“Forgive Them...”

A sermon based upon Luke 23: 32-43

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

Sunday May 31st, 2020 (5/10. How Jesus Saves.)

On October 2, 2006, Charles C. Roberts walked into an Amish schoolhouse armed with three guns. There were 26 students in the schoolhouse. He allowed the 15 boys, a pregnant female student, and three other adult females with infant children to leave safely, but held the remaining 15 girls captive and tied their feet together.

His deranged rationale for his actions was that he wanted to exact revenge for something that had happened in his past. Notes that he left behind indicate anger toward himself and God for the death of his newborn daughter almost nine years earlier. Authorities were alerted, and soon arrived on the scene. Not long after police arrived, Roberts started shooting, killing three children and himself. Two more children died later from their injuries.

In the face of such tragedy, one can only imagine the hurt and anger the loved ones of the victims might feel. In an extraordinary demonstration of forgiveness, members of the Amish community, including family members of the deceased victims, attended Robert’s funeral and comforted his widow. The Amish community did not stop there—they also offered financial support to Robert’s widow. https://listverse.com/2013/10/31/10-extraordinary-examples-of-forgiveness/.

Jennifer Miller, at her own website, The Dynamic Catholic, tells about her own need to forgive.   She says, she ‘came home one night and found that someone had slid a letter under (her) apartment door.  (She) immediately recognized the handwriting—and only one person wrote out (her) full name like that.   (She) picked up the letter and smelled his cologne.

The letter was from her ex-boyfriend, Phillip.  They had dated for about two years, both looking for marriage.  “That was our goal from the beginning, and we had talked about it many times,” she says.   It was a big step, and her boyfriend was struggling.  But she was confident God was calling her to marry him.  Then one night, she watched him walk out the door after breaking up.   She thought to myself, “I’ll never see him again.”  Six months later, however, not expecting, a letter came that asked for her forgiveness and the possibility of a future together.   She said a trusted mentor had already asked her, “Are you mad at Phillip? Because you’re allowed to be.”  But she didn’t want to lash out at Phillip.   Instead, she says, she sought refuge in the familiar pages of her worn Bible.   

Miller writes that her Bible “is filled with highlighted passages, underlined words and phrases, and notes scribbled in the margins.  It holds her pain, her joy, and ultimately her trust in the God who has carried her through it all.   Her parents gave that Bible to her when she was young, she’s treasured it ever since.  It was her Bible that taught her about forgiveness  https://dynamiccatholic.com/everyday-life/what-the-bible-has-taught-me-about-forgiveness/

Perhaps you have your own story about forgiveness, or about forgiving someone who has hurt you.  There are many stories that could be told.   Most of these stories would be inspiring, but a few stories I know about are on the edge of sanity.  One of those is about the woman, Yvonne Stern, whose cheating husband hired three different hitmen to shoot and kill her, not once but three times.  They missed her twice but on the third attempt hit her in the stomach.  She survived.  When the case finally came to court, in spite of her husband attempting to kill her, not once, but three times, she told the court,  “I forgive him of his discretions.” https://abcnews.go.com/US/cases-extraordinary-forgiveness/story?id=16065270.

         Although you certainly can’t predict human behavior, there is something very ordinary about the human situation that requires forgiveness.    And this not just a biblical or religious teaching, its also supported by good psychological science.   That science says that ‘Forgiveness is vitally important for the mental health of those who have been victimized.’   Forgiveness is important, it is said because it ‘propels the victim forward’ toward a hopeful future rather than ‘keeping them emotionally engaged in an injustice or trauma’.   https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/forgiveness.  

         For Christians, the most dramatic example of the human need for forgiveness comes to us from the cross.  After suffering betrayal, humiliation, and during the unspeakable pain of being nailed the cross, Jesus spoke these incredible words, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23: 34). 

Luke’s gospel speaks more intentionally about human and divine forgiveness than any other book of the Bible, which has some to name him ‘the theologian of forgiveness par excellence’.   This is not to say that the other gospels don’t speak of forgiveness.  They do.  Each gospel, along with the book of Acts, as well as, other New Testament writings and the Old Testament too, all underscore the human need to forgive and be forgiven.   

The idea of the ‘Forgiveness of Sins’ (a phrase used 10 times in the NT, whereas the word is used over 144 times) has been understood, both in the Bible and in the history of the Christian Church, as one of the most essential components of God’s saving work through Jesus Christ.   As Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it when he was charged with daunting task of helping with the healing and reconciliation after Apartheid, ‘Without Forgiveness, there is no Future!”   That’s true everywhere, not just in South Africa.

FORGIVENESS AS A GIFT  

One of the most incredible stories of forgiveness comes out of the dark period of Apartheid, began with a black woman, whose child was murdered, took the stand to tell the truth.  After describing with painful detail how her child was wrongly murdered, even while the whole ordeal was watched and approved of by a white police chief, that mother then turned toward him and deliberately forgave him in one of the most heroic and historic reconciling moves ever recorded in human history.   

         What that story reminds us is that at its very core, forgiveness is a ‘gift’.   This is exactly what we see Jesus doing on the cross.   After Jesus was falsely and wrongly accused, he was taken to the cross to be ‘crucified’ between two thieves.  Then, even while soldiers were gambling over his clothes and as passersby were mocking him, Jesus unexpectedly says “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” 

         There are reasons that other gospels don’t include this word from the cross, just like there is very good reason Luke does.   This act Jesus takes us to the core of how Luke interprets Jesus’ death.  Jesus has come “to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. (Lk. 1:77 NRS).  

         God’s desire to forgive is quickly revealed in the Old Testament.  After God gave the Ten Commandments, God then gave instructions on how Israel’s priests where to carry out both the religious and communal practice of the forgiving sins (See Lev. Ch. 4&5).  Through animal sacrifice, burnt offerings, and the releasing of a scapegoat into the wilderness, ancient Israelites obtained forgiveness as a healing gift from their God.   Just like God had given Israel the law as a ‘gift’ for their life together with God, God also gave Israel ways to deal with their inability to perfectly obey God’s law.   Both where considered to be gifts from a holy, loving, life-giving God.

Perhaps we can also understand how, out of this ancient practice of sacrifice and forgiveness, Jesus came to be called ‘the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1:29).   What is more difficult to explain is exactly how this ‘gift’ of forgiveness comes to those of us who aren’t part of that sacrificial tradition.   In Luke’s gospel Jesus is clearly asking God the Father to ‘forgive’ those Roman soldiers who were crucifying him because they were just doing their job.   That’s not so hard to grasp.  What is more challenging is to try to understand how Jesus’ death became a ‘once and for all’ sacrifice for the forgiveness of all sins (Heb. 9:26).   How did the death of a rejected Jewish Messiah make a way of ‘forgiveness’ for the whole world?    

 There has been, throughout 2,000 of Christian Faith, much speculation and theories the meaning of Jesus’ death.   We won’t name them here, but what we must recognize, beyond all those speculations, is that from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, Jesus’ own primary mission was to forgive sins (Mark 2).  Then, since the very first sermon ever preached at Pentecost, churches and their preachers have been proclaiming and offering forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ as God’s universal saving gift (Acts 2).

         Interestingly, we also find near the end of Luke’s gospel that the resurrected, but still unrecognized Jesus, explained to two of his unnamed disciples that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead so that ‘repentance and forgiveness of sins might be proclaimed in (Jesus’) name to the nations...’ (Luk. 24: 47).  Each in their own way; the gospels of John (20:23), Matthew (26:28), and Mark (2:10) make ‘forgiveness’ the most important ‘gift’ God gives to the world through Jesus the Christ.     

         When you go on to consider the Paul’s letters, which is the largest section of the New Testament, you’ll find Paul hammering (no pun intended) this most elemental truth over and over; that Christ ‘died for our sins according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3).  And not only that, with even more detail, Paul wrote to the Galatians that Jesus ‘gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father...” (Gal. 1:4).  This understanding that Jesus died, according to God’s will, so that he would become the ‘atoning sacrifice...for the sins of the whole world’ is the most important result of the death of Jesus Christ (1 Jo. 2:2).  But still, we’re never fully told exactly how this ‘gift’ of forgiveness works.   We are only informed, as Paul wrote to the Romans, that forgiveness is ‘the free gift of God’ that gives ‘eternal life’ because ‘the wages of sin’ and ‘death’ have been overcome through Jesus Christ (Rom 3: 23-25; 6:23).

         Why are we never given any full, biblical explanation or speculation of how forgiveness works?  Perhaps the reason is quite simple.  As the Bible expresses it several times, God’s forgiveness works the same way it always has, ever since ‘the foundation of the world’ (Heb. 4:3, 9:26; 1 Pet. 1:20, Rev. 13:8).  For when you study sacrificial offerings in the OT, you’ll understand that forgiveness was never accomplished by humans, nor through priests, or animals, but forgiveness was already there, always present and available in the heart of God, even before the world’s beginning.   People never earned, paid for, or appeased God’s anger to receive forgiveness, but forgiveness was a gift that was constantly offered by the sincere acknowledging of sin, which was what all those forms of sacrifices where about (See Forgiveness in Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, Abingdon Press, 1962).  

God’s forgiveness was there, all the time, deep within God’s heart of mercy and compassion, needing only to be appropriated through the proper approach and response of the sinner.   This is what it means to say that Christ was the sacrifice, who was already prepared before ‘the foundation of the world’.   God has always been ready and is always willing to forgive sin, but this forgiveness must be received with the proper attitude of heart and mind.  This gift of forgiving mercy is appropriated by approaching God with a ‘humble’, contrite, and repentant ‘heart’ (Psalm 51: 17, Isa. 57:15; 66:2,  James 4: 6-10).

FORGIVENESS IS COSTLY

The right attitude of heart and mind is necessary for forgiveness because not only is God loving and compassionate toward us, God is also holy.  And God’s holiness is not the flip side of God’s love, but God is a holy love that is true, faithful and life-giving.  As we all know too well, even the beauty of love, the greatest of all human virtues, becomes corrupted, destructive and cannot sustain life without a proper regard for what is right, what must be made holy, and must be kept sacred. 

I don’t mean to get too deep here, but coming to grips with how a holy God loves and forgives sin without becoming defiled or degraded by human sin has always required some serious reflection.  Our human desire to know this God who is holy love is part of what enables us to appropriate and fully receive God’s forgiveness.   For only the God who maintains the perfect balance of holiness and love has the capacity to give life, to sustain life, and has the power to redeem from sin.  Thus, to maintain God’s holiness and the sacredness of life, the wages of sin must be death and destruction.  But God’s love also provides a saving process for redeeming us, but because this is God’s gift, it will maintain this perfect balance of both holiness and love.   

Understanding God’s holiness as suffering love is how Isaiah came to predict that only God’s suffering servant could bear human sin (53).  Also, by knowing that God’s suffering love can only be fulfilled in perfect holiness is why Jesus said the Messiah must suffer many things.  And since God always maintains this perfect, life-giving, soul-saving balance of holiness and love, even the free-gift of forgiveness isn’t released into a broken, sinful world without there this balance being maintained.  It is this dreadful, but necessary cost of sin through suffering that reveals the cost that God’s love paid for our forgiveness on the cross.  This perfect balance of holiness and love is a balance that only God can maintain, and it is maintained by Jesus, who as God’s sinless Son, suffers both the wages of sin and the cost of holy love on the cross.   Through suffering love, this God of loves, maintains his holiness and forgives all our sin.    

  Without the wages of sin being maintained or paid, the balance of holiness and love wouldn’t be maintained so that life, love, and forgiveness itself would have no value whatsoever.  For only when the value of both holiness and love is maintained, can the redeeming value and power of forgiveness be maintained.  Although God eternally maintains the value of holiness, love and forgiveness within God’s self, this isn’t realized in a sinful, rebellious and broken world unless we choose to accept and share this value for ourselves.  And this is exactly why the death of Jesus is one death that human history must recall, remember and reverence.  Only in Jesus’s death, do we have the perfect revelation of God’s nature as holy, but forgiving love.

Valuing God and the costliness of forgiveness is not unlike the value we place on most everything, including money.  When as a child I asked my Dad what gives money its value, he pointed me to the gold at Fort Knox.  Then, when I went on to ask what gives gold it’s value, Dad’s surprising answer to me as a child, was simply that we humans do.  There is no value behind the value of anything, he explained, except the value we give it.  If we stop placing value in something, everything loses value.  It’s the same way with forgiveness.  If we lose ever sight of the great cost, suffering and pain that it takes for a holy God to forgive sin, then the value of life, love and holiness crashes into the darkness of nothingness and hopelessness.   

This deadly, unending and destructive loss of value, which can and does happen within the freedom God gives to humanity, is what Jesus himself named as the ‘sin (or blasphemy) against the Holy Spirit’. (Mark 3:28-29)  When humans cease to value what God values, or as Isaiah expressed it, when we ‘call what is good evil, and call what is evil good’ (Isa 5:20), we work against the life-giving, forgiving, Spirit of God who is holy love and maintains life through holy love. 

By our own choice not to value who God is, or not to value what God values, God’s power to redeem us is severed.  God’s power to save hasn’t stopped flowing toward us because we’ve committed some unforgivable sin, but in our own freedom and by our own choice not to value God or what God values, we have ‘shorted out’ God’s holy, redeeming, saving love because we make no value of it.  As my Dad explained, even what is valuable loses all value when place no value in it. 

FORGIVENESS IS RECIPROCAL

         We prove the value of God’s free gift of forgiveness, not only by understanding it, but by practicing forgiveness ourselves and forgiving others.  We begin to practice the forgiveness that has come to us through Christ, by making the ‘ministry of reconciliation’ (2 Cor. 5:18) the high calling of our lives.  

         This is why in the Lord’s prayer, the request for God’s forgiveness for our sin is always linked with forgiving others (Luk 11:4).  It isn’t linked this way because God’s power to forgive depends on forgiveness, but our desire to forgive others proves that we have rightly understood and fully appropriated the cost and value of God’s forgiveness for us.

“Forgive and you will be forgiven,’ Jesus also says (Luke 6:37).  And we ‘forgive each other, just as the Lord has forgiven us’ (Col. 3:13).  This means that we also offer forgiveness, even to the person who doesn’t deserve it, because this is what holy love offers to us.  It is not ‘out of the goodness of our own hearts’ that we forgive, but it is out of the goodness of God’s heart.   God seeks reconciliation with us, even when our lives are still broken by sin, and this message of reconciliation must also become our own ministry of reconciliation with others too.  

Len Sweet quotes an old Chinese proverb which offers this wise advice: “the person only seeks revenge should dig two graves.”  In other words, Sweet explains, ‘an attitude of unforgiving is ultimately an unforgiving death sentence.  Keeping and maintaining an unforgiving attitude, with an entrenched stance of hatred and vengeance, only leads towards one’s own spiritual death.  This is true because being “unforgiving” towards others is, ultimately, being “unforgiving” towards one’s self.’ The promise of peace and forgiveness isn’t received by us because we have ‘shorted out’ the flow of God’s holy, forgiving love.    

But Christ’s suffering love can still point us back to the free gift of God’s forgiving holy love.  For this gift to be realized in us, however, it must also be realized through us, by learning to trust in the same spiritual power that raised Jesus from the dead.   It is really incredible, isn’t it?  According to Luke, the very first thing the risen Christ does after his resurrection, was not to seek vengeance on all those who rejected or denied him.   As Luke reminds us, this holy, loving, and forgiving Jesus returns to send his disciples out on a mission to take God’s message of ‘repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations’ (24:47).   

Recently, I came across a most interesting article of hope and reconciliation in a Christian Magazine, reporting about a new church that meets every Monday night in a Barbershop in Durham, England.  James Rainey, who goes by the name Rusty (because of his red hair), started that church in the most unlikely place to find a church.  Rusty is also the most unlikely preacher because he has a tattoo across his throat the way folks in prison and gang members do.  Rusty is an unlikely Christian too.  He grew up in a local village where he was mistreated by his mum and dad.  He understands why some young people choose homelessness, and sleep outside in the cold to avoid their often addicted and abusive parents.  Rusty said that he tried going to church but also says he “couldn’t understand a word.”  

The Monday Night Church got started when Rusty and his friend Dan Northover, who now leads this work, began to invite people to come to the barbershop on Monday nights.  Dan, a university student minister working at Christ’s Church, was always interested in reaching people on the margins. Dan is an accountant, working three days a week to support his ministry habit. He says, “No one would ever choose me, a middle-class civil servant, to reach these guys.” But God has strange ways of reaching those he loves most.

This informal church gathering, made up of mostly homeless, ex-cons, on-again, off-again drug users, and otherwise marginalized people, was supercharged to grow when one of the most notorious offenders in Durham, with more than 100 convictions to her name, had been banned from being with children in her own family.  She met God while contemplating suicide in a prison cell. After coming to Monday Night Group, “she literally went ’round and banged on doors in the estate, telling people, ‘Come along, this is the most amazing thing,’” Dan recalled. The group grew from 15 to 35, outgrowing the barbershop.  After a failed stint at a Methodist church (“we freaked them out”), they found a home with the Salvation Army.

Dan speaks of the Monday Night Group as the greatest experience of church he could imagine. “I absolutely love it,” he said. “I can’t imagine going to church anywhere else.”   These are folks who’ve been kicked out of other churches, banned from whole cities, done hard time. Not a few are still addicts and alcoholics and have been for decades.  But they love God and they love one another. They still slip up and hate themselves for doing so. With their criminal convictions, many can’t get proper work. Dan admits,  “I learned early that our church is going to look more like Corinthians than Romans.” 

The focus is on everyday struggles, not lofty theology. The Monday Night Group is never going to feel pious, and moral failures will always have a life-or-death element to them. And they don’t rely on sudden conversions. Their model is less St. Paul on the road to Damascus and more St. Paul in the desert for three years preparing for his ministry.  Things are not that simple for the Monday Night Church.  Sometimes members vanish for months at a time—in prison or on a bender—and return asking for  forgiveness. This has been their pattern for decades. Everyone they love or who once loved them has given up on them. Not God. And so not this church.

The biblical model for this church is in the story about Jesus meeting the woman at the well in John 4.  Jesus confronts the woman with “everything I have ever done” in a way that is becomes good news for the woman.  Jesus knows her, but doesn’t condemn her because he loves and forgives her anyway.  After receiving such unexpected mercy, she goes back home to evangelize the people who’d long rejected her.

“These folks know they’re sinners,” Dan said. “They’ve been terribly hurt, they’ve hurt other people terribly. . . . These folks know they’re not all right. Everyone else in town knows it too.  But in a barbershop in Durham, England, God, still “welcomes the people no one else wants”  And this is exactly what has been in God’s heart since the foundation of the world.  It is the forgiveness of sins made possible, not based on what we’ve done, or not done, but it’s a forgiveness made possible through Jesus’ death for human sin on the cross.  Now, the opportunity to receive this holy, redeeming love has reappeared again, in a red-headed barber in northeast England. (Story is from the print edition of The Christian Century under the title “Monday night church.”,  Dec. 2019).

Could this story of holy, forgiving and redeeming love show up here again in our midst, on a Sunday, a Monday, or any other day?  I believe it could, because when we see the cross, lift up the cross, and live the cross, we are still revealing the forgiving and saving nature of God’s heart.  This forgiveness is God’s gift to us too, when we understand the cost and we humble ourselves before his cross.  Amen