Our Sunday Message

To Err is Human; To Forgive...?: James 5:13-16
Rev. Dr. Carol McCall Richardson
October 1, 2006
Seventeenth Sunday of Kingdomtide

  Hear God’s Good News! You are forgiven!
   I am forgiven!
   We are forgiven!
  Before us is a pot, a broken piece of pottery, that I purchased from a sales table some years ago. The sign on the table read, “Slightly damaged, greatly reduced in value,” a good reminder to us that we, like the pot, are broken and in need of repair.
  It was Jesus who said to the man who could not walk, the one brought to Jesus on a mat by four friends, “Friend, your sins are forgiven…Which is easier,” Jesus said, “to say your sins are forgiven, or to say, ‘Get up and walk?’ But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…I say to you, Get up, take up you mat and go home” (Luke 5:20-24).
  Jesus knew that true wholeness, healing, is both physical and spiritual. James also understood this as he says to his little struggling faith community, “anyone who has committed sin—those things that separate us for our God and each other—will be forgiven. Confess your sins, pray for one another…and you will be healed” (James 5:16).
  And so, at the very heart of this passage on healing prayer is the reality of FORGIVENESS. If we would be truly whole; if we would be healed, we need to hear the God’s Good News afresh—you are forgiven. Forgiveness is crucial to our healing and I believe with all my heart that forgiveness is the entire gospel. It is the heart of what we profess.
  “Father, forgive them,” Jesus prayed from the cross.
  “I believe in the forgiveness of sins,” affirms the ancient baptismal creed. “Forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven you” Paul urges the churches in Asia Minor (Ephesians 4:32b).
  So why do we see so little of it?
  Forgiveness in the New Testament sense is not a superficial event. It is not just a willingness to “let by gones be by gones.” In the New Testament, forgiveness is about making what is tragically broken right again. It is about deep healing, a complete repair of broken relationships, a removal of the poison that destroys love and peace, a restoration of wholeness and open trust. Forgiveness is saying with utter honesty, “the wrong is now righted. I no longer count this against you.”
  “Pray with faith”, James says. “Call the community leaders to anoint with oil, remind those who are sick of body, of mind, of spirit that their sins have been forgiven; confess your sins one to another…and you will be healed.”
  So where do we see real forgiveness in our world?
  Oh, we may see an occasional cease-fire or treaty in the Middle East, but forgiveness?
  In Kosovo, in Rwanda, in Afghanistan, between warring religious groups, ancient wrong endure despite deep, deep yearnings for peace.
  The Pope apologizes for the holocaust, Southern Baptist apologize for slavery, but are these old and deep wounds fully healed and trust restored? We don’t seem to see much forgiveness here.
  And even in the smaller, one-on-one personal relationships, where forgiveness could be within easy reach, we see little genuine, deep forgiveness.
  Listen to this story as told by Fred Craddock:
  “I was traveling by plane and sat next to a woman who began to cry. So being a minister I said, “I see this is not a very happy trip for you.”
She said, “No, it isn’t.” “I’m going to my father’s funeral.”
  “I’m so sorry,” he said, but she kept crying.
  “I can tell by your tears that you and your father were very close.”
  “No”, she said. “On the contrary, I haven’t spoken to my father, written to my father, called my father, seen my father, in seventeen years.” “In fact, the last time I saw him I was in his home, and we got into a quarrel. I left the table, threw my napkin in my plate, and as I slammed the door leaving his house, I said, ‘You can go to hell.’ That’s the last thing I said to my father. And now he’s dead.”1
We surely don’t see much forgiveness here, only the remnants of guilt.
  But it’s just not on a global scale or in the lives of other people that forgiveness is rare. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that forgiveness is rare in our own personal experience as well.
There are many reasons, of course, why forgiveness is rare in our lives. To begin with, forgiveness is hard to do. Think about it, if a husband and wife have said hurtful things to each other in a fight and are now positioned at opposite ends of the house, arms folded in a resentful standoff, shooting hateful thoughts toward the other, we all know what they need to do. Even they probably know. Of course, they need to move toward the middle, toward each other, with arms outstretched and say words of reconciliation—“I’m sorry. I was wrong. Please forgive me.”
  So what’s keeping them? Plenty, as a matter of fact. If forgiveness, healing, is to happen husband and wife must put aside the need for power—the power of being the one who is “right.” the power to punish the other for pain inflicted, the power of revenge for harm that has been spoken and done. They must renounce power and assume a position of vulnerability and weakness for the sake of reconciliation and healing, and this is very hard to do. It goes against almost every human instinct. Forgiveness is rare because it is very hard to do.
  But there is another and more significant reason why forgiveness is rare in our experience. Forgiveness is not just hard to do, but it is impossible to do. Part of the reality of life is that we have been harmed by other people and have harmed others. Whether it’s the sort that appears on the evening news—child abuse, alcoholism, or domestic violence—or whether it’s the more silent, subtle form, the fact is that our relationships are broken, just like this pot here. James knew this and at the very heart of this passage on healing, he addresses the forgiveness issue because he knew that this is what it means to be a sinner; this is what it means to be human; that these gashes in human relationships are not surface wounds; the damage runs deep. To be truly healed we must accept God’s forgiveness and forgive each other. So if a child has been assaulted by a parent, if a wife has been abandoned by a husband, if a husband has been betrayed by a wife, if a friend has betrayed or an employer cold and hard, or the many other ways we hurt each other, ask the wronged person to be civil to the offender and perhaps it can be done. Ask them to be kind, and maybe that can be done as well. Ask them not to repay evil for evil and maybe this can be achieved. But do no ask them to forgive. Do not ask them to completely heal the relationship, to withdraw all the painful memory and to extract any bitter poison. Civility, yes, is within our grasp; but forgiveness true, deep-down, New Testament forgiveness, is not a human possibility. We simply cannot do it. But we can reach out to others with forgiveness because God has already forgiven you. ”Forgive one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you (Eph. 4:32). The reality of forgiveness, of wounds healed, of wrongs set right are already ours. All we have to do is to live into what has already been given, so we may be healed.
You see, the New Testament is always calling us to do what we cannot do—love our enemies, bless those who persecute us, pray without ceasing, be perfect as God in heaven is perfect. The New Testament commands us to live these impossibilities because what is impossible with us is possible with God; because we are promised that, as we put one foot in front of the other to seek to live out these commands, what is commanded of us is given as a gift. No, you and I cannot forgive, but as we try to forgive we are given God’s forgiveness as a gift. All of our efforts to forgive those who have hurt us are gathered into the forgiveness that is full, whole, and pure—the forgiveness God gives in Jesus Christ.
  And know that forgiveness does not happen in an instant. Authentic forgiveness takes time; in fact, it takes more time than we have. There are not enough days in a human life for all the pain to be healed; there are not enough years in history for all the wrongs to be righted. Only in God who is eternal, only in Jesus Christ who is ‘the same yesterday and today and forever’ is there enough time. God has time for human restoration; God takes time to make peace with humanity. In God’s eternal, kairos, time, all the wounds have been healed.
  So true forgiveness is rare. We see it only now and then; but when we see it, when we experience it, it is a sign of God’s coming future. It is a foretaste of what is already true about us in Christ. So we can try to work at forgiveness in our lives, not because we can achieve it, but because it has already been achieved for us, given to us freely and we can participate in that gift of the Spirit.
  Thomas Long, Professor of Preaching, at Candler School of theology in Atlanta, tells this story of a pastor and his wife who were having a nice quiet dinner in a small restaurant when a crisis occurred outside the restaurant. An elderly man and his wife had been walking past the restaurant when the man evidently suffered a heart attack. He was lying on the sidewalk and his wife was bending over him, frightened and desperate. The minister rushed over to the man while the minister’s wife ran back inside to call for an ambulance. The pastor loosened the man’s shirt, reached out for his hand and said, “Try to relax. We’re here with you and an ambulance is on the way.”
  To the pastor’s surprise and puzzlement, the man looked up at him and said, “Forgive me, Charlie.”
  The pastor didn’t learn until later that Charlie was the man’s son and that father and son had been estranged for many years. The pastor squeezed the man’s hand reassuringly and said, “I am not Charlie. My name is Sam. I’m a minister and I’ll stay here with you until help comes. Don’t be afraid.”
  But the man responded in an urgent voice, “Charlie, please. Forgive me.”
  “I’m not Charlie,” repeated the pastor. “Stay calm now, and we’ll get you to a hospital soon.”
Abruptly the man’s breathing changed and his face turned ashen. It was becoming apparent that his condition was very grave and that he would not make it to the hospital. He whispered, “Charlie, I’m begging you. Please forgive me.”
It was now clear to the pastor what he must do. He embraced the dying man and said, “I forgive you. I forgive you.” A look in the man’s eyes signaled that he had heard these words. Then his breathing stopped, and he was gone.
  The next day the pastor wondered and worried about what had happened. What right had he to speak a word of forgiveness on behalf of the man’s son? The son was not there; father and son were still estranged. What right had he, a stranger, to speak words of forgiveness when the brokenness was still ongoing, when father and son were not reconciled?
  Gradually it came to him that his entire ministry, indeed, all the Christian life, is this way. We are always living God’s future in a broken present, the gospel is always a word of reconciliation from God’s future spoken ahead of its time.
  As for the past, God knows and remembers our sin.
  As for the future, God remembers our sin as forgiven.
  As for the present, “Forgive one another” because God’s future has already been given to you as a gift: “God in Christ has forgiven you.”2
The broken pot… “Slightly damaged, greatly reduced in value.” But a pot that I purchased, that I redeemed, and gave it value. And so has God in Christ done that for you and me on a cross. Hear God’s good news, “You are forgiven.” And be healed. Amen.

1 Fred B. Craddock, Eds., Mike Graves and Richard Ward, Craddock Stories, (St. Louis, Mo., Challis Press, 2001) 143-44.
2 Thomas G. Long, Forgiveness, Christian Reflection, (Waco, TX, The Center for Christian Ethics, 1989) pp. 34-35.