THE BIG PICTURE OF FORGIVENESS

August 5, 2012

Pentecost 10

2^nd Samuel 11:²⁶ - 12:^13a

Ephesians 4:^1-16

(prayer)

If you were in church here last week, you would have been blessed to hear Esther preach on King David’s misuse of power surrounding his (Clinton accent) sexual relations with ‘that’ woman: Bathsheba.

In case you missed it, here’s the Reader’s Digest version:

                 For some reason, King David was home and not out on the battlefield with his army.

                 As he looked down from his palace, he caught an arousing naked view of Bathsheba, bathing. David learned that she was the wife of Uriah, one of David’s loyal soldiers.  That didn’t stop the king: he sent for her and ‘lay with her’.  If coveting his neighbour’s wife and committing adultery wasn’t bad enough, David’s actions led to Bathsheba becoming pregnant.

                 No big deal, David thought, he’ll just reward Uriah with a little furlough.  Uriah would come home, he’d sleep with his wife and no one would suspect that anyone other than that Uriah was the father.

                 What David didn’t count on was Uriah’s unfailing loyalty.  When he came back to the city, he refused to ‘go home’ while his comrades in arms were still camping in a field.

                 David’s plan B: send a note to his general to place Uriah on the frontline when he gets back to the encampment.  It worked, Bathsheba became a war widow.  We can add conspiracy to commit murder to David’s list of sinful crimes.

//

Today’s reading from second Samuel picks up the story at that point.  With Uriah dead, David took Bathsheba as his wife.  She gave birth to his son.

//  //  //

Nathan was a prophet of God, who served the court of King David.  He had observed David’s sexual and murderous behaviour and expressed what he described as God’s displeasure with the king’s action. 

Nathan does this is a smart way.  He shows David the meat of the situation by telling the story of two men: a rich man who had many flocks and herds and a poor man who had but one ewe lamb which was more of a pet than livestock. 

When the rich man had a visitor over for supper, he was so self-absorbed and greedy that he did not want to use one of his many sheep for the meat at the meal, so he just took the poor man’s pet lamb.

A credit to Nathan’s storytelling ability, David really got into it: ‘As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.’

Nathan wasted no time in getting to the point: ‘You [David] are the man!’

The whole situation moved David to seek to live more faithfully. 

Psalm 51 is David’s prayer of confession:

Prayer for Cleansing and Pardon

A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

¹Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
²Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
³For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
⁴Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
⁵Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.

⁶You desire truth in the inward being; ^*therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
⁷Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
⁸Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
⁹Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

¹⁰Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right^* spirit within me.
¹¹Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.
¹²Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing^* spirit.

As he confessed, David saw that his actions affected more than just himself.  In his state of greedy entitlement, he had neglected to view God as his sovereign and to enjoy the blessings of humility.  Nathan, the prophet, was pleased in the contrition he saw within the king and proclaimed him forgiven.

//

As an aside: sadly, history would interpret the untimely death of David and Bathsheba’s infant son (after a week long illness) as some form of divine punishment. 

However, not long after Bathsheba and David had another son, who they named Solomon (who, as David’s eventual successor, would play a big role in the history of Israel).

//  //  //

David acted as if he was entitled to do whatever he wanted, to take and use whatever he saw fit.  Power can have that effect on people. 

Wise advice and personal tragedy allowed him to be more humble and see a wider picture of God’s love and justice.

In the early Christian Church, the Apostle Paul wrote to believers who were experiencing their own battles with feelings of entitlement.  Some were looking inwardly at their own skills and gifts for ministry and claiming some level of comparative status:  my gift is bigger and better than your gift!  Paul’s message: ‘lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.’

Humility, gentleness, patience, love, unity, peace.  These are not characteristics of ‘entitlement’.  We have, each, been gifted by God, Paul says, in ways that serves the whole body of Christ – it is not any one individual gift that is needed, but the balance combination/  He compared the church to a maturing body – as it grows, it needs to value every ligament, every joint, every connection, so that the Body of Christ (the church) is joined and knitted together by building itself up in love.

//

The big picture of forgiveness is that it is not something that we can provide for ourselves.  Forgiveness is a gift that someone else gives us.

Or from the other side of the coin, when we forgive, it is a gift that we have chosen to bestow on someone.

//

Now the biblical history of forgiveness is complicated.  For the ancient Hebrew people, there were Levitical practices of sacrifice and atonement for ‘sins’ for both individuals and for the assembly of the people as a whole.  These almost exclusively related to actions or in actions that got in the way of the people’s ability to live faithfully within God’s Torah (law).

Often God is described as merciful to a fault: in the book of Nehemiah, while recounting the time of Moses and the Exodus, it says you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

One of the central characteristics of God, is the ability to forgive, even after the most horrendous of sins or crimes.  We might even, fairly, question whether God is being just in such cases, whether a more punitive response might be called for.  Case in point: Jonah.  He hated the Assyrians for the way their empire encroached on Israel.  He detested everything about them.  And so, when God told him to offer the people of Nineveh (the Assyrian capital) forgives, Jonah just knew that God would forgive them and he didn’t think that was the right thing to do, so he ran away from his task and indeed, he tried to run away from God.  In the end, when the Ninevites repented and God did forgive, Jonah was miserable and went and sulked under caster bean plant.

It seems, quite often, that God is able to forgive, in situations that make us uncomfortable.

So opportunities for forgiveness between people is different than forgiveness coming from God.

//

When it comes to conflicts between people, the Bible also offers some wisdom: 

      Proverbs 17:⁹ says One who forgives an affront fosters friendship, but one who dwells on disputes will alienate a friend.

      Ecclesiates 28 seems to imply that God’s forgiveness is tied to our ability to forgive: Forgive your neighbour the wrong [your neighbour] has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray.

      That is somewhat similar to one of the most well known forgiveness passages in the Bible...forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

      The disciple Peter famously asked Jesus, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’  Peter thought he was being generous offering so many second chances, but Jesus responded by saying the number is closer to 500 times (seven times seventy) – Jesus clearly was being hyperbolic: there is no realistic limit to the times you can (or should) forgive.

Having said all that, there are at least as many examples of passages where people encouraged God not to forgive or where people are told to give up on people who aren’t interested in making peace.

//

That last point seems to be the key when it comes to inter-personal forgiveness.  Forgiveness is sown in changes of heart.

//

In this church, as in many others, each Sunday, we take time to share the “Peace of Christ”.  Now the modern practical purpose of that time is to welcome each other and saw hello, but the meaning behind the ritual is that we are setting aside anything that might be dividing us.  We are proclaiming (with those handshakes and hugs and waves and pleasant eye contact), that we are of one body here – like Paul wrote so wonderfully, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

//

Forgiveness among people is often much easier when there is a sense of contrition and repentance and a desire to live more peaceably.

//

And yet, there are some who are able to forgive, in spite of another’s lack of repentance.  That must be because, there is a blessing and value in simply offering the forgiveness, regardless of whether it is sought or even graciously received.

I have witnessed the sense of deep and lasting peace that comes to people willing to let go of their anger, when it would be perfectly understandable for them to resentful forever.

//

Jesus caught a lot of criticism for expressing his beliefs about God’s forgiveness.  When Jesus would declare someone’s ‘sins forgiven’, his opponents would say he had no jurisdiction to say such things: forgiveness belongs to God alone.  Now we can look at this passage in a couple of ways: (1) Jesus was the incarnation of God on earth, so his proclamations of forgiveness were really God’s anyway; but also (2), the fact is that the Biblical history was that the Torah was set up to allow the priests and the prophets to announce forgiveness, when the appropriate atonement had been completed (in the same way that Nathan declared David forgiven).  Jesus’ announcements were prophetic in nature.

I think it was the statement Jesus was making about God through his words and actions that really upset the authorities.

//

A pattern of Jesus’ acts of forgiveness was also the invitation to ‘sin no more’.  Jesus sees forgiveness as more than a moment in time, but part of a process of transformation, where we are part of (as the Apostle Paul wrote) a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (2^nd Corinthians 5:¹⁷).

It was one of the earliest teachings of the Christian movement...Jesus lived and taught and showed a forgiveness that was broader than a lot of people thought or even wanted.

There are those in the world (in Jesus’ time and in ours), who benefit from an atmosphere where fear and anger are more dominant than peace and forgiveness.

Forgiveness is an incredibly powerful thing. It can close gaps between people; it can make violence harder to justify; it can keep people afraid and therefore easier to manipulate by those act as if they are entitled to the power that fear and anger breeds.

//

Forgiveness is powerful because, humility is honorable and noble.  When we can humbly see our own shortcomings and when we can see the potential for reconciliation that must be given a fresh start to others, we are standing up to fear and disarming its effects.

This is why Jesus’ declarations of forgiveness were so threatening to those in power in his day; it is why the early church was puzzlement to those outside, when a theology of universal atonement took root.  We all are forgiven and right with God because of Jesus.

To not live in the shadow of condemnation is and should be very freeing for us.  How can we not offer that to others in our midst?

//

The big picture of forgiveness is that forgiveness is healthy for us.

Forgiveness is part of a healing transformation.  When we set aside entitlement for humility, we can begin to experience this truth.

Let us pray:

How difficult it has been, O Creator, for us to be humble and caring. We so easily forget your teachings of the just and right relationships that we are to have with each other, as brothers and sisters, in this land and around the world.

May we find peace so that we might share peace that is genuine and real, and help others to know peace-within. Spirit of life, help us to walk the road of integrity back to the circle of life.  Let your breath,

O God, fill us with life anew, that we might love as you love and do what you would do. Let us know the peace that comes from good relations with each other and with you. Amen.

#79MV “Spirit, Open My Heart”