Forgiving Ourselves

Forgiveness Series 4
sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 27:3-5          John 21:15-17, 19b

“I would never have forgiven myself!”  Have you ever said those words?  I remember hearing them first when I was just a boy.  My brother had been left in the car with the engine running while the rest of us got the last few things together for a trip.  Somehow he managed to get his seat belt off, climb over the front seat, and move the gear shift in the car to reverse.  My grandfather chased the car across the parking lot, opened the door, jumped in, and got it stopped just in time.  My mother said those exact words awhile later … after all the hugging and the “thank yous” and the appropriate expressions of amazement at grandpa’s quick thinking and heroic actions.

I’m sure that I wouldn’t remember her words at all if it wasn’t for all the adrenaline that ingrained the whole event in my mind, but periodically … more often lately as I have my own close calls, the memory comes back to me, and the same words run through my mind as relief chills my body:  “I would never have forgiven myself!”

I understand now that while those are words may be an expression of fear at what might of happened, they are also words of joy – words of relief that something bad didn’t happen because of my own actions or my lack of attention – words of thanksgiving that the heart-sick suffering that could have been ours along with any one of those awful futures has passed us by … this time at least. 

But what happens when we are not so lucky – not so blessed?  What happens when something horrible happens because we failed to act?  Or worse … what happens when we are the ones who have done that horrible thing ourselves?  What happens when those words become “I will never forgive myself?”

 

We have talked about forgiveness for the past three weeks: God’s forgiveness, asking forgiveness, and forgiving others, and one thing that I have learned in that time is that I don’t know how forgiveness happens.  I couldn’t tell you how God forgives us or how I come to forgive others.  I certainly can’t tell you how to forgive.  It is a process that is unique to each person, and – I believe – it comes as a gift to us … a gift that we cannot understand through reason because it is a thing of the heart and the soul.  We must simply accept and embrace whether it involves forgiving others, accepting forgiveness in turn, or forgiving ourselves.

I think that really do need to embrace that gift because, as Hannah Arendt says, “Without being forgiven, [without being] released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to a single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever….”[1]  And that is a terrible thought … a terrible future.

Unfortunately, it’s not just that I cannot tell you how to embrace forgiveness.  Nobody can.  What we can do is tell stories: stories about forgiving, stories about being forgiven, and stories about times when we have forgiven ourselves.  That, in itself, will not teach us how to forgive, but it does inspire us to keep on struggling on through the process … at least it inspires me.  So, I’m going to tell you two stories….

John Plummer lives the quiet life of a Methodist pastor in a sleepy Virginia town these days, but things weren’t always so.  A helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War, he helped organize a napalm raid on the village of Trang Bang in 1972 – a bombing immortalized by the prize-winning photograph of one of its victims, Phan Thi Kim Phuc.

For the next twenty-four years, John was haunted by the photograph…: a naked and burned nine-year-old running toward the camera, with plumes of black smoke billowing in the sky behind her.

Then, in an almost unbelieveable coincidence, John met Kim during an event at the Vietnam War Memorial on Veterans Day, 1996….  John had come with a group of former pilots unable to come to terms with their shared past, but determined to stick together anyway….

Beside himself, John pushed through the crowds and managed to catch her attention before she was whisked away by a police escort.  He identified himself … and said that he felt responsible for the bombing of her village….  He says: Kim saw my grief, my pain, my sorrow …. She held out her arms to me and embraced me.  All I could say was “I’m sorry; I’m sorry” – over and over again.  And at the same time she was saying, “It’s all right, I forgive you.”

John says that … without having had the chance to get that off his chest, he is not sure he could have ever forgiven himself….  Reflecting on the way the incident changed his life, [he] maintains that forgiveness is “neither earned nor even deserved, but a gift.”  It is also a mystery.  He still can’t quite grasp how a short conversation could wipe away a twenty-four-year nightmare.[2]

 

Pat, another Vietnam veteran tells his story with these words:

Death is on my mind a lot.  The deaths I have caused- and wanting my own death – are with me every day.  I joke around a lot with the people I work with.  I have to, to hide the pain and to keep my mind from thinking.  I need to laugh.  Laughing keeps the blues away.

            But I cannot love.  Part of my soul is missing, and it seems I won’t ever get it back.  I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself for all of my wrongs.  I live day to day, but I am tired all the time – tired.  Will it ever end?  I don’t see how.  It’s been with me over twenty-five years now.[3]

 

I chose these two stories because they are more immediate than those Perry read for us this morning.  Peter and Judas lived so long ago, and they are such extreme examples that it is hard for us to take their stories to heart.  John and Pat live in our world and in this time, and their stories can fill the same role for us that those long ago apostles did for the early church.  There are two choices, the stories say: forgive ourselves or don’t. 

 

We can follow in the footsteps of Judas and Pat, and we will find ourselves stuck in the moment or moments of our guilt, holding on to pain and unable to love.  Or we can find a way to let go of the pride and the grief that lock us into the past and join Peter and John, embracing life and serving others and ourselves with joy and compassion.  Both ways have their own consequences, and we should choose carefully … choose wisely.

“The longer we hold on to the old, …” says Robert Benson in his book Living Prayer, “the longer it holds on to us, and the longer it keeps us from hearing the Word that we so long to hear.  It becomes a matter of not being able to hear God’s voice because we are so full of our own.  We cannot hear the Word because our own words are in the way.

We cannot be filled with God until we are not so full of ourselves.  Our hearts and minds, wonderful as they are, are simply too small.  We cannot give our hearts to God, or anyone else for that matter, as long as they are too heavy for us to lift.”[4]

 

God has given us a marvelous gift in forgiveness.  It has the power free us from the failures of the past.  It has the power to heal the brokenness in our relationships.  It opens a clear space in the future before us so that only our own hopes, dreams, and creativity – ours and God’s – need shape what we do and who we may become.

But beyond all of that, forgiveness is the key to love.  Big or small, the moments that we hold onto … the mistakes that we hold ourselves accountable for – (going even beyond God’s judgment) – sap the joy and compassion from our living.  They build up leaving us dry husks wasting away in a spiritual desert, and only the water of life … only forgiveness can bring us back to life … and back to the love that gives life its meaning.

 

My prayer for you then … and for myself … is that we all will find the path to forgiveness.  That we all will hold onto the gift of love.  That we will choose life and joy and the peace that comes from letting go of the mistakes and struggles of our past.  That we will never let “I will never forgive myself” become the reality of our lives, and that in learning and growing from our experiences we will embrace the promise of a future lived in the light and love … the forgiveness of God.

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[1] Arnold, Johann Christoph.  Why Forgive? (Orbis Books, Maryknoll) 2008.123.

[2] Arnold, Johann Christoph.  Why Forgive? (Orbis Books, Maryknoll) 2008.126-8.

[3] Ibid. 128.

[4] Benson, Robert.  Living Prayer (Jeremy P. Tarcher, New York) 1999. 26-7.

Forgiving Others

Forgiveness Series 3
sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 18:15-22                  Genesis 50:15-21

In April 1995, Bud Welch’s 23-year-old daughter, Julie Marie, was killed in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. In the months after her death, Bud changed from supporting the death penalty for Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to taking a public stand against it. Bud tells his experience of transformation with these words ….

Three days after the bombing, as I watched Tim McVeigh being led out of the courthouse, I hoped someone in a high building with a rifle would shoot him dead. I wanted him to fry. In fact, I’d have killed him myself if I’d had the chance.

Unable to deal with the pain of Julie’s death, I started self-medicating with alcohol until eventually the hangovers were lasting all day. Then, on a cold day in January 1996, I came to the bombsight – as I did every day – and I looked across the wasteland where the Murrah Building once stood. My head was splitting from drinking the night before and I thought, “I have to do something different, because what I’m doing isn’t working”.

For the next few weeks I started to reconcile things in my mind, and finally concluded that it was revenge and hate that had killed Julie and the 167 others. Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols had been against the US government for what happened in Waco, Texas, in 1993 and seeing what they’d done with their vengeance, I knew I had to send mine in a different direction….[1]

 

Carrie mentioned last week that we arranged our preaching schedule for this series so that we each had an easier topic and a harder topic.  You may have guessed that this is my “easy” one.  Forgiving others is a common theme in our church and in the larger Christian community.  There are any number of scripture passages that talk about forgiveness in both the Old Testament and New, from the story of Joseph forgiving his brothers to the verses in Matthew that Linda read for us earlier this morning.  And they all seem to say the same thing….

            “Lord, if my brother [or sister] sins against me, how often should I forgive?...”

            “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven times.”

There’s no getting away from that.  It’s not as limited as turning the other cheek when someone strikes us, and it’s nowhere near as vague as loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.  Jesus is very clear here that we should forgive and not just once but at least 490 times (though I believe that saying “seventy times seven” was a way of pointing out that if you are counting, you aren’t really forgiving).  We are just supposed to forgive and forgive and forgive without keeping an account.

 

You understand that already though.  We all know that we are supposed to do it – to be forgiving people.  We all want to be just that – even strive to do it.  We discuss how important it is all the time….  We talk because it is easy to talk about forgiving others.  The truth is that it is not always easy to do it.  No matter how much we want it to be … how much we think it should be.  It is not easy.

So why is that?  Why is it so hard to forgive sometimes? ………

 

I say “sometimes” because as I was ponder that question – why is it so hard to forgive – I stumbled on an interview with Michael McCullough that helped me to see things a little more clearly.  McCullough is the author of Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct, and in that book he points our that we actually forgive all the time … even if we don’t notice it.

He said in the interview:

This … was part of my attempt to [challenge] this metaphor of forgiveness as this difficult thing that we have to consciously practice and learn, because we don't know how to do it on their own. I forgive my seven-year-old son every day, right? …  He's an active, inquisitive seven-year-old who sometimes accidentally elbows me in the mouth when we're cuddling and sometimes puts Crayons on the walls. And yet it seems demeaning to call it forgiveness. …  I wouldn't dignify it with the term forgiveness. It's just what you do with your children. You know, you — you accept their limitations and you move on. He broke my tooth once when I was drinking out of a water glass.

Parents have a million of these stories, right?  But you don't put any effort into forgiving. It naturally happens and you move on. … [We] have this natural tolerance for the misbehavior of our children. So it is, at that level, incredibly mundane. We put no effort into it. It happens every day a thousand times. We would never even give it a second thought. And yet we do it over and over again.[2]

So, congratulations!  You are already an accomplished giver of forgiveness!  You do it all the time, even if you don’t notice it.  I am absolutely certain that if we spent enough time thinking about it, you could all come up with at least three times this morning when you freely gave forgiveness.

 

I don’t mean to belittle the struggle to forgive, though.  What McCullough is talking about is just the little things – the easy things.  It’s a lot harder to forgive – even our family members – for the bigger transgressions that come between us.  But I do think that it might be easier for us to manage if we started to recognize those little times of willful forgetfulness - the “mundane” moments of mercy - for what they are because they are important.  They are us … practicing forgiveness … practicing in preparation for the difficult times, and if we start to think of them that way, maybe it will help us understand how we can find forgiveness for the big things that people do to us.

But even then – even if we take the lesson from our natural instincts – it is still hard.  There are just so many reasons why we don’t want to forgive.  Some of mine, strangely mirror those reasons Carrie listed last week as hurdles that stand in the way of asking forgiveness.  Sometimes, I just don’t want to let the other person get away with whatever they’ve done.  I want some sort of justice.  Or  maybe it’s vengeance that I want because I want them to suffer the same thing that I went through.  I also worry that I am part of the problem and that forgiving others lets them off the hook while I’m still dangling. 

Then there’s my fears.  I don’t want to be seen as too soft.  I don’t want people to think of me as an easy target.  I’m afraid of how people might judge me – might belittle me for my “weakness,” … and I’m afraid to make myself vulnerable. 

And, sometimes, I just don’t even know where to start. 

Here is where Bud started….

In December 1998, after Tim McVeigh had been sentenced to death, I had a chance to meet Bill McVeigh at his home near Buffalo. I wanted to show him that I did not blame him. His youngest daughter also wanted to meet me, and after Bill had showed me his garden, the three of us sat around the kitchen table. Up on the wall were family snapshots, including Tim’s graduation picture. They noticed that I kept looking up at it, so I felt compelled to say something. “God, what a good looking kid,” I said.

Earlier, when we’d been in the garden, Bill had asked me, “Bud, are you able to cry?” I’d told him, “I don’t usually have a problem crying”. His reply was, “I can’t cry, even though I’ve got a lot to cry about”. But now, sitting at the kitchen table looking at Tim’s photo, a big tear rolled down his face. It was the love of a father for a son.

When I got ready to leave I shook Bill’s hand, then extended it to Jennifer, but she just grabbed me and threw her arms around me. She was the same sort of age as Julie but felt so much taller. I don’t know which one of us started crying first. Then I held her face in my hands and said, “look, honey, the three of us are in this for the rest of our lives. I don’t want your brother to die and I’ll do everything I can to prevent it”.  As I walked away from the house I realized that until that moment I had walked alone, but now a tremendous weight had lifted from my shoulders….[3]

 

I think that feeling like that – like he wasn’t alone his pain and his grief … like there were others who were walking similar paths along with him – I think that might have given Bud strength and courage.  Strength and courage to risk the journey toward forgiveness … to risk the scorn of others?  It may have given him just enough of a sense of security that he stopped being too afraid to risk being vulnerable.  And that – that willingness to be vulnerable is at the heart of our struggle.

We may be naturally prone to forgive, but that only comes easily if we feel safe around the person we are forgiving.  When someone apologizes in a way that seems heartfelt and convincing, then we have an easier time moving past the past.  We don’t want to be push-overs, after all, and there may be real danger in putting ourselves at risk with someone who will continue to hurt us.  But if we are convinced that we don’t have to worry about being hurt the same way again, then we feel secure enough to think about forgiveness.[4] 

It may sound simple or obvious, but understanding that a sense of safety is essential may hold one key to moving forward when we are struggling with forgiveness….  What if we change our focus when we find ourselves in those really tough situations?  What if we let go of forgiveness for a time so that we can work at creating conditions where we can feel safe and empowered instead of feeling scared and weak?

That’s what Joseph did.  When his brothers came to see him, asking for help and begging forgiveness, he found a way to discover that they were truly sorry for what they had done to him.  So, in the end, he felt safe.  He was free to heal the divide that had been slashed through the middle of his family.  He was free to forgive his brothers and assure that his family would survive.

Bud offers these reflections at the end of his story….

About a year before the execution I found it in my heart to forgive Tim McVeigh. It was a release for me rather than for him.  Six months after the bombing a poll taken in Oklahoma City of victims’ families and survivors showed that 85% wanted the death penalty for Tim McVeigh. Six years later that figure had dropped to nearly half, and now most of those who supported his execution have come to believe it was a mistake. In other words, they didn’t feel any better after Tim McVeigh was taken from his cell and killed.[5]

 

Two things I learned from Mr. Welsh....  Vengeance doesn’t make us feel any better … no matter what we think.  It gives us a rush at first, but then it consumes us like an addiction.  The only real way forward is forgiveness … even when it seems impossible.  Only forgiveness can bring healing into our lives and our relationships.  Only forgiveness can free us to move on into hope.

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[1] http://theforgivenessproject.com/stories/bud-welch-usa/

[2] http://www.onbeing.org/program/getting-revenge-and-forgiveness/transcript/4575#main_content

[3] http://theforgivenessproject.com/stories/bud-welch-usa/

[4] http://www.onbeing.org/program/getting-revenge-and-forgiveness/transcript/4575#main_content

[5] http://theforgivenessproject.com/stories/bud-welch-usa/

Asking Forgiveness

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Psalm 32:1-7, Luke 15:11-24
Forgiveness Series 2

Torin and I joked, as we were preparing for this series on forgiveness, that we had to break the four topics down so we each got one easy one and one hard one.  Like I said last week, forgiveness is hard in general.  But when we talk about “easy” and “hard” we’re talking about the topics where there are lots said about this aspect of forgiveness.  Last week was my easy one.  God’s forgiveness.  Easy.

Asking forgiveness.  Um.  Where are the books about asking forgiveness?  There are lots about giving forgiveness.  Websites dedicated to it.  Ooodles of devotionals on it. But asking for it…Not so much.

Now let me qualify that. There are lots of scriptures and conversations about asking God for forgiveness, but not much on helping us with the very real spiritual struggle of asking another human being for forgiveness when we have hurt them.

This seems to be completely opposite of what we enforce in children, whether in home, school or in church.  How many times have you heard “Say you’re sorry!” when a child does something wrong?  “Why did you do that?  Say you’re sorry!”  to which a resentful “sooorrry” is muttered. 

We tell children to say I’m sorry, and yet we don’t train them how best to respond when someone offers an apology.  What do you hear in response to when children say, “sooorry” to other kids?  If you hear what I hear, it’s “that’s ok”

We’re trying to teach our children not to say “That’s OK.” because, as we know, kicking someone or hitting someone or hurting someone is not OK.  We are trying to get the boys to say “I’m Ok” or simply “Thank you” or, even… “I forgive you.”  (But I think I may be stepping on Torin’s toes and his sermon for next week)

No, as we grow to be adults especially in the church, things get flipped.  We hear more about all the reasons we should give forgiveness (which, admittedly, is not an easy task), and we hear less about how to ask for forgiveness.

This is why I automatically thought of the beloved story of the Prodigal Son.  This is story that you likely think of, as I did at first, about forgiveness on the giving end, right?  The father forgiving the son.  We begin the story by looking at the bad behavior of the son…his greedy entitlement.  And the story ends with the father’s grace-filled forgiveness, even to the shagrin of the elder son.  We know well how it begins, we love how it ends.  But we miss the mucky middle part.  The part where the forgiveness begins…

There he is: penniless, starving, perhaps a perfect picture of our theme psalm: all day, wasting away, feeling dried up as in summer.  We not only think of this young man feeding the pigs, we envision him as living in the pig muck, no better than swine, fighting off the little piggies for the last ear of corn in the desperate face of famine.  He cannot go any lower.

He knows what will save him.  He knows at his father’s home there is warmth and food and good work and companionship.  We know that the only thing that stands between the son and these things is a simple “I’m sorry,” but he doesn’t know that. 

He doesn’t know.  Because of the awful things he did or said…how could he know?

But somehow, he recognizes that it can come in no other way.  He has to return.  He has to ask forgiveness.  Just think of the pride he had to swallow.   Just think of his anxiety of not only facing his father, but his brother, the servants.  What have people been saying about him?  How would they treat him? 

Somehow, whether desperation or hunger or a true need for reconciliation, he mustered the courage to pull himself out of the pig-muck and go to his father. 

Now you, like me, may wonder about this son’s sincerity.  Did he really want reconciliation, or did he just have nowhere else to go?  Ah…isn’t that something we face when we look at our own fear of asking forgiveness?  That others will question our motives?

OK, let’s just look at those, shall we?  What gets in our way of actually asking forgiveness from others?  So, I made up a list of why I am so scared of asking forgiveness.  I bet some of these resonate with you.  Carrie’s list of why she finds it hard to ask forgiveness

1) I know it is wrong to hurt others, and asking forgiveness means admitting I did something wrong and hurt someone else.

Or…it means I made a mistake (which is #2).  And if I make a mistake, my competency is called into question and when my competency is called into question, my self-worth hangs perilously on a cliff.  And that is not a fun place to be.

3) Good Mennonites and Brethren should not be in conflict with one another, right? (Wrong.)

4) asking forgiveness makes me vulnerable.  There is a moment when you seek forgiveness that you stand exposed and the other person has all the power.  And we don’t like other people having that much power.  It’s the seconds that feel like hours where the other person gets to respond and you are so fearful that

5) they won’t forgive you.  What happens if they simply will not forgive you? (pause)

6) they may tell me what a horrible thing I did, which is translated in my mind to what a horrible person I am.  This possibility makes the option of simply not doing anything a lot nicer, doesn’t it?

7)I don’t like asking forgiveness because while it makes me vulnerable, it also makes me witness the vulnerability of someone else.  And when people are vulnerable they do or say things that are not kind, or true, or compassionate, and a terrible cycle of misunderstanding and miscommunication begins, making the situation all that much worse.

8) I don’t want to admit that I am less than perfect and did anything in need of forgiveness

9). there are more and more and more reasons.

At the beginning of my sermon last week, I invited you to think of a situation where you asked for or gave forgiveness.  Right now, I’m going to get into your business a little more, and invite you to consider a relationship where you need to ask forgiveness.

 It could very well be a huge thing: a long-term battle, a generation’s long family feud, it could even be something large where the person you need forgiveness from is not even around anymore to forgive you. 

And yet, it could be some small infraction: that daily violation of trust.  The constant nagging.  The unintended putdowns.   Take a moment and get a situation in your mind: (pause) and know that no one judges you, or berates you, or is asking you to do anything about this right now, so be as honest as possible.

When you think of the situation, picture the faces of the people involved.

Now instead of looking at that face straight on, which is a very vulnerable position, imagine yourself sitting next to that person.  Instead of looking into their face, imagine the upper part of your arms touching, as you sit quietly together.  This is relationship.  This is not a confrontation. 

Now ask yourself, what makes me anxious about asking for forgiveness?  Are you not quite sure what you have done wrong, so you don’t even know how to ask?  Are you scared about what they might say in response? Has too much time passed? 

What keeps you from asking this person to forgive you? (long pause)

And here you are.  In the muck.  Knowing you need to ask forgiveness and mustering the courage to do it.  You are with the prodigal son.  And maybe the story has some advice.  What does the son do?  (if you want, you can open your eyes, or not, as feel led)

Well first, we are resolved that reconciliation is needed.  Last week we talked about forgiveness being a gift given to us to keep us in relationship.  The hardest part can come when I simply admit that something I did hurt someone and our relationship is fractured.  The son recognized the need for forgiveness, and he mustered that courage, swallowed his pride, whatever cliché he did that got him simply moving toward his father. 

We admit to ourselves that we hurt someone, and we go to them.  That might be face to face.  That might be a phone call.  That might be a letter or email where you can think through your thoughts.

Then, as the son did, I state what I did, or at least what I believe I did, as specifically as possible.  I admit that what I did was wrong, or hurtful, or dishonest.  I express regret and ask forgiveness.  Here’s one I had to pull out recently: “Mom, my words were passive aggressive and unhelpful.  It was wrong of me to say that.  I’m sorry.  Please forgive me.”

I love how the story has the son rehearsing his apology  it in his head while he is still far away, hanging out with the pigs.  He says “OK, this is what I’m going to say (deep breath) “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”  I can just seem him muttering it to himself to calm his nerves as walks home, as he crossed the field, as he walked along the olive grove, muttering it to himself as he saw his father’s home (Father, I have sinned against heaven and you), he’s prepared to shield himself from his father’s rage with his apology.

And as he muttered it to himself for the 50-somethingith time, he sees his father.  Running to him.  Why’s he running?  He’s raising his arms…is he going to hit him?  And the arms don’t strike him, but encircle him.  There is no punishment, only compassion, and love. 

He can tell he is forgiven.  He didn’t even get the chance to ask. But that doesn’t stop him.  He still asks for pardon.  “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you…” And that is telling isn’t it?  Even if we know we are forgiven, even if we think like the movie line“Love never means needing to say I’m sorry” there is something that happens to our soul when we ask for it.

Now, that situation you thought of.  It’s not likely that the person you have hurt will come running to you with open arms.  Maybe so, but the likelihood is small.  It’s not likely that you will have such a warm greeting or that the resolution will be as effusive as the one between the father and son.  Forgiveness, as we said last week, is a process.  If there is forgiveness, it will happen slowly.

And the hard reality is…when you ask for forgiveness, you may not receive it.

When you confess your sins, you may get more offenses thrown in your face.

It may be that when you show your vulnerability, someone will take advantage.

But when you choose to seek reconciliation through asking forgiveness, you at least lift yourselves out of the muck that holds your hostage through guilt, or embarrassment, or shame.  And that can bring healing itself. 

And just because we do not know how it will turn out, does not mean we shouldn’t do it.  Because we do not know how it will turn out simply means that we are putting faith in a God who created us for relationships.  We put our faith in reconciliation.  We put our faith in love.

And when we are out of the muck of our guilt and muster the love to ask forgiveness…and we are in that pregnant pause in which anything can happen…finish

 

 

Paying Attention

sermon by Torin Eikler
Luke 16:19-31             Amos 6:1-7

The parable we just heard comes at the end of an extended section of Luke that teach about the dangers of wealth and the challenge of using it wisely.  Jesus starts off by setting the stage with a story about a dishonest manager who spent his master’s money to meet his own desires, and who then forgives the debts of his master in order to build up good will for himself when he has been found out and fired.  Then it moves into the familiar section in which Jesus challenges the Pharisees with the words, “no [one] can serve two masters….  You cannot serve God and wealth.”  In the finale, Jesus pulls the curtain on the fate of those who enjoy the power and luxury of wealth at the expense of others with the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and we should probably pay close attention since this parable sums it up in pretty drastic terms.

As R. Alan Culpepper notes, this parable can be seen as a drama in three acts, the first two of which set the stage for the real show at the end.  In the first act, neither man moves or speaks.  The characters are simply introduced, and their way of life is described, and the rich man takes pride of place.  He wears purple (which may mean that he was a high-ranking official or royalty).  He lived in a house with gates to separate himself from the riffraff of the city.  He dressed in and slept in fine linen and feasted sumptuously every day.  He was “at ease in Zion” – basically he had everything a person could want.

Lazarus is a crippled beggar whose body is covered with running sores.  He is thrown before the rich man’s gate, and we are told that he would have gladly eaten the soiled bread from the rich man’s table.  The depth of Lazarus’ deprivation is described with one final detail: the dogs lick his sores as they pass by.

In the second act, the positions are reversed and Lazarus goes first.  He dies, which comes as no surprise, but the parable does not dwell on that fact.  It quickly moves on to the angels that come and take Lazarus to bosom of Abraham.  The Bosom of Abraham was one name used by the Jews of Jesus’ time for the place of highest bliss.  It might be the equivalent of saying that Lazarus was transported to the seventh heaven which makes the point that while the poor man was neglected by others during his lifetime, Lazarus is prized in the sight of God.

Meanwhile, the rich man also dies.  How he dies we never learn.  Though our society might choose to make the point that the rich food and decadent lifestyle may have come back to bite him in the end, the parable doesn’t seem to care what caused his death.  It simply says that he was buried – another nicety that Lazarus didn’t enjoy, and that he ended up being tormented in hell. 

In the third act we finally have some “action” in the form of a conversation between Father Abraham and the rich man.  During the course of the three exchanges, the rich man makes some real headway.  He starts just as he finished his life – concerned for himself: “send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.”  Then he finally looks outside of himself for the first time: “I beg you, [then,] to send [Lazarus] to my father’s house … that he may warn [my five brothers], so that they will not also come to this place of torment.”  And then he goes even further.  He pleads with Abraham on their behalf: “but if someone goes to them form the dead, they will repent.”  In the end, his efforts still have no success, and his brothers’ only hope is to pay attention to the teachings they already know.

The first act showed us the way things tend to be: the poor appear to be poor and the rich appear to be rich.  The second act contains a reversal: the poor become rich and the rich become poor.  With Abraham’s final response, the third act underscores that reversal with a finality that offers no space for argument.  If one refuses to hear Moses and the prophets and repent, then they have chosen their fate.  There will be no further warning.[1]

 

And now we’ve set the stage to explore the parable, and I’d like to invite you into the process of dynamic analogy.  I invite you to put yourself into the story in place of one of the characters.  You can do it with any of the people in the parable and you might discover new ways of understanding what Jesus is trying to teach.  But, what I’d like you to do this morning is to match yourself with the character that best fits your situation so we can understand how this parable touches on our own lives and our experiences.

Are you more like Lazarus or is your life more like that of the rich man?  I’m just going to skip over Father Abraham and the angels; although if you do relate to them the most, please come and see me after worship.  We may have something else to talk about….

So, Lazarus or the rich man….  If your life is anything like mine, you will probably see yourself most in the rich man.  We may not have linen sheets or royal clothing, but we do have more than enough to keep us comfortable.  We may not feast on rich food every day, but we are not often starving.  We may not live in a walled estate, but our homes are generously sized, and we have enough privacy that we don’t have to worry about people wandering in to surprise us.  We certainly are not laying in the street begging for food as we slowly waste away from illnesses because the only medical care we can get is stray dogs licking our wounds.

We could stop there, and there would be a strong warning for us to be careful of the wealth we have … to use what we have in unselfish ways or, at least, to make sure that we don’t have too much now so that we can have more later.  I think that would be a mistake.  That gets us into the realm of trying to manipulate God into getting us what we want, and if we pay closer attention to the parable we might discover that there is a deeper message that addresses exactly that self-centeredness.

I think a story told by John Stendahl in the Christian Century illustrates that

message quite well ….

“Years later I still feel the shame.  I was visiting a young man in a facility for people with severe brain injuries.  he was agitated and eager to walk, so I joined him as he went from room to room and looked in each room as if he were searching for someone.  Eventually we came to a big room that wan not in use.  AT the far end a couple of janitors were at work buffing the floor.  I saw that no one was sitting at any of the tables and said to the young man, “There’s nobody in here.”

Then, from the other side of the room, came the voice of one of the janitors.  “What do you mean, nobody?  We’re not nobody.”

I don’t recall what lame apology I offered, but I remember the heat risign in my cheeks.  I really hadn’t seen those two men, although of course I’d registered that there were janitors at work.  My mind was elsewhere. [I was just like the rich man who didn’t really see Lazarus either; although this poor man was right there at his door or right under his nose, as we say.  His mind was elsewhere too.]  He saw Lazarus, of course – enough so that he could step over him and not stumble.  Perhaps he thought about for a moment about the problem of the poor, or considered the difficult question of whether it’s good or bad policy to give money to beggars.  Maybe he even dropped a coin in the man’s hands as he moved past him.  But he didn’t really see Lazarus, [and so he didn’t see the chasm that existed between them until it was revealed when he found himself on the other side of it.”[2]

The more fundamental way that we are like the rich man is that we often simply don’t see.  We don’t see the people who ask us for change on the street.  We don’t see the people who are struggling to find shelter … be it from harsh weather or from the equally harsh climate of our society.  We don’t see the people who have neither the money or the insurance they need to get medical help when they need it.

It may be more accurate to say that we don’t pay attention.  We see individuals in exactly those situations a lot.  We just don’t notice … or worse, we choose to ignore.  Most of us are so caught up in our own lives – our needs … our plans – that we sail right on past the dramas unfolding right in front of us.  We prefer the romantic comedies or the heroic epics that we are writing for ourselves to the tragedies written by life and played out all around us.  In that way, we are exactly like the rich man.  We create the chasms that stand between us and our neighbors in this life just as surely as he created the chasm that divided him from Lazarus.

 

Now I have to admit that I have led you astray in this journey down the road of analogy.  I’m only a little sorry for that.  This is how parables work, after all.  Like every good mystery, they draw you down one path after another until the truth is finally revealed.  Each path you follow teaches you a little more, though, and we do need to see just how much we are like the rich man in order to understand the lesson that Jesus was trying to teach his audience.  We need to learn that lesson just as much as they did.  But the truth is that there is another character (characters really) that we are more like than the rich man.

So here’s the next twist….  We are most like the brothers, and that’s a blessing … sort of.  The brothers are no better than the rich man.  They are just as misguided – just as greedy and proud … just as self-centered and blind, and they are clearly headed in the same direction as their brother.  But there is one very big difference:  They are still alive.  They still have the chance to change.  If they just pay attention to the voices of the law and the prophets, then there is hope for them.  They can still rewrite their future.

And here’s the final reveal....  There’s even more hope for us.  Those brothers got no extra help despite the appeals of the rich man.  They will have no angels come to them.  There will be no Lazarus rising from the dead to get their attention.  But that’s exactly what we have been sent – a new voice calling us to change … the voice of one who has died and risen from the dead … the voice of the one who is telling this parable … the voice of Christ.

So, the real question for us is not who we are most like in this story.  It’s not, ultimately, what we can learn from it (though that is important).  The question is, will we pay attention.  Will we hear … really hear the warning Jesus has buried in this little drama?  Will we pay attention to the hope that he offers?  Will we accept the call to change?

 
I like to think that I will…?  How about you?

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[1] Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume IX (Abingdon Press, Nashville) 1995.  315-19.

[2] Stendahl, John.  “Reflections on the lectionary” in The Christian Century, September 18, 2013. 21.

Counting for Joy

Sermon by Torin Eikler
Luke 14:25-33             Deuteronomy 30:15-20

The beginning of this passage is one of the scriptures that I have a hard time with.  Jesus doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would demand that his followers turn against their families in the way it seems to imply.  It just doesn’t fit with the message of love for all people that he preached so consistently during his time with us, and it certainly isn’t in keeping with his last actions telling John to take Mary as his adopted mother and vice versa.  Quite frankly, if the cost of following Jesus is hating my family, I don’t know if I can live up to the demand, and a part of me recoils from the idea that it would even be asked of me.  But I respect the scriptures enough to wrestle with this one rather than dismissing out of hand, and I have unearthed a couple of insights that have helped me along the way.

The first has to do with the challenging process of translation.  The word we read as “hate” in this passage comes from the Greek word “misei.”  It was originally translated as hate by the monks who put the King James version of the Bible together, and has held on through the years despite other valid possibilities.  The root of “Misei” is miseo which literally means "to regard with less affection, to love less, or to esteem less". It doesn't mean animosity, ill will, or revenge, which our English word, "hate," suggests. Miseo doesn't mean that the object is detestable or repugnant. It just means that by comparison, someone or something is less important than someone or something else.[1]

The other insight comes from scholars’ interpretation of the culture in the Middle East two thousand years ago which I think is probably on target since it helps this passage dovetail with the parable Jesus shared just before this text – the parable of the banquet that was refused by the chosen guest and became a feast open to all who chose to attend.  This is what that perspective has to offer according to John Pilch….

The purpose of meals in the Middle East was to cement social relationships.  Kin and friends were, and continue to be, the basis of economic survival in this world, where economics was deeply embedded in kinship and politics.  You could always count on your family and friends to look after you.  A follower of Jesus who ceased "networking" by means of meals would jeopardize a family’s very existence.  That disciple would have to choose between allegiance to the family and allegiance to Jesus.

Also, in the Middle East the main rule for behavior is family first. A disciple who chose to cut ties with family and social network would have lost the ordinary means of making a living. That would qualify as an economic cross for anyone who made that choice.  It is true that by joining a new "family" consisting of the other disciples of Jesus, a "family-hating" person could have found a new source of livelihood.  But without being able to make claims based on blood ties and advantageous social networks, members of that new "family" would have to rely on hospitality, which would have been extended exclusively by strangers to strangers.[2]

 

That interpretation helps me relax and breathe a little more easily.  I don’t have to “hate” my family.  I simply need to be reminded from time to time that they are not necessarily the most important thing in the world.  That’s still a little hard to stomach, but I don’t believe that God often chooses to separate or break apart families if there is another option.  (And I suspect that … for God … there is almost always another option.)

It also seems to imply that the cost Jesus was asking his listeners to count was more or less strictly economic.  That makes sense given that somewhere around 60% of Jesus’ teachings were about money and the rearranging of wealth-based societies, including the parable just preceding this passage.  If that was the case, it was still a pretty big cost to accept.

So what was the benefit?

 

We don’t often stop to ask that question.  Instead we just hunch our shoulders and think, “well, I’ll have to accept the cost if I want to follow Jesus.”  And yet, it seems to be the natural question to ask.  If I would have been there listening to him speak, that would have been the first thing that came to mind.

For us, the answer might be eternal salvation by the power of the grace offered through Jesus’ obedient self-sacrifice.  For the crowd, that wouldn’t have entered the picture.  They didn’t know anything (or had only the slightest inkling at most).  For them, the other side of the equation would have been the new way of life that Jesus preached – a life where there was enough for everyone to eat and where people reached out across the boundaries of family and social class to take care of each other with love and compassion … a life where the prosperity, abundance, and length of days became a reality for everyone just as Moses had promised so long ago.

Was that worth the cost?  Is it worth the cost to you?

 

I’m not sure that “family” holds quite the same place in our lives today.  We don’t really need our families to survive in the same way that Pilch speaks of when he describes the ancient Jewish culture.  But it is still a powerful motivator and there are any number of other things that stand in the way of following Jesus including pride and the class divisions that have taken the place of family to some extent.  Those are still costly barriers to cross with very real social and economic consequences.

Consider these two stories from Paul Gaffney and Robert Baldwin, respectively.  Gaffney writes…

As a street chaplain in Marin County, California, I join with the street community in San Rafael, California, every Tuesday.  Our Wellness Group is made up of people who live in their cars, people who sleep in bushes and those who are newly housed.  Some drink before noon, some are in recovery.  We are joined by mental health consumers, retired clergy, lay monastics – and whoever else is moved to join us.  In less than an hour we move together through the ritual we’ve built over the last ten years:  we sit in silence, pray and discuss sacred and secular texts.  Recently, we have concluded the time with a meal organized by members of our community….

Initially we planned only simple meals – bread and soup, salad and pasta.  But the cooks were delighted with the host church’s commercial kitchen and could not contain their enthusiasm.  Spaghetti and meatballs led to pulled pork with led to coconut curry.  Our simple dinners had turned into elaborate feasts….

At first the participants in the Wellness Group were upset that some people came only for the meal, or ate more than their share, or critiqued the food.  But as group members talked about this friction, we smoothed off some of the rough edges of the practice.  Now we proudly feed everyone and anyone, not just ourselves….[3]

And Baldwin tells this story:
I will never forget the day I met Mother Teresa. More than that, I will never forget what she taught me about loving other people, especially the poor.

She wasn't nearly as famous in the late seventies as she is now, but she already had hundreds of thousands of admirers around the world. I was the editor of a Catholic newspaper in Rhode Island, and when I heard she would be speaking in Boston, I decided to go.  [As a member of the press, I was] ushered into a room where  a little old lady wrapped in a blue-and-white sari [she was preparing to speak].

I couldn't believe how tiny she was. But what I remember most is her smiling, wrinkled face and the way she bowed to me, as if I were royalty, when I was introduced. She greeted everyone that way. I thought that if Jesus Christ walked into the room, she would greet him in exactly the same manner. The way she did it conveyed a message that said, "You are holy".

But meeting her wasn't as memorable as what she taught me about loving people. Until that day, I had always thought of charity as simply being nice to people. For Mother Teresa it was much more.

During her talk, she told us …. a story of how one of the sisters had spent an entire day bathing the wounds of a dying beggar who was brought to them from the streets of Calcutta. Mother Teresa's voice dropped to a whisper as she told the hushed auditorium that, in reality, the nun had been bathing the wounds of Jesus.  She insisted that Christ tests the love of his followers by hiding in grotesque disguises to see if we can still see him.

A few nights later, I was leaving my office after dark when a drunk accosted me.  He was dirty and ragged and smelled bad.  "Did the bus leave yet?" he asked.   The only bus that ever stopped on that corner was a van that carried street people to a soup kitchen.

"You've missed it," I told him.  Then I thought about Mother Teresa.  I didn't exactly buy the idea that this old bum was God in disguise, but I could see a person in front of me who needed a meal.  The soup kitchen wasn't very far out of my way.  "C'mon, I'll drive you," I said, hoping that he wouldn't throw up in the car.   He looked surprised, delighted and a little stunned.  He studied me with bleary eyes.  His next words floated to me on the smell of cheap wine and they seemed to confirm everything Mother Teresa had taught me.

"Say," he said, "you must know me."[4]

Was it worth the costs for these two men?  I think they would say that it was because it sounds to me (when I read between the lines) that they both found joy and fulfillment in the moments when they reached out past their barriers to help out those in need.  In those moments, I think they discovered the blessings of the Promised Land.  In those moments when they met Christ sitting at the table or weaving down the pavement before them.

 

For Baldwin, “family” was the social standing that would have him keep his distance from men who bear the smelly, lurking, nauseas stigma of those who have reached the end of their rope.  For the people in Gaffney’s group, it seems like pride and control were the barrier that wanted to keep everything just so and make sure everyone followed the same rules.  I don’t know what the barriers or concerns are that get in the way for each of you.  I don’t know the “family” that threatens to disown you if you choose to follow Christ.  I don’t even know what all of my own are, but I’m pretty sure that there is at least one. 

We all have that struggle.  There is a cost for each of us to count.  I only hope that you can find a way or a time or a place when you can set them aside and meet Christ.  I only pray that you too will discover the blessings and the joy of following his invitation to the banquet table set before us all.

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[1] Levin, Ron.  “Counting the Cost of Discipleship.” SermonSuite.com

[2] Pilch, John.  The Cultural World of Jesus, Year C. (Liturgical Press, Collegeville)  133 - 135.

[3] Gaffney, Paul.  “Feeding and being fed: a feast for those at the edges,” The Christian Century, September 18, 2013. 13.

[4] Baldwin, Robert. “Mother Teresa, the Wino and Me” in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Stories of Faith, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Amy Newmark, eds. (Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, Cos Cob), 228-229.