Forgiveness Part One: Wounded

Scripture Readings

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition Genesis 4

4 Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have produced a man with the help of the LORD.” 2 Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. 6 The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

8 Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. 9 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 And the LORD said, “What have you done? Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! 11 And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” 13 Cain said to the LORD, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! 14 Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” 15 Then the LORD said to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.” And the LORD put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him. 16 Then Cain went away from the presence of the LORD and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition Matthew 5

21 “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder,’ and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment, and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. 23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

WWTW

Introduction

This is universal!

In gearing up and talking to folks about this series, I realize that this is one that applies to absolutely everybody.

We have all been wounded in one way or another, haven’t we?

Jane Austen put it this way:

“Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.”— Jane Austen

In other words, this hits us all, no matter who we are.

Betrayal by the drumline

When I was a young pup in the drumline at Franklin Regional, the guys all started asking who they were going to ask out to homecoming.

I was a young nerd, so the correct answer was that I was going to stay home and read comic books.

But I wanted to look like I was one of the guys, so I told them how I had every intention in the world to ask out my crush.

I had no intention at all of doing such a thing, but here we were.

The next day my crush was sitting on the band bus in the exit row, which is helpfully illuminated by a red light.

So my drumline mates very “helpfully” started screaming “Freyer’s asking the red light special!”

That wound is called betrayal.

1.3 million wounds

At a previous church I worked for, our business administrator stole from the church.

A little bit? No.

Over seven years (or as I quickly learned, how long banks keep records) we were able to prove he took 1.3 million dollars.

And to add injury to injury, we discovered that the way he had taken the money was that he had not been paying our employment taxes, so in addition to having 1.3 fewer dollars than we should have, we owed the IRS 1.3 million dollars.

This was someone that I trusted.

This was someone I ate lunch with every day.

This is someone whose kids were in my youth group.

This was someone who played in our praise band beside me.

That one hurt.

And so that wound festered and festered, especially while the rest of the team and I tried to survive the fall out from that horrible season of ministry.

Other examples:

How many of you have heard someone gossiping about you?

How many of you were intentionally left off the guest list?

How many of you have been left by someone, or find yourself picking up the pieces of divorce?

Thanksgiving’s coming up, who’s ready for that political discussion that’s surely coming around the family table?

Rat Poison

C.S. Lewis had this down pat for those of us who follow Christ:

Everyone thinks that forgiveness is a lovely idea…until they have something to forgive. —C.S. Lewis

Anne Lamott was a bit more colorful:

Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the other rat to die. —Anne Lamott

So for the next three weeks, we’re going to explore forgiveness, and ask a super important question:

How?

That escalated quickly!

A story that happened, or a story that happens?

I have known folks who have a hard time with the creation story, with Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, literal six day creation stories and all that.

And no matter where you land on that question, if you believe in the literal nature of the story or struggle with that, either way there is a saying we need to hold on to:

The power of the story isn’t so much that it happened, but that it happens.

This story of Cain and Abel is something that happens again and again and again in our own lives.

Abel didn’t know it, but he wounded Cain first.

The original wound of this story is that God seems to look favorably on Abel’s offerings of livestock, and a little bit less so on Cain’s first fruits.

Side note: This only affirms for me that God was in fact in favor of a good steak, and there’s lots of biblical evidence for this. But I digress.

You can almost hear the murmuring in the story, can’t you?

“Stupid Abel…brings his stupid sheep to the altar and God loves him…all I have are vegetables…stupid tomatoes...”

But here’s the thing, I don’t think Abel knew anything about that!

Abel was just going about his life doing what he knew to be right.

He had no idea that what he was doing was in some way wounding his brother Cain.

So many of the wounds that we are inflicted with go completely unnoticed by the person who wounded us.

So many times when someone’s in my office talking about the people who have hurt them, a simple question is “Do they know?”

Are they aware of the pain they caused you?

Can you be convinced that it was intentional?

Was it them who wounded you? Or did the circumstances wound you, and you need someone to blame?

That’s what happened to Cain.

And I love this conversation that God has with Cain.

Sin is lurking at the door.

God shows up and says “Hey buddy, I can see you’re mad. What’s up?”

Essentially God is also saying “I like your offerings too, so maybe that whole idea that I don’t lives in you!”

And you better not let this fester, because if you do Sin is lurking at the door.

If you don’t get this right, if you don’t sort this out, it’s going to lead you down a path you don’t want to go.

And it really does.

The first humans in the span of about 10 verses go from the sin of eating fruit God told them not to eat, to killing each other.

Leading to another quote for us today:

That escalated quickly!- Ron Burgandy

Gehenna

Jesus’ Teaching on Anger

Jesus gives us an escalating teaching about what it looks like when we wound somebody else.

If you murder someone, you are liable to judgement.

Ok, I’m with ya!

If you are angry with a brother or sister, you are liable to judgement...

Uh-oh.

If you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council...

I could have to go to court if I insult somebody?

Congress doesn’t stand a chance!

But the part of this that I’ve always struggled with is

If you say “You fool” you will be liable to the hell of fire.

I could wind up going to hell just for calling somebody a fool?

That’s…a little troubling!

It turns out that there’s a little bit more going on under the surface here.

The word “hell” here is the word “Gehenna”

Gehenna was the town dump, which was always on fire and smelled like burning garbage.

In ancient Isreal it would have been just as it is in so many developing nations.

The town dump was just an open field where you put all your garbage.

And the only way to get rid of it all was to light it up and burn it.

So Gehenna was an actual place, where all the garbage went.

And because it was such a massive operation, the fires were always burning.

There was literally never a time where you would walk past Gehenna when it wasn’t smelling like awful rotten garbage.

Actually, it turns out that this is the word that Jesus almost always uses for “hell.”

Sometimes it means the eternal hell that we’re thinking about...

Sometimes he’s talking about the eternal home of the devil.

And actually this is where we get the image of hell as a place of fire and brimstone and torment.

Sometimes Jesus is talking about that and using Gehenna as a metaphor for what that place is like.

Sometimes it’s descriptive.

And I think this is one of those times.

When you refuse to forgive someone, you are essentially carrying around a dumpster fire in your soul.

When you say “you fool,” when you refuse to allow someone to experience forgiveness, when you’ve written them off as worthless,

You are opening up your own soul to carrying around this dumpster fire of emotions.

You are liable to that kind of hell in your own person when you refuse to forgive others.

Who are the “fools” in your life?

Can you think right now of someone you think of as a fool?

Can you think of someone right now who you have an issue with?

Can you think of someone right now who has wronged you?

Can you think of someone right now who has wounded you to the point of anger?

Of course you can! We all can!

But...I can hear some of your thoughts right now:

Pastor, you don’t know what they did.

You don’t know how they hurt me.

You don’t know how deep this pain is.

You don’t know what I’ve been through.

You’re right. I don’t.

But I do know that considering someone a fool is opening you up to the dumpster fire of Gehenna.

I do know that sin is lurking at the door when we carry that kind of anger with us.

I do know that If you are holding on to that kind of anger or resentment or bitterness, I do know that you are carrying something around that God wants you to be free from.

Forgiveness is really for you.

“Forgiveness is for you—not the other person. It’s something you do inside yourself that you feel in your body and heart that releases you from your past and frees you to live life fully.” – Barbara J. Hunt

As I’ve been studying and gearing up for this series, I’m starting to have a realization:

Forgiveness has very little to do with the person who has done the wounding.

They almost aren’t part of the equation.

They are a little bit, and we’ll turn to that later on.

But really, forgiveness is about us.

Forgiveness is about us setting down the burdens we’re carrying.

Forgiveness is about putting out the dumpster fire that is burning in our own hearts.

Forgiveness is about locking the door where Sin tends to lurk.

Forgiveness is about letting our own wounds heal.

Forgiveness is really about freedom.

“Holding a grudge doesn’t make you strong; it makes you bitter. Forgiving doesn’t make you weak; it sets you free.” – Dave Willis (Cartoonist)

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you." - Lewis B. Smedes

"As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison." - Nelson Mandala

Forgiving is an Action

So what kind of action steps can we take this week?

Remember how you’ve wounded.

Romans 3:23 “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;”

We should own up to the fact that we have all wounded someone in our lives.

How many of you have been in the middle of a heated conversation, and your words kind of became like cartoons where you wish you could start stuffing them back in your mouth?

How many of us have found ourselves advocating for our own needs, no matter who we leave in our wake?

How many of us, whether intentionally or unintentionally, have broken someone’s heart?

We are all wounders and offenders to our brothers and sisters.

And that takes us to two places:

1) We shouldn’t be surprised when someone wounds us.

Especially in church, every now and again someone wounds us, and every now and again I see someone with this shocked expression on their face.

Yeah, hurt is part of the equation!

Of course, we do everything we can to limit this hurt.

Of course we try our best to avoid it.

Of course we do everything we can to care for our brothers and sisters.

But you know what? We’re going to hurt people.

Give me enough time, I promise as your pastor, I will probably hurt each and every one of us in this room at some point in our time together.

I don’t want to!

And I’m sorry in advance!

But it’s going to happen.

Which leads us to a very important part in this:

2) We take accountability when we wound others.

“I’m sorry” are some of the most powerful words that we can say as believers.

Both to God, and to each other.

It is not weakness to admit that we were wrong.

It is not weakness to say we’re sorry.

It is not weakness to admit we were off track.

It is not weakness to own up to the way we wound others.

Actually, it’s a tremendous sign of spiritual strength and maturity.

If all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, then we hurt each other.

Let’s not be surprised.

And let’s own it when it’s us.

Decide to forgive

"Forgiveness is above all a personal choice, a decision of the heart to go against natural instinct to pay back evil with evil." - Pope John Paul II

The first step in the art of forgiveness is just to decide that you want to forgive.

Just because it’s the first step doesn’t mean it’s the easiest!

But it does mean that we realize that forgiveness is more about setting ourselves free than it is anything to do with the other person.

So we would do well to just decide to forgive.

I have a friend who is one of those sick people who does all kinds of endurance races.

He’s a runner, a triathlete, one of those guys.

And he’s told me countless times that the hardest part of any race

Is not all the training.

It’s not the race day jitters.

It’s not the opposition you might face on race day.

The hardest part of any race is registering.

Once you’re registered, you’re committed.

Once you’re registered, you’ve made a decision.

Once you’ve registered, the actions that follow are scripted out for you, and they’re hard.

So, to take the metaphor a little bit further than it’s meant to go…register for forgiveness.

Decide today that the people in your life are worth more to you than the wrongs they’ve done to you.

Decide today that you want to set someone free, and maybe even come to find that it’s you.

Decide today that forgiveness is in fact the way of Christ, and what we’re called to as believers.

Honestly, that might be the only action you need to take today.

We’ll get to what comes next in a couple of weeks.

But for today, it might be enough just to decide to forgive.

Well, maybe one step before that...

Drink in forgiveness for yourself

Many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently, all we can do is pretend to believe we are forgiven. —Brennan Manning

We have all fallen short of the glory of God.

We have all said something that we wish we could take back.

We all have creepy crawlies in the back of our lives.

We all have wounded someone, perhaps even someone very near and dear to us.

And Christ forgives us all.

Christ forgives our careless words.

Christ forgives the creepy crawlies of our past.

Christ forgives the wounds that we have inflicted on each other.

Christ even forgives the wounds we inflict on ourselves.

In conversations around this sermon, it has been clear that many of us think that the hardest thing to do might just be to forgive ourselves.

I get that.

But it’s in these moments that we need to trust Christ.

If Christ feels it’s right to forgive us, perhaps it’s time we decided to forgive ourselves too.

It’s a free gift, and it’s always available.

Drink deeply from the wells of forgiveness.

And then, let’s go give the world what God has given us.