April 12 John 20:19-23, I John 1,2
Worship helps us to experience resurrection. For many of us,worship is dutiful, something we slog through. We may mistake bells and whistles and high energy as an Easter experience. when I do a service in an assisted living facility, I find myself calling the declaration of forgiveness the most critical part of the service.In going over some movies for a collection of essays on faith and film, I selected the Railway Man as it is a journey into forigvienss. We use the word a lot in church, but we do not seem to have been successful with demonstrating a process of forgiveness.
Living in the Easter experience is the gospel of the second chance, of forgiveness.OK, it is a gift of the spirit but can we take some steps to clear the way? First, we do well to recall that we hurt others, just as we have been hurt. Usually, we hear of forgiveness in terms of us extending it to others. We do well to decide not to retaliate. I think is to pray for the well-being of the one we hurt or the one who hurt us. Even more so good relationships undergird all the readings-Volf-.“If on the bottom line of our lives lies the principle that we should get what we deserve, whether good or ill, forgiveness will sit uncomfortably with us. To forgive is to give people more than their due, it’s to release them from the debt they have incurred, and that’s bound to mess up the books.” (p. 203)
Why do we refuse the God-given bridge that would transport us from selfishness to self-giving, from vengeance to forgiveness? (224) William Willimon calls it “Preemptive Forgiveness.” God’s forgiveness precedes repentance. God’s forgiveness is the first word in the Divine-human conversation. “It’s as if,” Willimon says, “when the Father began creating the world, the first word was not, ‘Let there be light,’ but rather, ‘Let there be forgiveness’” (p. 6).
”Ambivalent, tentative, and hesitant attempts are not yet full-fledged forgiveness, but they are a start. If she doesn’t trample underfoot the tender plant of forgiveness that seeks to break through the crust of vengeance with which she has protected herself, if she waters that plant with the living water of God’s goodness, one day it may grow sturdy enough to bear fruit.” (p. 207)-when we are forgivers we are restored to our full human splendor. We were created to mirror God. .” (p. 209)-Do you want to become a forgiving person? Seek the company of forgiven forgivers!” (p. 214) That is an issue when we tell ourselves that god has a pretty good deal with us when it comes to the Declaration of Pardon, of forgiveness, of Reconciliation that we have every week. In an age where we call sin mistake or a bad choice, we lose both its power and the full wallop of forgiveness.
Bishop Tutu fought the South African system of segregation for years. He then led a truth and reconciliation program to help bind the nation’s wounds through forgiveness. -When I no longer hold his offenses against him, and can also forgive myself, those memories of him no longer exert any control over my moods or my disposition. His violence and my inability to protect my mother no longer define me. I am not the small boy cowering in fear of his drunken rage. I have a new and different story. Forgiveness has liberated both of us. We are free. In the movie Railway Man and in the beautiful closing to Unbroken, two men find their broken humanity in discovering a capacity to forgive. They live in Easter light.
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