Monday 29 July 2013

A Thought for the Week of July 29

"The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever." (Isaiah 40:6) The 18th century French philosopher Voltaire once wrote that "One hundred years from my day there will not be a Bible in the earth." Voltaire was wrong, of course. He died almost 235 years ago, and the Bible is still very much with us, and very much a part of our world. Many people abuse it, and turn it into an excuse for violence and hatred, But I believe many more use it productively as a guide for how to live a life pleasing to God, and in productive service to those around us. I hear the more militant atheist movement today proclaiming something similar to Voltaire - denying Scripture as a meaningless collection of fables or decrying it as the source of many of the problems in our world. Many predict the end of religion. They'll prove to be wrong, too, of course. Both faith and the word of God are too powerful to either be overcome by those who don't believe in them or defeated by believers who abuse them. I find the Bible to be a source of inspiration, hope and challenge. Some will deny it, and some will abuse it, but I've found that if you give the Bible a chance to touch your life, it will never disappoint you. Have a great week!

Sunday 28 July 2013

July 28 sermon - On Forgiveness: How Does It Help?

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility,gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do,whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. (Colossians 3:12-17)

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     An event that's had a huge impact on popular culture and on colloquial English happened back in 1878. In West Virginia, The McCoy's were accused of stealing a hog from the Hatfields. And so it began – the Hatfield-McCoy feud. Now, when a seemingly irreconcilable divide erupts between two people or two groups, it's often referred to as a Hatfield-McCoy type of feud. I suspect that because it's entered the common lingo, we don't realize how serious the Hatfield-McCoy feud was. The Hatfields accused the McCoys of stealing a hog. The McCoys denied it, and refused to give the hog in question to the Hatfields. The Hatfields took the McCoys to court, and the justice of the peace who heard the case just happened to be named “Anderson Hatfield.” Not surprisingly, the Hatfields won the case. The feud erupted. It was not the thing of humour that is sometimes portrayed. In fact, it was serious – deadly serious. 11 people died as a direct result of the feud. One of the interesting things about the two families is that in the decades prior to the feud breaking out there had been several inter-marriages between them, which perhaps explains a lot. These weren't just two different families, they were more like an extended single family, and the better you know someone the more bitter might be the reaction when you feel wronged by them. The killing, of course, eventually stopped (largely because the Hatfields moved on to Kentucky) – but interestingly enough it wasn't until 2003 that Bo and Ron McCoy met with Reo Hatfield and on national television they shook hands and declared the feud over. After 125 years! And it started with an accusation about stealing a hog! Sometimes the bitterest and longest lasting fights erupt over simple things that happen between people who should be close. But as Reo Hatfield said after, “you don't have to fight forever!” In the end, 60 descendants of both families signed an official truce, which said in part that “we ask by God's grace and love that we be forever remembered as those that bound together the hearts of two families to form a family of freedom ...” Ron McCoy said, “The Hatfields and McCoys symbolize violence and feuding and fighting, but by signing this, hopefully people will realize that's not the final chapter.” It never has to be the final chapter, because if it is, we're lost. The final chapter in such things is hopefully written in the Gospel, and hopefully it's entitled “forgiveness.”

     Forgiveness isn't about not making people face the consequences of their actions. It's about letting go and moving on. In some respects, forgiveness isn't about the person you're forgiving at all. Forgiveness is about “me.”  It's not uncommon to hear church leaders today decrying the “me generation” and the impact it's had on the church – the idea being that for many people the church today seems to exist only for the purpose of meeting “my” needs. That's really not a good rationale for the church's existence, but in this one case, maybe it is about “me.” Forgiveness is about me giving myself permission to move on with life. For the community as a whole, forgiveness is about letting us move on without baggage. It's about healing and wholeness. It's about new life. Jesus once said that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” That applies to individuals, to families, to churches. If we're constantly involved in battles – inner battles or battles with others – then we can't stand. We will fall. And these divisions only arise because we have trouble letting go of the past. But let go of the past and move into the future we must – because the past can so easily be a trap – perhaps even a nightmare that we can't let go of. Paul wrote “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.” He told that to the Christians of Colossae because he knew that a church that couldn't live at peace couldn't bear witness to Christ. Living at peace doesn't mean agreeing on everything – but it does mean always being ready to start anew.

     Some of you have probably heard of Corrie ten Boom. She was a Dutch Christian who helped many Dutch Jews escape from the Nazis during World War II. She was eventually arrested (along with her entire family) and sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp – a camp for women which was notorious for slave labour and grotesque medical experiments. Corrie's sister Betsie died at Ravensbruck while they were imprisoned there. A couple of years after the war ended, Corrie was teaching in Germany, and quite by chance she met a man who had been one of the most cruel guards at Ravensbruck. The man approached her and held out his hand in a gesture of reconciliation. Corrie wrote later that she didn't want to forgive the man, but she did reach out and take his hand. She wrote later, “for a long moment we grasped each other's hands and looked in each other's eyes, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then.”  She also wrote that in her experience with other former inmates of concentration camps, it was those who were able to forgive who were best able to rebuild their lives.

     The odds are that none of us here have to deal with such difficulties. The things we have to forgive are pretty small by comparison. Which makes it all the more important that we learn the lesson of forgiveness, because small things can be mighty things. As Paul wrote,

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.

       Forgiveness is about peace; it's about healing; it's about wholeness. It's the glue that holds a community together; it's the glue that holds our lives together; it's what gives us the ability to move forward – ever forward – boldly proclaiming the love and grace of God, and making us effective witnesses. I think this is an important subject. I believe that most of the problems I've discovered in churches and in Christians over the years really find their root in unforgiveness; in an unwillingness to let someone off the hook and move on. That's why it needs to be talked about and proclaimed among God's people over and over again - because when we fall into that trap we can't be the people we should be, and we can't be the church that God calls us to be. I want us to be all that God wants us to be, and for that to happen, we can't just talk about forgiveness – we have to be able to live it. That's hard. But it's necessary. I give the last word of the month to Nelson Mandela – a good Methodist, the former president (and the first black president) of South Africa; a man imprisoned for almost 30 years for fighting apartheid, and who could have chosen to take brutal vengeance against those who had oppressed him and his people when he finally claimed power – and yet a man who chose the route of reconciliation and forgiveness. In his words, “We especially need to forgive each other, because when you [merely] intend to forgive, you heal [only] part of the pain, but when you [actually do] forgive, you heal completely.”  As individual Christians, and as a Christian community, may we always seek the path of forgiveness; the route of healing and peace.

Monday 22 July 2013

A Thought For The Week Of July 22

This is how Eugene Peterson translates Psalm 51:10 in The Message: "God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life." As a new week begins for me, this seemed an appropriate Scripture to do some reflecting upon. Personally, I appreciate thinking about the fact that I get a fresh start not just every week, but every day - sometimes from minute to minute! Monday mornings are often my time to let go. I can look back at the week past, culminating in worship on Sunday, and I can let go of the things that could otherwise hold me back if I chose to hold on to them. If I thought about it too hard I'm sure I could find lots of ways in which I blew it, or where I failed, or where I could have done better, or where I wasn't a very good reflection of Jesus. And I could be burdened by those things - kicking myself all through the coming days. Or, I could choose to focus on where I feel others let me down, or disappointed me, or hurt me, or failed me. I could choose to carry a chip on my shoulder into the new week. Either of those approaches are options for how to face a new week - but they're bad options, because God is a God of new beginnings and I need to claim those new beginnings for myself. Peterson talked about shaping "a Genesis week from the chaos of my life." In the opening pages of the Bible, it was God who took chaos and created order, and God who brought forth the wonders of a new creation - a creation all of us are a part of. God hasn't finished creating. By God's grace, each one of us are a new creation each day. Forget last week, with both its successes and its failures. Commit yourselves to living as a reflection of Christ in the days to come. Have a great week!

Sunday 21 July 2013

July 21 sermon - On Forgiveness: Why God Forgives

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.  (Galatians 5:1-6)

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     From time to time when I'm working with a congregation's Search Committee helping them to find a new minister, I'll give them this advice: “be very wary of a minister who seems to want to be loved, because they won't challenge you, they'll just spoon-feed you what you want in order to try to keep everybody happy.” Now, as wonderful as keeping everybody happy might sound, the truth is that it's death for a church – because the moment we stop being challenged in our faith is the moment that our faith stops having any meaning, and being challenged in our faith doesn't necessarily leave everybody happy! Today, I want to give you some serious advice that you might want to follow for the next few minutes anyway: “be very wary of a minister whose sermon title starts with 'Why God ...' and who then presumes to explain why God does anything – because, really, who is anyone to explain God or God's actions?  And, yes, I'm talking about myself here today. So – be very wary of what I say today; or, at least, take everything I say with a grain of salt – because who am I to explain why God does anything? I believe in an omnipotent God, which means that, at heart at least, I believe that God does what God chooses to do; no explanation or justification required. However, as I continue to explore the idea of forgiveness (which is a far more complicated thing than most people realize) it seemed to me that I couldn't not devote at least a little bit of time to try to do my best to relate forgiveness to God.

     As Christians, forgiveness in one way or another is at the heart of what we believe about God. We proclaim it week after week in worship. I call it “The Assurance of God's Love” while many churches call it the “Assurance of Pardon” but whatever name it goes by it speaks to us of God's grace and God's forgiveness. We proclaim it regularly because there are, unfortunately, people who don't believe that God has forgiven them. In the early 20th century there was even a recognized psychological condition that revolved around people who felt that God hadn't forgiven them and that they were condemned to hell, and they would fall into periods of deep depression and despair as they contemplated what they believed was their hopeless future. The condition was called “religious melancholia.” One person who suffered from it was The Reverend Ewen MacDonald – a Presbyterian minister who's probably most remembered as the husband of Lucy Maud Montgomery, who wrote the “Ann of Green Gables” books. If you ever read Lucy Maud Montgomery's diary (which has been published) you'll find that her husband's periods of religious torment and conviction that hell was awaiting him were torture for her, and their life together wasn't an especially happy one. But as much as that problem exists, I suspect that many of us (and maybe most of us) take divine forgiveness for granted, don't we? But why do we take it for granted? What is it that so convicts us about the nature of God that we think we can take this for granted? So, with forgiveness as the background, this struck me as an ideal opportunity to speak a little bit not just about forgiveness, but about the very nature of God – as ill equipped as I (or anyone else) am to do that!

     There are many things that we say with great boldness about God. The authors of Scripture – inspired to write as they were by the Holy Spirit – were completely convicted about some things by the Holy Spirit, so that John could write with absolute assurance, boldly proclaiming that “God is love.” A modern example comes from our own United Church's newest faith statement - “A Song Of Faith” - which proclaims with no hesitation that “We witness to Holy Mystery that is Wholly Love.” In other words, “A Song Of Faith” proclaims, on behalf of the United Church of Canada, that while God is mysterious (and that means that there's a lot about God that we don't understand) we can say without doubt and in unison with John that God is love! When you think about it – that's a pretty bold statement. And to be even more bold – love and forgiveness go hand in hand. So – if God loves, then God must also forgive, as uncomfortable as I am with saying that God “must” do anything! But it's simply logical – and God is not a God of illogic.

     It isn't that God is willing to forgive those whom God loves. That's getting it backwards. It's that because God loves, God is always willing to forgive. Love in God's case is not an emotion; it's a quality. It's not a noun; it's a verb. Love is what God does. And, therefore, forgiveness is what God gives. This is one of the ways in which Jesus brought us to a deeper understanding of God. If you read through the Old Testament, you discover that most of the references to God's forgiveness are in the nature of pleas for forgiveness; of God's people hoping for forgiveness, longing for forgiveness, pleading for forgiveness, even begging for forgiveness. There are some exceptions. The prophet Jeremiah mentions a couple of times that God is willing to forgive His people, and Psalm 130 tells us that “with [God] there is forgiveness. But mostly there seems to be apprehension, uncertainty and even fear. God's people didn't seem quite convinced that God was forgiving.

     But then there was a change with Jesus. Suddenly, as you read the New Testament, you discover that there's an emphasis not on pleading for God's forgiveness but on simply claiming God's forgiveness – of understanding that God forgives. Now, a lot of people see a difference between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament – but it isn't God Who changed; it's how people perceived God that changed. And what caused that? It was that they suddenly had a direct experience of God; a direct encounter with God. And that was Jesus. Jesus lived both love and forgiveness. He wasn't beyond calling people to account. He wasn't beyond pointing out that there were consequences for not living as God desired. But he lived both love and forgiveness. And when people encountered Him they encountered those qualities. And they understood God more deeply than ever. And so, “God is love,” John could write. And in the same letter, John could write, “if we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins.” God is faithful; this is simply what God does.

     The passage from Paul in Galatians this morning helps us understand this issue. Paul writes that “You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.” Here was the difference Jesus made. What I call the gospel of law – the need for obedience to a set of rules – was done away with by Jesus. If you follow the gospel of law (and unfortunately a lot of Christians do) then you have little choice but to plead for forgiveness. The gospel of law requires complete obedience, not just pretty good obedience – just like you can't go before a judge and say “you can't convict me of murder because I've never stolen anything.” It doesn't work. One violation of the law is all that it takes, and it puts you in the position of constantly begging and pleading for forgiveness – which we see throughout the pages of the Old Testament, before Christ. But Jesus brought a new way. He brought a gospel of grace – a gospel that says that no matter what you've done forgiveness is there, simply because it is God's way. Law alienates us from Christ – and therefore from God; grace takes away the alienation – and that's what God desires from us; it's why we were created – to be in relationship with our God. In old words from the Westminster Catechism, “the chief end of man is to glorify God.” To seek relationship with God in other words; and if we seek, we will find. Jesus promised us that.

     We know that we've taken hold of God's forgiveness if we carry no burdens from the past; if we're not tormented by anything we might have done. If we have the faith to simply acknowledge our past before God and admit our failings. Then, God forgives. I've had that experience. It's a blessing. There are things in my past I'm not proud of; things I would do differently if I could have a do-over. But I can't. But the thing is that with God – the past is the past, and because of that we should look to the possibilities of the future rather than the failures of the past. Because God has forgiven whatever in our past needs to be forgiven. Why? Just because God is God, and it's God's nature to love, and it's love's nature to forgive! That's why God forgives!

Monday 15 July 2013

A Thought For The Week Of July 15

"The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride." (Ecclesiastes 7:8, NIV) It's often said that "patience is a virtue." In fact, it's said so often that many people probably believe the words come from the Bible. They don't, although I think the old saying captures the spirit of what Scripture teaches about patience. I learned a lot about patience this past Sunday. We had gone across the border to do some shopping and have dinner. On the way back, we discovered the Canadian border jammed. Approaching the Peace Bridge, cars were lined up across the bridge, through the streets of the city leading to the bridge, on to Interstate 190 and almost to Downtown Buffalo. That's a long line. We skipped that crossing and decided to try the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls. Cars were lined up a long way into the city and of course the police directed us to the end of the line, where we had no option but to sit and wait. For probably close to two hours. That's when you learn patience - either you have it, you're trying to develop it, or you just don't care about it. I saw examples of all three. I think I personally fall into the second category. But I watched the people in the third category - those who just don't care for being patient. Those who would inch forward a bit and then try to force their way in ahead of another car. Those who would suddenly leave the line, heading down a side street that represented another route to the border - as if they expected that route to be magically clear. And I wondered what difference those few minutes (or maybe just a few seconds) would make in their lives. The answer is probably none at all. Thinking about the words of Ecclesiastes ("patience is better than pride") I wonder if such people aren't simply consumed by pride - the feeling that they shouldn't have to sit there with everyone else waiting for the line to move; that they should have some right to a faster way. But nothing makes people more equal that waiting at a backed up border crossing. Yes. I was frustrated. But that proved the Ecclesiastes verse to me as well. The end - getting across the border - was, indeed, better than the beginning - having to wait in the lineup! I don't know that I was able to completely let go of my pride, and accept the situation and simply be patient. But I did learn a lot about patience and pride. Maybe having to wait is good for us sometimes! Whatever you're expecting and whatever you're waiting for - be patient! And have a great week!

Sunday 14 July 2013

July 14 sermon - On Forgiveness: A Faithful & Biblical Definition

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go. “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” (Matthew 18:21-35)

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     I want to go back to that line from The Lord's Prayer for a moment: “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Now, the traditional words that we use are, of course, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” They say largely the same thing, but with a bit of a different emphasis. “Trespasses” suggests that we need forgiveness for going places we shouldn't have gone – and that we need to offer forgiveness for the same thing. “Debts,” on the other hand, “suggests that we have been let off the hook for something that we owed, and that we need to let others off the hook for what they owe to us as well. I challenge tradition very cautiously, of course, but our traditional version of The Lord's Prayer is wrong. The word in the New Testament means literally “something that's owed.” It means a debt in other words, and not really a trespass. It puts the whole idea of “forgiveness” into what you might call economic terms rather than strictly moral terms. So Jesus seems to be saying that real forgiveness is about not holding someone in debt to you. That seems to be emphasized in the parable we read today.

     Jesus is still speaking in terms of forgiveness. Jesus is still speaking about consistency and reciprocity in forgiveness, but to make his point he uses a couple of business exchanges for lack of a better word. He offers this parable – which is an interesting parable because it's not mysterious and it's not hard to understand and it really needs no explanation, unlike many of the parables Jesus taught with – as a way of helping His disciples understand the true nature of forgiveness. The very existence of the parable (and the fact that it's placed in Matthew's Gospel where it's placed) is another hint of how hard true forgiveness really is. Think about it. Last week, we talked about forgiveness in The Lord's Prayer, and the use of the word “debt.” That was in chapter 6. Now we're in chapter 18. In the context of Matthew's Gospel at least, 12 chapters have passed by and Jesus returns to the point to give a more in depth explanation of the concept of forgiveness – because it seems as if even after all this time His disciples still haven't got that message! So, once again, Jesus speaks of forgiveness in relation to debt and its repayment.

     One of the problems that's been around forever is that it's hard for many people to get out of debt. There was the old sharecropper system, where former slaves were “given” parcels of land to work by their former masters. They had to buy seeds and other supplies from the landowner, they had to give the landowner usually half the crop they produced and pay for the seed and supplies on top of that and the end result was that they were rarely able to pay off their own debt, and they were condemned to a never-ending cycle of poverty, and even unofficial slavery – supposedly free to move on anytime as long as their debts were paid off, which could hardly ever happen. There are other examples closer to home. Think about pay day loans. So if you suddenly need $500 that you don't have, you borrow $500 from a pay day loan company. The company charges you interest, meaning that you have to pay back more than the $500 out of your next paycheque, meaning that you're probably short again as the end of the pay period approaches, meaning that you need another pay day loan. And on and on it goes. The Criminal Code of Canada allows interest rates of up to 60%! So you end up basically working to pay off the pay day loan company. And have you ever wondered why banks keep asking to up your credit card limits? It's because they want you to get hopelessly in over your head so they can make interest off you once you have a balance that you just can't pay off. Debt is a burdensome thing, and so many people who are in debt  can never get out of debt. They constantly owe their creditor. They can't live their life in freedom, or even with any hope for freedom. The parable uses this every day problem to make a spiritual point.

     In the parable, the debt in question is huge: ten thousand bags of gold, or (in traditional language) ten thousand talents. If you think that this at least puts a limit on the debt owed, think again: in ancient Greek culture, the highest number possible was 10,000. There was no higher number.  In the modern world it's like a child trying to imagine the biggest number possible and you hear something like “a million, billion, trillion, jillion, kazillion times.” In context, then, Jesus is saying “the sky's the limit” when it comes to the first man's debt to the king. He cannot pay it off; he has no hope of paying it off; he is constantly in bondage to the king, and in this first case the response to the unpayable debt is an unimaginable forgiveness. The traditional rule of the rabbis was to forgive someone three times. When Peter asks about offering forgiveness seven times, then, he's being surprisingly generous – going above and beyond the call of duty. Jesus essentially makes the amount of forgiveness to be offered the equivalent of the unimaginable debt.  Depending on the translation it's either seventy-seven times or seventy times seven times, but it doesn't really matter, because the number Jesus uses is as symbolic as 10,000 bags of gold, or “a million, billion, trillion, jillion, kazillion times.” So much traditional Christian language and so many of our hymns speak of the huge debt we owe God – and that misses the point. The debt is forgiven. It doesn't exist anymore. The forgiveness God has given us is unimagineable.

     This debt is huge – and so is the forgiveness granted, and so is the forgiveness demanded in response. By way of comparison, while the first man owed the king an unimaginable debt, the second man owed the first man “a hundred silver coins – or a denarius - what would be the equivalent today of about 16 cents. I talked last week about the need to offer forgiveness if one receives forgiveness, so I'm not going to dwell on that again. The point of the parable is about getting out of debt or being held in debt. I was thinking this morning as I watched the news about the George Zimmerman trial in Florida. Zimmerman is the Neighbourhood Watch guy who shot and killed an unarmed teenager named Trayvon Martin who was carrying nothing but a bag of Skittles for no good reason except – I guess – because he was a black teenager in a neighbourhood where he wasn't supposed to be. Zimmerman was found not guilty yesterday. This morning it was being speculated that the Martin family might file a civil suit – basically asking for money in repayment of the “debt.” One family member said that they hadn't decided what to do, but that money could never pay them back. The truth is that nothing can pay them back. I don't know if the Martin family can get to the point of forgiveness toward Zimmerman. That would be tough. I'm not sure I could do it. But acknowledging that the debt can't be paid would be a good first step toward forgiveness. Dealing with simpler matters, let me ask you: how would you feel if the credit card companies wiped out your debt? Or if the bank said to just forget about making payments on your mortgage? Or if the car dealership said “just take it. You don't have to pay.” Jesus is saying that this is the sort of thing that God does. This is what forgiveness is. This is what we are called to do.

     Real forgiveness – the way we see it described in the Bible – is quite simply not holding people in your debt. When we refuse to forgive someone we are, in a way, saying that they owe us something, that we deserve something from them, that nothing they do can satisfy us. We already have that problem in our relationship with God. We owe a lot to God – more than can ever possibly be repaid. And that could put us into bondage. It could take away our freedom. The parable ends on a bit of an ominous note, speaking of the person who won't forgive the debt being tortured by the jailer. Understand, though, that in the parable it's the jailers doing the torturing, and in the parable God isn't the jailer. The jailer who tortures the one who won't forgive might well be unforgiveness itself – which forces a burden on us, which eats our soul away and saps our life of joy. God won't prevent that from happening - but God desires us to live in freedom, and so God solves the problem of unpaid debt by simply cancelling the debt and choosing not to hold us in bondage. Consider the mortgage covered. Consider the car paid off. Consider the credit card debts wiped clean. Consider what you could have the freedom to do if you had no debts at all. None. Zero. 

     This is not forgive and forget. God doesn't forget. But it is a reminder that we no longer owe God anything – whether in the Old Testament system of sacrifices, or in the way Christians often think they repay God – with good works. We owe God everything, and yet at the same time we owe God nothing, because our debt is forgiven. We are not in God's debt, because being indebted to God would take away our freedom as children of God. We offer forgiveness for the same reason – so that people are free from their burdens to us to live as children of God, or at least to seek God. Forgiveness takes away indebtedness. Taking away indebtedness gives freedom. That's what God does for us. That's what forgiveness is all about.

Monday 8 July 2013

A Thought For The Week Of July 8

"But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope." (1 Thessalonians 4:13, NRSV) Is there anything that causes us more despair than death? I doubt it. And that means that there's a lot of despair in the world. I live in a relatively small city of under 20,000 people. From what I can see there have been 17 funerals organized by the two funeral homes in our town in the last month - and who knows how many by funeral homes located outside town? People are grieving. Which is appropriate, of course. Death separates us from someone we love. And it isn't just people. We grieve all the things that death takes from us. I spoke to neighbours yesterday. They had just had their 8 year old dog euthanized because of bone marrow cancer that was causing her great pain. They were grieving the loss. Death can easily cause us to lose hope. But isn't this the purpose of the gospel? People try to turn the gospel into a rule book, or into little more than an empty feel-good message, or they deny its power altogether. But the gospel is hope to those who believe. Not empty hope, and not wishful thinking. It is hope - as I say at funerals - "the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." This is why Paul used the words he used in 1 Thessalonians. He didn't tell Christians not to grieve. I know Christians who think it's wrong to grieve, because they think we should rejoice that death has taken our loved ones to a better place. But that's not what Paul said. He said not to grieve "as others do who have no hope." In other words, grieve by all means, but do not let grief overwhelm you; do not give grief the last word. Many people are grieving - because of death or other significant loss or change in their lives. And that's all right and natural. But let the hope of the gospel see you through the time of grief into a time of increased faith as you discover that, indeed, the light of God continues to shine even in the greatest darkness. Have a great week!

Sunday 7 July 2013

July 7 sermon - On Forgiveness: It's In The Middle Of The Lord's Prayer For A Reason

This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:9-15)

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     You could say that it's all about consistency.  As Christians, we have to live consistent lives. It gets put many ways: “Practice what you preach.” “Make your actions match your words.” Or, more appropriately perhaps for those of faith, “Walk the talk.” Faith does a lot of talking. Churches and pastors and individual Christians say a lot of things, and they often say them with great authority, and for the most part they expect (or, at least, they hope!) that the people they're speaking to will pay attention to them. But why would people listen to us if we don't live up to what we say we believe – or, if we don't live up to what people know that we at least profess to believe. I mean, even if you never speak about your faith to anyone, there are people who are going to know that you attend church, and because of that they expect a certain kind of life from you – certain behaviours that match the values and teachings of Christ – and my experience is that a lot of those who say they're not Christians are very aware of Christ's teachings and of His example, and they're quite willing to point out where we don't follow them. And so they don't listen to us. The point is that we have to be consistent in how we live our lives.

     There's nothing that turns people off the church more than what they perceive as hypocrisy. Oh, some will say church is boring, and some will say that they just don't believe what the church believes, but what you hear from non-churchgoers on a fairly regular basis is this refrain: “The church is full of hypocrites!” That hurts, doesn't it. We're not hypocrites. We're very sincere. But the refrain has been around for a long time. When Mahatma Gandhi tried to attend a Christian church in South Africa more than a hundred years ago, he was turned away at the door – because he wasn't white. One of the things he said for the rest of his life was, “I admire your Christ, but you Christians are so unlike your Christ.” There's more than enough evidence for us to say that Gandhi's words are still true. I suppose that some “hypocrisy” is inevitable: we're not perfect, after all, and so even if we know what Christ wants of us the unfortunate reality is that we won't always do it perfectly. But people might cut us some slack if only they could see us trying! And that's where it becomes truly sad – because there are Christians who must know that their actions or behaviours aren't matching their faith, and yet they persist in those actions and behaviours.

     My theme for July is going to be “On Forgiveness.” It's an important topic because it may be the one point where Christians fall down most easily. Really - it's so easy to talk about forgiveness, isn't it. Forgiveness is easy to talk about, but it's a lot more difficult to live forgiveness out. Over the years, I've seen a lot of unforgiveness in churches, and I've seen that unforgiveness do a lot of damage – to the church and to the people involved. Unforgiveness leads to anger, to bitterness, and to divisions. Unforgiveness is a sign of serious spiritual sickness. If we want to be spiritually healthy, we need to learn about forgiveness and we need to display it where necessary.

     Today's Scripture was Matthew's version of what we now call “The Lord's Prayer.” It's kind of a strange name, because this isn't actually a prayer. Jesus didn't pray it. He used it as what you might call a template for His disciples to help them understand how to pray, and as a template, the structure is interesting. The Lord's Prayer begins by acknowledging the qualities of God, and it ends by acknowledging our needs. But there's a little bit of a “bridge” part to the Lord's Prayer that does both:

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

     Those words are pretty much right in the middle of the Lord's Prayer. As we say it traditionally, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It's basically the same thing. Next week, I want to talk a little bit more about what exactly forgiveness is and we'll think about those two words. But for today, my point is that based on the template, forgiveness is what everything else in The Lord's Prayer revolves around. Maybe the point Jesus was making to His disciples was that forgiveness (and unforgiveness for that matter) are the centre of the Christian faith around which everything else revolves. Unless we can at least make a sincere effort to master the art of forgiveness (and it is an art) everything else in our lives of faith runs the risk of falling apart.

     Think here about the solar system for a moment. If the sun in the centre of the solar system were to suddenly disappear, all the planets (and everything else – dwarf planets, and asteroids and comets) would soar off in all different directions because there would be no gravity to control them. The planets would still exist, but the solar system would be in chaos, and in fact it wouldn't even really exist – because how can you have a solar system without a sun? Forgiveness works in a similar way in a life of Christian faith. Some would say that love is the centre, but love without forgiveness wouldn't work. As I pointed out last week, Jesus wants us to love our enemies – and to do that there has to be an element of forgiveness involved! Otherwise we'll simply love those who love us, or at least those who haven't hurt us – and there's not a lot of challenge to that! If there is no forgiveness in our lives, then (just like the solar system without the sun) all the other Christian gifts and qualities we show would suddenly have no centre around which to organize themselves. We might still do nice things and we might still live good lives, but if there's no forgiveness then bitterness and anger will eventually overtake us – because eventually someone's going to let us down or hurt us - and unless we can forgive them our faith will be in chaos, just like planets without a sun to revolve around.

     Jesus' teaching on prayer sees this as a two way street: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” That means that we need to be both forgiven and forgiving. As the old song says about love and marriage – you can't have one without the other. If we're being honest, we need to seek God's forgiveness because we haven't got it all right, we have done things we shouldn't have done, and we have hurt people around us from time to time. If there's anyone here today who can say in all honesty that you've never hurt another person's feelings by doing or saying something thoughtless, then you're either completely oblivious or you're a far better person than I am. But I believe we all do thoughtless and even hurtful things from time to time, and when we do these things, it isn't only our relationship with other people that suffers – it's our relationship with God. So we need to acknowledge our need for God's forgiveness as a first step. But we need to be consistent. If we seek God's forgiveness for ourselves, we have to offer our forgiveness to others. You can't truly be forgiven if you are not willing to be forgiving. We'll explore that a little more over the next month as well.

     Sometimes we say The Lord's Prayer so often in church and at other times that it becomes a rather thoughtless thing; little more than a set of words that we've been able to memorize. Perhaps we don't really listen to what it is that we're praying when we pray The Lord's Prayer. Perhaps we forget that it's really a teaching from Jesus about how to live a life that's faithful to God and how to pray in a manner that's faithful to God – not in these words, but in this way. And if we listen for the teaching contained within The Lord's Prayer we discover that among other things there's a call for us to live consistent lives of faith. There's a call for us to “practice what we preach;” there's a call for us to “make our actions match our words;” there's a call for us to, yes, “walk the talk.” In a way, Jesus is reminding us not only to go to church, He's reminding us that we actually have to live in such a way that our faith makes a difference. Jesus is probably saying to us, “Practice what you preach!” “Make your actions match your words!” “Walk the talk!” Be consistent, in other words, because if we can't be consistent about as important a thing as forgiveness, then why should anyone listen to anything we have to say about anything else?

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

     Challenging, isn't it! But then again – the gospel is supposed to be a challenge!

Monday 1 July 2013

A Thought For The Week Of July 1

"He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth." (Psalm 72:8, KJV) As I mark Canada Day - the 146th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, I found myself drawn to this verse. I don't very often use the King James Version of the Bible, but the KJV version of this verse in significant in this country. Our national motto - "A mari usque ad mare" - comes from the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, and it means "from sea to sea." Partly, this verse also gives significance to the fact that our country is, technically, the Dominion of Canada. Historically, I suppose, it meant we were a dominion of the British crown, but there's also an attempt to link the nation with God. That can be a dangerous thing. Religion and nationalism or patriotism are not always easy fits, and the attempt to blend the two can result in a lot of tragedies, with the nation becoming little more than an idol, and doing the will of the nation becoming more important than doing the will of God. Nations, after all, are always convinced that God is on their "side" whenever they march off to war. I suppose, in a way, God is on all sides of war - reaching out to the warriors, and trying to remind all of the gospel imperative to love not only neighbours, but even enemies. That's one reason I like to remember this national motto, this verse of Scripture, and what it means (or should mean) in our national life. There's no corner of life (not even our relationship to our nation) that falls outside God's dominion - outside God's sovereignty. And the same applies to all nations. God is not the God of Canada, or the God of the United States, or the God of Iran. God is the God of Canadians - and also of Americans and of Iranians. God is simply God, and God calls us to an allegiance beyond patriotism - an allegiance to the gospel values of love, peace, compassion and reconciliation. I'm proud to be a Canadian, yes. Most certainly. But I'm grateful to be a child of God. That's far more precious. Have a great week!