We tend to simplify the complicated and complicate the simple. It's only human, I suppose. So when someone comes along and uses simple language to speak to the depths of our faithful existence, our ears perk up. Here's a bit of that today...
Do all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
To all the people you can
As long as ever you can.
- John Wesley
Yes. Please. Amen.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen."
Sermon on Sunday, October 24, 2010
Ephesians 1:3-14
Matthew 6:7-13
God doesn’t belong to us. We belong to God. That’s the sermon today, really, and I could stop there. God doesn’t belong to us. We belong to God. That would be an amazingly short sermon, though, wouldn’t it? So I suppose I’ll elaborate for at least a few more minutes…
This morning we find ourselves at the end of our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer. And today I’m going to tackle that big chunk at the end: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, amen.”
Again and again during this series, it has occurred to me that a world of meaning lies behind each of these little phrases in this prayer that we say together so often. On more than a few occasions, I’ve been able to imagine preaching from the Lord’s Prayer indefinitely—long enough, perhaps, to make some of you wish it wasn’t in the Bible to begin with! But once again, my hope in preaching on the Lord’s Prayer is that we find ourselves praying through it with more intentionality than ever before—that each time we begin to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven…” we can resist the temptation to set our minds on auto-pilot—that we can summon deep connections and convictions within us, and that the words of the Lord’s Prayer become for us a continuous call to think and live more vividly in our faith.
Our section of the prayer today begins with the phrase, “Lead us not into temptation,” and I’ll confess to you that it’s the part of the prayer with which I have the most trouble. “Lead us not into temptation…” I tend to think that we do just fine leading ourselves into temptation, and so I’m not sure that God needs convincing in this department. But that’s an image of God that’s really out there, isn’t it? That notion of a God who’s got the whole world hanging on the puppet strings, and God’s up there, making it all happen. Stuff happens here on earth, and it looks random and unplanned, but really God’s got it all mapped out, and minute by minute, God’s up there pulling the strings, keeping it all going.
That’s an image of God we need to get rid of, by the way—a God who doesn’t love the world, but who operates the world.
Still, the truth is that in this world that is so loved by God, temptations exist. Sometimes daily. We’re tempted by simple things—a juicy piece of gossip or a convenient lie…
But we’re also tempted by more subtle and complicated forces. Greed, envy, lust, mistrust… temptations to be something less than who we are and temptations to think of ourselves as more than who we are… Temptations to believe the worst fears we have about the world… to believe, for example, that a mosque in our neighborhood somehow poses a threat and not an opportunity for greater understanding. Temptations to think of the world as “us and them”—Christian and non-Christian, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, black and white, rich and poor…
Susan Retik and Patti Quigley both lost their husbands in the attacks of 9/11. Susan was seven months pregnant and Patti eight months pregnant, when their husbands’ planes crashed that day.
In response to their loss, they created an organization called Beyond the 11th, and since its inception, they’ve helped more than 1,000 widows from Afghanistan start businesses, including one that makes soccer balls and one that raises chickens for selling eggs. Beyond the 11th also supports, among other projects, a literacy center for Afghan women. For the past nine years, their work has grown and flourished, but here’s an amazing statistic: all of it has cost less than keeping one American soldier in Afghanistan for just eight months. (1)
The temptation for Susan and Patti might have been to believe that the world was as evil and worthless as it felt the morning their husbands’ lives were taken. The temptation might have been to live with a pervasive sense of fear and mistrust for the Muslim world. The temptation might have been to give up on any possibility of change for a world broken with violence. But in the end, these women found themselves able to believe in and hope for a world that had been unkind to them.
Sometimes temptations are so real—so overwhelming, that it’s hard to imagine life without them. And so we pray, “Lord, deliver us! Deliver us from evil.” Deliver us from our shortsightedness. Deliver us from our mistrust of others. Deliver us from fear, from hopelessness. Deliver us from our mistaken impression that love and goodness are scarce in this world. Deliver us from evil.
And that’s actually where the Lord’s Prayer ends as it appears in Matthew’s gospel. That’s the last request: deliver us. Somewhere along the line, liturgists added the phrase, “for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.” In that version of the Lord’s Prayer that we used last week in worship, we prayed, “For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever.”
I’d like to end our Lord’s Prayer series by simply wondering about that last word with you—forever.
Fred Craddock, a celebrated thinker and preacher in our tradition, tells this story from his own childhood. He and his father were lying in the grass in their backyard on a warm summer night. He was just a young boy then, and they were lying there, chewing on tender stems of grass, and looking up at the evening sky.
His father said to him, “Son how far can you think?”
The boy said, “What?”
“How far can you think?” his dad asked.
“Well, I don’t know what you mean,” the boy replied.
“Just think as far as you can think up towards the stars.”
The boy looked up, concentrating, and said, “I’m thinking… I’m thinking… I’m thinking…”
“Think as far as you can think,” said his dad.
“Ok. I’m thinking as far as I can think,” the boy said.
And then his dad said, “Well, drive down a stake out there now. In your mind, drive down a stake… Have you driven down the stake? That’s how far you can think.”
The young boy said, “Yes, sir.”
And then his dad said, “Now what’s on the other side of your stake?”
And the boy said, “Well, there’s more sky.”
And his dad said, “Move your stake.”
Fred Craddock says that that summer night, he and his father kept moving his stake further and further out into the night sky. “It was a crazy thing to do,” Craddock admits, “but I can never thank [my father] enough for doing it.” (2)
How far can you think? In a way, that’s the question that the Lord’s Prayer could leave us with each time we pray it. “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever…” Forever. And in some churches, they pray, “and the glory forever and ever…” Either way, forever’s quite a ways, isn’t it?
The Lord’s Prayer ends with an acknowledgement that God’s presence goes on and on and on—that a true endlessness exists when it comes to God’s power and glory.
“How good is God?” we might ask, or “How big is God’s love?”
Think about your answer to that question—“How big is God’s love?”—and put a stake there, and then ask yourself, “What’s on the other side of that stake?”
We will never get to the bottom of God’s love. It is and always will be beyond our ability to name, describe, or contain. So we could end the Lord’s prayer like this, really: “… for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, beyond our limits, beyond our perceptions, beyond our ability to fully comprehend—kingdom, power, and glory infinitely beyond all the words we can summon… amen.”
That’s the “forever” at the end of the Lord’s Prayer—a reminder of God’s nature beyond all we can name or describe.
Had Paul written the Lord’s Prayer, he might have ended it a little differently. In his letter to the Ephesians, he writes, “With all wisdom and insight, God has made known to us the mystery of his will… as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.”
That’s what we acknowledge and celebrate with our “forever” at the end of the Lord’s Prayer—our faith that at the end of it all, in the final forever, in the fullness of time, God is gathering up all things in Christ! All things! Not just the church things, not just the faithful things, certainly not just the Presbyterian things, and not even just the good things, but all things.
In the Lord’s Prayer, we acknowledge week after week that the kingdom and the power and the glory are God’s forever—and that we belong to God too—that we are infinitely part of God’s forever. Put a little more simply, the Lord’s Prayer sets forth a reminder each time we pray it. God doesn’t belong to us. We belong to God. Forever. Amen.
____________________________
1 I first read about Beyond the 11th in the 10/5/10 issue of The Christian Century, but the Century picked it up here.
2 Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, Chalice Press, 2001
Ephesians 1:3-14
Matthew 6:7-13
God doesn’t belong to us. We belong to God. That’s the sermon today, really, and I could stop there. God doesn’t belong to us. We belong to God. That would be an amazingly short sermon, though, wouldn’t it? So I suppose I’ll elaborate for at least a few more minutes…
This morning we find ourselves at the end of our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer. And today I’m going to tackle that big chunk at the end: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, amen.”
Again and again during this series, it has occurred to me that a world of meaning lies behind each of these little phrases in this prayer that we say together so often. On more than a few occasions, I’ve been able to imagine preaching from the Lord’s Prayer indefinitely—long enough, perhaps, to make some of you wish it wasn’t in the Bible to begin with! But once again, my hope in preaching on the Lord’s Prayer is that we find ourselves praying through it with more intentionality than ever before—that each time we begin to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven…” we can resist the temptation to set our minds on auto-pilot—that we can summon deep connections and convictions within us, and that the words of the Lord’s Prayer become for us a continuous call to think and live more vividly in our faith.
Our section of the prayer today begins with the phrase, “Lead us not into temptation,” and I’ll confess to you that it’s the part of the prayer with which I have the most trouble. “Lead us not into temptation…” I tend to think that we do just fine leading ourselves into temptation, and so I’m not sure that God needs convincing in this department. But that’s an image of God that’s really out there, isn’t it? That notion of a God who’s got the whole world hanging on the puppet strings, and God’s up there, making it all happen. Stuff happens here on earth, and it looks random and unplanned, but really God’s got it all mapped out, and minute by minute, God’s up there pulling the strings, keeping it all going.
That’s an image of God we need to get rid of, by the way—a God who doesn’t love the world, but who operates the world.
Still, the truth is that in this world that is so loved by God, temptations exist. Sometimes daily. We’re tempted by simple things—a juicy piece of gossip or a convenient lie…
But we’re also tempted by more subtle and complicated forces. Greed, envy, lust, mistrust… temptations to be something less than who we are and temptations to think of ourselves as more than who we are… Temptations to believe the worst fears we have about the world… to believe, for example, that a mosque in our neighborhood somehow poses a threat and not an opportunity for greater understanding. Temptations to think of the world as “us and them”—Christian and non-Christian, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, black and white, rich and poor…
Susan Retik and Patti Quigley both lost their husbands in the attacks of 9/11. Susan was seven months pregnant and Patti eight months pregnant, when their husbands’ planes crashed that day.
In response to their loss, they created an organization called Beyond the 11th, and since its inception, they’ve helped more than 1,000 widows from Afghanistan start businesses, including one that makes soccer balls and one that raises chickens for selling eggs. Beyond the 11th also supports, among other projects, a literacy center for Afghan women. For the past nine years, their work has grown and flourished, but here’s an amazing statistic: all of it has cost less than keeping one American soldier in Afghanistan for just eight months. (1)
The temptation for Susan and Patti might have been to believe that the world was as evil and worthless as it felt the morning their husbands’ lives were taken. The temptation might have been to live with a pervasive sense of fear and mistrust for the Muslim world. The temptation might have been to give up on any possibility of change for a world broken with violence. But in the end, these women found themselves able to believe in and hope for a world that had been unkind to them.
Sometimes temptations are so real—so overwhelming, that it’s hard to imagine life without them. And so we pray, “Lord, deliver us! Deliver us from evil.” Deliver us from our shortsightedness. Deliver us from our mistrust of others. Deliver us from fear, from hopelessness. Deliver us from our mistaken impression that love and goodness are scarce in this world. Deliver us from evil.
And that’s actually where the Lord’s Prayer ends as it appears in Matthew’s gospel. That’s the last request: deliver us. Somewhere along the line, liturgists added the phrase, “for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.” In that version of the Lord’s Prayer that we used last week in worship, we prayed, “For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever.”
I’d like to end our Lord’s Prayer series by simply wondering about that last word with you—forever.
Fred Craddock, a celebrated thinker and preacher in our tradition, tells this story from his own childhood. He and his father were lying in the grass in their backyard on a warm summer night. He was just a young boy then, and they were lying there, chewing on tender stems of grass, and looking up at the evening sky.
His father said to him, “Son how far can you think?”
The boy said, “What?”
“How far can you think?” his dad asked.
“Well, I don’t know what you mean,” the boy replied.
“Just think as far as you can think up towards the stars.”
The boy looked up, concentrating, and said, “I’m thinking… I’m thinking… I’m thinking…”
“Think as far as you can think,” said his dad.
“Ok. I’m thinking as far as I can think,” the boy said.
And then his dad said, “Well, drive down a stake out there now. In your mind, drive down a stake… Have you driven down the stake? That’s how far you can think.”
The young boy said, “Yes, sir.”
And then his dad said, “Now what’s on the other side of your stake?”
And the boy said, “Well, there’s more sky.”
And his dad said, “Move your stake.”
Fred Craddock says that that summer night, he and his father kept moving his stake further and further out into the night sky. “It was a crazy thing to do,” Craddock admits, “but I can never thank [my father] enough for doing it.” (2)
How far can you think? In a way, that’s the question that the Lord’s Prayer could leave us with each time we pray it. “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever…” Forever. And in some churches, they pray, “and the glory forever and ever…” Either way, forever’s quite a ways, isn’t it?
The Lord’s Prayer ends with an acknowledgement that God’s presence goes on and on and on—that a true endlessness exists when it comes to God’s power and glory.
“How good is God?” we might ask, or “How big is God’s love?”
Think about your answer to that question—“How big is God’s love?”—and put a stake there, and then ask yourself, “What’s on the other side of that stake?”
We will never get to the bottom of God’s love. It is and always will be beyond our ability to name, describe, or contain. So we could end the Lord’s prayer like this, really: “… for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, beyond our limits, beyond our perceptions, beyond our ability to fully comprehend—kingdom, power, and glory infinitely beyond all the words we can summon… amen.”
That’s the “forever” at the end of the Lord’s Prayer—a reminder of God’s nature beyond all we can name or describe.
Had Paul written the Lord’s Prayer, he might have ended it a little differently. In his letter to the Ephesians, he writes, “With all wisdom and insight, God has made known to us the mystery of his will… as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.”
That’s what we acknowledge and celebrate with our “forever” at the end of the Lord’s Prayer—our faith that at the end of it all, in the final forever, in the fullness of time, God is gathering up all things in Christ! All things! Not just the church things, not just the faithful things, certainly not just the Presbyterian things, and not even just the good things, but all things.
In the Lord’s Prayer, we acknowledge week after week that the kingdom and the power and the glory are God’s forever—and that we belong to God too—that we are infinitely part of God’s forever. Put a little more simply, the Lord’s Prayer sets forth a reminder each time we pray it. God doesn’t belong to us. We belong to God. Forever. Amen.
____________________________
1 I first read about Beyond the 11th in the 10/5/10 issue of The Christian Century, but the Century picked it up here.
2 Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, Chalice Press, 2001
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Evotional - Determined, Repeated, Leisurely
I came across this quote from Eugene Peterson yesterday, and it's been on my mind. Our worship lately has drawn our thinking and believing toward the subject of prayer, and I'm particularly struck by the way he describes it as a "determined, repeated, leisurely" meeting with God. Here's the quote:
"Civilization is littered with unsolved problems, baffling impasses. The best minds of the world are at the end of their tether. The most knowledgeable observers of our condition are badly frightened. The most relevant contribution that Christians make at these points of impasse is the act of prayer -- determined, repeated, leisurely meetings with the personal and living God. New life is conceived in these meetings."
- Eugene H. Peterson, from his book Earth & Altar
I love those words...
Determined. Because we depend on God, because sometimes we have nowhere else to turn, because the "baffling impasses" of this world are beyond our ability to manage or understand, because we don't know what else to do, because ultimately our faith is in God...
Repeated. Because prayer is a practice, because prayer over time calls us more deeply into faithfulness, because prayer is for us, too, and we struggle to listen the first time...
Leisurely. Because prayer isn't about saying the "right" things the "right" way, because God listens openly, because talking with God can be like talking with a trusted friend, because it's never a bad time...
Blessings to you in your prayerful life!
"Civilization is littered with unsolved problems, baffling impasses. The best minds of the world are at the end of their tether. The most knowledgeable observers of our condition are badly frightened. The most relevant contribution that Christians make at these points of impasse is the act of prayer -- determined, repeated, leisurely meetings with the personal and living God. New life is conceived in these meetings."
- Eugene H. Peterson, from his book Earth & Altar
I love those words...
Determined. Because we depend on God, because sometimes we have nowhere else to turn, because the "baffling impasses" of this world are beyond our ability to manage or understand, because we don't know what else to do, because ultimately our faith is in God...
Repeated. Because prayer is a practice, because prayer over time calls us more deeply into faithfulness, because prayer is for us, too, and we struggle to listen the first time...
Leisurely. Because prayer isn't about saying the "right" things the "right" way, because God listens openly, because talking with God can be like talking with a trusted friend, because it's never a bad time...
Blessings to you in your prayerful life!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
"And Forgive Us Our Debts..."
Sermon on Sunday, October 17, 2010
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 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 3:12-13
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a lesson, and so she said to her boys, “If Jesus were sitting here, he would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.’” Kevin thought fast, turned to his younger brother, and said, “Ryan, you be Jesus!”
Sometimes just because we’ve had the lesson doesn’t mean we have any idea what the lesson really means.
Today is the fourth Sunday in our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer, and so we’ll spend some time with the phrase, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” And you could say that we’ve all had the lesson on this one. From an early age, most of us are indoctrinated into some sense of understanding about forgiveness.
In most cases, our early sense of forgiveness was thrust upon us. “Say you’re sorry,” we all heard our parents and teachers order as they tried to resolve conflicts at the breakfast table and on the playground. “You go and apologize right now!” Did you ever hear something like that? “You march over there and say you’re sorry this very instant.” I caught myself intervening the other day with two of my own daughters. There’d been an altercation involving some Polly Pockets, and it had required a time out, after which, in an effort to promote peace and reconciliation in the Johnston-Krase home, I ushered the offender back to the scene of the crime and, before play could resume, asked the offending daughter, “Now what do you say to your sister?”
In so doing, I joined the ranks and ranks of parents who have attempted to force forgiveness on their children, only to have it backfire. You see, my own children are learning, as I did at their age, that the purpose of an apology is often to get you off the hook, or even worse, that the purpose of an apology is to satisfy not the person to whom you’re apologizing, but rather the adult who’s managing the conflict.
Of course, when it comes to helping our children navigate conflict, much of our energy is put into helping them say the right things. Actual forgiveness is a deeper and more complicated issue, and as we grow into adulthood, we all discover that at one time or another.
Most people genuinely aspire to forgive in their daily lives. A while back, a Gallup Poll in this country shared that 94% of the people surveyed felt like it was important to forgive. In that same poll, however, only 48% said that they usually try to forgive. It’s always one thing to say the right things about forgiveness—it’s another to actually put forgiveness into practice. In the same poll, 85% of those surveyed said that they could not forgive on their own and needed outside help.
Sunday after Sunday, we pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Others pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Some Christian churches have found that “debts” and “trespasses” don’t make immediate sense to folks in our culture these days, and so they pray, simply, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” They’re all fine ways to pray a prayer that we struggle to follow.
The early Christian church must have found it difficult too. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul wrote, “Bear with one another and… forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive”—imploring the faithful to mirror God’s forgiveness in their own lives.
“So you also must forgive…” But what does that look like? Mother Theresa said “if we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.” And that’s just it. Forgiveness isn’t simply about accepting an apology, and it’s especially not about accepting an apology that’s been coached by an “adult” or some other authority figure.
In the daily and weekly scrum of living, practicing forgiveness is tough. In the midst of feelings damaged, when we find ourselves as victims, when hurtful words have been said, when we push through the troubled waters of separation and divorce… forgiving can be tough. And yet, as Paul Boese said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” And so it is good for us to name and honor the potential that forgiveness holds for us.
This morning I won’t pretend to make forgiveness easy. The fact that our need to forgive appears so frequently in Scripture reminds us that forgiveness has never been easy. I would like to take some time, however, to help us think a little more openly and perhaps hopefully about forgiveness in our own lives—about the power of forgiveness to “enlarge the future.”
An author I’m liking more and more these days, Lewis Smedes, lifts up four truths about forgiveness that I’d like to share with you today.
The first is that forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself.
When we think about forgiveness, we’re often led to consider the issue of fairness. And it often can feel like forgiveness isn’t fair. Maybe you’ve been hurt or maybe your life has been changed forever because of someone else’s carelessness or meanness. And while forgiving may sound like the “Christian” thing to do, it still doesn’t seem fair, in light of the damage that’s been done. Smedes argues that offering forgiveness may not be about fairness to the other person, but rather fairness to yourself.
“Forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself,” he writes. And so he argues that when someone hurts us, it’s not fair that the hurt goes on and on and on, for the rest of our lives. It’s not fair to us that the one who hurt us once can hurt us again and again in our memory. And so while forgiveness may be about fairness to another person, it’s also, and perhaps more importantly, about fairness to ourselves.
The second truth about forgiveness, according to Lewis Smedes, is that forgivers are not doormats.
That’s an image of forgivers that we need to shake—that image of someone offering forgiveness looking like a doormat, lying down and letting others walk all over him or her.
Smedes tells a story about a woman who learned about being a forgiver without being a doormat. This woman had a five year old son who was playing in the front yard near the curb when a drunk driver swerved off the road and killed him, right in front of the house. The absolute worst thing for a parent to imagine. For two years, she lived in a fog of rage and even fantasized about the most horrible things happening to the man who took her son’s life. She wanted him to somehow suffer more than he had made her suffer.
“Well,” says Smedes, “after living in the misery of her blind, unhealed rage for two years, she woke up to the fact that the drunk who killed her son was now killing her—inside—a day at a time, killing her soul. And she was helping him do it.” With the help of the woman’s priest, she began to forgive even this man, and to send a message to her community and prevent further misery, she began a local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk driving. These two acts went hand in hand. Forgivers are not doormats. They forgive others, but do not tolerate their wrong doing.
The third truth about forgiveness is that you don’t have to wait until someone says they’re sorry.
Sometimes we get to thinking that the beginning of forgiveness is an apology, but that’s not always the case. “I’m sorry” can be nice to hear, when it’s genuine, but sometimes it’s not, and sometimes it never comes.
If we wait for the other person to ask for forgiveness, we just might wait forever, and then we’re the ones stuck with the pain. “Why should you put your future happiness in the hands of an unrepentant person who had hurt you so unfairly to begin with?” Smedes asks. “If you refuse to forgive until he begs you to forgive, you are letting him decide for you when you may be healed of the memory of the rotten thing he did to you.” I can remember talking with Dee Talley, the interim minister in this church before me. We were talking about forgiveness, and Dee made this remark: “Not forgiving another person is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die.”
Waiting for an apology can result in you putting your happiness in the hands of the person who made you unhappy in the first place. Don’t let your forgiveness wait for an “I’m sorry.” Let the other person be responsible for that while you go on healing yourself.
The fourth truth about forgiveness is that forgiving is a journey.
Sometimes forgiveness is a lot like grief. It isn’t over in a day or a week, or even a year. Sometimes it’s part of life’s journey, and it takes time. It may help to remember, then, that forgiveness isn’t about letting someone else off the hook—it’s about healing and recovering in the midst of pain.
And so sometimes we find ourselves struggling to forgive the same person again and again and again. And that’s ok. And while we’re on the subject, let me simply say that sometimes the person we’re struggling to forgive is ourselves. You might hear someone say to you, “Oh, well, you just need to forgive yourself,” but sometimes that’s easier said than done. Forgiveness is a journey, and it can take time.
So, to recap some truths about forgiveness:
1. Forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself.
2. Forgivers are not doormats.
3. You don’t have to wait until someone says they’re sorry.
4. Forgiveness is a journey.
My hope all along in this Lord’s Prayer sermon series is that we might pray the Lord’s Prayer with more hope and intentionality than ever before. I pray today that the prayer, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” might make new and gracious sense to you. I pray, too, that forgiving others and forgiving yourself, you might find your future enlarged with faith and love. Amen.
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 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 3:12-13
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a lesson, and so she said to her boys, “If Jesus were sitting here, he would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.’” Kevin thought fast, turned to his younger brother, and said, “Ryan, you be Jesus!”
Sometimes just because we’ve had the lesson doesn’t mean we have any idea what the lesson really means.
Today is the fourth Sunday in our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer, and so we’ll spend some time with the phrase, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” And you could say that we’ve all had the lesson on this one. From an early age, most of us are indoctrinated into some sense of understanding about forgiveness.
In most cases, our early sense of forgiveness was thrust upon us. “Say you’re sorry,” we all heard our parents and teachers order as they tried to resolve conflicts at the breakfast table and on the playground. “You go and apologize right now!” Did you ever hear something like that? “You march over there and say you’re sorry this very instant.” I caught myself intervening the other day with two of my own daughters. There’d been an altercation involving some Polly Pockets, and it had required a time out, after which, in an effort to promote peace and reconciliation in the Johnston-Krase home, I ushered the offender back to the scene of the crime and, before play could resume, asked the offending daughter, “Now what do you say to your sister?”
In so doing, I joined the ranks and ranks of parents who have attempted to force forgiveness on their children, only to have it backfire. You see, my own children are learning, as I did at their age, that the purpose of an apology is often to get you off the hook, or even worse, that the purpose of an apology is to satisfy not the person to whom you’re apologizing, but rather the adult who’s managing the conflict.
Of course, when it comes to helping our children navigate conflict, much of our energy is put into helping them say the right things. Actual forgiveness is a deeper and more complicated issue, and as we grow into adulthood, we all discover that at one time or another.
Most people genuinely aspire to forgive in their daily lives. A while back, a Gallup Poll in this country shared that 94% of the people surveyed felt like it was important to forgive. In that same poll, however, only 48% said that they usually try to forgive. It’s always one thing to say the right things about forgiveness—it’s another to actually put forgiveness into practice. In the same poll, 85% of those surveyed said that they could not forgive on their own and needed outside help.
Sunday after Sunday, we pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Others pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Some Christian churches have found that “debts” and “trespasses” don’t make immediate sense to folks in our culture these days, and so they pray, simply, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” They’re all fine ways to pray a prayer that we struggle to follow.
The early Christian church must have found it difficult too. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul wrote, “Bear with one another and… forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive”—imploring the faithful to mirror God’s forgiveness in their own lives.
“So you also must forgive…” But what does that look like? Mother Theresa said “if we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.” And that’s just it. Forgiveness isn’t simply about accepting an apology, and it’s especially not about accepting an apology that’s been coached by an “adult” or some other authority figure.
In the daily and weekly scrum of living, practicing forgiveness is tough. In the midst of feelings damaged, when we find ourselves as victims, when hurtful words have been said, when we push through the troubled waters of separation and divorce… forgiving can be tough. And yet, as Paul Boese said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” And so it is good for us to name and honor the potential that forgiveness holds for us.
This morning I won’t pretend to make forgiveness easy. The fact that our need to forgive appears so frequently in Scripture reminds us that forgiveness has never been easy. I would like to take some time, however, to help us think a little more openly and perhaps hopefully about forgiveness in our own lives—about the power of forgiveness to “enlarge the future.”
An author I’m liking more and more these days, Lewis Smedes, lifts up four truths about forgiveness that I’d like to share with you today.
The first is that forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself.
When we think about forgiveness, we’re often led to consider the issue of fairness. And it often can feel like forgiveness isn’t fair. Maybe you’ve been hurt or maybe your life has been changed forever because of someone else’s carelessness or meanness. And while forgiving may sound like the “Christian” thing to do, it still doesn’t seem fair, in light of the damage that’s been done. Smedes argues that offering forgiveness may not be about fairness to the other person, but rather fairness to yourself.
“Forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself,” he writes. And so he argues that when someone hurts us, it’s not fair that the hurt goes on and on and on, for the rest of our lives. It’s not fair to us that the one who hurt us once can hurt us again and again in our memory. And so while forgiveness may be about fairness to another person, it’s also, and perhaps more importantly, about fairness to ourselves.
The second truth about forgiveness, according to Lewis Smedes, is that forgivers are not doormats.
That’s an image of forgivers that we need to shake—that image of someone offering forgiveness looking like a doormat, lying down and letting others walk all over him or her.
Smedes tells a story about a woman who learned about being a forgiver without being a doormat. This woman had a five year old son who was playing in the front yard near the curb when a drunk driver swerved off the road and killed him, right in front of the house. The absolute worst thing for a parent to imagine. For two years, she lived in a fog of rage and even fantasized about the most horrible things happening to the man who took her son’s life. She wanted him to somehow suffer more than he had made her suffer.
“Well,” says Smedes, “after living in the misery of her blind, unhealed rage for two years, she woke up to the fact that the drunk who killed her son was now killing her—inside—a day at a time, killing her soul. And she was helping him do it.” With the help of the woman’s priest, she began to forgive even this man, and to send a message to her community and prevent further misery, she began a local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk driving. These two acts went hand in hand. Forgivers are not doormats. They forgive others, but do not tolerate their wrong doing.
The third truth about forgiveness is that you don’t have to wait until someone says they’re sorry.
Sometimes we get to thinking that the beginning of forgiveness is an apology, but that’s not always the case. “I’m sorry” can be nice to hear, when it’s genuine, but sometimes it’s not, and sometimes it never comes.
If we wait for the other person to ask for forgiveness, we just might wait forever, and then we’re the ones stuck with the pain. “Why should you put your future happiness in the hands of an unrepentant person who had hurt you so unfairly to begin with?” Smedes asks. “If you refuse to forgive until he begs you to forgive, you are letting him decide for you when you may be healed of the memory of the rotten thing he did to you.” I can remember talking with Dee Talley, the interim minister in this church before me. We were talking about forgiveness, and Dee made this remark: “Not forgiving another person is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die.”
Waiting for an apology can result in you putting your happiness in the hands of the person who made you unhappy in the first place. Don’t let your forgiveness wait for an “I’m sorry.” Let the other person be responsible for that while you go on healing yourself.
The fourth truth about forgiveness is that forgiving is a journey.
Sometimes forgiveness is a lot like grief. It isn’t over in a day or a week, or even a year. Sometimes it’s part of life’s journey, and it takes time. It may help to remember, then, that forgiveness isn’t about letting someone else off the hook—it’s about healing and recovering in the midst of pain.
And so sometimes we find ourselves struggling to forgive the same person again and again and again. And that’s ok. And while we’re on the subject, let me simply say that sometimes the person we’re struggling to forgive is ourselves. You might hear someone say to you, “Oh, well, you just need to forgive yourself,” but sometimes that’s easier said than done. Forgiveness is a journey, and it can take time.
So, to recap some truths about forgiveness:
1. Forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself.
2. Forgivers are not doormats.
3. You don’t have to wait until someone says they’re sorry.
4. Forgiveness is a journey.
My hope all along in this Lord’s Prayer sermon series is that we might pray the Lord’s Prayer with more hope and intentionality than ever before. I pray today that the prayer, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” might make new and gracious sense to you. I pray, too, that forgiving others and forgiving yourself, you might find your future enlarged with faith and love. Amen.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Evotional - Autumn Thoughts
Two pieces to share today and then a thought of my own. First, a prayer/poem...
"Turn my Soil"
Turn over
Gently
My dry, cracked soil.
Just a little,
Let it breathe
In the cooling air of autumn
And then be watered
By Your life-giving rain.
- Kathy Keay, England
And a line from the Psalms...
"When you send forth your spirit, all is created;
and you renew the face of the ground."
- Psalm 104:30
These cooler fall days bring us to a time of harvest and, eventually, to a time of winter rest. But even the beginning signs of decay that we see these days - dry corn stalks, crackly leaves, frost-tinged tomato plants - all come as reminders of an ancient rhythm of life and death and new life. The smell of autum is the smell of creation slowly and graciously returning to the soil, where it will await the day it can energize the next generation of shoots and saplings.
As you consider the rhythms of your existence - rhythms of joy and grief, loss and birth - may you feel God's patient presence, gently turning over the patches of dry, cracked soil in your life, making room, perhaps for the promise of new growth.
Peace,
Pastor Ben
"Turn my Soil"
Turn over
Gently
My dry, cracked soil.
Just a little,
Let it breathe
In the cooling air of autumn
And then be watered
By Your life-giving rain.
- Kathy Keay, England
And a line from the Psalms...
"When you send forth your spirit, all is created;
and you renew the face of the ground."
- Psalm 104:30
These cooler fall days bring us to a time of harvest and, eventually, to a time of winter rest. But even the beginning signs of decay that we see these days - dry corn stalks, crackly leaves, frost-tinged tomato plants - all come as reminders of an ancient rhythm of life and death and new life. The smell of autum is the smell of creation slowly and graciously returning to the soil, where it will await the day it can energize the next generation of shoots and saplings.
As you consider the rhythms of your existence - rhythms of joy and grief, loss and birth - may you feel God's patient presence, gently turning over the patches of dry, cracked soil in your life, making room, perhaps for the promise of new growth.
Peace,
Pastor Ben
Monday, October 4, 2010
"Give us this day our daily bread"
Sermon on Sunday, October 3, 2010
I Corinthians 10:16-17
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
Have you ever prayed for something you didn’t want? You can think about it for a moment. Have you ever prayed for something—anything—that you didn’t really want?
Maybe you thanked God for the rain when you really wanted to play a round of golf. Maybe you prayed for forgiveness when you really wanted revenge. Maybe you prayed for strength to get through the day when what you really wanted was permission to go back to bed.
Let me ask you: When you pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” are you praying for something you don’t really want? Keep that question in mind for a moment.
Today is Sunday number three in our series on the Lord’s Prayer, and so we’ll spend some time with “Give us this day our daily bread.” Given the fact that today is also World Communion Sunday, it makes sense for us to think about bread this morning. All over the world, Christians are breaking it together and remembering Christ in their communion. Today, all over the world, we’re coming together around bread as we break and share it.
All over the world, you know, there’s enough food to feed everybody. Every body. As of today, just fifteen minutes before worship, in fact, the world population is 6,872,695,540 (http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html). And it’s amazing, but there is enough food on the planet to sustain all of us. Based on the amount of food produced globally, there’s enough to provide each and every person in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories a day. (World Hunger Education Service, www.worldhunger.org) That’s a staggering amount of food available on the globe, but of course the problem is that for too many, it’s simply not available. Roughly 925 million people in the world—most of them women and children—are hungry every single day.
Meanwhile, folks here in the United States throw away roughly 40% of their food. Statistics vary on this, but it’s estimated that every year, 38 billion dollars worth of food is thrown away in this country.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” Huh. Interesting request, given the fact that we’re likely to throw almost half of it away. So back to my initial question: When we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” are we asking for something we don’t really want? Don’t we really mean to pray, “Give us this day and tomorrow and the next day and the next more food than we could possibly eat. Give us enough food to fill our stomachs and our refrigerators and our pantries and our basement shelves and our trashcans”? Well, that would be a ridiculous prayer to make, but judging by the amount of food we buy, store, consume, and waste, it might not be that out of line.
What if we got all we ever prayed for, but what if all we every prayed for was daily bread? That’s not really something we’re comfortable expecting. We’re a little too rattled by the prospect of scarcity to live that way.
Does anyone here remember Harold Froehlich? Froehlich was a US Congressman from Wisconsin back in the 1970’s. In 1973, his first year in office, he issued a report stating that the federal government was falling behind in getting bids to supply toilet paper. Froehlich claimed, therefore, that the United States could face a serious shortage of toilet tissue within months.
Without CSPAN or instant news on the internet, this announcement may have passed by unnoticed, except for the fact that that very night, during his opening monologue on the Tonight Show, Johnny Carson made it into a joke. “You know what's disappearing from the supermarket shelves?” Carson asked. “Toilet paper. There's an acute shortage of toilet paper in the United States.” The very next morning, millions of people across the country ran out and bought as much toilet paper as they could possibly carry. By noon, every store in America was out, and it took three long weeks to get it back in stock.
We’re not comfortable with scarcity. Whether it’s toilet paper or oil or energy or food, the possibility of a shortage seizes us and we respond with fearful behavior. I was living in Texas when hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast, and during those weeks when the storms came, you could hardly find bottled water in stock on the shelves, and we were a good four hours from the ocean. In our comfortable abundance, we don’t like even the possibility of scarcity.
We’re closing in quickly on another election in this country, and so the political rhetoric is ratcheting up once again. As Americans continue to endure the recession, I’ve heard politicians talk about our standard of living. Mainly, they seem to prey on fears that it’s on the decline. “Let’s not give the next generation an inferior standard of living,” we hear them say. Or, “Our standard of living is in danger of decay for the first time in generations.”
Now it’s not that I’m not worried about the future at all, but I question just what “standards” we’re struggling to maintain here. Should it be “standard” that we throw away half of our food? Should it be “standard” that our closets are bursting with clothes? Should it be “standard” that on average, we each use 160 gallons of fresh water a day while the rest of the world lives on just 25? Should it be “standard” that though we make up just 5% of the world’s population, we use a fourth of its fuel? I’d love to hear a politician stand up and say, “Our standards, by and large, are ridiculous!” Because if we don’t get wise about our standard of living, we certainly will suffer.
Jesus teaches us to pray, simply, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That’s a standard of living we’re praying for…
Give us this day that which we need today.
Provide us today, God, with the food, the energy, the things that are necessary.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Give us not heaped-up stores for days and days come.
Give us not the false promise that nothing will go wrong.
Give us not more than we could possibly use.
Give us not sinfully more than we need.
Just our daily bread, God—that will be enough.
Enough. Sometimes “enough” can be a hard concept to pin down. So I’d like to issue a prayerful invitation for you today. I’d like for you to take a moment, right now, to think of a few things that sustain you each day. Just three or four things. Maybe five. These are the things that sustain you as a person each and every day. Food. Work. A place to live. Of course, we’re sustained by much more that food and shelter. Maybe other things are coming to mind for you. What sustains you each day? Family? Church family? Friends?
Another way of thinking about what sustains you is thinking about what you can’t imagine living without. People. Connections. Sources of love, hope, strength. When you get a chance, jot down those things—write down those three or four or seven things that sustain you each and every day. And then each morning from now until you start forgetting, I’d like to invite you to pray this prayer:
“Give me today my daily bread. In other words, God, help me receive as a gift that which sustains me. My family—help me receive it as a gift. My church—help me embrace it as a gift. My spouse, my children, my friends—help me receive them as gifts in my life, my daily bread that sustains me. My faith, my hope, my God—help me receive you as a gift each day that I live. Even my food—my literal daily bread—help me receive it as a daily gift that sustains me. God, give me today my daily bread. Help me be satisfied in that which will sustain me today. Help me not to worry about the bread I don’t have yet. Help me trust that you hold my entire life in your care. And while I’m praying for my daily bread, God, let me reach out to those who are not sustained in your world—those who go without food, without shelter, without love. May my daily bread give me strength to care for myself and for others, so that perhaps a part of your kingdom might come.”
In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul reflects on Jesus sharing daily bread with his followers, and asks, “The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” And then he makes this wonderful claim: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”
Today we join sisters and brothers all over the world. All of us, coming together at the communion table, and in our bread-breaking, we declare an impossible and yet amazing truth—that we are one in Christ. One body of Christ, spread all over Wisconsin and North America and China and Pakistan…
In our bread-breaking today, and in our communion, let us be mindful of our global family of faith, and in so doing, let us be thankful for that which sustains us, mindful of that which we need, and generous with the rest. Amen.
I Corinthians 10:16-17
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
Have you ever prayed for something you didn’t want? You can think about it for a moment. Have you ever prayed for something—anything—that you didn’t really want?
Maybe you thanked God for the rain when you really wanted to play a round of golf. Maybe you prayed for forgiveness when you really wanted revenge. Maybe you prayed for strength to get through the day when what you really wanted was permission to go back to bed.
Let me ask you: When you pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” are you praying for something you don’t really want? Keep that question in mind for a moment.
Today is Sunday number three in our series on the Lord’s Prayer, and so we’ll spend some time with “Give us this day our daily bread.” Given the fact that today is also World Communion Sunday, it makes sense for us to think about bread this morning. All over the world, Christians are breaking it together and remembering Christ in their communion. Today, all over the world, we’re coming together around bread as we break and share it.
All over the world, you know, there’s enough food to feed everybody. Every body. As of today, just fifteen minutes before worship, in fact, the world population is 6,872,695,540 (http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html). And it’s amazing, but there is enough food on the planet to sustain all of us. Based on the amount of food produced globally, there’s enough to provide each and every person in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories a day. (World Hunger Education Service, www.worldhunger.org) That’s a staggering amount of food available on the globe, but of course the problem is that for too many, it’s simply not available. Roughly 925 million people in the world—most of them women and children—are hungry every single day.
Meanwhile, folks here in the United States throw away roughly 40% of their food. Statistics vary on this, but it’s estimated that every year, 38 billion dollars worth of food is thrown away in this country.
“Give us this day our daily bread.” Huh. Interesting request, given the fact that we’re likely to throw almost half of it away. So back to my initial question: When we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” are we asking for something we don’t really want? Don’t we really mean to pray, “Give us this day and tomorrow and the next day and the next more food than we could possibly eat. Give us enough food to fill our stomachs and our refrigerators and our pantries and our basement shelves and our trashcans”? Well, that would be a ridiculous prayer to make, but judging by the amount of food we buy, store, consume, and waste, it might not be that out of line.
What if we got all we ever prayed for, but what if all we every prayed for was daily bread? That’s not really something we’re comfortable expecting. We’re a little too rattled by the prospect of scarcity to live that way.
Does anyone here remember Harold Froehlich? Froehlich was a US Congressman from Wisconsin back in the 1970’s. In 1973, his first year in office, he issued a report stating that the federal government was falling behind in getting bids to supply toilet paper. Froehlich claimed, therefore, that the United States could face a serious shortage of toilet tissue within months.
Without CSPAN or instant news on the internet, this announcement may have passed by unnoticed, except for the fact that that very night, during his opening monologue on the Tonight Show, Johnny Carson made it into a joke. “You know what's disappearing from the supermarket shelves?” Carson asked. “Toilet paper. There's an acute shortage of toilet paper in the United States.” The very next morning, millions of people across the country ran out and bought as much toilet paper as they could possibly carry. By noon, every store in America was out, and it took three long weeks to get it back in stock.
We’re not comfortable with scarcity. Whether it’s toilet paper or oil or energy or food, the possibility of a shortage seizes us and we respond with fearful behavior. I was living in Texas when hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast, and during those weeks when the storms came, you could hardly find bottled water in stock on the shelves, and we were a good four hours from the ocean. In our comfortable abundance, we don’t like even the possibility of scarcity.
We’re closing in quickly on another election in this country, and so the political rhetoric is ratcheting up once again. As Americans continue to endure the recession, I’ve heard politicians talk about our standard of living. Mainly, they seem to prey on fears that it’s on the decline. “Let’s not give the next generation an inferior standard of living,” we hear them say. Or, “Our standard of living is in danger of decay for the first time in generations.”
Now it’s not that I’m not worried about the future at all, but I question just what “standards” we’re struggling to maintain here. Should it be “standard” that we throw away half of our food? Should it be “standard” that our closets are bursting with clothes? Should it be “standard” that on average, we each use 160 gallons of fresh water a day while the rest of the world lives on just 25? Should it be “standard” that though we make up just 5% of the world’s population, we use a fourth of its fuel? I’d love to hear a politician stand up and say, “Our standards, by and large, are ridiculous!” Because if we don’t get wise about our standard of living, we certainly will suffer.
Jesus teaches us to pray, simply, “Give us this day our daily bread.” That’s a standard of living we’re praying for…
Give us this day that which we need today.
Provide us today, God, with the food, the energy, the things that are necessary.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Give us not heaped-up stores for days and days come.
Give us not the false promise that nothing will go wrong.
Give us not more than we could possibly use.
Give us not sinfully more than we need.
Just our daily bread, God—that will be enough.
Enough. Sometimes “enough” can be a hard concept to pin down. So I’d like to issue a prayerful invitation for you today. I’d like for you to take a moment, right now, to think of a few things that sustain you each day. Just three or four things. Maybe five. These are the things that sustain you as a person each and every day. Food. Work. A place to live. Of course, we’re sustained by much more that food and shelter. Maybe other things are coming to mind for you. What sustains you each day? Family? Church family? Friends?
Another way of thinking about what sustains you is thinking about what you can’t imagine living without. People. Connections. Sources of love, hope, strength. When you get a chance, jot down those things—write down those three or four or seven things that sustain you each and every day. And then each morning from now until you start forgetting, I’d like to invite you to pray this prayer:
“Give me today my daily bread. In other words, God, help me receive as a gift that which sustains me. My family—help me receive it as a gift. My church—help me embrace it as a gift. My spouse, my children, my friends—help me receive them as gifts in my life, my daily bread that sustains me. My faith, my hope, my God—help me receive you as a gift each day that I live. Even my food—my literal daily bread—help me receive it as a daily gift that sustains me. God, give me today my daily bread. Help me be satisfied in that which will sustain me today. Help me not to worry about the bread I don’t have yet. Help me trust that you hold my entire life in your care. And while I’m praying for my daily bread, God, let me reach out to those who are not sustained in your world—those who go without food, without shelter, without love. May my daily bread give me strength to care for myself and for others, so that perhaps a part of your kingdom might come.”
In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul reflects on Jesus sharing daily bread with his followers, and asks, “The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” And then he makes this wonderful claim: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.”
Today we join sisters and brothers all over the world. All of us, coming together at the communion table, and in our bread-breaking, we declare an impossible and yet amazing truth—that we are one in Christ. One body of Christ, spread all over Wisconsin and North America and China and Pakistan…
In our bread-breaking today, and in our communion, let us be mindful of our global family of faith, and in so doing, let us be thankful for that which sustains us, mindful of that which we need, and generous with the rest. Amen.
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