Judgement and Forgiveness

            I have a prayer that I use every time I open myself to God.  I ask God to “curb my judgement”.  I do that because I am a frequent and terrible judge, sometimes when I am watching television and particularly when I am driving.  “That guy on the motorcycle isn’t wearing a helmet!”  “Why did that car pull out in front of me?”  What is wrong with him!” “Why is that car going so fast?” I say that just before I start driving that fast myself.    I’m awful about that stuff.  I even stop myself when I am doing it and try to stop it.  Rosie calls me on it all the time.  Judgement is an easy thing for all of us to do.  It comes with setting the rules for how everyone ought to behave and then watching as people disobey. It is sometimes satisfying, making us feel like we are better than all of those offenders.

           

            After God rejected Saul from being King over Israel, he sent Samuel to the house of Jesse to find the next king.  In the process of this, Samuel found Jesse’s youngest son, David to be the one selected by God and he anointed him to be King.  It was a tremendous moment for the people of Israel.  David turned out to be a great King with a great story.  The great thing about David is that he wasn’t perfect.  He was also a remarkable sinner.  He is the one who lured Bathsheba to his home and seduced her.  The child that was born because all of this did not survive, but after they married, Bathsheba gave birth to Solomon who was a great king who followed David and who built the great temple in Jerusalem where the Ark of the Covenant was stored.  What I like about this story is that being a sinner is not the end of the game. That is the best news that we are ever going to get.  We are not going to lose the love of our creator just because we make some mistakes.

            I have seen this work out in practice.  I have listened to many people who have done things that they regret and are worried that they have fallen out of favor with God because of what they have done.  What I have been able to assure them of is that they are loved by God and are forgiven by God because God’s love is not conditional.  We are loved because we have been created by our God who stands ready to forgive everything that we do that we know is wrong.

            The Pharisees had a curious way of thinking about sin, kind of like me when I am in full judgement mode. They were the rule makers who watched how people obeyed.  When they failed, the Pharisees told them that they were sinners and threw them out of the temple.  This made the Pharisees better than the rest of the people because they were the rulers.  It is fascinating how this worked in the Gospel that we heard about Jesus healing the man born blind.

            The story begins with Jesus’ disciples asking him about the man born blind, “who was it who sinned, was it the man or his parents?”  Jesus answered them by telling them that nobody sinned, that the man was born blind so that the glory of God could be seen through him by his healing.  Jesus then made a paste of mud, rubbed it on the man’s eyes, told him to wash in the pool of Siloam and when he washed, all of a sudden he could see.  This story was told to the Pharisees who were disturbed that this was done on the Sabbath and was therefore a sin.  When they discovered this, they told the formerly blind man of this sin and threw him out of the temple.  Jesus found him and talked to him about what had happened.  The man told him and Jesus asked him if he believed in the Son of Man.  The man asked Jesus who that was and Jesus told him that it was he who was speaking with him.  The man said simply, “I believe.”  Jesus then said I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.  Some Pharisees who were near heard what he said and replied, Surely, we are not blind are we? Jesus told them, If you were blind, you would not have sin, but now that you say “we see”, your sin remains.  This becomes a great discussion of what is or is not sin.  Certainly, the way that the man born blind was treated by the Pharisees in the temple was sinful.  He had done nothing at all wrong.  All that Jesus did wrong when healing him was to do it on the Sabbath, which was against the Pharisee’s rules.  It was only sin to the rulers of the temple, not sin before God.

            The way to stop all of this is by looking closely at ourselves.  Here in the season of Lent we are asked to do just that.  Beginning with Ash Wednesday, we are reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return, a statement that tells us about our humanity, about our life and that our deaths are a foregone conclusion.  Getting right with God and with each other needs to be our focus and that is what slows down judgement.  Lent proceeds through its Sundays with stories of Jesus’ constant forgiveness featured.  Finally, we get to Palm Sunday, when Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph at first and then is handed over to the authorities, tried and sent to the cross to die.  Here is Jesus giving of himself to counter all of the judgement around him. This is God telling humanity how much we are loved, that he sent his only son to die for us that we might understand the depth of that love.  The way that we are asked to respond to that love is to love one another.  This can lessen our judgement and increase our community.    

           

           

        

Accepting One Another

            Tony Norman had a column in the Post-Gazette this week describing how the young Muslims in Canada have been going door to door and introducing themselves, passing out pamphlets in order to counter the negative feelings that sometimes have existed even in peaceful Canada.  His column went on to wonder what would happen in this country if they did the same thing and speculated that there might be some shooting problems in the US with our Castle Doctrine, the extraordinary number of guns and the sometimes unabashed bigotry that we have in our communities.  Getting along with each other is certainly what we need in this nation.  We have had such a growth of conspiracy theories and misunderstanding over religion and politics.  I’m not sure that a house-to-house program led by the Muslims such as the Mormons and the Jehovah’s witnesses do would work very well.  We have become a nation that has become more or less averse to listening.

            The story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well is one of the greatest stories in the New Testament.  Jesus has arrived at a town called Sychar, present day Nablus, which is the site of Jacob’s well.  We visited this place when we were in the Middle East and I got a jar of water from the well.  In the Gospel story, Jesus was sitting by the well at midday, thirsty from his trip.  His disciples had all gone into town to get some food.  The woman arrived at the well and Jesus said to her, give me a drink.  She was puzzled at this and she showed her puzzle by asking Jesus, how is it that you, a Jew ask me, a woman of Samaria to give you a drink? The Jews and the Samaritans had many differences stemming from the time of the Assyrian conquest of the northern tribes.  He told her that he would give her living water.  She said to him, give me that water so that I don’t have to come all the way out here to this well to get water. Jesus told her to go and to get her husband.  She said that she had no husband.  Jesus told her that she was right about that, that she had had five husbands and the man that she was living with was not her husband.  The woman went back into the town and told the people who were there that she had met an amazing man who had told her everything that she ever was and one who could possibly be the Messiah.  The people all streamed to the well to see Jesus.

            What strikes me about this encounter is not only the conversation between a Jew and a Samaritan, it also about Jesus encountering a cast-aside woman who deeply needed to find acceptance.  She came out to the desert to Jacob’s well to get water because the well in the town was surrounded by women who constantly rejected her because of her lifestyle, because of her many marriages.  You can imagine the tongues wagging as she went past the well where they were all gathered. 

            What is particularly impressive about this meeting that Jesus has with the woman is his lack of condemnation.  Jesus accepts her as a five-times married Samaritan who has no standing in her town and has to come all the way out to the desert to get water.  This is a beautiful demonstration of Jesus’ message to the world that God loves each and every one of us, that his forgiveness and his certain acceptance is there for each of us whenever we need to repent and get on with our lives.  He offers this to the woman at the well without any exception.  She is included.  What is amazing is that the people in the town, who have not accepted the woman at all are intrigued by her announcement that she has found a wonderful person who just may be the Messiah and come flocking out to Jacob’s well to see him.   All of their condemnation and bigotry evaporated because of her announcement that she had had such a wonderful experience at Jacob’s well.  I can imagine that the look on her face as she came to tell her story was enough to influence the people of the town.

            The lessons on these Lenten Sundays have been interesting in the way that we started with the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ definition of God’s commandments to include much more than we ever thought.  Thou shalt not kill now includes being angry with one another.  Committing adultery includes having lustful thoughts.  But Jesus goes on to show us in his interaction with the Pharisee Nicodemus and in this story of the woman at the well how that mercy and compassion are at the heart of God’s love for all of us.  Jesus told us how it would be best to live, but offered also the promise of God’s love and forgiveness when we fail.  In this culture of blame and finger pointing, this is exactly what we all need to hear.  Listening to each other is the key to our relationships.  Increasingly, the people in positions of power seem to listen less each day.  If we are ever going to have peace in this world and in this nation, we need to have them listen to us and we need to listen to them.  When that happens, we will begin to have understanding and understanding leads to peace and the better welfare of us all.

           

           

           

            

Jesus Great Gift of Forgiveness

            The conversation that Jesus has with Nicodemus that is described in John’s Gospel is very significant.  Nicodemus was a Pharisee, one of the higher orders of the Jewish faith.  The Pharisees were always the judges of who was keeping the law and who wasn’t.  Rules were very important to them.  These leaders were the ones who God spoke about who made sure that everyone knew what good deeds that they were doing.  When they gave sums to various causes, they did it with great flourish so that they got optimum credit.  Jesus told us not to be like them.  When we said our prayers, or when we gave of our wealth to causes, we ought to do it quietly so as not to make people look at us rather than at the causes that we are supporting.

            Jesus also brought a message of forgiveness and restoration to the people that he met in his ministry.  They all lived in a society in which keeping the rules that the Pharisees set was all important.  The Pharisees set the boundaries.  What Jesus brought to this world is the infinite mercy of God, who sees the struggle and the pain of human existence and who sent Jesus to help us to understand that love is the answer to our struggle.  The story of the woman accused of adultery who is brought before Jesus who refused to condemn her to being stoned to death and who said those wonderful words, he who is without sin cast the first stone; and after he said this, the crowd just melted away. Condemnation and punishment was not something that Jesus wanted to see.  He wanted us to understand that the desire of our God is for us to be forgiven and returned to a place where we could live our lives in peace and hope.  Sometimes people want to focus on the fact that he also told the woman to go and sin no more, but focusing on that diminishes the message of this moment in Jesus ministry.  The last thing that Jesus says to Nicodemus is that God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world would be saved through him.

             Nicodemus saw something in Jesus that intrigued him and that he wanted to know more about.  He knows that Jesus carries with him the being of God and he admires him very much.  He says that nobody can do the things that Jesus has done apart from God’s approval.  Jesus tells Nicodemus that the only way that we can know God’s presence is to be born from above.  What our Lord means is that without being dedicated to the working of the Spirit, that you can’t know any of the things that God is doing in this world.  Nicodemus has a hard time understanding what Jesus is trying to tell him, but he follows him anyway.

            What I find compelling in the story of Nicodemus is that he is the one who provided the empty tomb for Jesus after his crucifixion.  Nicodemus, the Pharisee, came up with the place to lay Jesus’ body.  He did that out of a faith that came from watching Jesus do his ministry in this world. Nicodemus found a way to be “born from above” and see the beauty of the love that Jesus brought into this world, and the forgiveness that became the basis of Christianity as it began to tell the world about the Risen Christ.

            Over the years, the church has sometimes slipped back into the Pharisee’s mode of giving us all rules to live by.  Many Episcopal churches will tell you that all “baptized” Christians are welcome at the altar to receive the sacrament.  I’ve always thought that to be a bit too strict.  I like it when everyone in the congregation is invited to come and receive the sacrament.  The reason for that is that in the process of receiving the bread and the wine which has become the body and blood of our Lord, we receive the presence of God in our lives and have the joyful experience of being forgiven our sins and sent out to show the world the love that God has given us in the person of Jesus, his Son. 

            Here we are in Lent, a wonderful time to cleanse ourselves of the things that we have all done wrong and to find a way to be agents of the God who loves us all so very much.  That is a great gift and one that I hope that we all can share with the world.  I’ve had moments in my life when I have hurt very much.  When I had my brain tumor, I had a whole congregation surround me with their comfort.  I was so thankful for their care and their compassion.  It made a great difference in my recovery. As you go on with your lives, look for those who are hurting and afraid.  Comfort them as you can and make sure that you leave them with the sense that at least somebody cares.  That is our mission as Christians.  God wants peace in this world, not only between nations, but with all of us.  In this tumultuous time, listen to one another.  That alone will help create peace.      

           

              

Ashes and Humility

            There is a wonderful old statement about Ash Wednesday and receiving ashes.  When you are leaving the church, if you think that you ought to wash the ashes off your forehead because you don’t want anyone to see them, they you need to leave them on.  If you are proud of having the ashes on your forehead and you want the world to admire you for having them, then you ought to wash them off.  The point that this is trying to make is that we need to approach this day and this sacrament with humility.  We have all done things that don’t make us proud.  Being forgiven is a beautiful thing that gets us back on track and back to the place where we need to live our lives.  What guilt and shame cause in us is disruption and in this great beginning of Lent, God is giving to us a chance to get rid of some of those things that cause the disruption.

            Jesus advice in the gospel for today is in the same vein.  He tells us that when we give alms, or pray or fast that we ought not to do it as the hypocrites do in very public and outlandish ways to cause attention to what we are doing, but we need to do it all very quietly so that our God knows what we are doing and can give us our reward.  The reward is forgiveness and the blessing of God’s love cleansing our souls. 

            The point is that we are all human and human beings sometimes do things that we ought not to do.  We all know this and sometimes we tell stories to cover up what we have done.  That isn’t always helpful.  We need to honestly confess our failings before our God and sometimes before each other so that we can get back to normal. That isn’t always easy.  Frequently it can be rather embarrassing for us to tell one another that we have done something wrong.  People sometimes go to great lengths to not do this.  It can destroy relationships.  Every time that we have the Eucharist, we have the general confession, a time when we are supposed to confess the things that we have done before God and to receive absolution.  Before we have the confession, there is supposed to be a period of silence that I always observe so that we can think of the things that we need to confess.  In addition to that, I am always available to you if you need to talk further about any of this.  I have had a lot of experience with people who have done wrong and who have needed to talk about it.  What I have discovered is that confession frees the soul and offers a time of reflection that contributes to a better life.

            I have told you of the ministry that I had for a number of years at Western Penitentiary.  In that time, I had great relationships with men who had killed someone.  I saw how our conversations helped them to understand the depth of forgiveness.  I have a number of stories of how that played out in the lives of not only those prisoners, but in the lives of the people who they hurt by their crime. 

            This service today is a time for confession.  In a moment, we will recite Psalm 51, which is the Psalm that King David wrote after Nathan the prophet came to him and accused him of the seduction of Bathsheba, his neighbor and the wife of Uriah the Hittite a soldier in his army whom he ordered to be sent into the heart of the battle and then was killed.  David was filled with remorse because of Nathan’s reproach and went back to his room and wrote this Psalm.  We will then say the litany of penitence, to which I will respond with an absolution.  We will then receive the ashes on our forehead as a sign of our repentance and absolution.  This is how we begin this season of Lent, leading to the absolute joy of Easter.  God bless us in this endeavor and help us to understand the totality of His love.