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January 29, 2006
Why Pray?
Psalm 5 / Daniel 9: 18-23
James 5: 13-18
January 29th, 2006
If someone asked you, “What is prayer?” I suspect most of us would give the simple and obvious answer, “Prayer is talking to God.” And to mind would come the prayers you have mostly heard in church, or perhaps the prayers you have offered as families before meals at home, or as a child when your parents prayed with you before you went to sleep at night.
So, prayer is talking to God. But I was asked to speak to the question “Why pray?” Someone once said to me that the percentage of times when God seems to grant us our requests is small. And this is true. We notice this because very often our prayers are essentially requests. If prayer is essentially asking God for things, and He grants us a very small percentage of our requests, it makes sense to ask wryly, “Why pray?”
And yet we pray. Why? It is an instinct in everyone to at least think to pray when they are in distress. An atheist friend of mine told me he almost prayed when he faced a surgery whose outcome was predicted to be grim. But he could not bring himself to actually pray. Yet he thought about praying. Why?
We’re told there are no atheists in a foxhole under fire. Why? Because there is this something in everyone that cries out when all known sources of hope are exhausted. For many, I think, this source is undefined. It is a cry to Someone out there, some unseen Reality that encompasses us. And this unseen, encompassing Reality is God. “In Him we live and move and have our being,” Paul quoted a pagan philosopher with approval.
The late atheist physicist from Cornell, Carl Sagen describes in his novel, Contact conversations between people and extraterrestrial beings. I could not help but think he was trying to describe something like prayer. There is something in people that stretches beyond; we cannot help it.
“Why pray?” I have heard prayer described as spiritual breathing. We exhale to God as one part of
prayer; but we inhale the sense of His presence too. If we are conscious of the presence of God how might we speak with Him? What to say to a present God?
A recent book on prayer laments about the Church today that “Ours is the epitome of a prayer-less church.” Stanley Grenz, the author of this book is a pastor, and I think he may have been venting his personal frustration, as we pastors will sometimes do. Maybe we are prayer-less because prayer has been largely reduced to asking God for things.
Prayer is far more than asking God for things. When prayer is reduced to asking God for things it is no wonder that prayer should be a low priority. I think people succumb to the sinking awareness that God does not automatically grant us what we ask for. So they pray with uncertainty and spasmodically. I hope it will be helpful to look at the three passages we have read together to find guidance on how as well as why to pray.
The three Scriptures we have read this morning don’t exactly give us a three-point answer to the question, “Why pray.” But they point us in the right direction.
In the Fifth Psalm David talks to God. We don’t read God replying to him at any point. David opens up as though he’s talking to a psychiatrist who listens intently to him.
“Listen to me, O Lord; pay attention to my groaning.” He reminds God that every morning begins with prayer, “O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.” And God nods. “Yes, I know you do.” And David feels that God has nodded because he told the truth. Every morning he talks to God this way. You can’t fool God. It’s silly for David to say, “God, every morning I pray to you” if he didn’t really do this. Why does he remind God of this? For reasons why you and I remind our friends that it is good to have coffee with them, or just to see them again after an interlude. We say this kind of thing to those we care about. David cared about God.
The sacrifice he has in mind is not the bloody kind priests offered, but the sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise. An important part of prayer for David is remembering the past. I picture David thinking of how God took him from being a shepherd boy, and now here he is the king of Israel. He has replaced his small flock of sheep for vast armies over which he is the royal commander. So he thinks, “God, how amazing have been your ways not only with me, but for your people Israel through me.”
When David says, “I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch,” he lets us know he’s stopped talking to God. Now he waits on God. Quietly perhaps he kneels before an open window and looks out into the morning sky, waiting to see what thoughts God will awaken in him after he has spoken. Thoughts for the day. Thoughts about the purpose and duty of being the king of a nation that is uniquely God’s people. Who knows what thoughts will come as he waits, as he watches. Ten minutes, twenty minutes. Maybe an hour goes by. Maybe he doses in between moments of quiet listening for a still small voice from God.
We read on in his prayer and find his thoughts becoming unsettled. He thinks of difficult people he must contend with. “You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil you cannot tolerate. Arrogant people can’t stand before you. Liars and violent men disgust you.” Self-righteous thoughts pass through his mind. “I’m not like they are,” he thinks. At times he seems like the Pharisee in the Temple that Jesus chided—the one who said to God, “I thank thee that I am not like others are, for example this lousy publican who makes a living by cheating people.”
There is such a range of thoughts that pass through our minds while we wait, we watch in prayer. As we read David’s thoughts flow in the psalm we can see a reflection of how our minds wander when we pray. And that’s part of praying. You worry that you can’t concentrate because you think you’re supposed to concentrate when you pray. You maybe think your prayer should come out as an organized flow of pious words. Not so. And when we watch, when we wait on the Lord after we have spoken to Him, our minds do wander. And God speaks to us in this wandering.
After some time of wandering thoughts, David’s mind comes back to God. And he feels peace inside. And he thinks of this peace not only in terms of his own need, but he remembers that he is the king of a people that is God’s people. “Let all who take refuge in thee rejoice.” He thinks not only of himself. His talk with God has covered quite a range of thoughts. And this is how prayer works. And this is why we pray. To expose our hearts to God. We cannot do this fast. The prayer our hearts really long for needs us to give time for it.
We make time to eat and to sleep. It’s hard to fit in the idea of giving time to prayer as well. But our instinct to pray needs time or it will get lost in the busyness of life. Maybe you see that what your ability to pray needs is simply more time given to it. Maybe that’s what you principally need—time given to praying and listening, exhaling and inhaling with God.
If you opened your Bible to the second prayer that we read this morning, the prayer of Daniel, we’d notice that the prayer begins much earlier. In verse three Daniel says, “I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and supplications with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.” Here we see he prepared to pray with signs of contrition before God. Fasting is not eating in order to focus our thoughts. While it is good that our prayers should often be very casual, there are times when we need them to become very specific in our preparation to pray.
You remember that Jesus chided His disciples when He found them unable to help deliver a demon-possessed boy, even though they were praying for his release. They asked Jesus why they were powerless. He told them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.”
We cannot force God’s hand by fasting, by the intensity of our desire, but we know that there is a distinction between how we respond to casual and very deliberate acts of friends. A movie some of you have seen and I hope many of us will see, “Babbett’s Feast,” shows us the remarkable preparation of a woman to make a meal for those she wished to serve. The purpose of her costly choice of ingredients of the meal, and the lengths to which she went to secure them, are left to the minds of those who watch the story. But what struck me in the story was how beautiful it is when we offer one another our costliest hospitality.
In the casual day in which we live, we’re big into ordering a pizza out, or picking up a TV dinner to pop into the microwave. And we may bring to our prayers the same casual approach. I sometimes think our informality and casual-ness, rather than freeing us has lured us into another kind of bondage; a bondage to self that cannot think carefully of the value of the Other—whether the other be God or other people.
The way Daniel approached his prayer to God, when he had a great matter to spread before God in prayer, teaches us that it is good, at least sometimes, to approach God with great care. We may not wear sackcloth or put ashes on our hair, but perhaps the reverent attitude of supplication, and the preparation of body with fasting would teach us something about prayer that we could not know from reading a book or hearing a sermon. Had you asked Daniel, “Why are you doing all this?” I wonder if he would not even have answered you. Quietly he would have continued to prepare to pray to God, toward whom his thoughts surged. The answer to some questions can only come from within.
When we read his prayer we can see why he approached God so carefully. He prayed for his people. “We have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from thy commandments and ordinances . . . To thee belongs righteousness, but to us confusion of face . . . to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers.”
I read Daniel’s prayer and put it up before our self-justifying, competitive religious climate and wonder if we might learn something from Daniel. As John Henry Newman put it in his great hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light,” “pride rules my will.” And so we may find ourselves praying without taking inventory of our attitude as we pray. If we pray without taking inventory of ourselves, imagining that our proper theology equips us to charge into the presence of God, children of a heavenly Father who has so opened His throne-room that we can run in and out as children in their family room, something isn’t right. I cannot see into the mind of God, but I believe that God must respond to us in some way as we respond to each other. We notice when a friend means something strongly. And God notices when we come to Him earnestly.
At the conclusion of Daniel’s prayer we read that God answers him. Actually God sends a heavenly agent who says, “O Daniel, I have now come to give you wisdom and understanding . . . you are greatly beloved.” Does it seem to you that God is touched by how Daniel approached Him in prayer?
You and I will answer our own questions about prayer if we approach God with due care and not casually—at least periodically. From day to day our quick prayers are certainly appropriate. But God notices and we instruct our own hearts when we approach God with care as part of the cycle of life.
There was this care in Daniel’s approach to his prayer. And at least from time to time, you and I would teach our own hearts something in the response that would come within us if we took great care in approaching God in prayer.
The third passage of scripture we read together describes prayer as part of the life of a community. The brother of Jesus counsels his Christian friends in James 5: 16: “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” He no doubt had in mind the 103rd Psalm where the psalmist connects God’s forgiveness of sin with healing. “Bless the Lord, O my soul, who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases.”
We think of confessing our sins to God in prayer, but here James urges us to confess our sins to each other. More commonly we don’t confess our sins. Indeed, is it not so that we may silently remember what we have done, and remember what others have done to us, and a climate of unrest takes us over. We mull on what others have done that offends us; we defensively push to the recesses of our minds what we have done to others. It should be the opposite of this.
What connection do you think there might be between confessing to one another our sins and the prayer of righteous people? It takes a person right with God to want to make right what is wrong. And it is the prayer of a righteous person that has great effects. Perhaps we find it hard to pray because we’re not righteous people? Perhaps we live up to our standards, but our standards aren’t high enough. We have not included in our standards the confession of our faults to one another, and most certainly not the forgiveness of the faults of others. In such a setting, we may try to pray; in fact, we may pray, but nothing happens. It remains a pious exercise in futility. Thus we may wonder why we pray even as we pray. We keep on because we know we should, but the zing is lost.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, there is a close connection between confessing to one another and praying that God hears. If our hearts are silent to each other, maybe this is why God is silent to us. Confess and then pray—for one another, that you may be healed. Here the preparation of our own hearts by confession is part of the prayer-equation. Should we ignore this part of the equation, our prayer seems to rise no higher than the ceiling.
Paul wrote to Christians in one of the early churches, “Pray constantly.” Why? Because we live in the presence of God. In David’s prayer in the fifth Psalm, we see his regularity and how in the wandering of his mind in prayer he prayed naturally, as God expects of us.
Before Daniel offered this very important prayer for his people, he prepared himself deliberately. He shows us an example of how our daily prayer may be supplemented with more deliberate prayer before which we should prepare ourselves carefully. This corresponds to the courtesy we extend in preparing to welcome guests who we love and want to show finest hospitality. They notice and the friendship is strengthened. This reflects something of our relationship to God that is expressed in prayer.
From James we learned that confession of offenses and sins against one another is prior to prayer that is effective. Righteous people are not righteous because they don’t ever sin, but because they confess their sin to each other. And then they pray. And then too they probably will seldom ask, “Why pray?” because the answer arises from within to that question.
You and I pray because we are a social animal. And our society is not only with each other but with the God who made us in His image and likeness. Our friendships with each other wander all over the map of interests and activities. And so does our prayer to God. We are touched when our friends honor us with consideration, and so is God. Our friendship with each other cannot survive if we go on offending each other and do not make things right. Neither can our friendship with God. We cannot talk to God about all the things that friends talk about if our heart is far from Him. Our prayers may become exercises in futility, and we will reasonably wonder why pray, if we do not keep alive to God and alive to one another by keeping the channels of friendship open.
So, let us keep on praying—letting ourselves be guided by these words of Holy Scripture.
Let us pray: O Lord God, full of grace, full of kindness, mercy, goodness, you have welcomed our prayer and taught us to pray. But teach us again and again for our faith is weak, and we need your kindly care. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM
January 22, 2006
Witnessing in our Jerusalem
(First given as a children's sermon)
Genesis 15: 1-6 / Acts 1: 8
January 22nd, 2006
Jesus told his disciples as He was about to depart this earth to resume life with the Father in heaven, "You will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come on you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth." He told them this in Jerusalem. He wanted them to understand, "Begin right where you are."
Christians who read these words are hearing Jesus say to them too, "Begin right where you are to be my witnesses." Jesus says to you and me, "Begin where you are." We are in West Lafayette, Indiana. What does Jesus mean His followers to do? This was a question His disciples asked too.
His disciples remembered a story Jesus told them that made sense enough to them at the time, but carried no big meaning when they first heard it. This story is recorded in Luke 19, starting at verse eleven. Jesus was about to leave them to return to the Father. He spoke of Himself as a nobleman who was going away to receive a kingdom and would come back again. He summoned ten servants and gave them ten minas. One Mina was quite a lot of money, about three month's wages. When this word is used in the Old Testament it sometimes means "portion." I wonder if this nobleman divided up his possessions into ten portions. I wonder if he gave one-tenth to each servant. In other words, his entire present domain he invested in his servants.
In the old King James Version we read that Jesus told them, "Occupy till I come." Today we would say, "Use what I've given you profitably." But the word "occupy" is very suggestive.
When you and I are occupied with something that's what we're completely busy doing. I'm occupied playing tennis, or studying, or working in the yard. You might say, "I'm already occupied," which means don't disturb me.
This is very much what Jesus wanted His disciples of all time to remember. Be occupied with what I've given you until I return.
The nobleman returned after receiving the Kingdom. He called to him his servants. We read about only three servants that came to report on how they'd been occupied with their responsibility.
The first servant came back having turned his one portion into ten portions. Maybe this means he used his one-tenth so well that it multiplied as much as the whole possession that the nobleman had divided before he left. The nobleman was very pleased. "Well done, good servant. Because you have been trustworthy in a very small thing, take charge of ten cities."
The second servant came and reported. "The one mina you gave me I have made into five minas." Again the nobleman was pleased. "You will rule over five cities."
The third servant came hesitantly. "Lord, here is your mina. I wrapped it up in a piece of cloth—look how shiny it still is--, for I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow." The nobleman was angry. "Why didn't you at least put it in the bank and get interest on it?" So he took the one mina this man had not used at all, but kept safe, and gave it to the first servant who had multiplied his portion ten times.
Jesus then said something that seems unfair to us. "To all those who have more will be given, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away." If we did not know that each of the servants was given the same amount to begin with this would seem very harsh, even unfair. But when we know that Jesus was putting the cap on a parable about ten servants who had all been given the same to start with, it seems very fair.
"Occupy till I return," he had told them all.
There is an untold part of this parable that begs to be told. Three servants came back to report, but there were seven others to whom the nobleman had given the same amount. What about them? If the third servant incurred his master's displeasure for simply hanging on to his one mina, what about the other seven who didn't even come back with their shiny, unused mina?
I wonder if Jesus' disciples wondered the same thing after a while. They noticed as any pastor notices that when people are invested with the Gospel, the Good News that God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, some take this investment and multiply it ten fold, others five fold, and some merely keep it wrapped in a napkin, hidden under a pillow somewhere.
Those who multiply God's investment in them ten fold are those who have given their lives to obedience to Jesus so thoroughly that it is evident to any who look at them that they have been transformed. And then they speak of Jesus to others in a way that is believable. People hear them after seeing them, and put their trust in Jesus. So they multiply over and over again the Gospel that was entrusted to them.
Some have greater gifts of communication than others, so that some increase their entrustment ten times, while others only multiply their investment five times. But both are well occupied. The Lord is pleased with them, and they no doubt enjoy the sense of the Lord's pleasure.
Then there are those who have taken the Lord's investment, the Gospel, and they put it under a pillow. They have not lost it. Maybe they talk about it, read about it, sing about it, think about it—but it doesn't affect them personally. All their contact with the Gospel has not affected their lives. Their natural dispositions, warts and all, are as it was when they first heard the Gospel. They are interested in the same things everyone else is interested in, essentially having to do with being secure economically and as safe and healthy as possible. Since the Gospel has been bracketed in some "religious" closet of their lives, they've not spoken of it to anyone else. They've kept the Gospel in a napkin, safely tucked under their pillow. How many, I wonder, are like this third servant. Fruitless lives, but still saying, "I believe the Gospel." Indeed, it's not clear to them what "I believe" means. It's a bit of religious jargon. The Lord has nothing but harsh words for such servants as these.
But what are we to say of the ten servants not mentioned in the story? I wonder if these are the servants who, to use Bishop Westcott's words, have succumbed to "the slow [spiritual] suicide of idleness." While possibly even going to church with some regularity they hardly remember the Gospel and have made no attempt at all to live in obedience to anything other than the ordinary quest for prosperity and good health.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to fellow German Christians back in 1937, as the church was having its heart slowly eaten away by Nazi-ism,
"The price we are having to pay to-day in the shape of the collapse of the organized Church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a while nation unasked and without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving."
Christians now look with near disbelief at the German Christians who were taken in by Hitler's holocaust of the Jews and others he wanted to eliminate from the earth. "How could they when they had the Gospel?" we ask. Well, they did with the Gospel what the seven servants in the story did with their minas. They remained servants, but they were no longer even identifiable as servants who had been entrusted by their Lord with anything.
Well, when Jesus said to His disciples at the end, "You will be my witnesses," they remembered what He had told them in this story. And you and I have been given a mina, an investment of the Lord's property to use.
We will maximize the Lord's investment not when we hold on to our investment, but when we give it away. Because what the Lord has given us in the Gospel is like the flask of oil God provided for the widow in the Old Testament story. Elijah told this widow who had cared for him, who had only a little oil and wheat that she shared with him, "the jar of wheat will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth."
We will never run out of this Gospel. The more we live by it and witness to it believably, the more of it there is. It finds a place in everyone who receives it. Indeed, it multiplies still more as these who receive it duplicate this process into which they were introduced.
In this new initiative that we have heard today at Faith Church, our success will come not just if we get more children into this place. It will really come when in each one who comes to us the Gospel is rooted deeply because they have been persuaded by our witness. And our witness will be demonstrated not as we hold on tenaciously to what we have, protecting it in some napkin under a pillow lest it get lost. But when we hold it in our hearts, let it challenge our way of life so that we follow Jesus, and when we speak of it credibly to others.
Jesus said, "You will be my witnesses. Where? How so? Start in Jerusalem. Start in your Jerusalem, which is West Lafayette, Indiana. Hold in your hearts what is true. Let it govern how you live. Speak of it to those who express to you their need."
May God so direct us to receive Jesus' words and give them flesh.
Grant, O heavenly Father, that we may so believe our Lord Jesus that we may be faithful servants, using well His investment in us that we multiply what we have been given, and so please Him that His Kingdom is being extended where we are. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
January 15, 2006
Forgiveness?
Psalm 32 / Genesis 50: 15-21
Matthew 6: 7-15
January 15th, 2006
One of you asked me some weeks ago if I would preach on forgiveness. Every one of us knows the pain of not being forgiven. Every one of us knows the difficulty of forgiving. Lurking beneath the surface of most people is the sense of having fallen short, and yet it’s so hard to forgive. I risk preaching about forgiveness when I too find it hard to forgive. Some of you will think I’m talking about you this morning. I hope that all of you will feel God nudging you.
The well-known psychiatrist, Karl Menninger begins one of his books telling about a stern-faced, plainly dressed man who stood in Chicago’s loop on a sunny day in September 1972. As pedestrians hurried by on their way to lunch or business, he would solemnly lift his right arm, and pointing to the person nearest him, intone loudly the single word, ‘GUILTY!’ Then without any change of expression, he would resume his stiff stance for a few moments, before repeating the gesture. Then, again, the inexorable raising of his arm, the pointing, and the solemn pronouncing of the one word, ‘GUILTY!’
The effect of this strange pantomime on the people passing by was extraordinary, almost eerie. They would stare at him, hesitate, look away, look at each other, and then at him again, then hurriedly continue on their way. Some mumbled about this “kook.” One man, turning to another—who told this story—exclaimed, ‘How did he know?’
Guilty of what? Over-parking? Lying? Arrogance? Hubris before God? Of “borrowing” from the company, that is, embezzling? Of cheating on my wife, my husband—or planning to with that one I linger with at the water fountain? Guilty of bigotry? Of that last remark I made to a fellow worker that put him in his place before I left work? Guilty of passing along choice gossip? Guilty of neglecting my family to get ahead at work?
There are many unsolved crimes, which means there are people who walk the streets who are guilty of murder, of theft, of sexual abuse of children—and every one of these carries inside the burden of what he has done.
“Guilty!” The man pointed his finger and said sternly, looking at this person, then at that person. The antidote to this vast fund of guilt that underlies our society is massive forgiveness, convincingly offered. But where is this to be found?
Forgiveness is found in Jesus Christ, but I know many Christians who linger with evidence of being under the weight of guilt. How to apply to ourselves the forgiveness offered by Jesus? Bishop Westcott remarked of forgiveness that “the paradox of the Gospel [is] that we are forgiven when we believe that we are forgiven. Forgiveness justifies itself because we are bidden by faith to take to ourselves by faith that which God has already done.”
Three passages of Scripture leaped out at me not long after I was asked to preach on this topic. In fact, I was torn to know which of these three I should focus on this morning. Each one is so illuminating.
The 32nd Psalm lays bare the psychological effects of guilt. King David wrote, “When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”
King David sagged into deep depression. His conscience tormented him. He thought of what he had done. He doesn’t say what he has in mind that caused his body to waste away, to find his strength drying up. Perhaps he lingered with guilt over his great sin with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband.
Maybe his conscience did what ours do; he remembered the various stages of his sinking to this crime. He got used to unlimited power while forgetting his responsibility to God in exercising this power. He recognized that he thought of women as all the other kings of his day did, as objects of his pleasure. Great sins have a long introduction. As David’s memory came alive, he loathed the person he saw inside.
But then he writes, “I acknowledged my sin to thee, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ then thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin.”
Here David did not preach to others. He spoke of his own experience. “I admitted what I did. I stopped hiding my sin. And God forgave me.”
We often talk about God’s forgiveness. But we talk far less often about our need to admit our sin. We plunge on in life perhaps more inclined to justify our sin than to confess them. “I can’t just let her off the hook after she’s done me so wrong!” “I did this because you did that.” I did it because that’s how I am.” We live in a day advertising self-affirmation. This doesn’t leave much place for honest introspection. Confession of sin seems at odds with the general feeling many folk have, even many who believe in Jesus.
“I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” is good testimony to hear. “Then You forgave me of the guilt of my sin.”
The second lesson Lonni read to us this morning is the concluding episode of the longest family saga in the Bible that begins with Abraham and ends with Joseph.
The first book in the Bible tells of the tragic effects of the first sin. It ends with the remarkable effects of forgiveness.
Joseph says to his brothers who years before had sold him into slavery, “You intended to do harm to me; God intended it for good . . . Have no fear, I myself will provide for you and your little ones.”
The sin of our first parents is often referred to as the Great Fall. But we read the story and see that what Eve and Adam did was pretty ordinary. They only ate forbidden fruit. What they did was like what you and I do every time we choose to do something we know we should not. Usually our sins are what are considered minor. I spoke out of turn, but who doesn’t? I didn’t tell of my income quite like it is on my tax return. But of course, the government wastes a lot of my money so why shouldn’t I?
Some offenses cause a momentum that is tragic. I let loose and tell off my fellow worker, my wife, my son, my daughter when I got mad. The trust between us took a blow.
Every great embezzlement begins with taking a few dollars. How gradually I discovered I’d stolen thousands from the company; and then when I was caught, Oh what embarrassment. “I’m not a bad person,” I told the judge.
Every family feud begins with something small. And Eve’s disobedience was small. She saw that the fruit looked good to eat. God said, “Don’t!” She did it. Genesis 3 does not tell us that God forgave Adam and Eve. They were cast out of Eden.
But then in the final saga of the Genesis we see the long-range effects of human sin, the family kind. But the story ends with unexpected consequences. Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers, had the chance to get even big-time. He played with them as a cat with a mouse—or so the story seems to tell us. Read the story in Genesis 37 to the end of the book. It’s a great tale. Joseph could have tormented his guilty brothers and then brought the weight of his power against them. But when he reveals himself to his brothers, now as the second most powerful man in Egypt, it is with tears of affection and forgiveness—even before they confessed their wrong. Indeed, they never do really apologize; instead they seem to squirm in embarrassment. In the face of grace their kind of human smallness flew up before them as disgrace. But Joseph was larger of soul than they were small.
His brothers felt safe so long as their dad is alive. “Joseph won’t disappoint his revered father, Jacob,” they said among themselves.
But then comes this deathbed scene that Lonni read. Their father is about to die. They knew that now Joseph would get even. They sent a message to Joseph, “Dad said you’re supposed to forgive us.” And Joseph might very well have responded as we are tempted to respond when we feel we have been greatly wronged and are in a position to do something about it.
But not Joseph. Instead, Joseph wept and asked them a big theological question, “Fear not, for am I in the place of God?” And then follows that remarkable statement, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” And so Genesis ends with a huge act of forgiveness. Joseph stands before history as an example of greatness, in deed a type of Christ.
This was many years before Moses gave to Israel God’s Ten Commandments. There was no commandment even in them to forgive. But Joseph displayed a magnanimity that was in keeping with his awareness that it is only God’s right to take vengeance. The great Scottish novelist, Sir Walter Scott once said, “revenge is the sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever was cooked in hell.”
The third passage from Holy Scripture we read this morning is very familiar to us. Jesus’ disciples asked Him to teach them to pray. We repeat this prayer every week. But in this simple prayer Jesus made plain that the forgiveness of God comes to us on condition.
We pray, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” because Jesus taught us this. And He backed up that condition, “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
In some churches the wording of the prayer is, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” But Jesus did not teach that. He taught, “Forgive us our debts (opheilemata).” And then went on to tell us if we don’t forgive others their trespasses (paraptomata) neither will our heavenly Father forgive us our trespasses. Maybe debts and trespasses mean the same thing. But maybe not.
A debt is something that must be paid. The Greek word here is very correctly translated “debts;” it points to what is owed. So long as we linger with the memory of an offense, it is a debt that must be paid.
A trespass is very different. The Greek word found in Matthew describes the kind of offense into which we stumble, rather than the deep sin of the will. It is a blundering offense. Keep off my property; no trespassing; the sign says. You walk on my property; you didn’t even see the sign; nonetheless, that’s trespassing. Get off and you’re no longer trespassing.
Customarily when we hold someone in bondage to the debt of their offense, we justify our clinging to the offense by saying, “I can forgive but not forget.” Thus the debt is never payable. It has become common to say, “I can forgive but not forget,” and so we may reasonably wonder if any forgiveness has happened.
Forgiveness is at the very heart of our relationship with God. And we cannot relate to God while ignoring our relationship to each other. I can’t love God if I don’t love you. And I can’t have God’s forgiveness if I don’t forgive you.
This morning we will be ordaining and installing to sacred office some of you as deacons and elders. It is your task with me to maintain the proclamation of the Gospel here, and to live before the congregation in accordance with this Gospel. The Gospel consists of ideas we believe we must believe. But the Gospel consists as well of a life that we must live.
I delight to quote I John 1: 9, “If we confess our sin God is gracious and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And so it is. But there is that which Jesus taught us, You are forgiven if you forgive others their debt of offense against you. Of course I tell you nothing you don’t know.
After many years of ministry, Bishop Westcott of Durham Cathedral, remarked painfully on the danger of things that we all know very well, that have become the slogans, the truisms, the clichés of the Christian community—but which we are used to ignoring.
The Divine command to us to forgive one another is like the 55 mile an hour speed limit. Last week as my wife, our son and I drove to Brown County we were going through Indianapolis. I saw behind me the flashing lights of a State Police car. I thought for sure that the intention of the state trooper was to pull over someone else, some conspicuous speeder—since cars were zipping by me. But his car zoomed up behind me, the lights flashing. I pulled over to the side of the road. Out stepped this tall, well built, and very serious trooper. Bonnie and Stu were puzzled what motivated this interruption of our day. The trooper asked me if I knew the speed limit. I frankly didn’t. But he told me it was 55 MPH and I was exceeding it. I might well have said, “Nobody drives 55 MPH along here.”
Indeed, isn’t this why we don’t forgive? We don’t forgive because everybody treats the command to forgive like the 55 MPH speed limit. And isn’t this why we feel justified in not forgiving—because nobody else is doing it. We cruise along at 70 MPH, holding on to our grudges, our memories of what he did and she did, of what he said and she said—because everyone does this. And thus families live in shambles of mutual hostility. And thus every kind of community lives tragically, remembering offenses as debts that cannot be paid.
So how can we forgive—and forget? I heard the president of Gonzaga University, a Jesuit institution give a helpful answer to that question. He said if you will give to God the offense you feel, to let God handle it, you will be relieved of the duty of getting even. You and I don’t have the duty of balancing the scale of justice by making sure others get what they deserve. That’s God’s job. It is a wonderful truth.
You remember Joseph asked his brothers, “Am I in the place of God?” In other words, “Is it my duty to get revenge.” Paul reminds us in Romans 12, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.”
And so leave it to God. Remember this is the God before whom you and I stand too. And we remember that we want His forgiveness. We confess our sin expecting not vengeance, not what we deserve by rights—but forgiveness.
Jesus bore in His body my sin and yours. I envision a day when there will be those of us who will stand before God at a final judgment aware of that host of unkind and untrue words, of spiteful thoughts, of deceitful intents, perhaps even of criminal acts we have done. We will spread them helplessly before God. Our smallness will loom large before us as we remember the host of small things we have maintained in our hearts as a burden of debt others owe us. And we will feel ashamed and in a great plight.
I remember that the Gospels tell us Jesus did not automatically and indiscriminately fling forgiveness to all wrong doers. The parable of the sheep and goats ends with Jesus casting some people into hell. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man doesn’t get pulled out of his hot place and seated in Abraham’s bosom with the poor man. Jesus was not soft on hypocrites; He called them “whited sepulchers.” We should not assume that the character of God suddenly changes to suit our preferences when we feel offended by other people.
The Gospel you and I profess and which you deacons and elders preserve with me is that not only can we claim God’s forgiveness when we confess our sin, but that we must actually forgive others their indebtedness to us—debts incurred by offending us.
Perhaps there are those of us here today who need to ask God to grant us the grace to live more nearly as we say we believe, as we boldly and rightly claim that the Gospel is God’s Good News of forgiveness in Christ.
Let us pray: O Lord, thank you for forgiveness. We ask for Your help to forgive the debts we hold in our hearts. Help me to live by the Gospel I profess. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM