15th sun after pentecost

Sermon: Proper 19 – Sept. 17

St. Paul’s, Monroe

Forgiveness as the source of life

I’m thinking of the philosophers and scientists pursuing the question of how life began, how human beings were created, where it all started. We were reminded of some of this in the past few days and weeks as the Cassini space craft was completing its 13 year mission to Saturn. I read about how some of the things discovered during this remarkable ended up giving us new information about life could have beegun.
But in spite of all the new information we have about the origin of life, I am led to a curious conclusion. The beginning of everything we need to know about human life is really to be found somewhere else. Today I want to put before you the proposition that life really comes from a process of forgivenness.
Consider the central role forgiveness plays in the foundational story of the patriarchs – in particular Joseph and his brothers. We get a little flavor of that in the episode we hear today, coming as it does toward the end of the saga.
Poignance of Joseph receiving and forgiving his brothers after they had perpetrated such violence against him. (Gen)

Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good (Gen)

Or Paul, writing towards the end of his magnum opus, his letter to the Romans.

Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions (Paul)

Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? (Paul)

Finally, of course, in the gospel, we hear Jesus’ response to Peter who asks him, “How many times do we need to forgive someone?” Jesus’ words are probably not what he was looking for. They were:
“Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times."
Jesus goes on to illustrate his answer with a parable using one of his most common similes. It is the continuation of Jesus’ opening, “The kingdom of heaven is like …”

And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Lemons

Somehow the story emerging from these selections from the Bible is about God taking the terrible things that we have made and making something good out of it.
It’s something like taking lemons and making lemonade.
I remember a professor at seminary who bought an Oldsmobile. Within the first year I think he had to replace the transmission twice – or maybe it was having to replace the transmission a month after it went out of warranty. I’m not sure exactly. But he was left with the feeling that the car company was telling, “Sorry for your loss, pal. See ya around.”
His solution was to get a custom license plate – in Wisconsin at the time, license plates were a bright yellow. On his plate, boldly pinned to his nearly new Oldsmobile were the letters: A (space) LEMON.
I’m not sure if he was completely satisfied. But at the time it seemed like an innocent way of expressing one’s frustration at being powerless and being exploited by a corporation – all without hurting anyone.
In a much more serious example, my wife and I have been watching a tv show this season that some of you may have seen. It’s called “This is us”.
We first began watching because a colleague had said that it was a great show but that you had to have a box of kleenex handy because every episode would make you cry.
We found that to be roughly correct as far as the crying goes.
We also found it an enormously attractive story for a number of reasons: great acting, great writing, I like it because it has good things to say about being a father, and more.
It is also trying to tell a story that is as deep and significant as the words we hear in scripture today.
We have a whole season under our belts now and the next one is about to begin, but I don’t want to give too much away for any of you who might try to watch it.
(I don’t suppose I should worry about that because we have recently been re-watching the episodes and they still make me cry.)
Much of the premise of the series is built on an event in a hospital 30+ years ago. There a physician sits with a stunned and shocked father. They are in a hospital waiting area. It becomes clear that it is the waiting area outside the Delivery Room of the hospital. Dr. K. says

Dr. Katowsky: I like to think that one day you’ll be an old man like me talkin’ a young man’s ear off explainin’ to him how you took the sourest lemon that life has to offer and turned it into something resembling lemonade. If you can do that, then maybe you will still be taking three babies home from this hospital, just maybe not the way you planned.

Making lemonade out of sour lemons. It may be that the business God himself is in is making lemonade. Because he is in the business of taking the terrible things that we make and making lemonade from them – that is what we in turn need to be about.

“Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

Forgiveness is like lemonade

I don’t mean this to be trivial at all. Perhaps a little playful. But playful so that we can hear that it is about the transformation from the brokenness of sin and betrayal to something beautiful to God; from hate and violence to something beautiful to God; from abuse and exploitation – into something that God can smile about. Forgiveness provides us with a path forward when every step in front of us seems barred from us.
I once got a call late at night from a physician in the small congregation I served. The doctor worked with hospice and he had a patient that he was seeing who was dying. My friend observed that from a physical standpoint the man should already have died, but that there seemed to be something holding him back. He called me, thinking that the work of a priest might be more appropriate.
Indeed when I got there I found a man who was essentially unconscious, clinging to life with each breath. I asked a few general questions of the family at his bedside, but then began to pray. Basically I followed the outline of repentance and forgiveness as found in the BCP. It was a powerful experience for me. I got a phone call a few hours later – still in the middle of the night – that the man had died peacefully. Not that it mattered, but the man was a Baptist not an Episcopalian.
It is as if God was in the lemonade business, like two 8 year olds out on the street in front of their house. There is a card table there, a pitcher and some paper cups, and a sign that says, “Lemonade. 5¢ a cup.” God is those 2 young children.

God sings a song of forgiveness

I Know why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

I’m sure some of you have read it. It is a standard book in many of our schools’ curricula.
The book’s title comes from a poem by African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. The caged bird, a symbol for the chained slave, is an image Angelou uses throughout all her writings. Wikipedia
In that autobiographical book she covers powerful and poignant subjects, from rape to racism. What was most important to me as I read and reread that book through the late 1980’s – we used it as one of our standards texts at St. Joseph’s College – was its account of how one particular girl took the greatest lemon one can imagine – and from the lemonade she made, she herself began to sing as a bird, as an author.
Angelou took the title of her book from a poem by an early 20th c. African-American poet by the name of Robert Dunbar. He used the image as a symbol of a chained slave and she borrowed and continued to use it. Wikipedia
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!
Sympathy
“Take the sourest lemon life has to offer and turn it into something resembling lemonade”
The caged was 1st caged – it had been served a lemon like no other – its life of freedom was robbed from it – but the bird was able to bring forth song.

Forgiveness gives life

I was given a book some years ago that provided something of a roadmap or method for making forgiveness a part of your life. Though to forgive might seem like an insurmountable obstacle, the author would claim along with Jesus that to walk the path of forgiveness is to walk into life, lived to the fullest.

How to forgive and get your life back together again.

Dennis R. Maynard
(Maynard) outlines 7 steps to forgiving. They are not necessarily easy in as much as they seem insurmountable. But they are as near to us as is the Kingdom of God. They are:

• Choose to forgive
• Don’t cry alone
• Go get angry
• Forgiving and forgetting
• Choose to reconcile
• Sometimes reconciliation is not a choice
• When restoration is a choice
• Nurture a forgiving heart

These 7 steps are in effect a recipe for making lemonade from the lemons served us in life. There are perhaps variations, but when we consider the central place that forgiveness has in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we might conclude that it is the central recipe of the gospel.
Jesus forgives our sins through the power of God’s Grace. We forgive because we are first forgiven.
The Way of the world is “Arbeit machst frei”
The Way of God is "Versöhnlichkeith machst frei
Conclusion
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If 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. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. (Paul)
Forgiving and Forgiven