Forgiveness is Hard

2 Corinthians 2:1-11

 “Forgiveness Is Hard”

29 May 2106 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            (Play First Les Miserable Clip)

            This is such an amazing scene that gets right to the heart of what it means to be forgiven. We see the nun seeking retribution and justice with a healthy dose of indignation at the bishop’s suggestion that they’ll just use wooden spoons. And if we’re honest, that’s how we’d probably react to a similar situation. Just look at how most people react to someone taking a parking spot at the mall. I really enjoy seeing her facial expression when the cops drag in Jean Valjean.

            After being beaten and robbed in the middle of the night, the Bishop gets the chance to face the man who broke his trust with the full backing of the law. Most of us, yours truly included, would look at that turn of events as divine intervention to restore what was lost and to teach a thief a lesson. And this scene is divine intervention, but not how we’d expect. The Bishop defies our expectations. Like Christ.

            For years, people had given their hard earned money to the parish and they had purchased some pretty fancy dinnerware and candlesticks. All for this moment. I’m sure the congregation thought they had bought these items to show their bishop how much they cared for him and to give him some moderate luxury. I doubt they thought that purchase wasn’t for the bishop, but rather for a paroled criminal. But, isn’t that how this whole Christian thing works? Nothing is really for us but for serving Christ and furthering his Kingdom here on earth.

The Bishop not only forgives, he goes the extra step and gives even more that was taken. And lest we think that forgiveness was given without a cost, listen again to what he told Jean Valjean. “And don’t forget, don’t ever forget you’ve promised to become a new man. Jean Valjean my brother you no longer belong to evil. With this silver I’ve bought your soul. I’ve ransomed you from fear and hatred and now I give you back to God.”

That is true forgiveness. Someone gives something of themselves to give us back to God.

Sometime prior to Paul writing this second letter to Corinthians (though there is strong evidence this is actually a third letter), he had written to them with anguish in his heart. Apparently this did not have the intended effect and caused pain in the community rather than it being read as a letter born out of love.

It appears that someone in the community has caused a great deal of controversy and pain within the community, probably through slander of Paul himself. The community didn’t correct the individual so Paul called out the community to correct the issue. It appears that correct it they did, perhaps a little overzealously as the church is wont to do. It seems the church decided to balance previous indifference to an offense with harsh punishment of the offending party, perhaps banishment though we don’t really know what happened.

We do know that Corinth went from indifference to unforgiving rage against a member of their community who had gone astray. So Paul, ever the pastor, seeks to bring the community to a posture of graceful forgiveness. He doesn’t rebuke the community for disciplining a member of the community, rather he is telling them to apply mercy to the situation so as not to overwhelm the offender. The goal of church discipline is not banishment, but rather to give them back to God.

This leads Paul to tell the community that they are empowered to also forgive on his behalf. Because he is part of the community, the mercy and love they demonstrate to one member is done on his behalf as well. Just imagine if we took that aspect of this letter to heart in the everyday life of the church in America. Imagine if we let the forgiving nature of the church speak for each of us individually. Such that if one community forgave someone for something they have done, the whole church accepted that act of forgiveness.

That can be a hard pill to swallow. Especially if someone has done something we personally find repulsive. We tend to take a position that no one can speak forgiveness in our names. If we are individually wronged, then we as individuals must forgive. That may just be our individualistic culture speaking for us. The church is a communal culture where we work not towards personal goals and dreams, but rather we work towards goals and a calling set forth by God through Christ with the leading of the Spirit.

Now before anyone says that Les Miserables is fiction and a great moral lesson nothing more, nothing less or that our time is more complicated than what Victor Hugo is trying to convey, let’s take a look at something that occurred in Pennsylvania 6 years ago.

After a horrible tragedy in which a number of Amish children died at the hands of one individual, the community offered forgiveness not only to the man responsible, but to his entire family. When I first heard of what the Amish had done for the family of the person who killed their young children I was astonished. And convicted. That is one of the most Christ like acts of forgiveness I have ever seen. So much so that various news organizations that rarely mention Christ were making the same connection between this act of forgiveness and Christ. The Amish knew the world would punish the family, so they chose to heed Paul and “forgive and console, so they may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.” They forgave as a community. They forgave on behalf of us all.

And lest we forget just how powerful and life changing it is to receive forgiveness let’s take a look at when Jean Valjean forgoes vengeance against Javert. (Play second Les Mis clip)

Javert made it his life to seek justice and retribution without mercy. Forgiveness was not in his DNA so he has a battle within his soul over whether or not he can receive such a gift as forgiveness. He can’t live under the debt of a thief. And that is where he gets forgiveness wrong. It isn’t a debt, it is a gift. A powerful gift that can heal a life. A gift we all need. Javert finally gets it when he sings that the gift killed him. Forgiveness kills our worldly selves. It kills sin and gives us back to God.

Forgiveness is powerful and something that we are all empowered to do on behalf of Christ. No matter how many times we need to offer forgiveness, it retains its power to heal. If we forgive someone, then in our role as emissaries of Christ on earth, they are forgiven. Period.

So, let us today use our God given power right here as practice for being the church in the midst of the world. Turn to your neighbors and boldly proclaim, “In the name of Christ you are forgiven.”

Blessing the World

2 Corinthians 1:1-11

 “Blessing the World”

22 May 2106 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            Dietrich Bohnoeffer was a Lutheran pastor in Germany at the outset of World War II. As he looked around his homeland and saw the German state taking over his church and supporting horrific acts upon German citizens, he decided to make a stand. To not just speak out against what he saw as sinful but join a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was already in prison when they discovered his involvement in the plot, so they just sped his transfer to a concentration camp in Buchenwald where he died in April 1945, a mere two weeks before the camp was liberated.

            Coptic Christians are the largest religious minority in Egypt and live on the edge in a country where religious discrimination ebbs and flows. On Christmas Eve 2010 in Cairo, a congregation of Coptic Christians were leaving their Christmas Eve service when a car pulled up and sprayed bullets at the departing congregation. When the gunfire settled, eight congregants under the age of 23 were dead and nine others wounded.

            In 1979, a military junta took control of San Salvador. Oscar Romero was the Archbishop of San Salvador at that time and had been working hard for the rights of the poor in his home country. This was a relatively new activism for Oscar. He began this work for the poor following the assassination of a fellow priest who advocated for the poor shortly after Romero was appointed as Archbishop. Romero criticized the US government for supplying arms to the military government and called out the new government for the human rights abuses they were committing. He never backed down. On March 24, 1980 as he was conducting a mass, right as he raised the chalice during the Eucharist, he was shot and killed by an unknown assassin.

            Nate Saint was a missionary working on an operation called Operation Acua to bring the Gospel to the Huaorani people in Ecuador in 1955. He was the pilot making a number of flights over their land before finally landing there in 1956. The caution was well advised as the Huaorani were known for their violence, especially towards outsiders. They established a camp a few kilometers from the tribe and had been exchanging gifts. However, that didn’t end well as all five missionaries were speared a mere five days later. Their story as well as that of Nate’s son and his later efforts of evangelizing the Huaorani are immortalized in the movie The End of the Spear.

            I could go on and on with stories of people who have suffered and given their lives for Christ throughout the centuries. But, I wonder if sometimes Christians put too much emphasis on the need to suffer to be like Christ and follow in his footsteps. Granted, there will be suffering to spread the Gospel. Some may even be called to martyrdom. But, that isn’t as common or as necessary as we are sometimes led to believe.

            The other thing we tend to do is to think and act as if suffering is part of God’s plan so much so that we actively seek out ways to “suffer for Christ” or embellish our own suffering.

            If we read this passage with these two ideas in our hearts, we could isolate a phrase such as “it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering,” and find a sympathetic voice to confirm that we are supposed to patiently endure whatever suffering God sends our way.

            But, I think that would miss Paul’s point. I think we can all agree that Paul is a devout scholar of Scripture, especially in light of his zeal for keeping to Hebrew Scripture before his Damascus Road moment. This letter begins a bit differently than his other letters to churches in that instead of a lengthy greeting to the church, he spends time pronouncing a blessing to God and connecting that blessing to the church. It sounds like Paul is making a direct connection back to Genesis 12 where Abraham is blessed by God to be a blessing to the world.

            Perhaps the reason we remember the suffering servant is due less to the suffering and more because we see in clear 4K resolution how they are a blessing to the world. Bonhoeffer was blessing not just the German church and people with is stance, but also his Jewish brothers and sisters. The Copts in Egypt, blessed us with a vision of how to live honorably as a religious minority under hostile conditions. Oscar Romero blessed the poor and stood up to military power both in San Salvador and the US. Nate Saint, though he never saw the fruit he sowed, blessed a people and brought them together through his family.

            None of these people set out to become a martyr. Many actively resisted being the groundhog who stuck their head out of the hole so it wouldn’t be hit. What they did was follow Christ and trust that Christ would provide the consolation and grace needed to face life each day. They didn’t gain money or any real fame in their day, only after their deaths. They weren’t specifically called to death, rather to give their all to Christ through a specific ministry. By giving their all, they weren’t hesitant to go where Christ led

            Paul doesn’t call Corinth to suffer. He calls them to follow Christ and trust that Christ’s blessing upon us all is more than enough. It gives us extra blessing to share with the world. Paul starts this letter reminding Corinth and us that we have a universal call to bless the world. As this is our first and most basic call as Christians, let us always seek to bless the world.

Regardless of our specific call, we will always be called to bless the world. It may not be in a spectacular and memorable way, but that doesn’t mean we get to ignore this universal call on our lives. Rather, let us seek to always bless the world so that from our being a blessing, the world learns of our specific calling on our lives.  It doesn’t take us to die a martyr’s death or to physically suffer for Christ to bless the world. In fact, it’s the every day blessing that we provide the world that is more difficult and that also forms us to be vessels of blessing for the world. Let us leave here seeking not martyrdom, but to be people of consolation to everyone living in a difficult and complex world. We have received more than enough blessing from Christ so that we can bless the world. 

Resurrection Matters

1 Corinthians 15:1-26, 51-57

 “Resurrection Matters”

08 May 2106 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            I think it’s safe to say that Paul is definitely one who believes in the importance of the resurrection. So much so that we need to really ponder our thoughts on the resurrection and then how our theological view of resurrection affects how we live our daily lives.

            Paul just comes right and out says if there is no resurrection then there is no good news, no Gospel, no church. Earlier in the letter to Corinth he states the importance of the cross and Christ’s death, something we discussed a few weeks ago. Now he bookends this letter with the ultimate importance of the second act of the Passion/Easter story, resurrection.

            Paul has sensed that the church in Corinth has a bit of a superiority complex. They are so smart they feel they have already been resurrected spiritually and have already made it into the Kingdom. It almost seems as if a bodily resurrection is beneath them. It’s crass and embarrassing. Who needs bodies when you are spiritually elite? I mean once you’ve reached the spiritual enlightenment of Christ you don’t need to go through what he endured, right?

            There is a danger in viewing resurrection as an allegory, a mere object lesson. This may lead us to think that “the resurrection of Jesus is a wonderful metaphor for the spiritual change that God works in the lives of those who posses knowledge of the truth. ‘Resurrection’ symbolizes the power of the Spirit that we experience in our wisdom and our spiritual gifts. But the image of resuscitated corpses is only for childish fundamentalists. Those of us who are spiritual find it repugnant.” (Richard Hays, Interpretation Series p260)

            When we view our bodies as just vessels that carry spirits, as meaningless in the long run, then we lose focus about our role in God’s plan for humanity and creation. Because what we do with our bodies and with and to creation matters.

            Just imagine a world where bodies didn’t really matter. We’d live in a world where trafficking slaves didn’t make our blood boil. Where physical harm of another wouldn’t engender a want of revenge or any fear of punishment. A world where MLK’s dream of everyone getting an equal chance would only stay in one’s mind. A word where no one mattered because their physical existence didn’t matter.

            Paul tells us that more than just our spiritual self will be resurrected and redeemed. Because of this what we do in the here and now matters. We aren’t allowed to sit around, look at the world say, “Good thing I’m saved,” and let others work to solve the mess. Our bodies matter just as much as our spiritual lives so we need to also use our bodies to bring about the Kingdom.

            Even though we have no idea how it will happen, we know that our bodies will be resurrected. Christ was resurrected not replaced. Christ’s body wasn’t replaced with a newer model, it was brought back in its fullness. The disciples may have taken a few moments to realize it was Christ standing before them, but Christ’s resurrected body was still Christ standing there in the flesh teaching the disciples how to spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

            So what would it look like to actually believe in a bodily resurrection? We’d take care of our bodies as best we can, realizing that physical illness and injury don’t necessarily mean someone isn’t taking care of their body. Sometimes we get sick and hurt through no fault of our own. We’d live lives of moderation where we don’t overindulge. I once heard that the seven deadly sins of gluttony, lust, greed, pride, envy, wrath, and sloth were so detrimental because they are sins of excess.

            Beyond just taking care of one’s own body, believing in a bodily resurrection calls us to stand up for the protection of the bodies of our neighbors. That may include going on mission trips to places that protect people from bodily harm, and there are many opportunities for that here in Southeast Asia. Possibly one could teach yoga or be a fitness instructor as a ministry to the power of a bodily resurrection. Perhaps one is discerning a call to be a nurse, doctor, or work in hospice. All of those professions honor the body and speak a theology of resurrection to the world.

            But, we’re not limited to just these. Donating to causes that further a theological statement about caring for our physical bodies is a way to proclaim the Gospel. Living an example of how to care of the physical health of one’s self and others on a daily basis is an evangelistic act. Teaching people proper bathing techniques and other sanitary practices. Providing clean water and stable food sources is a theological proclamation about the importance of the body. Gardening and farming are theological statements.

            There is a wide range of things that proclaim a theology of the importance of our body and the future resurrection, not replacement, of our bodies. Let us not be like the church in Corinth and think that taking care of our bodies and the bodies of others doesn’t matter. That kind of thinking leads us down a path to where we start to believe that if our bodies don’t matter, resurrection doesn’t matter. Or worse, that Christ’s resurrection was just an allegory.

            Resurrection is vital to our faith. For if there is no resurrection, there is no conquering of the world. If there is no resurrection, there is no conquering of earthly powers. If there is no resurrection, dictators win. If there is no resurrection, evil and sin have the last word. If there is no resurrection Quoheleth was correct when he lamented in Ecclesiastes that all is vanity. If there is no resurrection, darkness cannot be overcome. If there is no resurrection, Christ was just another false prophet executed by the state to prevent rebellion. If there is no resurrection, Christianity makes no sense. If there is no resurrection, then death is the final answer, the end. If there is no resurrection, there is no hope.

            Resurrection provides the hope we need to ignite and fuel our faith. Faith that keeps us going in spite of everything the world throws at us. Faith that gives us the courage to follow Christ when people say we are crazy for doing just that. Faith that destroys our fear of death and lets us set our sights on something much greater than ourselves. Faith that drives us to care for not just our fellow travelers, but for the creation in which we live. Faith that is the light eternally glowing brightly in the darkness such that it can’t be overcome.

Resurrection gives us hope which gives us faith and energizes the church to do Christ’s work in the world. We all need grace and resurrection is ultimate grace. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? Indeed!