“The Heart of the Matter”

June 13, 2010

Nehemiah 9:9-21

Luke 7:36-8:3

“Your sins are forgiven.”

Jesus speaks to a woman who seems to show up uninvited at a dinner where he is the guest. His words bring into sharp focus a major part of the great good news of Christianity.

“Your sins are forgiven.”

This is the assurance that we hear each time we confess our sin together.

It is the substance of many sermons.

And it is the substance of this sermon.

Forgiveness is, in the words of the old Don Henley song, “the heart of the matter.”

Listen once more to the shocking reality of God’s extravagant mercy: Your sins are forgiven.

Now I recognize that a lot of people—even good, church-going people—don’t like to hear that God forgives. Some think God has little—if anything to forgive. Others think there is so much that God shouldn’t forgive.

I once preached a sermon in another church that spoke about God’s great, forgiving love. As I greeted people after worship, several of them said things like: “Nice sermon.”

But one person came up, looked me straight in the eye and said: “How can you say something like that?” I think she wanted to know what kind of bone-headed, hard-hearted insensitivity could lead a minister to talk like that from the pulpit.

“How can you say that?”

It was a wonderful question. A caring question. A searching question. It was that rare kind of response that I appreciate far more than nodding approval. It forced me to think, to consider why it is that I would say something like that.

I guess that what I know most of all is my own need to be forgiven.

Whenever I need a dose of realism, I turn to Paul. He gets right to the point when he writes to the early church in Rome: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

We understand, don’t we, that “all” would certainly include that woman who brought an alabaster jar of ointment, and bathed the feet of Jesus with her tears, dried them with her hair, and went on kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. “All” certainly refers to the guy you read about in the paper or the woman on the ten o’clock news.

But here’s the real point of Paul’s statement: “All” includes you and me.

A hundred years ago many people weren’t so sure about this. Everything seemed to be getting better and better. “Progress” was eliminating the concept of sin. And Congregationalists were not just jumping onto that bandwagon. We’d pretty much built the whole cart and were driving it as well. We seemed to be developing to the point that we wouldn’t need to talk about sin and sinners much longer.

Some people are still stuck in the past—and they don’t like to hear about sin, which seems so old-fashioned. But after the past hundred years the evidence is pretty clear: Paul was right.

We are as caught up in our sins as that woman who comes to Jesus. She is called a “sinner”—and that is a good word. It is good because it is powerful. It is good because it covers a great territory. There is no need to be specific here. There is no need to point to a particular flaw or action on her part or on our own.

To say that we are sinners is to acknowledge that our lives are not in our control, that, as one person put it, “We have gotten into the grips of powers which we cannot handle, which control us.” We are caught up in the destructive chaos of political, economic, and social forces no longer subject to our will.

So to hear, “Your sins are forgiven,” is not to be told that we are good people or strong people or especially virtuous or moral people. It means that God is “winning the battle,” that slowly—sometimes imperceptibly—yet as sure and certain as the sunrise, the very powers that control us are being defeated so that we might be more fully alive, so that we might take part in the abundance that surrounds us, so that we, too, might love.

For love, it would seem from the Gospel lesson that we heard today, is in some sense an outgrowth of forgiveness.

“The one to whom little is forgiven,” Jesus says, “loves little.”

Maybe that’s the problem—the sense that we have been forgiven little.

After all, when I say that what I know most of all is my need to be forgiven, I'm not talking about some checkered past. My sin has not landed me in jail or sent me to court. My sins are mostly what Carl Sandburg called “the sins of Kalamazoo:”

            The sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.

            The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab.

And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.

            They run to the drabs and grays. . .

Most here this morning would acknowledge that the sins of Kalamazoo are very similar to the sins of this congregation; that the sins of Kalamazoo are very similar to our own sins.

Most of us would agree with the tongue-in-cheek comment of Krister Stendahl, the late dean at Harvard Divinity School. In talking about the theological belief that Christians are all sinners, he added, with his characteristic wit, “Of course, we are only honorary sinners.”[1]

Martin Luther said something like: “Sin boldly and trust in God.”

We don't take that advice. It is very easier to sin the sins of Kalamazoo: to give in to the convict gray, the dishwater drab. It is easier to let the color drain from our lives, to let the music fade from our souls, to let the joy vanish from our lives.

It is easier to depend on our goodness rather than God’s than to sin boldly and trust God. Still, one of the lessons the past century has taught us, if we are willing to learn it, is that good people—model citizens, family people, church-goers, the drab and gray—are sinners and quite capable of doing bad things.

Perhaps there is something we can learn from those whose sins are more colorful. Perhaps they have something to teach us about the great love that comes in response to the great forgiving mercy of God.

Remember what Ezra told the people after the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt? He reminded the people about what they were like: stiff necked, disobedient, walking around with their eyes closed to the goodness of God.

But even more, Ezra reminded the people about what God is like: “ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

To say “God forgives” is to affirm that at the heart of the universe is a power that understands that human beings are imperfect, limited in our abilities, finite—fallen, to speak theologically—and still that power will allow us to continue, will offer us the opportunity to stumble and get up and try again, to stumble and get up and try again. . .God does not give up on us.

By nature as fallen, finite creatures, human beings sin.

By nature, God forgives.

Most people can accept that idea—at least to some extent.

It’s when ministers get up and start saying that God forgives everyone that the trouble begins.

Maybe it's because most of our sins are the sins of Kalamazoo--the dull and gray sins. And we imagine that it must be pretty easy, really, for God to forgive someone like us. But when we start thinking of the sins of others, well, that's a different question.

Forgiveness is one of the more terrifying aspects of God.

Do we really want a God who will forgive?

You will say it isn’t fair for God to forgive those who are cruel and hateful, those whose crimes are great, who have caused so much suffering for so many people. And I will agree with you.

You will ask what becomes of God’s justice, God’s judgment, if everyone is let off the hook. And I will wonder with you.

You will say if God is so forgiving, what’s to keep us from doing whatever we want, no matter how sinful, how hurtful. And I will worry that the answer is: “nothing at all.”

A forgiving God is frightening. Doesn't it make you shiver to watch the news and think: “God's forgiveness is offered here as well?”

The French philosopher, Vladimir Jankélévitch, in his thin yet very dense book Forgiveness, arrives at the conclusion that troubles many: “In one sense, forgiveness extends to infinity. Forgiveness does not ask if the crime is worthy of being forgiven, if the atonement has been sufficient, or if the rancor has continued long enough… Which amounts to saying: there is an inexcusable, but there is not an unforgiveable. Forgiveness is there to forgive precisely what no excuse would know how to excuse.[2]

As I said, in general, I'm a “Kalamazoo sinner.” I don't know great sin, great evil. And I feel a little out of my league in talking about it.

But awhile ago I came across this prayer.

O Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted on us; remember the fruits we have brought, thanks to our suffering—our commradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this, and when they come to judgement let all the fruits which we have borne be their forgiveness.

It was written by an unknown prisoner in a German concentration camp. “Let all the fruits which we have borne be their forgiveness.”

God's forgiving nature can, when we let it, enable us to forgive. Can we not also say that our own greatness of heart can influence our Creator?

Perhaps this is what we witness as this unnamed woman bathes the feet of Jesus with her tears and dries them with her hair, as she kisses his feet and anoints them with ointment. She has heard no words of forgiveness. And yet she shows great love.

She seems to sense that something has taken place, some change in her condition in the presence God and human beings even before Jesus speaks words of forgiveness. She seems to sense that where Jesus is she will find the forgiveness that sets free even as it creates love.

God forgives.

When we experience the forgiveness of God, we draw near to the heart of all that is holy.

It has to do with something Jesus calls “faith.” It’s not a matter of having complete knowledge about the person and character of Jesus. It is not wishful thinking. Faith gives us the courage to move toward a goal, to show compassion or courage, to turn out toward the world in love, which is the fruit of the forgiveness that we desire.