"Repentance and forgiveness," 12.23.12

Isaiah 40:1-11

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. ²Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

³A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. ⁴Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. ⁵Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” ⁶A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. ⁷The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. ⁸The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.

⁹Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” ¹⁰See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. ¹¹He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.

Luke 3:1-18

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, ²during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

³He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, ⁴as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. ⁵Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; ⁶and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

⁷John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. ⁹Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

¹⁰And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” ¹¹In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” ¹²Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” ¹³He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” ¹⁴Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

¹⁵As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, ¹⁶John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” ¹⁸So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

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            I’ve got good news for you and bad news. We’ll start with the good news: God loves you and welcomes you into his kingdom. That’s the best news. God welcomes us with open arms. The Lord is waiting to pardon our sin, to throw out all the garbage that stands between us and God. God is ready to set the past aside and welcome us into a future free from judgment and shame and guilt. God is ready to do that right now for you; for everyone. That’s a fact.

            The bad news is that you need to change. I need to change too. We need to repent, which means to turn around. We need a fundamental change in the way we approach life, the future, God and everything else. Repentance and forgiveness go together, but not always in the way we expect.

            Often we have this image of God like a strict father. He stands over us and makes us say we’re sorry with the threat of punishment in the background. A lot of people go to church because they are worried they will go to hell if they don’t. Behind door number 1 is saying we’re sorry, forgiveness, following the rules, going to church, and finally, going to heaven. Behind door number 2 is having fun, not following the rules, not going to church and finally, hell.

That’s a theology of punishments and rewards. There are some pretty huge problems with this theology. There’s some truth to it, but it’s not the freeing, joyful, transformative life God calls us to. Thinking about our relationship with God that way leads to questions like: what’s the least I can believe and still go to heaven? Can I repent at the last minute before I die? Why does God let people who repent at the last minute into heaven the same way as those of us who have been going to church for years? What do we get for following God for our whole life.

            There are definitely times the Bible talks in terms of rewards and punishments. Our passage from Luke is one of them. John paints our choices in stark terms: God comes to judge, to gather the wheat into the granary and to burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. John calls the audience to choose between blessing and curse, life or death, wheat or chaff.

            It sounds like a simple choice, and in some ways it is, but there’s more to it than that. We can only repent because God opens the door for us. God’s grace comes first: before our first confession, before our repentance, before our first breath. God’s grace, God’s amazing love for us paves the way for us to realize our mistakes and turn around.

           

Even the call to confession is grace filled; that’s part of why Luke says John is preaching good news to the people. Even in John’s challenging words and his call to repent and change their lives the people recognized something important. His message touched them, so people came from all over to be baptized. They recognized that they were not right with God, and they felt John had a way to come back home.

"Wait for the Lord," 12.9.12

Psalm 46:1-11

¹God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. ²Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; ³though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

⁴There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. ⁵God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.

⁶The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.

⁷The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. ⁸Come, behold the works of the Lord; see what desolations he has brought on the earth. ⁹He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.

¹⁰“Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.” ¹¹The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

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            Last week we talked about how Advent looks in two different directions. We look back to Jesus’ birth in the manger and we look forward to the end of history when Christ will come again and the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our. In some ways, that is setting the cosmic scene for our Advent experience. Today I want to look at Advent more personally and practically.

            Waiting is a key idea of Advent. During Advent we prepare ourselves for Christmas, but we’re not preparing for something we have any control over. We’re waiting for Jesus kind of like we wait for a train or a bus. Nothing we can do can make Christmas come any faster (not that we’d want it to), and nothing we do can make God’s kingdom come any faster. We have to wait.

            We usually think of waiting as passive, as passing time until whatever we are waiting for arrives. There’s a lot more to it than that, though. For one thing, if we’re waiting for something we trust that it’s going to happen. We wouldn’t wait for a bus unless we were pretty sure it was going to arrive. Not only do we trust that the thing we’re waiting for is real, the thing we’re waiting for is also our main focus. We can do other things, but whatever we’re waiting for takes priority when it arrives. It’s helpful to think about waiting for God in the same way. We can trust that God is real and worth waiting for. We can also remember that God is the point of this season and of our life. All the other things in the season are important, but God is the purpose for our waiting, the reason for our hope and our existence.

Our readings for today shed some biblical light on waiting, in this case, waiting for the Lord. Psalm 46, which John just read, is a meditation on trusting God. It begins and ends with the affirmation that God is our refuge, our safe haven. It expands on that by reminding us that we can trust God to take care of us even when life is chaotic. Even if the world were to melt away, God would still be with us, leading us through.

Both the images of chaos and the picture of a river running through the City of Jerusalem suggest God’s judgment at the end of history. When the Prophet Ezekiel sees a vision for the restoration of Jerusalem there is a river of life flowing from the temple. The river in this Psalm takes me there, to a peaceful stream and God’s restoration in the future.

The chaotic images of mountains shaking and the earth changing remind me of Jesus’ words about the judgment last week. Even when everything falls apart God is there. Thinking about God’s judgment like we did last week can be unsettling. This passage reassures me that even then, God will take care of us. If God can hold us together when the mountains shake and judgment comes, it’s safe to say we can trust him to get us through Christmas shopping and baking too.

forgiveness (9.11.11)

Matthew 18:21-35

²¹Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” ²²Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

²³“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. ²⁴When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. ²⁵and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. ²⁶So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ ²⁷And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt.

²⁸But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ ²⁹Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ ³⁰But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. ³¹When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. ³²Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. ³³Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ ³⁴And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. ³⁵So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Romans 14:1-12

¹Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. ²Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. ³Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. ⁴Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

⁵Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. ⁶Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.

⁷We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. ⁸If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. ⁹For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

¹⁰Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. ¹¹For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
          and every tongue shall give praise to God.”
¹²So then, each of us will be accountable to God.

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            We’re not really going to dig into this Romans passage very much because we’re pretty good about accepting differences of opinion here. But I do want to lift it up for a moment because it’s one of the most important things about faith in community. We are not all the same. We have different strengths and weaknesses; we even have different beliefs.

            Often we grow in our faith and understanding through study with other people who see things a little differently, but there is no point in getting upset about those differences.

Paul would be quick to point out that there are limits to this; there are false teachings and dangerous ideas in the church that can hurt our faith and our witness to God’s love. But most differences of opinion in the church are not worth arguing about. Instead of worrying about what someone else believes, we should focus on how we can be better, more faithful disciples of Jesus. If the Presbyterian Church could learn this lesson we would be much stronger, more joyful, and better witnesses to Christ’s redeeming love.

Jesus reminds us that the heart of community is forgiveness. Matthew is more interested in how the church functions than the other Gospels are; probably because he writes somewhat later than Mark. So here he’s talking about forgiveness within the church, but the lesson goes further than that.

            Jesus hopes we will be incredibly persistent in forgiving each other. Frankly, I can’t think of anyone in any church I have forgiven seventy seven times. Long before we get to that point we’ve usually put our guard up so forcefully that the other person can’t wrong us anymore. But that’s not what Jesus has in mind. Jesus expects us to keep forgiving and forgiving; to keep opening our heart to other people whenever they ask us to forgive them.

            Reasonably enough, we worry about getting hurt or taken advantage of. We worry someone will pull something over on us. That’s not Jesus’ concern, but then look at Jesus’ example. The leaders of his faith rejected, accused and tortured him. His closest friends abandoned him; one even betrayed him. And he must have known that many of those he died to bring home to God would turn away too.

Still, instead of carrying a grudge, Jesus carried a cross. Instead of leaving us wandering on our own, Jesus keeps looking for us with a love that simply won’t give up. Jesus is our Lord and our example; while we won’t ever measure up to his forgiveness, we are called to follow in his footsteps.