We’re talking about forgiveness these days…
• Central to message of Jesus, it becomes central to us as followers
• And there’s good reason Jesus is so insistent on the matter…
• We’ve seen that forgiveness is one of those spiritual principles without which our souls flounder
The world is full of bad stuff that happens
And a load of it has happened to you
• And the most natural thing in the world is to hold on to our resentments
• hold on because we are afraid of forgiveness-land
• Afraid we’ll be taken advantage of-become enablers/codependent
• Afraid we’ll fail: that’s a big one!
And with all these fears, human inclination is to avoid the subject
• When a marital spat invites forgiveness, we prefer to sulk
• When a colleague wrongs us at work, we prefer to avoid
• And when we can’t avoid the subject altogether…
• When some pesky minister… or the words of Jesus/nudge of HS
• Won’t let us get away from it
• We have a fall-back position…
• We try to justify or rationalize our unforgiveness
This can’t be what is required of me…
This can’t be the way things really are…
My hurt was way too bad
This person has wronged me for so long
The depth of pain I have sustained
• If you only knew… if Jesus only knew…
• Surely this isn’t what Jesus was talking about
And in our fear, our avoidance, our rationalizations…
• We fail to take our rightful place as citizens of forgiveness-land
• But as we’ve seen, as followers of Jesus, we get no wiggle room
• It’s not that Jesus denies how hard it is
• It’s not that the horrors that people do to one another is ignored
• It’s just that if we don’t forgive, our own souls are destroyed
I told story about Uncle Jim; Jesus told story about CEO/employee
• And we saw that when we fail to forgive, the result is prison
• We are cut off from life itself
• That’s one of the morals of Jesus story…
• Unforgiveness imprisons us, destroys us, slowly kills our souls
And it’s not just Jesus who proclaims this universal wisdom
Others note: when we harbor resentment, place our lives in danger
• Not much love lost between conservative Xns and Sigmund Freud
• Xn folks find the whole sex thing quite frightening
• And then there’s that atheism thing
• But was father of modern psychology and many coming around
• Using emerging language of the new science, he expressed the same truth Jesus does in a parable of his own…
READ
The journey through life, he said, is like a long military march. At birth each of us is supplied with a certain number of soldiers to deploy when we come across some opponent on this march
• When a threat to our safety arises, when an enemy real or imagined arises, we deploy our soldiers to protect ourselves. Perhaps we have a conflict with a neighbor which, try as we might, we cannot resolve. So we resort to closing our hearts off in anger and resentment. Now, we must station some troops to protect our flanks. We have to tie up some energy at the point of unresolved conflict, at the point of our unforgiveness.
• This of course, leaves us with fewer resources, fewer troops with which we can face the next challenge life presents. Some people, having had so many of these unresolved conflicts, having so many points of unforgiveness, have precious few reserves left for present challenges.
• When we’re stuck in the past, fighting battles from days or years before, we are inadequately prepared to face the challenges of today.
Freud draws the same conclusion Jesus does…
• We forgive, not simply because it is right, good, and noble…
• We forgive because we must let go of our anger and resentment
• If we don’t, we will slowly siphon off our internal resources until eventually we die
When we clutch to our judgments, our accusations, our resentments…
• Our hearts themselves are poisoned
• For our own sakes, and for our very salvation, we need to forgive
So, with Spirit of God inside us (a forgiving Spirit), we can do this thing
• Yes, courage is required; especially on the small things…
• But we are natural-born citizens of forgiveness-land
Next we spoke of forgiving ourselves
• We said that to be citizens of forgiveness-land we must not only be skilled in forgiving others…
• We must have not only courage…
• We must also be skilled in forgiving ourselves
We’ve all behaved badly, we’ve all done things we regret
• We all carry an element of shame
• We talked about the universally experienced, and universally despised duality of our nature
• There is something wrong inside of us
• Our instincts betray, mislead, and keep us from our true selves
And the first requirement of a citizen of forgiveness-land is the ability to both see oneself clearly…
• to see one’s weakness, failures, and existential shame…
• and at the same time move forward in forgiving one’s self
• to recognize we’re not yet fully redeemed, and that as long as we’re on this earth this will be the case
• And in this clear, unvarnished recognition, to forgive ourselves
We live in the tension theologians call “already-not yet”
• We are already the glory of God, already the delight of God, already of the righteousness of God…
• We are on a journey of awareness to discern our true natures
• But while we are on this journey of discovery, we experience ourselves as not yet fully realized
• Not yet fully whole, not yet completely free
• As such, we regularly fail, we regularly fall down
• We disappoint ourselves and fall short of our own expectations
• We know what virtue is, but we cannot consistently live it out
But recognizing this about ourselves, we learn to get up when we fail
• Which requires we learn the art of forgiving ourselves
• To believe that this journey is one of awareness of what already is
• That our failures are temporary as we grow into our true selves
• We learn to brush ourselves off when we fall, get up and extend grace to ourselves in our weakness
That’s a review: if you didn’t hear last 3 messages, have a listen online
—
Now today I want to turn to a third and fourth way we take our rightful place as citizens of forgiveness-land
1. We access Divine capacity within ourselves
2. And we make forgiveness into specific actions
When Jesus spoke of forgiveness, it was very little about feeling
• typically there was a specific behavior involved
• a word spoken, a debt cancelled, a prison door opened
we’ll come back to that as we finish this morning
but first, some background to help us think…
• when Jesus made forgiveness both central, and very specific…
• when he began to move beyond internal feelings…
• when he began to talk about very concrete actions that express the forgiving heart of God…
• his words became very tough for the priests to swallow
the priests role was bigger then than it is today: they were the entire religions system, and the judicial system
they were the law and order of their day
• they were two separate, yet equally important groups…
• the police who investigate crime…
• and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders
• and these were their stories…
so when Jesus started advocating these crazy ideas…
cancelling debt…
pardoning crime…
swinging open prison doors…
• they were understandably upset
given the human proclivity to evil…
• the fear of punishment is a powerful motivator!
…and Jesus didn’t seem to mind abandoning this essential ingredient of law enforcement
• in fact, he wasn’t very concerned at all about the practical problems of administrating a just and equitable society at all
it is not very practical, given the presence of human evil in each of us…
• To forgive every debt, to allow every criminal to go unpunished
• A workable society requires law-enforcement
• And law enforcement demands that offenders be punished
But that didn’t seem to be Jesus’ primary concern at all
• He seemed to be challenging the entire framework that surrounds our thinking about human nature
• Challenged our thinking about what is good and what is evil
• Challenging the way we see one another
• Challenging the way we see ourselves
For the foreseeable future, I’m sure society will demand we straddle the fine line between justice and mercy
• We will continue to punish criminals for their behavior
• Justice will continue demanding we confront those who wrong us
But while this world system is running along as it has for millennia…
• We can also be allowing the Divine Spirit…
• To be transforming our very cores
• The place our instincts tell us what we are as humans
• What other people are as humans
Our collective societal instincts have a defined view of human family
• There is a division between good people and bad
• There are righteous people and sinners
• There is my team and then, there is your team (one of them good)
• There are Christians, and there are all the others
Jesus, on the other hand, saw only one family
• The family of God
• All humans equally created in the image of God
• All humans equally carrying glory nature talked about last week
Jesus saw all humans equally in need of God’s mercy
• All humans having equally lost something wonderful
• Having fallen from glorious state of being we sense in ourselves
Consequently, Jesus saw all humans equally in need of grace
• Equally in need of forgiveness
• Equally in need of mercy
• All of us need to be seen as more than our sin, more than our failure
All humans need to embrace the forgiveness of the universe, the forgiveness of God
All human beings need to be forgiven by themselves (last week)
And all human beings need to be forgiven by one another
• For the thing that has happened to us; polluting of glory-nature
• An innocent baby is born, but it won’t be long before a secondary, lesser, sinful nature will show itself
• It has shown itself in all of us, it will in that baby too
And some people deceive themselves into thinking that…
• Because we are working hard to be nice…
• Because we have never murdered anybody…
• Because we compare ourselves to others and come out looking pretty good…
…that we are somehow exempt from the need for forgiveness
But this denies the universality of the human condition
• It denies that we are all in this thing together
• That every one of us, given the right circumstances, could and would be what the most despised among us has become
And this concept, Jesus challenged
If we are going to put people in the category of needing mercy
• we should make sure we put in everyone who qualifies
• and we all qualify
• the shame that comes on us when we are not what we could be…
• the fear that comes on us when we are not our glory-selves…
…these are archetypical human experiences
…a universal sense of being
And consequently, we all have the same need
We need to be forgiven our fundamental sense of being flawed
We need to be forgiven the sense that there is something wrong w/ us
• We need Divine grace to navigate the lesser state we’re in
• We need grace from ourselves to navigate this lesser state
• And we need grace from one another to navigate this reality
So, Jesus was looking at this bigger picture
Not caring much about the practical demands of law enforcement
• Not thinking about how to make a broken society work
(sure, that needs to happen…)
• But Jesus was reframing our thinking for a future society
• A society that will inevitably transcend the one founded on broken, fallen, shamed human beings
• A society in which forgiveness releases us to wholeness
Jesus mission is to restore us to our glorious state
• That’s what the cross is about
So he let some practicalities go by the wayside
• Things like motivating people to good behavior by making them afraid of the consequences if they go caught
Jesus’ agenda was a divine-insight agenda
• A beyond the box agenda
• The whole issue of forgiveness is a divine-insight kind of thing
• A beyond the box kind of thing
To move into forgiveness, then…
We must see it as a divine-agenda kind of thing
• We need to see beyond the box of everyday life
• Beyond practical concerns like efficient law-enforcement
• Beyond making sure offenders don’t get away
No, to move into forgiveness, we need to access divine wisdom
• We need to access divine power
• We need to access divine discernment
• We need to access divine instincts
What we need to live in forgiveness-land, is to be baptized w/ HS
many times we’ve used this image…
• Word baptizo… a nautical term in ancient Greek
• Image: boat on the water vs. a boat in the water
• The latter is baptizo, the water is in the boat
• When Jesus used the term he was talking about HS coming into compartment after compartment of our lives
• HS filling up the soul, part by part, issue by issue, fear by fear
• Whereas once there was anger, pride, grudge, pain
• Upon being baptizo those places are filled w/ Divine Nature
• The Divine presence, Divine power
Forgiveness, extending mercy, requires this of us
We never forget offenses done us unless we’re forgetful people
• But w/ divine empowerment, we come to the place that the offense no longer defines that memory
• The wrong, the pain, the offense are powerless over us
• Truth, grace, mercy enable us to see a bigger picture
• To see the true identity of the offender as a child of God
• A human being needing the same forgiveness we need
Of course, we don’t put ourselves in harm’s way…
but we see the offending person more clearly, with Divine vision
• We see offenders in that impractical way Jesus was talking about
• That truer, outside-the-box way Jesus was talking about
• And with that vision…
• With that divine empowerment…
• We are able to forgive
To forgive we must act as an agent of the Divine
• We must allow the Divine Spirit within us to do so
• And for this, the compartments of our souls must be baptizo
Since the time of Jesus, people have prayed to be baptized in HS
• Like us, they were imagining the HS flooding through compartment after compartment of their souls
Had you come from the Charismatic tradition, you would be familiar with certain rituals neatly laid out to help you to pursue this
• You would know the style, the practice intimately
• But the principle is larger even than the Charismatic tradition
For centuries, people have had crisis moments of Spirit-baptism
And in those moments, they experienced a breakthrough
• For some it was a surge of spiritual power
• Or, a surge of soul-healing
• For others, they experienced increased discernment of Truth
• Still others experienced abundant compassion for others
Most groups that experienced one of these surges tended to make a very specific tradition out of their experience
• But the surges are a broad spectrum of manifestations
I would always encourage you to ask God for a baptism in HS
• If forgiveness is an issue, perhaps a baptism of the area of resentment or offended-ness
• Ask for a baptism of mercy in the compartment of pain
• Ask for a baptism of grace in the area of resentment
• Ask for a baptism of kindness and peace in the compartment of hatred and bitterness
And as has been the case in many of these surges, you might ask a spiritual friend lay hands on you
• It was done that way in scripture
• It has been done that way throughout history
• Something about togetherness: find God better together than alone
• I will do that for you if you’d like
• SF team would probably do it better (SF’s RAISE YOUR HANDS)
• A simple thing, a quiet faith-filled thing
• HS, baptize me; remove the knotty self part, and flood that part of my soul w/ Divine life, Divine presence
So for today…
1. Ask for Divine enablement
2. As I mentioned earlier; make forgiveness a specific action
This last part of taking our rightful places as citizens of forgiveness-land
• we make forgiveness a specific action
again, when Jesus spoke of forgiveness, it was very little about feeling
• it was about specific behaviors
• a word the offended would speak to the offender
• an overwhelming debt that is forgiven
• a guilty soul before the bar is mercifully set free
We have hot dogs today, so I’m going to let you discern specific actions HS would ask of you
• You listen for inner nudges, promptings
• You talk out w/ your spiritual friends
• Ask HS what specific actions you would be called upon to perform
• And know that Jesus made forgiveness more action oriented than feeling oriented
—
Here’s what you have heard so far…
• If there’s someone who has offended, hurt, wounded you
• No matter how deeply, no matter for how long…
• If you are a follower of Jesus, you have an imperative to forgive
It will require courage
• And for you to be able to do it, you will need to forgive yourself
• And finally, you will need a fresh baptism of HS to access Divine
And finally, you are hearing this…
• The way Jesus set this thing up…
• It will be less about your feelings, and more about the actions you take, the words you speak, the intentions you follow
So, the question before you if there is someone for you to forgive…
• What will you say? What will you do?
• Instead of suggestons, I end w/ story of someone in that place…
You’re driving the highway in your car when suddenly something rock-hard shatters your windshield, hits you and breaks nearly every bone in your face. As silly as it sounds, the projectile was a frozen turkey, hurled from the rear window of a speeding car by a teenage college student out for a joyride.
That’s what happened last November to Victoria Ruvolo, a 44-year-old office manager, on a road in the town of Riverhead on Long Island. It nearly killed her, and could easily have given her brain damage. Surgeons had to rebuild her face using metal plates and screws. But remarkably, she recovered and within a few months was back on her own and working again.
But that’s not the real story. It’s what happened the following August in court that makes this a tale to remember. The boy who threw the turkey, 19-year-old Ryan Cushing was indicted on a first-degree assault charge and faced up to 25 years in prison. Until Ruvolo stepped in. She saw Cushing for the first time coming out of the courtroom. She approached him, and as the NY Times reported, for an intensely emotional few minutes, alternately embraced him tightly, stroked his face and patted his back. He began to sob uncontrollably. The paper continued… “As the young man kept saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,” the woman he could have killed repeated, “It’s OK. It’s OK. I just want you to make your life the best it can be.” At Ruvolo’s insistence, prosecutors agreed to a plea bargain for Cushing, giving him six months in jail and five years’ probation instead of 25 years in prison. One man later said that in his 30 years as a prosecutor “he had not seen such a forgiving victim.”
The reporter on the story had written about forgiveness himself. He had a wrestling match of his own, trying to forgive the murderer of his son and his wife. When asked: Is forgiveness possible when crime shatters a family? He responded… It took time, but the day came when I could honestly say yes. He talked about forgiveness beginning with letting go of the anger and how when this happens, freedom returns. He talked about the next stage of forgiveness, praying for the one who has hurt us and remembering that this person is also a child of God.
The New York Times wrote an editorial about Ruvolo, titling it “A Moment of Grace.” Their words were touching: “Given the opportunity for retribution, Ms. Ruvolo gave and got something better: the dissipation of anger and the restoration of hope, in a gesture as cleansing as the tears washing down her damaged face, and the face of the foolish, miserable boy whose life she single-handedly restored. What a gift she gave! God bless her!”
You can forgive: It is natural to you
• You can discern what specific forgiveness actions you must do
• You have the courage to step into forgiveness-land citizenship
• You can forgive yourself for bad actions
• You can forgive yourself for having two natures battling w/in you
• You can be baptized by HS; and access Divine Nature within you
You can do all these things: the HS is within you; Divine life right in you
And that Spirit is a forgiving Spirit
Everything you need is right inside you
We’re talking about forgiveness these days…
• Central to message of Jesus, it becomes central to us as followers
• And there’s good reason Jesus is so insistent on the matter…
• We’ve seen that forgiveness is one of those spiritual principles without which our souls flounder
The world is full of bad stuff that happens
And a load of it has happened to you
• And the most natural thing in the world is to hold on to our resentments
• hold on because we are afraid of forgiveness-land
• Afraid we’ll be taken advantage of-become enablers/codependent
• Afraid we’ll fail: that’s a big one!
And with all these fears, human inclination is to avoid the subject
• When a marital spat invites forgiveness, we prefer to sulk
• When a colleague wrongs us at work, we prefer to avoid
• And when we can’t avoid the subject altogether…
• When some pesky minister… or the words of Jesus/nudge of HS
• Won’t let us get away from it
• We have a fall-back position…
• We try to justify or rationalize our unforgiveness
This can’t be what is required of me…
This can’t be the way things really are…
My hurt was way too bad
This person has wronged me for so long
The depth of pain I have sustained
• If you only knew… if Jesus only knew…
• Surely this isn’t what Jesus was talking about
And in our fear, our avoidance, our rationalizations…
• We fail to take our rightful place as citizens of forgiveness-land
• But as we’ve seen, as followers of Jesus, we get no wiggle room
• It’s not that Jesus denies how hard it is
• It’s not that the horrors that people do to one another is ignored
• It’s just that if we don’t forgive, our own souls are destroyed
I told story about Uncle Jim; Jesus told story about CEO/employee
• And we saw that when we fail to forgive, the result is prison
• We are cut off from life itself
• That’s one of the morals of Jesus story…
• Unforgiveness imprisons us, destroys us, slowly kills our souls
And it’s not just Jesus who proclaims this universal wisdom
Others note: when we harbor resentment, place our lives in danger
• Not much love lost between conservative Xns and Sigmund Freud
• Xn folks find the whole sex thing quite frightening
• And then there’s that atheism thing
• But was father of modern psychology and many coming around
• Using emerging language of the new science, he expressed the same truth Jesus does in a parable of his own…
READ
The journey through life, he said, is like a long military march. At birth each of us is supplied with a certain number of soldiers to deploy when we come across some opponent on this march
• When a threat to our safety arises, when an enemy real or imagined arises, we deploy our soldiers to protect ourselves. Perhaps we have a conflict with a neighbor which, try as we might, we cannot resolve. So we resort to closing our hearts off in anger and resentment. Now, we must station some troops to protect our flanks. We have to tie up some energy at the point of unresolved conflict, at the point of our unforgiveness.
• This of course, leaves us with fewer resources, fewer troops with which we can face the next challenge life presents. Some people, having had so many of these unresolved conflicts, having so many points of unforgiveness, have precious few reserves left for present challenges.
• When we’re stuck in the past, fighting battles from days or years before, we are inadequately prepared to face the challenges of today.
Freud draws the same conclusion Jesus does…
• We forgive, not simply because it is right, good, and noble…
• We forgive because we must let go of our anger and resentment
• If we don’t, we will slowly siphon off our internal resources until eventually we die
When we clutch to our judgments, our accusations, our resentments…
• Our hearts themselves are poisoned
• For our own sakes, and for our very salvation, we need to forgive
So, with Spirit of God inside us (a forgiving Spirit), we can do this thing
• Yes, courage is required; especially on the small things…
• But we are natural-born citizens of forgiveness-land
Next we spoke of forgiving ourselves
• We said that to be citizens of forgiveness-land we must not only be skilled in forgiving others…
• We must have not only courage…
• We must also be skilled in forgiving ourselves
We’ve all behaved badly, we’ve all done things we regret
• We all carry an element of shame
• We talked about the universally experienced, and universally despised duality of our nature
• There is something wrong inside of us
• Our instincts betray, mislead, and keep us from our true selves
And the first requirement of a citizen of forgiveness-land is the ability to both see oneself clearly…
• to see one’s weakness, failures, and existential shame…
• and at the same time move forward in forgiving one’s self
• to recognize we’re not yet fully redeemed, and that as long as we’re on this earth this will be the case
• And in this clear, unvarnished recognition, to forgive ourselves
We live in the tension theologians call “already-not yet”
• We are already the glory of God, already the delight of God, already of the righteousness of God…
• We are on a journey of awareness to discern our true natures
• But while we are on this journey of discovery, we experience ourselves as not yet fully realized
• Not yet fully whole, not yet completely free
• As such, we regularly fail, we regularly fall down
• We disappoint ourselves and fall short of our own expectations
• We know what virtue is, but we cannot consistently live it out
But recognizing this about ourselves, we learn to get up when we fail
• Which requires we learn the art of forgiving ourselves
• To believe that this journey is one of awareness of what already is
• That our failures are temporary as we grow into our true selves
• We learn to brush ourselves off when we fall, get up and extend grace to ourselves in our weakness
That’s a review: if you didn’t hear last 3 messages, have a listen online
—
Now today I want to turn to a third and fourth way we take our rightful place as citizens of forgiveness-land
1. We access Divine capacity within ourselves
2. And we make forgiveness into specific actions
When Jesus spoke of forgiveness, it was very little about feeling
• typically there was a specific behavior involved
• a word spoken, a debt cancelled, a prison door opened
we’ll come back to that as we finish this morning
but first, some background to help us think…
• when Jesus made forgiveness both central, and very specific…
• when he began to move beyond internal feelings…
• when he began to talk about very concrete actions that express the forgiving heart of God…
• his words became very tough for the priests to swallow
the priests role was bigger then than it is today: they were the entire religions system, and the judicial system
they were the law and order of their day
• they were two separate, yet equally important groups…
• the police who investigate crime…
• and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders
• and these were their stories…
so when Jesus started advocating these crazy ideas…
cancelling debt…
pardoning crime…
swinging open prison doors…
• they were understandably upset
given the human proclivity to evil…
• the fear of punishment is a powerful motivator!
…and Jesus didn’t seem to mind abandoning this essential ingredient of law enforcement
• in fact, he wasn’t very concerned at all about the practical problems of administrating a just and equitable society at all
it is not very practical, given the presence of human evil in each of us…
• To forgive every debt, to allow every criminal to go unpunished
• A workable society requires law-enforcement
• And law enforcement demands that offenders be punished
But that didn’t seem to be Jesus’ primary concern at all
• He seemed to be challenging the entire framework that surrounds our thinking about human nature
• Challenged our thinking about what is good and what is evil
• Challenging the way we see one another
• Challenging the way we see ourselves
For the foreseeable future, I’m sure society will demand we straddle the fine line between justice and mercy
• We will continue to punish criminals for their behavior
• Justice will continue demanding we confront those who wrong us
But while this world system is running along as it has for millennia…
• We can also be allowing the Divine Spirit…
• To be transforming our very cores
• The place our instincts tell us what we are as humans
• What other people are as humans
Our collective societal instincts have a defined view of human family
• There is a division between good people and bad
• There are righteous people and sinners
• There is my team and then, there is your team (one of them good)
• There are Christians, and there are all the others
Jesus, on the other hand, saw only one family
• The family of God
• All humans equally created in the image of God
• All humans equally carrying glory nature talked about last week
Jesus saw all humans equally in need of God’s mercy
• All humans having equally lost something wonderful
• Having fallen from glorious state of being we sense in ourselves
Consequently, Jesus saw all humans equally in need of grace
• Equally in need of forgiveness
• Equally in need of mercy
• All of us need to be seen as more than our sin, more than our failure
All humans need to embrace the forgiveness of the universe, the forgiveness of God
All human beings need to be forgiven by themselves (last week)
And all human beings need to be forgiven by one another
• For the thing that has happened to us; polluting of glory-nature
• An innocent baby is born, but it won’t be long before a secondary, lesser, sinful nature will show itself
• It has shown itself in all of us, it will in that baby too
And some people deceive themselves into thinking that…
• Because we are working hard to be nice…
• Because we have never murdered anybody…
• Because we compare ourselves to others and come out looking pretty good…
…that we are somehow exempt from the need for forgiveness
But this denies the universality of the human condition
• It denies that we are all in this thing together
• That every one of us, given the right circumstances, could and would be what the most despised among us has become
And this concept, Jesus challenged
If we are going to put people in the category of needing mercy
• we should make sure we put in everyone who qualifies
• and we all qualify
• the shame that comes on us when we are not what we could be…
• the fear that comes on us when we are not our glory-selves…
…these are archetypical human experiences
…a universal sense of being
And consequently, we all have the same need
We need to be forgiven our fundamental sense of being flawed
We need to be forgiven the sense that there is something wrong w/ us
• We need Divine grace to navigate the lesser state we’re in
• We need grace from ourselves to navigate this lesser state
• And we need grace from one another to navigate this reality
So, Jesus was looking at this bigger picture
Not caring much about the practical demands of law enforcement
• Not thinking about how to make a broken society work
(sure, that needs to happen…)
• But Jesus was reframing our thinking for a future society
• A society that will inevitably transcend the one founded on broken, fallen, shamed human beings
• A society in which forgiveness releases us to wholeness
Jesus mission is to restore us to our glorious state
• That’s what the cross is about
So he let some practicalities go by the wayside
• Things like motivating people to good behavior by making them afraid of the consequences if they go caught
Jesus’ agenda was a divine-insight agenda
• A beyond the box agenda
• The whole issue of forgiveness is a divine-insight kind of thing
• A beyond the box kind of thing
To move into forgiveness, then…
We must see it as a divine-agenda kind of thing
• We need to see beyond the box of everyday life
• Beyond practical concerns like efficient law-enforcement
• Beyond making sure offenders don’t get away
No, to move into forgiveness, we need to access divine wisdom
• We need to access divine power
• We need to access divine discernment
• We need to access divine instincts
What we need to live in forgiveness-land, is to be baptized w/ HS
many times we’ve used this image…
• Word baptizo… a nautical term in ancient Greek
• Image: boat on the water vs. a boat in the water
• The latter is baptizo, the water is in the boat
• When Jesus used the term he was talking about HS coming into compartment after compartment of our lives
• HS filling up the soul, part by part, issue by issue, fear by fear
• Whereas once there was anger, pride, grudge, pain
• Upon being baptizo those places are filled w/ Divine Nature
• The Divine presence, Divine power
Forgiveness, extending mercy, requires this of us
We never forget offenses done us unless we’re forgetful people
• But w/ divine empowerment, we come to the place that the offense no longer defines that memory
• The wrong, the pain, the offense are powerless over us
• Truth, grace, mercy enable us to see a bigger picture
• To see the true identity of the offender as a child of God
• A human being needing the same forgiveness we need
Of course, we don’t put ourselves in harm’s way…
but we see the offending person more clearly, with Divine vision
• We see offenders in that impractical way Jesus was talking about
• That truer, outside-the-box way Jesus was talking about
• And with that vision…
• With that divine empowerment…
• We are able to forgive
To forgive we must act as an agent of the Divine
• We must allow the Divine Spirit within us to do so
• And for this, the compartments of our souls must be baptizo
Since the time of Jesus, people have prayed to be baptized in HS
• Like us, they were imagining the HS flooding through compartment after compartment of their souls
Had you come from the Charismatic tradition, you would be familiar with certain rituals neatly laid out to help you to pursue this
• You would know the style, the practice intimately
• But the principle is larger even than the Charismatic tradition
For centuries, people have had crisis moments of Spirit-baptism
And in those moments, they experienced a breakthrough
• For some it was a surge of spiritual power
• Or, a surge of soul-healing
• For others, they experienced increased discernment of Truth
• Still others experienced abundant compassion for others
Most groups that experienced one of these surges tended to make a very specific tradition out of their experience
• But the surges are a broad spectrum of manifestations
I would always encourage you to ask God for a baptism in HS
• If forgiveness is an issue, perhaps a baptism of the area of resentment or offended-ness
• Ask for a baptism of mercy in the compartment of pain
• Ask for a baptism of grace in the area of resentment
• Ask for a baptism of kindness and peace in the compartment of hatred and bitterness
And as has been the case in many of these surges, you might ask a spiritual friend lay hands on you
• It was done that way in scripture
• It has been done that way throughout history
• Something about togetherness: find God better together than alone
• I will do that for you if you’d like
• SF team would probably do it better (SF’s RAISE YOUR HANDS)
• A simple thing, a quiet faith-filled thing
• HS, baptize me; remove the knotty self part, and flood that part of my soul w/ Divine life, Divine presence
So for today…
1. Ask for Divine enablement
2. As I mentioned earlier; make forgiveness a specific action
This last part of taking our rightful places as citizens of forgiveness-land
• we make forgiveness a specific action
again, when Jesus spoke of forgiveness, it was very little about feeling
• it was about specific behaviors
• a word the offended would speak to the offender
• an overwhelming debt that is forgiven
• a guilty soul before the bar is mercifully set free
We have hot dogs today, so I’m going to let you discern specific actions HS would ask of you
• You listen for inner nudges, promptings
• You talk out w/ your spiritual friends
• Ask HS what specific actions you would be called upon to perform
• And know that Jesus made forgiveness more action oriented than feeling oriented
—
Here’s what you have heard so far…
• If there’s someone who has offended, hurt, wounded you
• No matter how deeply, no matter for how long…
• If you are a follower of Jesus, you have an imperative to forgive
It will require courage
• And for you to be able to do it, you will need to forgive yourself
• And finally, you will need a fresh baptism of HS to access Divine
And finally, you are hearing this…
• The way Jesus set this thing up…
• It will be less about your feelings, and more about the actions you take, the words you speak, the intentions you follow
So, the question before you if there is someone for you to forgive…
• What will you say? What will you do?
• Instead of suggestons, I end w/ story of someone in that place…
You’re driving the highway in your car when suddenly something rock-hard shatters your windshield, hits you and breaks nearly every bone in your face. As silly as it sounds, the projectile was a frozen turkey, hurled from the rear window of a speeding car by a teenage college student out for a joyride.
That’s what happened last November to Victoria Ruvolo, a 44-year-old office manager, on a road in the town of Riverhead on Long Island. It nearly killed her, and could easily have given her brain damage. Surgeons had to rebuild her face using metal plates and screws. But remarkably, she recovered and within a few months was back on her own and working again.
But that’s not the real story. It’s what happened the following August in court that makes this a tale to remember. The boy who threw the turkey, 19-year-old Ryan Cushing was indicted on a first-degree assault charge and faced up to 25 years in prison. Until Ruvolo stepped in. She saw Cushing for the first time coming out of the courtroom. She approached him, and as the NY Times reported, for an intensely emotional few minutes, alternately embraced him tightly, stroked his face and patted his back. He began to sob uncontrollably. The paper continued… “As the young man kept saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,” the woman he could have killed repeated, “It’s OK. It’s OK. I just want you to make your life the best it can be.” At Ruvolo’s insistence, prosecutors agreed to a plea bargain for Cushing, giving him six months in jail and five years’ probation instead of 25 years in prison. One man later said that in his 30 years as a prosecutor “he had not seen such a forgiving victim.”
The reporter on the story had written about forgiveness himself. He had a wrestling match of his own, trying to forgive the murderer of his son and his wife. When asked: Is forgiveness possible when crime shatters a family? He responded… It took time, but the day came when I could honestly say yes. He talked about forgiveness beginning with letting go of the anger and how when this happens, freedom returns. He talked about the next stage of forgiveness, praying for the one who has hurt us and remembering that this person is also a child of God.
The New York Times wrote an editorial about Ruvolo, titling it “A Moment of Grace.” Their words were touching: “Given the opportunity for retribution, Ms. Ruvolo gave and got something better: the dissipation of anger and the restoration of hope, in a gesture as cleansing as the tears washing down her damaged face, and the face of the foolish, miserable boy whose life she single-handedly restored. What a gift she gave! God bless her!”
You can forgive: It is natural to you
• You can discern what specific forgiveness actions you must do
• You have the courage to step into forgiveness-land citizenship
• You can forgive yourself for bad actions
• You can forgive yourself for having two natures battling w/in you
• You can be baptized by HS; and access Divine Nature within you
You can do all these things: the HS is within you; Divine life right in you
And that Spirit is a forgiving Spirit
Everything you need is right inside you
So step into the land of forgiveness