempt that goal, he realized that he would have put even more obstacles in place for creating that ultimate goal of a beloved community.  King had a deeper view of justice than just winning.  Winning meant keeping open the possibility of friendship.

Augustine, a fourth and fifth century church leader, certainly had it right when he said, “Let [Christians] not pray, then, that their enemies may die, but that their enemies be corrected; then the enemies will be dead, because when converted they will no longer exist as enemies.”  When that happens, I will be able to fully celebrate.  Until then, I will continue to pray that God’s kingdom would come here on earth as it is in heaven.

For another great reflection on this issue, check out my good friend, Mark Aupperlee’s blog.

Filed Under: Ponderings Tagged With: ,
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