Speaker 1: Welcome to The CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 2: Well, welcome to church. My name is Jeremy, and here we are at the start of 2021. And I know things are Not exactly back to normal yet, but just closing the chapter on 2020 feels like some kind of a small victory, doesn't it? That said, it's 2021 and that means a new year and hopefully a new page, but also a new series. And often at this time of year, we try to think about our relationships.
And January tends to be that time of year when we're a little more open to introspection. In the past, we've talked about loneliness and friendship. And last year in a series called Swipe Right, we talked about our relationship to sexuality. This Here, we want to begin the year to frame the year by talking about forgiveness. Now, sorry, you can't forgive a year.
2020 will to remain in infamy. But you can in fact forgive quite a lot. In fact, you can forgive far more than you think you can. It just doesn't always come easily to us because forgiveness is hard and more than that it is Hard work. However, before we can forgive anything, we need to know what it means to forgive and perhaps what it doesn't.
And that's where we'll start this year together. But first, let's pray. Almighty God to whom all hearts are open, all desire known and from whom no secrets are hidden. Right? We come to understand that even in the fullness of your knowledge about us, You love us.
You welcome us. You invite us toward you. God, in those moments where we sometimes question if we are loved, if we are forgiven, if we can be healed and made whole again. Would you speak to us by your spirit and remind us of our full acceptance and embrace. As that story sink somewhere deep into our bones, may it become the story that we begin to live out.
And we begin to trust that we can forgive, that we can move past old hurts, that we can do our part to reconcile broken relationships. And that when we are ready, when we have learned the lessons of past hurts, We can set that aside to move forward in you. God, may your spirit be present to each of us just where we are, are just as we need you to be today. Speaking love and healing, inviting us to Follow your path toward the health, the forgiveness, the love, and the grace that you embody in this world. The strong name, The risen Christ we pray.
Amen. Okay. Well, the question might be why are we talking about forgiveness now when most of us haven't even seen another human person in 9 months? Or at least apart From those we live with and maybe that's actually part of it. Distance makes the heart grow fonder.
Proximity makes us all a little cranky. Yes, that is actually part of it. Probably most of us have spent more time in close quarters than in seasons past, and honestly, that can create tensions. If That's you? It's okay.
More than that, I think all of us have felt the weight of this season. That little bit of extra hanging around in the background all the time. And you can call it anxiety or fear or frustration or just sadness. It doesn't mean we haven't laughed or celebrated or felt real joy in the season. We have.
It just means that for a lot of us, there has been that little bit less energy to go around. Look, I intend to make 2021 a year worth remembering, and I don't know exactly when it will get rolling. But when it does, I'm going to be there for it. What that means is that I don't want to be carrying around any unnecessary weight with me into this year. You see, the thing is when we are carrying around what happened a year ago, a month ago, an hour ago, when that person that heard This is still taking up residence in the back of our mind somewhere.
We may not think about it consciously. We might not even really notice it at all, But as long as we're hanging on to it somewhere, it is taking up emotional energy somewhere. And that means that's energy that we don't have available to us now. By the way, if you found yourself a little more tired or a little less productive, if your kids were a little less focused when you tried to homeschool them this term, It's not because you're a bad person or parent or teacher. It's just because we're all human beings.
And emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual energy, all of that has to come from the same calorie pool. Everybody was into the Queen's Gambit this Our show about, yes, chess. But one study actually found that top chess players can burn up to 6,000 calories a day during tournaments. Take that Ton. In fact, your brain burns about 20% of all of your calories every day, and that's when you're not living in a pandemic or carrying around old wounds.
So if you really do want to bring yourself and your creativity to your world and your to your relationships in 2021. And part of the work now is finding a way to be free from back there so that you can actually be present to right here. But what does that mean? Can we Or really leave the past behind, can we ever really be free from it? And the answer is no and then yes.
No. You can't ever really leave the past behind, but yes, you can absolutely find yourself free from it. And so that's That's where we need to start this year. But to do that, I wanna look at a parable of Jesus. This is one of his longer more elaborate ones, one of his more famous ones, it's the story of the prodigal son.
And this is one that we've looked at a number of times before and yet it's one that continues to draw all of us back to it to learn from it again. And the parable itself is found in Luke 15. It's in verses 11 to 32 if you want to look it But basic story is this, there's a wealthy dad with 2 sons and one day his younger son comes and asks for his share of the inheritance. Now a couple things here. The younger son would have been eligible for a smaller share than his older brother.
And 2, that share would have normally been his when his father died. Now asking for that share from a living father was not unheard of, although it was a little uncouth. The book of Tobit and the wisdom of Sirach, both second temple Jewish books in the Apocrypha, talk about children asking for their inheritance from their living others. Tobit looks somewhat fondly on this. Sirach not so much, but the precedent was there.
And so this son, well, he goes for it. And without much fanfare, the father agrees. So the son takes the cash and he skips town and he heads To the nearest foreign country and he lives it up. Jesus tells us that he spends all of his money on a wasteful life. But then right at that point, just as he's about to run out of cash, a famine strikes the land and the economy pulls back and he can't get a job.
So he ends Working with pigs, remember, he's Jewish so this is not so cool. But he's also so underpaid that he's literally thinking about stealing some of the Slop from the animals. It's at this point that Jesus says he came to his senses or more literally here what the text says as he returned to himself, which I mean honestly is just such a great image in itself. Idea that for Jesus, our worst moments are not the ones that define us. In fact, our worst moments are often simply where we have lost sight of who we really are.
But this kid, this young man, he remembers that his dad for whatever he was or wasn't, he was a good man who at the very least looked after his employees. And he thinks to himself, well, I could go home. I could tell my dad I messed up. I could say I'm not even worthy to be your son anymore, or but maybe, I mean, surely you would give me a job. I would be better than this.
And so he heads home. Now, Well, he's still a long way off. Jesus says that his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him. He ran to his son. He threw his Arms around him and he kissed him.
And the son now tries to start into his little speech but the father cuts him off and says, look nonsense. You're home. We're having a party. I thought my son was dead but now I know he's alive. That's the good part of the story, but it's not actually done.
Because next, the older brother catches wind of this. In fact, he hears the band Starting up and the party getting underway and he comes roaring back to the house. What's the deal? He says, this kid treats you for dead, Squanders your money and you welcome him back with a feast? This is not fair.
I'm over here working in the field. Not Once did you ever toss a goat my way to pull a rage room with my friends? This is totally uncool. Well the father says, you are Always with me my son. Everything I have is always yours.
Today, we celebrate and we're glad because this Brother of yours was dead and is now alive again. He was lost, but now is found. It's a really Good story, right? I mean, regardless of how many times you've heard it or read it, it kinda grabs a hold of a part of us and we all of us want to be Welcome home like this younger son. All of us we want to believe in a God who is like this father.
And yet, when it comes To forgiveness, I think we often miss some of the nuance with which Jesus tells this tale. You see, the story is told in response to a confrontation between some religious leaders and Jesus. Jesus has been hanging out With a crowd that's deemed a little less than reputable and the religious leaders are grumbling about this. So Jesus tells them a story about a shepherd Bird with a large flock of sheep. And one of them wanders off, so the shepherd leaves the flock to care for each other and he goes off to find the lost sheep.
He tells another variation of the same story. This time it's about a woman who loses a coin and searches her house desperately looking for it. But when it's becoming clear that his detractors aren't quite getting his meaning, he tells this version of the same story. This time it's a little more involved. The setup is longer and there are more characters here, but the premise is essentially the same.
When And this isn't actually all that surprising. I know people like to imagine that these Pharisees would have been offended by this Image of grace, but that's obviously not the case. In fact, Jesus seems to have purposely drawn his Language here from Genesis 34. There Jacob and Esau are reunited after they've had a falling out and the text there says that Esau ran And to meet Jacob, embraced him, he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. That's almost exactly the same language that Jesus uses here.
So this is actually a beautiful, well known Hebrew image of family reconciliation Jesus is drawing on. Except that this time the story isn't done because this time those detractors, those that did not like the way that Jesus carried himself in society, they're actually part of the story. If the sinners are sheep and God is the shepherd, if the sinners are the coin and God is the woman, if the younger brother is those sinners And the father in the story is God. All of that is good. Except now.
Now we have all those who grumble and complain about forgiveness. Those who choose to sit outside the party and log their criticisms over the fence, they are represented here in the older brother. And now we start to see that the story isn't just about forgiveness and what it offers to us. It's also about unforgiveness and what that does to us. And that's Really, what makes this parable so insightful, I think.
Yes. It's it's extreme and it's unexpected. It's offensive almost in the In which forgiveness invades our brokenness to welcome us back home. But it's also the subtly subversive Sidious way that fun forgiveness saps the joy and the beauty out of the life that's right in front of us. Look, Jesus isn't presenting forgiveness here as the drudgery of religious commitment, something you have to do.
He's presenting it as the choice that gives you back the joy that was stolen from you. He's not mad at religious leaders for not forgiving well. He's sad that they're keeping themselves outside of such a great party. Here's here's a theological hot take for you. Perhaps the reason that God is the most joyful being in the universe is because God refuses to ever be held captive by any unforgiveness.
God forgives all of us and therefore God is free to enjoy all of us. But there are there are a few ideas here about forgiveness that this parable makes plain for me that I wanna look at today. The first is that forgiveness is a process. There's this really interesting thing that Jesus points out in the story here. He says that the father saw his son when he was still a long way off.
And the implication here is that this isn't just a coincidence. He didn't just happen to be looking off in the distance one day. The idea is that perhaps this father has been getting up regularly early in the morning for Some time now walking to the edge of his property to look for his son and wait for his return. That's really beautiful. And I think we're supposed to notice it.
We're supposed to pay attention. Forgiveness is intentional and enacted, and it looks for those opportunities to express itself. But what this doesn't mean is that the morning after his son took his money and left the family, the father Wanted him back the next day. In fact, that probably took a while. See, if I was gonna flesh out the backstory in my mind, I might imagine this father alternating between these moments of desperately wanting his Son back home and and then moments of thinking good riddance to that ungrateful brat.
I picture him hoping his Son was doing well one day and then the next morning in the shower rehearsing the conversation when disaster befell his son and he had to come groveling to dad. By the way, rehearsing with conversations in the shower, that's exactly how I know I haven't actually forgiven someone yet. But here's the thing, when when Jesus says that the father They're stood at the edge of his property watching the distance. What this tells me is that this father has been in this process long enough that the story wasn't just about him anymore. And I think that's really important because sometimes I think we think that if we're ever going to forgive, it's going to be supernatural.
And look, I'm not saying it's not. In fact, I think all forgiveness is divine, but that doesn't mean it's magical. Often, I think we try to move from the moment where someone hurt us to the moment where we have given them as if there was no ground to cover in between. And look, when someone has hurt you, it's okay to be hurt by that. It's okay to not be ready to forgive them for that.
It's okay to say not yet. Now hear me. I'm not saying it's okay not to forgive. That's only going to hurt you in the end, but I am saying it's okay to not be ready yet. And there's a Big difference.
Because forgiveness isn't magic. It's a process that we enter into, and it's one that we have to enter into consciously. So maybe someone did something to you a year ago or years ago when you never actually dealt with them. The first step Step in forgiveness is simply to acknowledge that you are still holding on to this. Recognize that maybe you're not quite ready to let go of it yet, but to name the Fact that you do want to.
Because once you can say that, once you can own that, then you can start to ask yourself, well What do I want to do with this? What comes next? Maybe you're in the place where you know you're not ready, But maybe you have noticed lately that you're a little less tense when you think about that person. That your body doesn't quite tighten up the way It used to when you heard their name that you don't feel it in your shoulders or your jaw the same way anymore. And for some reason that's always my thing.
I clamp my jaw shut when I'm mad And eventually it just it hurts. Well, notice that. Pay attention to that. Celebrate that loose jaw for the wind that it is right now. Because Forgiveness is a process and every step takes you somewhere new.
But if you expect yourself, if you try to force yourself to pretend that you're over it when you're not. What happens is that pain has to go back into your jaw and back into your shoulders, back down deeper into your heart Hard until you start to think that it's actually part of you. And oftentimes, it's Small wins and incremental steps, this is what our healing is made of. But the fact that Jesus Shows us one person, the father who's now at the end of a very long journey. And contrast that with Other person, the brother who hasn't even recognized the journey that's in front of him yet, that should probably help you realize that you are likely somewhere in between.
And Jesus is not scolding you for not being done. He's pointing you to everything that waits on the other side. That's because forgiveness is about learning to remember well. Now, I know we've all heard that God forgets our sins. Am I right?
I blot at your transgressions. I will remember not your sins. Isaiah 43. I mean, That's good stuff. But let's be realistic here.
A divine being who speaks stars into skies Does not forget where they put their car keys. But this is poetic anthropomorphization. The The poet is saying that God is not like us. God does not hold our sins against us. In fact, God is not beholden to us at all precisely because God forgives us so completely.
Part of that completeness, I think, is that God only ever has to forgive us for what we've done. No. I don't know about you, but my objective grasp of reality is tenuous at best and so much less so when I am angry about My son is 7. He has very large emotions that he wears very openly. I hope he never loses any of that.
Last week, I said something to him that struck him in a way I didn't intend which immediately sent him into tears. But as we were working our way through it and breathing ourselves back down as I held him in my arms, he said to me, dad, sometimes when I'm tired things just feel really big. That's a whole sermon right there by the way. Part of the reason God can forgive so completely is because God can forgive objectively, and that's Just not something we can do easily. God doesn't have to forgive you for the thing God imagined you did after you left.
God doesn't ever have to forgive you for the tone God thought might have been there in your voice as you spoke. God doesn't have to forgive you for the story God created about what you meant by that. God knows the offense so God forgives the offense. You and I though, sometime we've gotta work just to understand what it is we're trying to forgive. And so we have to remember well.
That means we begin to surrender our stories and be honest about what actually happened. And that may mean you have to leave some things behind before you even start to forgive. Narratives you've constructed and intentions you've assumed, you Realize that you're mostly mad at someone for a conversation you made up in the shower as you've rehearsed confronting them for something they actually did say? I have. Forgiveness starts with letting all of that go so that you can remember what actually happened and choose what it is you're going to Forgive.
Desmond and Mfotutu write in their book, The Book of Forgiving, that we do not enter into the path of forgiveness blithely, nor do we travel without some trepidation that it may not go as planned. Forgiveness is a conversation, and like most important conversations, It needs a language that is clear and honest and sincere. Healing and reconciliation are not magic spells. They do not erase the reality of an injury. To forgive is not to pretend that what happened did not happen.
Healing does not draw a veil over hurt, Rather healing and reconciliation demand an honest reckoning and remembering. Here's the thing, if you haven't Spend the time so that you understand exactly what someone did to you, how they hurt you, why it hurt you so much, then you will never be able to choose the path Hath away from that pain. Now we need to talk about boundaries and consequence and revenge in this series, and we will. When the father welcomes his son home, I don't think that means he put him in charge of the family business the next day. And that's precisely because forgiveness is not about forgetting, it's actually about remembering well, and the naming and then consciously choosing to respond to all of that hurt in a healthy healing way, which brings us to a last point, which is where we'll spend most of our time next week.
Forgiveness is for you. And this one is kinda tricky because I don't wanna sound like I'm turning forgiveness into something that can be selfish. I think I think that can actually derail the process. You can't be greedy for your own healing. And yet as Desmond and Fo write, when you forgive, you're free to Move on in life to grow to no longer be a victim of the one who hurt you.
When you forgive, you slip the yoke and your future becomes unshackled from your past. And this is it, I think. Someone hurts us, and we think, well, that was unpleasant. I'll push At a way, I'll arm her up. I'll hold on to this so tightly that I can make sure it never happens again.
But once we do that, Once we learn how to do that, it becomes a pattern and we start to find offense and we gather up little injuries and we pile on those hurts and we grasp it every Every chance we can to be offended and we just build it all up and we carry it all around until at some point we find ourselves ground down to our knees under The weight of all of these moments we should have let go years ago. Until one day, Objectively, you're a wealthy kid surrounded by family within a friends to throw a party and a Ad who loves you desperately. But subjectively, you are utterly miserable, suffering over what someone else It's received. I'm not saying that to minimize how you were hurt or that you were hurt. I'm saying that refusing to deal with that hurt is adding hurt on top of hurt.
And this older brother who refuses to forgive his sibling, now turns his fury on his father, and his brother's past now starts robbing him of his present. And in the context of Luke, Jesus tells this story to say, guys, don't you get it? You may not want to forgive these people. You may not think they deserve it. But Trust me, God already has and they are already welcome and the party is all ready starting.
And you are out here holding out in the field, grumbling and complaining and missing out on all of the celebration. And maybe you think that you're withholding something good from them, but in the economy of God, you are only ever refusing to join the party that's already in progress. Yes. Forgiveness is a process and no God doesn't ever expect you to just get over it. Yes.
Forgiveness is to remember well, and no, God doesn't ever expect you to forget What happened to you? But forgiveness is for you. It is a gift to you. And God desperately wants you to receive it when you are ready to. Look, I know you've been Curt.
All of us have. But none of us were meant to carry it forever. And you don't deserve to be forced to. May you know that you have been forgiven. Honestly and completely that God remembers everything you and chooses to love you.
And as that begins to sink in, may it then become the story from which you live, you remember, You love, you forgive. And may you begin to be free to celebrate with the goodness in the grace of God today. Let's pray. God, may your forgiveness flood into all of our lives wherever we are in this moment right now. Might we Hence, your presence and your grace, your spirit near us in this moment speaking to us of our worth, our value, our essential That in all the ways that we have fallen, we have failed, we have dropped the ball and Scraped our knees.
You are there to pick us up, to forgive us, and welcome us home. And as that becomes our story, that goodness and Grace coursing through us. May we recognize that every bit of bitterness that we hold on to after it has served its purpose And after we have learned the lessons from it, the longer we hold on to it once it has served us, now we begin to serve it. And it will begin to steal from us the goodness and the joy and the celebration that you are inviting us to. So when we are ready, when we have healed, when we have learned, when we have moved past it to the point where we can let it go, Might you help us do exactly that.
To send the hurt away. So that we can move into everything you Have in front of us. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.