The Rev. Ann R. Lougee

February 19, 2006

Radical Trust

Mark 2:1-12

When our grandchildren come over, one of them usually drags out our big book of Charles Schultz’ Peanuts cartoons. One of my favorite strips shows Lucy in her open air Psychiatric Help Booth and Charlie Brown seeking advice. In the first panel Charlie Brown is paying the counseling fee of five cents, and in the next he's saying, "And so I can't help it. I feel lonely, depressed, without a purpose."

Lucy shouts back, "This is ridiculous!" You should be ashamed of yourself, Charlie Brown. You've got the whole world to live in, there's beauty all around you; there are things to do... great things to be accomplished; no one trods this earth alone; we are all together; one generation taking up where the other generation left off!"

Charlie Brown smiles "You're right, Lucy, you're right! You've made me see things differently... I realize now that I am part of the world... I'm not alone... I have friends!" Then Lucy scowls at him, "Name one!"

Poor Charlie Brown is constantly struggling and falling short of having his spiritual needs met. Human spiritual needs have been defined as "The deepest requirements of the self, which, if met, make it possible to function with a meaningful identity and purpose, so that, in all stages of life, a person relates to reality with hope..."

Let’s hear that again: "The deepest requirements of the self, which, if met, make it possible to function with a meaningful identity and purpose, so that, in all stages of life, a person relates to reality with hope..."

In somewhat simpler language, experts say that having a healthy spirituality means at least three things:

1) having a sense of meaning and purpose in life;

2) having an awareness of God, the source of life and love, and being drawn by that awareness into relatedness with all the people with whom we live and work and share the planet;

3) realizing the importance of forgiveness, and having a good handle on how to offer and receive forgiveness.

At first glance, one might think this morning’s gospel reading is one of the healing miracle stories. But on closer examination, it’s really concerned with that third requirement, the one about realizing the importance of forgiveness and learning how to give and receive it.

A paralytic has been lowered by friends down through the roof into the middle of a crowd where Jesus is, in search of healing. Jesus says, "Child, your sins are forgiven you," and the scribes and the Pharisees are outraged, saying, "Who is this speaking blasphemies? For who can forgive sins but God alone?"

In that culture, one widely-accepted theology depicted a lofty, far-away, and rather fierce, God . This God had to be approached through intermediary priests who placated the deity with burnt offerings to obtain forgiveness of one’s sins.

It was believed that those sins, unforgiven, might cause any kind of misfortune or illness. Forgiving and healing had been functions reserved only for the priests. With such authority, the temple elite drew enormous social power from this function. So Jesus was crossing a dangerous line in placing the power of forgiveness in the human sphere; he was challenging the established power culture.

There is a similar story in Luke’s gospel, you may remember, about when a woman who is called "a sinner" came to the Pharisee’s house where Jesus was dining, and anointed his feet and dried them with her hair. It caused a scandal at the dinner when Jesus told her that her sins were forgiven.

Those at table with him then questioned, "Who is this who even forgives sins?" (Luke 7:36-49). Jesus was also quoted in Luke as having told his disciples to be merciful as God is merciful, and to forgive even their enemies (Luke 6:36-37).

The gospels all agree that much of what Jesus was about in his life and his ministry was forgiveness. It was, in fact, in claiming the power to forgive that Jesus first ran afoul of the temple power structure, according to the gospels.

The early church began to recognize that one way to witness to the continuing presence of the spirit of Jesus among them was by continuing to forgive sins in his name. They became convinced that one of God's gifts in the midst of their pain after the crucifixion was indeed the very gift of forgiveness.

With this gift of forgiveness came the gift of community, the gift of the presence of Christ’s Spirit, the gift of grace, the gift of purpose. How crucial, then, forgiveness is to our spiritual well-being -- both being able to offer it and being able to receive it!

For to live in relationship with other people is necessarily to disappoint them and to be disappointed by them, so we’re always in need of seeking and offering forgiveness. It's part of our human condition that we can’t either always know or always fulfill another’s needs, so that we hurt each other without ever meaning to or even realizing it.

Every successfully partnered couple or group knows that forgiveness is necessary -- both offering and receiving it -- in order to live together. Forgiveness is in fact essential to the new community that Jesus creates around himself to carry on after his death.

The inclusive community that will embody his spirit and carry on his work must practice giving and receiving forgiveness. This is essential for God’s kingdom to come on earth. In the Lord’s Prayer as it has been translated into English, we pray "forgive us our debts (or trespasses or sins) as we forgive our debtors (or those who trespass or sin against us).

This language may unfortunately lead us to think of forgiveness as a transaction, in which God, imaged as a stern judge, will only forgive us as a payback after we forgive others. In the Aramaic language which Jesus spoke, though, we might hear God imaged as the power of love working within.

I’ve brought for us to hear this morning three different possible translations based on various connotations of the Aramaic words that Jesus or his followers might actually have spoken. Listen for the Spirit of love and grace that is assumed in them:

1.) Loosen the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others' guilt. (Repeat)

2.) Lighten our load of secret debts as we relieve others of their need to repay. (Repeat)

3.) Forgive our hidden past, our secret shames, as we consistently forgive what others hide. (Repeat)

 

Frederick Buechner writes, in Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC,

Jesus is not saying that God’s forgiveness is conditional upon our forgiving others. In the first place, forgiveness that’s conditional isn’t really forgiveness at all, just Fair Warning. And in the second place, our un-forgiving-ness is among those things about us which we need to have God forgive us most.

What Jesus apparently is saying is that the pride which keeps us from forgiving is the same pride which keeps us from accepting forgiveness, and will God please help us do something about that...

To accept forgiveness means to admit you’ve done something that needs to be forgiven, and thus both parties must swallow the same thing: their pride.

 

So it is not that God, in some ornery fashion, refuses to forgive us until we forgive others. It is that our hearts cannot freely receive what is freely given until we open them. But how do we open ourselves to a change of heart, which is what the word "repentance" really means? A story from the desert monastic tradition may illustrate:

One of the monks had been insulted by another, and he wanted to take revenge. He came to the Abbot and told him what had taken place, saying that he was going to get even. The elder urged him to leave it in God's hands, but the brother refused, saying he would not give up until he had made the other pay for what he had said. Then the elder stood up and began to pray: "O God, Thou art no longer necessary to us, and we no longer need Thee to take care of us since, as this brother says, we can avenge ourselves, and will." At this, the brother monk promised to give up his idea of revenge.

To allow ourselves to learn more merciful ways of dealing with transgressions than we are naturally inclined appears to be a painful but invaluable part of spiritual maturation. It is not an impossible task to forgive as we have been forgiven, but it does take spiritual growth.

Those like Jesus and other spiritual giants who grow into sincere humility and lack of judgmentalism have indeed been recognized in all cultures through the centuries as holy ones or saints. Those saintly qualities don’t come from an absence of temptation to sin, as Mark’s gospel makes clear in depicting Jesus wrestling with it in the wilderness after his baptism.

In fact, just the opposite, saintliness seems to grow from a capacity to identify with human sin. It seems to grow from a sorrowful knowledge and understanding that each human heart has at its depths a great potential for evil as well as for good.

For example, Mother Teresa of Calcutta claimed that she engaged in her ministry of love because she knew that there was a Hitler inside her. One may conclude that those who are considered saintly are not shocked by any form of evil or degradation, for they know its potential deep within themselves.

As we learn more about the hidden depths of our hearts, our capacity for compassion and mercy should grow, and the ability to accept and offer forgiveness along with it. Once we understand that it is by grace that we stand again after falling, how can we refuse grace to others?

The Apostle Paul repeatedly assured those to whom he addressed his letters that we too, like Jesus, may attain the Spirit of Christ. That Spirit, shown to us in such clarity in the Jesus of the gospels, makes the rest of us capable of participating in divine, merciful love and forgiveness.

The Good News is that, if we will simply let it be, we are loved and forgiven. To become fully realized human beings, made in the image of God, we must learn to accept that love and forgiveness, and to love and forgive ourselves and one another. May it be so. Amen.