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Ashes: Luke 15
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
However, it's the start of a new year, and that also means the start of a new series. And I realized that we have chosen somewhat intimidating artwork for this conversation. Now perhaps, were not expecting to start the new year with this sad looking child staring back at you, but he is there because we wanna talk about forgiveness to start the year. And here's the thing. Forgiveness is hard.
Speaker 1:More than that, forgiveness hurts. There's a very real grief that comes when you realize that to forgive means that you will not be getting even. Things won't ever be made fair. That you won't get to enact all of those elaborate revenge fantasies that you have been constructing in the back of your mind somewhere. Now forgiveness, real forgiveness is a really difficult skill to apply in our lives.
Speaker 1:And that might sound like a heavy way to start the new year. I mean, couldn't we just talk about Jesus in your fridge and how he helps or wants to help you diet well in 2017? But here's the thing. I think God has some incredible things in store for us as a community and for you this year. And I don't mean that in just some lame, light, and easy as if God wants you and your family to look like you're in a photo shoot all the time kind of way.
Speaker 1:I mean it in a very deep, heavy, significant kind of way. But the thing is, when you are carrying around what happened a year ago, a month ago, an hour ago, and when someone that hurt you is taking up residence in the back of your mind somewhere, That is energy that you don't have available to you right now. And if you really want to bring yourself and your creativity to your world and your family and your relationships the way that they need you to this year, then you need to find a way to be free of back there so that you can be present to right here in this moment. And so today, we're gonna begin this conversation about forgiveness by talking about what it isn't. Sometimes you need to start with what it isn't before you can talk about what it is.
Speaker 1:At next week, we wanna look at what it means to forgive ourselves. In the third week of this series, it will be revenge and the myth of redemptive violence, why that never works. And then finally, in the last week of this series, we are gonna look at healthy boundaries. So how to interact with this idea of forgiveness in our relationships when you have someone who is toxic and there still needs to be some boundaries in your life. Let's start with a prayer before we dive in.
Speaker 1:Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden. May we come to understand that even in the light of your perfect knowledge, you love and you welcome and you invite us toward you. May we come to embrace your offer of forgiveness as the only path toward true wholeness and health in our lives. And in that, may we even begin to sense the depth of your love in the self giving sacrifice of your son. Might we come to truly grasp your love, not as a thing that you do for us or toward us, but as your identity.
Speaker 1:The fact that you are love. And so, God, for those of us in this room who continue to struggle with the idea of forgiveness, not to accept it, to offer it, to sense it within the core of our being. Would your spirit be present here in this room, in this conversation, and in these moments? Speaking to our hearts that we might grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. To him be all glory through all generations forever and ever.
Speaker 1:Amen. Alright. What it isn't. One of the real problems I think with taking forgiveness from a theoretical or even a theological concept and putting it into a regular practice or discipline in our lives is that sometimes we just have bad ideas about what it is. And so I wanna talk today about what it isn't because I think that that can help us as we move farther into this series and we start trying to talk about how to place it and work it out in our lives.
Speaker 1:And to do that, I wanna look at a very famous passage today. One that probably most of us are familiar with, at least culturally, because it's one of Jesus' most famous parables. It's one of his longer ones, and it's generally called the parable of the prodigal son. It starts in Luke chapter 15 verse 11, and it runs all the way through to verse 32. But the basic premise is that there is this father with two sons.
Speaker 1:And one day, the youngest son comes to his dad and he says, listen, dad. I want my inheritance. And I know that you're still alive, but I don't have time to wait until you die. I've got big plans for myself. So I'd like it now.
Speaker 1:I'd like it in cash, an unmarked bag, small bills preferably, and if we could do it this afternoon, that would be great. And remarkably, as offensive as this is, the father agrees to it. So the kid takes the money and he leaves home and he heads to a foreign country and he just lives it up. The text says that he spends all of his money on a wasteful life. But then, right at that point, just when he has run out of cash, a famine strikes the land and the economy contracts and he can't even get a job.
Speaker 1:And so he ends up working with pigs and he is so underpaid that he is literally thinking about stealing some of the slop from the animals so that he can eat. And it's at this low point in his life that the text says he comes to himself. And he remembers that his dad, for whatever he was or wasn't, he was a good man. And at least he looked after his employees. And so he thinks, maybe I could go home.
Speaker 1:And I could tell my dad, I know that I messed up. I could say, I'm not even worthy to be your son anymore, but maybe, maybe he would give me a job. And so he gets up and he heads home. But while he was still a long way off, Jesus says that his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him. He ran to his son.
Speaker 1:He threw his arms around him and he kissed him. And the son tries to start into the speech that he's prepared, but the father cuts him off and says, no nonsense. We were having a party. I thought my son was dead, but now I know that he's alive. And for some of us, the way that we've heard this story or maybe the way that we remember this story, this is basically where the story ends.
Speaker 1:Except the thing is, if you back up to the start of chapter 15, what you realize that this is where actually the story starts. You see back at the start of chapter 15, Jesus has been hanging out with a bunch of social outcasts. And worse than that, these are unrepentant sinners. And so the context in Luke is that there are all of these religious leaders who are looking at Jesus and they are unimpressed with his choices, and so they are criticizing the people that he's hanging out with and who he chooses to party with. But instead of firing back at them, Jesus tells a story about a gracious and forgiving father who represents God and who welcomes home his wayward child.
Speaker 1:And everyone there would have nodded in agreement. See, there's nothing controversial about this story so far. I mean, yes, it represents God in a somewhat shocking way. It imagines him hiking up his cloak and running to meet his son. This is not a particularly dignified way for a patriarch to act in the ancient world.
Speaker 1:But honestly here, nobody would have objected to this story. In fact, the language that Jesus uses here, it seems to intentionally call to mind a story from Genesis 34 where Jacob and Esau, they are reunited after they have a falling out in their relationship. And the text there in Genesis 34 says that Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him. He threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And that is almost exactly the language that Jesus uses here.
Speaker 1:And so this is a beautiful, well known Old Testament image of family reconciliation that Jesus is very specifically playing off in order to teach us something about forgiveness. And so even the pharisees, yes, of course, the pharisees who knew the Hebrew scriptures inside and out, they would have immediately recognized this language, and they would have seen god in this image immediately. But if the surprise hasn't hit yet and if the climax hasn't landed yet, that means that the story isn't done. And so Jesus continues. Meanwhile, the older son was out in the field.
Speaker 1:And when he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and he asked him what's going on. Your brother has come home, he replied. Your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound. The older brother became angry at this and refused to go in.
Speaker 1:So the father went out and he pleaded with his son, but he answered his father, look, all these years I have been slaving away for you and I've never disobeyed your orders. Yet, you never gave me even a young goat so that I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours, I don't know if you ever noticed this, but when you haven't forgiven someone, you almost unconsciously avoid naming them. You know, my ex wife said this to me, or my father did that to me. He, they, she, it, anything to escape saying a name.
Speaker 1:But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him. My son, the father said, you are always with me and everything that I have is yours. But today, we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is now alive again. He was lost, but now is found. So here's the thing.
Speaker 1:This is very clearly a story that is meant to contrast forgiveness and unforgiveness in our lives. Right? That's what Jesus is doing here. The extreme, unexpected, almost offensive way in which forgiveness invades our brokenness to welcome us home. And the subtle, insidious subversive way that unforgiveness saps the joy and the beauty out of life from us.
Speaker 1:And in some ways, I think we are meant to see ourselves in each of these characters. And the son who needs welcome, that's us. And the father who offers it completely, sometimes that's us. The brother who withholds his grace and forgiveness, sometimes that's us. It's part of the depth and the beauty of these types of stories that Jesus likes to tell.
Speaker 1:But given the context for this story and given the audience that Jesus is addressing in this story, who is Jesus really asking us to identify with in this story? It's the older brother. Right? I mean, that's the point. That's the crux of the story.
Speaker 1:That you are always in need of forgiveness. God is always welcoming you home, but often, we find ourselves getting stuck on the outside of that story looking in. And so I think there are some interesting things here about what Jesus is asking us to enter into when it comes to forgiveness. But perhaps, just as importantly, given the main character and his dilemma, what God is not asking us to enter into. And so I wanna talk about three things tonight from this story.
Speaker 1:First, that forgiveness isn't a moment. Second, that forgiveness isn't forgetting. And then finally, that forgiveness isn't for them. So first, forgiveness isn't a moment. I think sometimes what happens is we read a story like this, and we know that it is designed to move us toward forgiveness.
Speaker 1:But we leave the story, and then we go back into real life, and we think about that thing that person did to us. And we say to ourselves, you know what? I just can't. Like, I can't forgive them. I can't get there.
Speaker 1:The problem is that's really discouraging and I think it's self defeating. Because we're trying to move from the posture of the brother to the posture of the father in a moment, and that's not how forgiveness works. Now forgiveness is not a moment. Forgiveness is not a single decision. Forgiveness is a process that you enter into.
Speaker 1:It is really important we understand that going in. Now in Jesus story, it says that the father saw his son while he was still a long way off, and he was filled with compassion for him. Now the implication here is that this isn't just a coincidence. That perhaps this father has been getting up regularly every day for some time to walk to the edge of his property to look for his son and wait for his return. That's beautiful.
Speaker 1:But what that does not mean is that the morning after his son took his money and left the family, the father wanted him back the next day. And my guess is that would take a while. Now, if I was to flesh out the backstory here a bit, I might imagine this father alternating between moments of desperately wanting his son to return and then moments of thinking good riddance to that ungrateful brat. I'm glad he's gone. If I was to fill in the story a bit, I could imagine his father moving from wondering what he did wrong as a parent.
Speaker 1:You know, was this his fault? Was he too generous? Did he spoil the kid? Is that what went wrong? And then one minute later, think, no.
Speaker 1:You know what? Some kids are just bad kids. And I gave him every opportunity and he wasted it. That's on him. I imagine him hoping that his son was doing well one second in this foreign land and then wishing disaster on him the next.
Speaker 1:Just hoping that he would one day have to come groveling home to his dad. But here's the thing. When Jesus says that the father saw his son and was filled with compassion for him, What this tells me is that this father has been in this process long enough that he realizes the story isn't about him anymore. It's about his son now. And that's really important.
Speaker 1:Because sometimes, I think that we try to move from the moment where someone has hurt us to the moment where we forgive them completely, but we haven't allowed our story to play itself out. And sometimes, if you try to move too fast and sometimes we try to do that in a day or an hour or a single session with a counselor, what happens is it actually derails the process that God is working on inside of us. You need to know that if someone has hurt you, it's okay to be hurt. It's okay to not be ready to forgive them yet. Now hear me.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying it's okay to not forgive them. What I'm saying is it's okay to not be ready to forgive them right now. And there's a big difference. Because forgiveness isn't a moment. It's a process that we enter into, and sometimes it takes a very long time.
Speaker 1:But it's a process that we have to enter into consciously. So maybe someone did something to you years ago, and you have never dealt with it. And you just pushed it down. Or maybe you shoved it away. But the first step in real forgiveness sometimes is simply to acknowledge that you are actually still holding on to this.
Speaker 1:And recognizing that maybe you're not actually ready to let go of it yet. Because once you can name that, once you can see that, once you can own that, well, then you can start to ask yourself, well, what do I wanna do with this now? Forgiveness is a process. And maybe you are in that process right now, but you know you haven't moved on. And maybe you are still at that place where you can't even say their name, it's still your ex.
Speaker 1:But maybe what you have noticed lately is that you are a little bit less tense when you think about that person. That your body doesn't tighten up quite the way it used to when you hear their name in conversation. Like, you don't feel it in your shoulders or your jaw the same way anymore when their name comes up. And notice that. And pay attention to that.
Speaker 1:Celebrate that even. Because if you are slightly less angry today than you were yesterday, then that means you are heading somewhere positive. And forgiveness is this process that we enter, but if you expect yourself, if you try to force yourself to pretend that you have let go when you haven't yet, then that pain and that hurt, it will work itself deeper and deeper inside of you until you come to think that it is part of you. And it's not. Sometimes, small wins and incremental progress, sometimes that's what healing is made of.
Speaker 1:So take it and celebrate it and keep moving forward one step at a time. The fact that Jesus is showing us one person who was at the end of a very long journey of forgiveness and then contrasting that with another who hasn't even recognized the journey that's in front of them yet. What that should do is help you to realize that you are probably somewhere in between those two. And what that can do for you is help you to understand the journey that you're on and the place that you are working your way toward. Second, forgiveness is not about forgetting.
Speaker 1:And I know God forgets our sins. Right? Isaiah 43, I blot out your transgressions. I will not remember your sins. But let's be realistic here.
Speaker 1:If there is a divine being who speaks reality into existence, he probably does not forget things, Absent mindedly or otherwise. What this means is that God doesn't remember our sins against us. Right? Means he doesn't hold our sins against us. Now, does that mean that there are no consequences for bad choices?
Speaker 1:Of course not. There are consequences for every choice that we make. There's consequences in life. There's consequences in relationships. There's consequences in our economics.
Speaker 1:There are consequences in our spirituality. But if you go into a process of trying to forgive someone for what how they have hurt you, expecting and believing that this means you have to forego any consequences in your life, that you have to forget everything and that you have to put everything back the way that it was before they injured you, then you will never be able to move through that process in a healthy way. Trust needs to be earned. Broken trust needs to be earned doubly. And so the father celebrates when his son comes home.
Speaker 1:Of course, does. But I do not think that means he put him in charge of the family finances the next day. Maybe you have somebody in your life who keeps saying to you, listen, I said I'm sorry. Like, why can't it just go back to the way that it was? And maybe you just need to know that it's okay to say because it can't.
Speaker 1:Now in the best of situations, in the healthiest of relationships it can, and that's always the hope. Right? And sometimes, that's after a lot of time and after a lot of healing. Sometimes, that's even right away, but reconciliation is always the hope in every damaged relationship. And I have friends here in this community who and I wouldn't do this consciously on purpose, but I could say some incredibly insensitive or hurtful things to.
Speaker 1:And once I realized that, once I understood what had happened, I know that I could go back. I could apologize. I could say, listen. I am so sorry. And they would say to me, without question, no problem.
Speaker 1:It's done. Like, we don't ever need to talk about this again. Of course, I forgive you. Now if I kept saying hurtful insensitive things and I kept coming back and apologizing, that response might need to change. But that's because forgiveness is not about forgetting.
Speaker 1:It's actually about remembering and naming and then consciously choosing to respond to that hurt in a healthy healing way. And if you haven't spent time so that you understand exactly what this person did to you, and how they hurt you, and why it hurt you so much, then you will never be able to choose to send that hurt away. To set it down and to walk away. Now, we're gonna talk later in this series about healthy boundaries. And about how to forgive and then still maintain appropriate non revenge based consequences in our relationships.
Speaker 1:And sometimes people are toxic, and we need to keep a certain distance. But we have to understand that forgiveness does not necessarily mean you forget what happened. Finally, forgiveness is not for them. Now, let me preface this by saying that forgiveness is not just about personal therapeutic deism. We don't just forgive because we will feel better about ourselves.
Speaker 1:We forgive because God is forgiving. That's our story as Christians. However, in that, what we recognize is that we were actually built to forgive. You and I, we were not built to carry around all of this baggage. You and I, we weren't meant to load hurt on top of injury.
Speaker 1:We were made in the image of the divine who is love and grace and forgiveness. But what that means is that for you to flourish, you need to learn how to forgive. It's as simple as that. Just look at the image of unforgiveness that Jesus presents to us in this story. He's a rich kid surrounded by family, apparently with enough friends to throw a party, and a dad who loves him.
Speaker 1:And he is utterly miserable. He's wealthy. He's got a family. He's got friends. He's got health.
Speaker 1:He's got a job. And all that he can think about is how unfair life has been to him. Does that sound familiar to anyone here? There's a hit, a little clue who close to home to anyone because it does for me. I mean, I look at this brother and when I see it on paper, like when I see it in Jesus' words, it just seems so absurd and clearly ridiculous.
Speaker 1:I mean, he's got everything, and he doesn't even know what he's upset about here. I mean, is he mad at his brother for leaving? Is he upset with his dad for forgiving him? I don't think he even really knows, and yet this is what I do all the time. Like, I find a little bit of offense, and I gather little injuries and I pile on the hurts and I grab at every chance to be offended that I can.
Speaker 1:And we just build them up and we carry them around until we have been ground down to our knees under the weight of all of these small little moments that we should have learned to let go of years ago. And I'm not saying this to minimize the way that you really were hurt by someone. I'm saying this because all of the small things that we haven't learned how to let go of make it almost impossible when some real weight and some honest hurt and a long process of forgiveness stares us down. It's a cliche, but I have often heard that forgiveness is about setting someone free and realizing it was you. But sometimes cliches are cliches for a reason.
Speaker 1:And that is exactly what Jesus is trying to show us here in this story. This older brother who refuses to forgive his sibling and then takes it out on his dad. He is the only one who is left suffering at the end of this story. And Jesus tells this story to a bunch of religious critics to say, guys, don't you get it? Like, you may not want to forgive these people, but God already has.
Speaker 1:And they are already welcome, and the party is already starting, and you you are out in the field grumbling and complaining and missing out on the celebration. You think you are withholding something from them, but you are only ever making yourself miserable. So, yes, forgiveness is a process. And sometimes it is a very long one. And, yes, forgiveness starts with remembering.
Speaker 1:There's a time to hold on to that hurt so that you can heal from it. But eventually, if you don't start to let go, you will find yourself on the outside frustrated and lonely, drained of passion, and wondering why you don't have the energy to celebrate anything anymore. That's what unforgiveness does to us. And forgiveness is a gift. And when you get to offer that to someone else, it is beautiful because it is divine.
Speaker 1:But forgiveness will never be as transformative for anyone else in the world as it will be for you. That's how it works. Because you were not meant to carry this hurt with you forever. And you were not created to hang on to this offense for a lifetime. You were built to be joyous and passionate and creative.
Speaker 1:You were built to contribute to this world, and God gave you everything that you need to do that well. But what he did not give you was the ability to carry the weight of the world on your back forever. And so maybe you need to start this new year by forgiving yourself. Maybe that's where it needs to start. Maybe you need to start by forgiving a friend or a family member or a lover who has hurt you.
Speaker 1:Maybe you need to forgive God. But like any epic journey, that begins not at the end with the image of the father and the son reunited in their embrace. It begins perhaps with the recognition that you are actually closer to the brother stuck frustrated in the field closer to that than you thought you were. But even if that's the case, then I pray that simply that realization will begin to remove some of the weight that you carried with you into this room. So that you might enter into a process of forgiveness by remembering those hurts.
Speaker 1:But then realizing that when you are ready to set them down, you will never need to pick them up again. Let's pray. God, we pray that as we begin this new conversation, you would be present to each of us, helping us to wade through the difficulty of what it means to be truly forgiving in our lives. And whether we find ourselves closer to the brother out in the field, Not ready to let go yet, but realizing there is a process, there is a journey that we need to enter into. And whether we realize that we are closer to the father, we are ready to let go.
Speaker 1:We are ready to be reunited, but stand at the edge of our property waiting for someone to return to us. God, we ask that you would be present by your spirit with us at whatever step in the journey we find ourselves in, and that you would help us to find the courage and the strength and the hope to take the step that's in front of us. God, help us not to worry about 10 steps down the road or even where the story is going to end, but, God, help us to be present to this step that's right in front. One movement closer to health, and one step closer to forgiveness, one tiny inch closer to you. Because this is the story, your forgiveness and grace that welcomes us and heals us and invites us home.
Speaker 1:And so, god, might that story become the model that we pattern our choices and our decisions and our discipline on. You're a great God. In the strong name of the risen Christ, pray. Amen.