Forgiveness

 Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

 A warm welcome to each worshiper today. We celebrate you and offer you our friendship and love. We are a congregation of people who seek to grow spiritually, to become more like Christ in His compassion and acceptance of everyone while growing more aware of what it really means to be Christians today.

As a Reconciling Congregation, EPUMC affirms the sacred worth of persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities and welcomes them into full participation in the fellowship, membership, ministries, and leadership of the congregation.

 

 

 

943 Palmer Avenue, Schenectady, NY 12309 / 518-374-4306 epumc943@gmail.com / www.easternparkway.org

Order of Worship

August 6, 2023

10:00 a.m.

*You are invited to rise in body or spirit.

 

Prelude

Greeting and Announcements

Mission Statement:

We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth disciples of Jesus Christ.

Call to Worship:

Just when we are feeling most discouraged, God bursts into our lives with healing mercy.

Lord, listen to our hearts, our cries, our prayers.

Give us peace and hope in our spirits.

Direct us in ways of service in your name!

Praise be to God!

AMEN!

*Hymn               I Come with Joy          #617, v 1, 3, 5

Prayer of Confession:

Lord of mercy and hope, we come before you with fear. We know that we have fallen short of being the kind of disciples that you have called us to be. We have turned our backs on people in need; we have closed our ears to the cries of the voiceless. And so we hesitate to come before you because we believe that you are disappointed in us. Remind us again that you are merciful and your love transforms and changes our lives. When we falter and slide off the path of hope you place before us, you “pick us up and dust us off” and put us again on the trail, confident of your faithful presence with us. Forgive us our weakness. Strengthen us and give us courage; help us to be bearers of your good news of peace. We pray this in Christ’s name. AMEN.

Assurance:

Feel God’s healing love pouring over you and into your lives. Know that God delights in each one of you and will always be present to you. This is indeed the Good News of the Gospel. AMEN.

Scripture Reading Matthew 18: 21-35

Forgiveness

21 Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven[a] times.

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him, 25 and, as he could not pay, the lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him by the throat he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Sermon Forgiveness  

Friends, we’re now in week 3 of Stump the Preacher 2023, sermons requested by you and then researched by me. The idea for this week’s sermon came when I opened up Stump the Preacher to anyone who follows me on Tik Tok. Gotta tell you, the flood gates really opened when I did that, so much so that you won’t get to hear some of those sermons until next year. This fellow Tik Toker is also a woman of the cloth, and she wanted to hear about forgiveness, specifically the kind of forgiveness that really makes us question our own ultimate morality, and the greater order of the world: we need to forgive, Jesus commands it of us, we have lots of good reasons to forgive, we know it’s the right thing to do. But, that doesn’t mean that forgiveness is easily achieved, even when you’re forgiving someone you love very much, who you really want to keep in your life, and who only committed a small offense against you. Though I’m sure it was very taxing for her, Lily managed to forgive Daniel for finishing off the Cheetos and leaving the empty bag in the pantry. It really made Lily mad, but that wrong was easily fixed by buying another bag. 

But what about forgiving the much larger debts? The person who really hurt you, so much that they took something from you that you can never get back? Unfortunately, the deepest of these wounds also often come from people we love very much. And sometimes, no matter how big and obviously wrong that injury was, the person who hurt you will never acknowledge what they did, never apologize, never make reparations, and never seek your forgiveness. Do we still have to forgive? And if we really do, how?

We covered this subject of forgiveness in Lent last year, when I did a sermon series about the Lord’s Prayer. But this is such a huge topic, for our faith, for our relationships, and for our lives, that it’s worth revisiting often. It’s also not a topic that has ever been easy for me, either to preach or to apply to those around me.

Ten years ago, right after I graduated from seminary, I spent a year working as a chaplain at Strong Hospital in Rochester, under a program called Clinical Pastoral Education wherein I spent about half my time providing spiritual care to the patients, staff, and families at Strong, and the other half of my time in the classroom with a half dozen other clergy aspiring to deepen their approach to their ministries. We talked about some big stuff during that classroom time, especially these connections and triggers between our clinical work, and our own life experiences. On one day, when I presented a “verbatim”, or a word for word transcript of a pastoral care visit with a patient, the details of that talk brought up a lot of bad memories for most of us in the room. The patient was an alcoholic, being treated for liver damage. And sadly, alcoholism and drug abuse are such an epidemic in our society that most of us who have lived long enough have loved someone who struggled with addiction. And if you’ve been in that boat, like me, then you know that addiction is a blood thirsty monster that rips apart everything that gets too close, and friends and loved ones become collateral damage. It’s a story so uncomfortably relatable that it allows a lot of y’all to look at your own memories, too, and think about the people in your life that had to choose between you and drugs, and the drugs won. My classmates told me I had more forgiveness work to do, that my forgiveness theology was really lacking, and that I owed it to myself to let go. 

So, you know, first I had to forgive them for saying that.

And, ultimately, they were right. I surrounded myself with my anger against this person, like a huge fire ball that was meant to keep him out, but instead the smoke inhalation was suffocating me and he couldn’t have cared less if he tried. But my classmates were lacking a bit in their forgiveness theology, too, and I have every trust that they’ve worked on it since then. They treated any kind of wound in your life like a huge boulder that you carry around entirely by choice, and forgiveness like this one-time, incredibly freeing experience where you abruptly drop the boulder, it doesn’t matter where it lands, and you skip off happily into the sunset.

That’s not forgiveness. That’s one of those really corny Christian movies that we show to kids in youth groups. Which also means that a lot of us were taught some form of that theology, too. Forgiveness happens once, it’s easy, and it effortlessly sets you free. Jesus knew better, and so have a lot of other relationship psychologists.

One such psychologist was named Abraham Maslow, a 20th Century social scientist and academic who put out a theory that he named the “hierarchy of need”. He taught that the things a human being needs to live and thrive assemble themselves like a pyramid. The base of the pyramid are physiological needs, and until those needs are satisfied you can’t move up to the next level. Those physiological needs are for things like food, water, shelter, and sleep. Once those needs are satisfied, you can move on to the next level, which is all about safety–your body, your property, your relationships, your morals, your employment, your money all need to be secure before you can move on. Next up is love, where you can begin to form friendships. Next you can move on to building self-esteem, and self-respect. And only after you have met every one of those needs can you visit the very top of the pyramid, a place Maslow called “self-actualization”, where I would argue you could finally explore forgiveness, as well as creativity, acceptance, and a solution to the prejudices and problems of your life.

In other words: forgiveness sits at the top of a mountain. Every step we take in this life, in faith, gets us a little bit closer to being able to reach it. But someone who is starving has to find food first, they can’t worry about forgiving the capitalist businessmen who caused the inflation that made bread unaffordable. And a person who is still unsure that they are safe can’t forgive the person who poses a threat to them. Not as long as they’re threatened.

But eventually, with both the salvific power of Christ and, most importantly, with the support of our community, we start to move up that pyramid, and we’re fed, safe, we have trusted friends, we have solid self esteem, and we have big goals for our future. In time, and with a lot of help, we’re ready to do something about the boulder. I would argue that a lot of the work of forgiveness happens while we’re climbing our way up that mountain. We can’t drop the boulder of the hurt someone did to us at once, or it will just land on someone else and we’ll end up hurting them. But when we take care of ourselves, we shave off layers of the boulder until it’s much lighter.

So that brings us back to the question my colleague posed for us: what does forgiveness look like for us when many years have passed since the harm was done, but the consequences of that harm are still playing out in our lives, and the person who hurt us isn’t sorry and never will be?

Once we’re in a truly healthy place, forgiveness of that person can look like what Jesus taught his disciples. The reason why that giant boulder didn’t crush you while you were climbing the mountain with it was because God carried it for you for a time. The Divine knows that sometimes we need help until we’re ready to face our burdens. And the Holy carries around enough giant boulders of human harm to build a whole other planet, maybe this time occupied with people who don’t hurt each other. But God holds off on that, and instead holds space for us, because a world where we can hurt one another but one day find healing, and then act with deep compassion toward one another because we know how it feels to be hurt, is a much better world than one where no one has ever felt pain. And our Creator, holding all those boulders, asks that when we’ve finally reduced them to pebbles, we put them down, because it’s time to free our hands. And it’s by no means a simple process. You’ll revisit that hurt so many times while you climb that mountain of need that you’ll lose count of how many times you’ve had to take small measures of forgiveness to survive the day. Seven? Seventy seven? Seventy times seven? A bazillion and seven? Man, who knows.

All I can tell you with certainty is that, even in that ever so irksome case of the dude who hurt you and not only isn’t sorry but maybe is kind of proud, is that you don’t have to face that until you’re ready, and when you are ready that hurt will looks very, very different than it ever did, by the will of God.

Amen.

*Hymn                                 We Shall Overcome                                 #533

Offering

Offertory

*Doxology #94

*Prayer of dedication           

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

Good and gracious God, you who never fails to forgive us, to wipe the slate clean, to begin again for each of us, one more time…we come to you today, your answer to Peter’s question and our own, “How many times should we forgive?” echoing without end in our ears, your answer: over and over and over and over and over…and over again.

We confess this was not the answer we wanted to hear.  We prefer instead to clutch tight our anger and resentment, the deepest conviction that we have been gravely and grossly wronged, far beyond all acceptable limits, as we all have. We prefer this, but one day we realize that in the holding tight, our justified outrage becomes an impenetrable armor that cannot be breached by any human attempt, no matter how sincere.  What started out with the good intention of self-preservation turns us from victim into victimizer, tearing down relationship and assaulting beloved community because we are so very scared to take even one more chance at forgiveness.  And that armor protects us from hurt and pain and humiliation and self-doubt and vulnerability…and that armor disallows love and tenderness, authenticity and deep relationship, and most of all: community.  Communion.  With you.  And with our sisters and brothers.

Lord, Lord, we need you.  We need your help, because we heard you loud and clear today: building the beloved community the world needs—we all need—is going to take our herculean efforts at forgiveness.  Big, huge shifts, and tiny nudges of our hearts, opening ourselves in ways we perhaps could never even have imagined, each movement a step toward the possibility of relationship and reconciliation, even transformation for those who have been our tormentors, to the broken world around us, and even to…ourselves.

We don’t want to do it, God.  We don’t want to forgive.  They don’t deserve it, and we can’t bear the pain.  But here we are again, facing what we know to be true: it’s brave and gritty and powerful and freeing to unclench our fists from the false security of resentment.  To open our hearts to the possibility of love.  To be disappointed yet again.  And to be delighted with a heart miraculously turned from death to life because we had the courage to listen and obey you today.

You are the one who, with your last breath, offered to forgive the unforgivable. Soften our hearts in a way only divine mystery can invoke, and with a supply of forgiveness more vast than we can imagine, help us welcome into reconciliation those who have sought to destroy us, so that they may feel what we feel: loved, forgiven, at peace…and so that together we may build the community you long for in this world.  Beloved.  Beloved.  Beloved.

May it be so.

Amen.

Our Father, Mother, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.

The Lord’s Supper

Come, dear friends, now to the table. Lift your hearts up to the Lord.

Let us gather, kneel together. Raise our voices, praise God.

Now we gather at the table, now we come to sing our praise.

At the table of forgiveness, oh God’s goodness, see and taste.

Out of love we were created, from God’s breath we drew our life.

But God’s goodness we rejected, bound for pain and grief and strife.

So God sought us through the ages, called to us to turn from sin.

Yet we would not heed God’s pleading, lost and suffering, broken.

So God sent to us Christ Jesus, God made flesh to walk with us.

By his wounds we found redemption, in his life, abiding love.

Jesus sought us when still strangers, wandering from the fold of God.

He, to rescue us from danger, interposed his precious love.

On the night of the Last Supper, Jesus broke and shared the bread.

“This my body, take and eat it; broken so the world might mend.”

Jesus took the wine and poured it, offering with it his own life.

Telling us: “You are forgiven,” telling us we’d gained new life.

O to grace how great a debtor daily we’re constrained to be.

Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind our wandering hearts to thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, we feel it, prone to leave the God we love;

Take our hearts, oh take and seal them, seal them for thy courts above.

*Hymn                             Wade in the Water                    #2107, v 1, 2, 4

Benediction

Postlude

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Staff

Natalie Bowerman Pastor

Betsy Lehmann Music Director

Joe White Custodian

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant