forgiveness – Page 3 – Salvaged Faith

Scars

Posted on April 22, 2012Leave a comment

I have a couple of scars in my body.

Right below my left knee the area is numb and without feeling and there is a small whitish mark. That scar is from the time I thought it was a good idea to do a cartwheel in the girl’s locker room and I ended up hiting my leg… hard… against the corner of the wall.

I have a few tiny scars on my belly from my gall bladder surgery a few years ago. They are nearly imperceptible… unlike the scars many have from days when that surgery was performed open and not lapriscopically.

And I have a scar on my left forearm from an iron last summer. After going through the entire pile of t-shirts for Vacation Bible School and getting all of the transfers ironed on… I reached over to unplug my iron and my arm hit the hot plate. There is a triangular shaped mark on my arm to this day!

But none of those are extremely noticeable. Especially not compared with some of the scars that others have in their lives.

My dad is one such person. In an accident at work, his hand was caught in a gear of a machine that processes hot sugars. After months of surgery and rehabilitation, he lost two fingers on his right hand, part of his pinky finger, and had a large skin graft around his thumb and forefinger. His right hand will never be the same. And while his hand looks a bit gnarled and ugly, to me it is a sign of his perseverance, his incredible work ethic, and a reminder of how he got through that difficult part of his life.

The scars in our lives tell stories. Whether they are small marks or large ones, they are visible reminders of the lives that we have lived. Maybe it is not a physical scar, but a nickname you bear, or a tattoo, or an item that you keep around in your life to remind yourself and others of something important that has happened.

I want to invite you to turn to a neighbor or a small group around you and share what kinds of scars and battle wounds you might have. If you feel comfortable, share a story about that scar with the group.

…

There was a classmate of mine in high school who had a large scar that ran down the center of her chest. She had had open heart surgery when she was fairly young, but will carry that scar with her for the rest of her life. And I remember the day I discovered that scar. We all went swimming at a friend’s house and for the first time, she revealed her scar. She had kept it carefully covered up all those years. She wore shirts with high collars, or scarves, or jewelry, anything that would keep people from seeing the scar she thought was ugly… and embarrassment. But when she told us about the story of the scar, I thought it was such a powerful sign of her strength – that she got through that journey and came out on the other side a strong and healthy and powerful young woman. She continued to feel uncomfortable about her scar, but that scar helped me to see the strength and the beauty inside of her.

Did anyone learn something about a friend based on those scars? Anyone want to share?

Will you ever look at that person the same way again?

There is a reason that twice in our gospel reading for this morning Jesus hands and feet are mentioned.

The first time is when he appears to some of his disciples on the evening of the resurrection. They were huddled together – scared, frightened, unsure of themselves – and suddenly the Risen Lord shows up. He breathes into their lives peace. He forgives them. He gives them a job to do. AND he shows them his hands and his side.

He shows them who he is.

He shows them what he has been through.

He shows them what he has overcome.

And then, a week later, the disciples don’t seem to have moved. They are still there, in the house, only this time Thomas was there also. Thomas missed the first appearance, and said that unless he had seen the nail marks and put his finger where those nails were, that he wouldn’t believe.

So when Jesus stands among them, the first words he utters are: “Peace” – but then he offers an invitation. An invitation for Thomas to come and to reach out his hand and to touch his scars. And Thomas recognizes those scars, remembers what they have all been through together and cries out – “My Lord and my God!”

The Rev.Dr. Janet Hunt writes:

Our scars tell part of the story of who we are, what has mattered to us, what has happened to us, the risks we’ve taken, the gifts we’ve given. And as we are reminded in the story before us in John’s Gospel, this was surely also so with Jesus, too.

Which is why Thomas insisted he needed to see, no more than that, feel the scars in his hands and put his own hand in Jesus’ side to be sure that it was him. One would think he would have recognized him with from the features of his face or the sound of his voice, but no, for Thomas, Jesus had become something more since that long walk to the cross a week before. Jesus’ very identity was now defined by the sacrifice he had made in our behalf. A sacrifice made most visible in those wounds that by then could have only begun to heal. (words.dancingwiththeword.com)

So what are the lessons that we learn by seeing the visible wounds of Jesus? What are the lessons that we learn from seeing the visible wounds of one another?

We see Jesus wounds, and in spite of how the disciples failed him… in spite of how we have failed him, Jesus tells us that we are loved… we are forgiven… that peace is freely offered… and that we have a job to do.

1) We are loved: Jesus comes to us. When someone shares a scar with us, when they are vulnerable with us, it means that they trust us and care about us and are willing to share their lives with us.

2) We are forgiven: Each of us played a role in the crucifixion of Christ. Each of us is responsible for the wounds he bears. And yet, he tells us we are forgiven. When we encounter wounds in our lives, they can be symbols to us of our failings… but they can also be symbols of forgiveness, healing, and love.

Story of running into a pole in Brandon’s car… I was in a bad place, my grandpa had just died… he wasn’t happy, but his love for me in the midst of that experience of loss and grief that got me through. My mind was in a million places when I was backing up the car and I did not even notice the parking pole before I slammed into it. The bright yellow scrape on his car marred it in the same way that my soul was grieving and broken and needed some healing. But just as that car was patched up good as new, so too, with time and love, did we both make it to the other side of the grief process.

3) Peace is offered: This may seem to go with the idea of forgiveness, but it really is about releasing ourselves from a heart full of fear.

In her reflection, Kathryn Matthews Huey talks about life one week after Easter… when we return to life as usual: “wars and uprisings that drag on for months and years, with hundreds and thousands dead and maimed; an economic crisis that still threatens thousands with foreclosure and bankruptcy, high unemployment, high gasoline prices, high health care costs, and a political season poisoned with ugly rhetoric and personal attacks. And then there are our own private griefs and burdens: health problems, kid problems, too much work, too much worry, too much coming at us, so much to run away from, so much to fear. What’s an overwhelmed person of faith to do? Even one week after the music of the trumpets and the splendor of the lilies have faded, how are we to live “as Easter people”?
William Sloane Coffin once said, “As I see it, the primary religious task these days is to try to think straight….You can’t think straight with a heart full of fear, for fear seeks safety, not truth. If your heart’s a stone, you can’t have decent thoughts – either about personal relations or about international ones. A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind. When our hearts fill with a fear we can’t organize or get our arms around, a fear that makes us feel weak and small and inadequate, all of us disciples receive that same gift of grace, forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit, a gift that limbers up our minds and our hearts, turning them from hearts of stone to hearts full of love.”

4) We have a job to do: The visible wounds of Jesus and of our own lives can also remind us that there is a job to do.

Jesus died for us while we were yet sinners, and there is a world full of people who need to know that love and grace.
Jesus takes our wounds and scars and uses them to ministry to others
There are wounds in this world that need healing. And in the end, Jesus sent his disciples out from that upper room… and “Jesus sends us out into the world, to put our hands on the marks of its suffering, to bring good news and hope to all of God’s children.” (Kate Huey)

Amen!

Excuse me, Pastor…

Posted on February 15, 20122 Comments

I make mistakes… Often.

The latest incarnation of mistakes came this past Sunday.

I have a lot of big ideas, but I am not always good at figuring out the details… how things will ebb and flow. And so, I set in motion a plan to help my congregation discern their spiritual gifts during worship.

We are embarking upon a study of Romans 12 – our theme scripture for the new vision for our church. It will be a Lenten study and will encompass worship, daily devotions, sunday school lessons, etc. But a big part of the journey will be to claim and to give over to God the gifts we have been blessed with.

So I found these awesome resources by Dan and Barbara Dick called “Equipped for Every Good Work.” We wanted as many congregants as possible to have the opportunity to discover their spiritual gifts before embarking on this journey.

Realistically, I knew that if I simply directed folks to an online resource, most wouldn’t do it. If I only offered it during Sunday School, I would miss a lot of people. If I sent it home, most wouldn’t bring it back.

The only way to let people know, “Hey, this is important” was to set aside time in worship to go through it together. I handed out scoring sheets and gave a brief introductory sermon and set out reading out the first of 200 statements.

Yes, two hundred.

In my head, it didn’t seem like a lot. I thought about how many words a typical sermon was and how short the statements were and thought it was doable. THOUGHT.

We got through 40 and I felt like people’s heads were spinning. We passed 60 and I could sense the tension in the room. We hit 80 and I looked back and saw a lovely woman near the back shaking her head back and forth.

“How are we doing,” I asked… and the woman kept shaking her head.

“We need to be done,” she replied.

I looked at the clock, and knew she was right. Between the pauses for answers and the repeating of some statements, there simply was not time. It was exhausting to think like this. And it was extremely foolish of me to think that we could get through the entire list in the time we had for worship.

“Good idea,” I said. We made peace with letting it go for now. We decided that we could either a) finish it the next week or b) let half way done be good enough and still use the tool next week to talk about where we are.

The way the inventory is set up, we were scoring for each category as we went along, and so getting half way through, I think we were able to still get a pretty good indication of where people’s spiritual gifts lie. It was a difficult process, and we didn’t do it perfectly, but I figure that getting through 5 questions for each spiritual gift is just as good as the much shorter 40 question inventory based on the same materials online. So we are going with it.

I’m extraordinarily grateful that someone was willing to step up and call me out. Just because I’m the pastor does not mean that I have everything figured out all the time. In fact, as my spiritual gifts demonstrate, I’m not good at organizing. I’m not good with the details. And I do need to be surrounded by people who are willing to look out for the good of everyone around us when I’m leading us down long and tedious paths.

I have to say, regardless of the length, the very idea of doing this type of spiritual gifts inventory had mixed reactions. Some people were really enthused by the idea and were looking forward to claiming what they had been called to. They were intrigued by the ways specific characteristics were lifted up. They wanted to know more. Others felt like failures. They didn’t like the idea of a “test.” I had tried to carefully explain that this is a way of discovering what we are good at and what we have been gifted at… that there were no wrong answers, but I’m not sure the message sunk in for everyone.

It is difficult to take a deep look at where we are spiritually. It is hard to be honest with ourselves about what we are not good at. We can tend to focus on our weaknesses and lament them, rather than celebrate our strengths.

This next Sunday, we had planned on talking about ways that our spiritual gifts can be used in the life of the church, but based on our responses, I want to dive deeper into what it means to be gifted… I want to help people to cherish the ways God has blessed them. I want to help them let go of the false notion that we have to be perfect at everything and help them to realize that is precisely why we have community – in order to fit our differently shaped puzzle pieces together and make the body of Christ.

I make mistakes. I make them often.

But thank God I am surrounded by people full of forgiveness.

And thank God that they call me out and give me a chance to rethink my plans and start again in a new and better place.

The Long Hurt

Posted on September 11, 2011Leave a comment

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The second most difficult thing in the world to do is to harbor anger and pain.

This week, I read the story of a woman who had refused to forgive. As John van de Laar tells the story:

Whenever a visitor came for a cup of tea or coffee, she would pour the drinks and then reach for an old and battered plastic sugar bowl. Then, apologetically, she would tell her story of the beautiful bone china bowl that her mother had owned, but that her sister had taken when her mother died and they divided up her possessions. She had never forgiven her sister, and had turned her bitterness into a daily routine that kept it fresh and growing.

Every single time she reached for that plastic sugar bowl, she rekindled the anger.

She had never forgiven her sister.

Van de Laar goes on to say that we sometimes let “our lives be defined by our wounds.” We spend all of our days looking backwards at what was and refusing to see the possibilities of healing and hope and forgiveness in our lives.

And while on the surface, it may not seem to take much energy or thought, the truth is that refusing to forgive is exhausting. It is a burden that you carry with you every moment. It is bitterness that never leaves your mouth.

As Nelson Mandela once said – “Resentment is like a glass of poison that a man drinks; then he sits down and waits for his enemy to die.”

And the only person that it hurts, is yourself.

September 11th, 2001 is a terribly sad and painful day in our history. And on this day, exactly 10 years later, we have a question to answer: How are we going to let that day define our lives?

Is it a wound, perpetually reopened, refusing to let us move forward?

Is it a source of anger and bitterness that causes us to lash out in fear?

Or in the midst of our grief and pain, can we also remember the tremendous acts of courage and love from that day? And can we look not only backwards but also look forward to as David Lose puts it, “a future that is not defined by the calamity of that day but instead is shaped by hope, possibility, and the grace of God.”

That is what forgiveness is after all. It is letting go of the pain. It is releasing the anger. It is refusing to allow what has happened in the past define your future.

Photo By: Alex Bruda

And while hanging on to old wounds might be the second most difficult thing in the world, the act of forgiving is the first.

Forgiving goes against our nature. We want revenge. We want answers. We want apologies. We want justice. We want someone in this world to pay. We want to hold guilt over another person. Overcome by sadness, anger, and pain, we do not want to move on.

As I have talked about many times in these messages – my own extended family is trapped in a pattern of unforgiveness. I, myself, find it extremely difficult to let go of that pain and imagine a future of mercy and love. Even when I find myself getting close to the point where I can, something else happens, another wrench thrown in, that makes saying, I’m sorry and I forgive you, that much harder.

And yet, over and over again, I find these words in the scriptures that say: Forgive.

Proverbs 17:9 – He who covers and forgives an offense seeks love, but he who repeats or haprs on a matter separates even close friends.

Matthew 6:14 – If you forgive people their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

Colossians 3:13 – Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

Mark 11:25 – And when you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgiven him and let it go, in order that your Father who is in heaven may also forgive your own failings and shortcomings and let them go.

Luke 6:37 – Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

from Romans this morning: Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

Or the even more difficult passage from Matthew: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

Forgiveness is the most difficult thing in the world to do, and yet over and over and over again, the scriptures command us to forgive.

Why?

Because without forgiveness, there is no life.

Without forgiveness, there is no hope.

Without forgiveness, there is no future.

And we are not talking about the people who hurt us here… we are talking about ourselves.

You see, if debts always have to be paid and sins must always be punished, then there is no hope for us.

And there is no hope for our communities.

You see, a family does not work without forgiveness.

A marriage falls apart without forgiveness.

A church cannot survive without forgiveness.

Even a nation will find itself spinning out of control if revenge and justice are the only goals that it seeks… if it cannot find ways to compromise and show mercy and yes, even forgive.

Left to our own devices, we do not have the strength to do the hard task of forgiveness.

But in the midst of remembering the events of September 11th… in the midst of grieving the destruction and loss caused by four hijacked airplanes and grieving the death and destruction cause by the cycle of revenge that came afterwards… we also take time to remember the events of 2000 years ago.

You see, that is when our ability to truly forgive was realized.

On the cross, looking out on a world of brokenness and destruction, facing his tormenters in the eye, Jesus Christ called down forgiveness and not vengeance. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

Our future was forever changed through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The wounds that we caused were forgotten. The sins we committed were forgiven. The debts of the past were canceled.

The future of Christ is one of mercy and not judgment, hope and not despair, healing and not violence, abundance and not scarcity, love and not hate, new life instead of death. (from David Lose, paraphrased)

That is the power of forgiveness.

Life, love, hope, healing, mercy.

The most powerful stories that I have heard in recent days are the ones in which loved ones recounted the conversations they had with loved ones who were trapped high above the ground in towers one and two of the World Trade Center.

They are stories full of tears and goodbyes and I love yous. I was driving down the road, listening to a woman tell of the last time she spoke with her husband and I had to pull over, because the tears just overwhelmed me.

But what I realized in the midst of those stories is that not once did those courageous people who died tell their loved ones to seek revenge.

They spent the few precious moments they had saying I love you.

They said, I’m proud of you.

They said, I’m sorry.

They said, All is forgiven.

They said, remember I love you.

And as we remember those who perished. As we grieve… and we must… we also need to look to our futures. We need to put away the wounds.

I we keep pulling out that old beat-up plastic sugar bowl and refuse to seek peace or forgiveness, then evil has already won and we are truly defeated. (van de Laar paraphrased)

It is hard and painful to forgive… and we cannot do it alone.

But the good news is that through the love and grace of Jesus Christ, we can find the strength and courage we need to let go. To admit when we have caused pain. To say, “I forgive you.”

Today, as we remember, let us forgive… and let us imagine together a future in which God’s peace truly reigns.

confrontation and follow through

Posted on May 25, 2011Leave a comment

I am notorious for finding myself in situations where my vehicle is hit by another vehicle.

Four years ago, I was stopped at a light, and the car that came up behind me failed/forgot to stop. Bumper damage.

A month or so ago, I was parked and dropping my car off at a hotel when a car backed out of a nearby spot straight into my driver’s side door.

I have to admit, I have had my fair share of fender benders that were my fault. And I did what I had to do to resolve those issues.

So it is frustrating that in each of the above situations, the person responsible never had to take responsibility.

Or rather, I haven’t made them take responsibility.

Avoidance of confrontation is my M.O. If I can resolve the issue another way, it is much preferable. I don’t like having to call someone up, sit them down, and tell them… this is not okay and you need to fix it.

And so in the first situation, I put off the phone calls. I passively wrote a letter that never got a response. And eventually the time passed and I moved and it was never resolved.

In the second situation, I’m working up the courage to call and hold the person accountable that hit me. Which means, I haven’t done it yet.

I’m not sure where this avoidance comes from. My mom is a fairly direct person… at least it has always seemed that way to me… and when there was a problem, she took care of business and she used her “taking care of business” voice and it always seemed to me that the issue was resolved. That trait was NOT passed on to me! And maybe that is only my own perspective as a girl and young woman watching my mother and she would describe herself differently… who knows! =)

I think one of the reasons that confrontation is so difficult for me is that I leave a lot of room for grace. Perhaps too much room. I know that some things are not okay, but I don’t want to have to be the person who calls it out.

In my work as a pastor, I realize that both grace and truth are needed. Repentance involves both truth about sin AND forgiveness… they are two sides of one coin. To lean too heavily one way or the other leaves us with cheap grace or heavy handed morality.

In the Ascension Sunday text for this year in the lectionary, from the gospel of Luke, we are reminded that Christ calls us to preach repentence through the forgiveness of sin. Repentence, the turning away from the past, leads us into forgiveness of our mistakes. It leads us into a live of forgiveness for others. But it also involves speaking the truth and confessing those things that need to be forgiven. In calling others to repent, we must also name the reality of sin that needs repenting!

May God grant me the grace to speak a little bit more truth, to make accountability just as important as forgiveness, and to get my car repaired without having to pay for it myself!

Falling Behind

Posted on February 5, 2009Leave a comment

I definately have not been blogging as frequently as I planned at the beginning of the year. If I’m completely honest with ya’ll it’s because I’ve been sucked into the vortex of trying to get “Loremaster” of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms in the game World of Warcraft. Basically, you have to do 700 quests on each continent in order to get the title. Last night, I completed 700 on Kalimdor and have only 100 left on Eastern Kingdoms. I’m a nerd. A complete nerd. And I don’t really care.

That has basically what I’ve been doing in my free time. Which means no time left to blog.

Church work has been very fruitful in the past few weeks. I was in a bit of a preaching rut, but I dug myself out of it on Sunday. We had a baptism, communion and an ad board meeting all in the span of the morning – and so I knew that my sermon needed to be much shorter than normal. And having to focus on being concise really helped the message. Our speaker system also was malfunctioning, so I preached without amplification, which also made me consciously enunciate more and put more emphasis and passion behind what I was saying. Not that I wouldn’t have meant it the same way before… but I really felt strongly about this sermon on forgiveness, felt like God was calling me to say some things, and not only did I say them, but the Holy Spirit helped them to make contact with a number of people. I actually felt energized by worship, instead of that feeling of just being absolutely spent when I got home.

Ironically, it was a message that really came true in my life later that day. God has a way of hitting us upside the head sometimes and more often than not, I find out that the message I’m preparing is as much for myself as for the congregation. We really are all on this human journey together.

Yesterday I got a great surprise when I recieved an email from someone who is in the local hospital. They were in need of some conversation and faith wrestling and found my email and our church through our website. It was the first time I’ve heard about our website having an impact on others, being a vehicle for invitation, and all of the time I spent on the site really has paid off, just in the one conversation I got to have with her today. If the site was shut down tomorrow, I know that it has served it’s purpose. Hopefully, it will continue to be a place for connection.