In Jesus Holy Name August 1, 2010
Text: Luke 4:11 Pentecost X - Redeemer
“Can You Bury the Hatchet?”
(read text)
Sometimes I listen to Country Music. The songs in Country Music, whether sung by Johnny Cash, Tanaya Twain, Alan Jackson, Taylor Swift certainly put words to music that express the hurts and sorrows of life. During the Country Music awards I watched Sugarland sing their hit record….. oblivious to the audience her words poured out her pain. Tears flowed down her face as she pleaded for her lover “don’t leave my bed for hers.” It made me wonder if she had experienced the pain of love gone astray.
I realize that Country Music may not be the best resource for Christian Theology but one certainly can identify with the emotional pain. Garth Brooks sang a song a few years back that made me wonder how well I was obeying the words of the Lord’s Prayer. The words in his song went like this “We buried the hatchet, but left the handle sticking out.” When we review the Lord’s Prayer maybe we have to ask ourselves…..Have we offered forgiveness… but left the handle sticking out of the ground?
“The primary act of faith is forgiving. It is the characteristic act of God, the Father of Jesus Christ. If we follow him in faith, it is the first thing we do in our following. It is the one thing we do in faith which we would not do if we had no faith. Forgiving is what we do if we want to put meaning and purpose back into our lives.” (from Seventy Times Seven Robert Hoyer)
Our Lord has challenged us. When we have been wronged, when we have been hurt when we pray the Lord’s Prayer we are promising “too bury the handle of the hatchet along with the hatchet.” For if we leave the handle sticking out of the ground… it means we have failed in our act of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is the ultimate test of love when someone hurts you. The Apostle Paul wrote: “Love keeps no record of wrongs.” Love does not keep score. One guy said: “When my wife and I get into an argument she gets historical. The other guy says: “you mean hysterical?” No. “Historical”, she tells me everything I’ve ever done wrong.” Love does not keep a record of wrongs.
Unfortunately sometimes we do. We leave the handle of the ax out of the ground. We keep a record of the wrongs so we have ammunition when others hurt us. But the bible says that love does not do that.
In your bulletin this morning is a questionnaire I want you to fill out.
( read each question and let them mark their answer.)
The act of forgiving involves words between people. It is not private like prayer or giving to the poor. Forgiving is not a moral act done in obedience to a law or custom. Forgiving is an act of faith. I forgive, when I forgive, because I am a disciple of Jesus. As a follower of Jesus I am expected to imitate Him.
It is not easy. I do not pretend to do it well. Nor does anyone else I know! I have experienced the forgiveness of Jesus. I have heard his words. When I forgive, my heart and emotions will experience peace. I will be able to sleep at night. If I don’t forgive…then anger, and bitterness will fill my soul. Happiness will elude me…. The same is true for you.
Cain did not forgive his brother. God warned him; saying, “…if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door, it desires to have you, but you must master it.” (Gen. 4:6,7)
Cain invited his brother out into the field…and there “rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.” God spoke again and asked Cain where his brother was. Cain, who could not forgive …. Justified himself and said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God banished Cain from his crops, his family, and he became a wandering nomad.
Jesus invites us to listen to his words. He invites us to speak words of forgiveness to others, for they are words that will create “the kingdom of heaven” where grace is at work.
The primary act of faith is forgiving. It is the characteristic act of God, the Father of Jesus Christ. If we follow him in faith, it is the first thing we do in our following. It is the one thing we are reminded to do…each and every time we pray, “Our Father who art in Heaven….forgive us our sins, just as we have forgiven those who sin against us…” Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer we are reminding ourselves to “imitate Jesus” by forgiving others just as we have been forgiven. (Ephesians 5:1)
Forgiveness may be the most difficult action of love. There is a lot of shoddy thinking about forgiveness so let’s clarify a few things. (Take out your outline)
1. Forgiveness is not “minimizing the seriousness” of the offense.
If you minimize the hurt then you cheapen the forgiveness.
Being wounded and being wronged are two different things:
• Being “wounded” is accidental. It happens all the time. Someone makes a comment, not knowing that you have taken the words personally. The way you deal with a wound is to offer patience.
• Being “wronged” is intentional.
2. Forgiveness is not “resuming the relationship” without changes.
• Forgiveness is instant, but trust must be built over a long period of time.
• Forgiveness takes care of the damage done by “letting the person off the hook,” but does not guarantee the relationship will be restored.
People often feel they can’t forgive because they don’t understand
forgiveness. Someone has told them that forgiveness means forgetting and they know they just cannot forget. Forgiveness is not forgetting…. Deep hurts can rarely be wiped out of one’s memory. But the truth is forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to pretend you don’t remember the hurt, or that the event
never happened.
Forgiveness does not excuse bad or hurtful behavior. Forgiveness means you “let it go.” Forgiveness takes care of the damage done by “letting the person off the hook”. The Greek word that Jesus uses means to that we “throw away our resentment at being wronged.” (Mark 11:25)
You let go of your “bitterness and your desire for revenge for your own heart and soul. It may not change the other person but it will keep you from being filled with bitterness. Philip Yancey calls forgiveness an “unnatural act”. It is not easy. We do not do it well. Forgiveness is an act of our will not our feelings. In time God will heal our emotional hurt. The Lord’s Prayer does not say “forgive others when you feel like it.”
If someone repeatedly hurts you… you are obligated by God to forgive, but
you are not obligated to keep going back into that relationship to be hurt again and again, and again. If you do not let it go… then bitterness will eat away at your heart and soul. It is worse than cancer. Bitterness will not change the past. You cannot change the past. Bitterness will mess up your present day…. You’ll have to wake up angry every day. You are not hurting the person only yourself.
In the book “Shoah, Claude Lanzmann’s Documentary” on the
Holocaust, a leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising talked about the bitterness that remains in his soul over how he and his neighbors were treated by the Nazis: “if you could lick my heart,” he says, “it would poison you.” (The Forgiveness Facter article in Christianity Today 1/10/2000)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn notes that we were created different than animals by God. It is not our capacity to think that makes us different, but our capacity to repent, and to forgive. Only human beings can perform that most unnatural act of forgiveness. We forgive because God first forgave us.
Forgiveness is an act of the will, not an act based on emotions. When we have been hurt we say things like: “I don’t think I can want to forgive him or her.” I’m angry, I want him/her punished for what he did. I want to see them hurt the way I hurt.” The secret truth is that it is easier for Christians to be forgiven by God than for us to forgive others. It is true that people are deeply hurt by the breakup of their parent’s marriages, and hurt is buried so deep, or fester so close to the surface, that they find it difficult, impossible to forgive.
There are Christians who have been wronged on the job or have been gossiped about in the church….they find it difficult to pray “Forgive us our sins, just as we forgive those who sin against us.” It is God who has promised “to remember our sins no more.” Remember “forgiving is not the same as forgetting. But you and I are not God….. Our problem is that we leave the ax handle sticking out of the ground too many times.
In his sermon on the Mount Jesus noted the difference between the world of men in which we live and the world created by the “kingdom of heaven”. The usual rule is: “love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But Jesus creates the opposite world. His rule: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Jesus also taught: “If your brother sins against you seven times in a day, and turns to you seven times and says, “I repent”, you must forgive.”
Once we make the decision to forgive with then what must the offender do if the relationship is to be restored?
• To restore a relationship, the offender must:
• Demonstrate genuine repentance and a change of lifestyle.
• Make restitution whenever possible
• Trust is rebuilt by proving trust over time.
One day Jesus was sitting in the temple courtyard talking to a crowd of people. Some Pharisees brought to him a woman who, they said had been caught in the act of adultery. They pointed out that their law, from Moses, commanded them to stone such a woman. They asked Jesus what he thought should be done with her.
The story is simple enough. It is well known. The crowd listening to Jesus was the jury. He had been talking about forgiveness and forgiving. But you can’t forgive an adulteress just like that. Adultery was a serious sin…. It takes two people. They wanted an answer. Jesus did not answer immediately. He sat there writing with his finger on the ground until they asked him again.
When everyone was listening for a response…. Jesus stood up and faced the accusers. He said: “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.” Then he sat down….and went on writing on the ground. He did not look at the woman or her accusers.
That took courage. He had technically agreed with the law of Moses that the woman should be stoned to death. He instructed her accusers to get it done. He was confident nothing would happen.
Note: Jesus did not try to excuse the woman or find a loophole in the law to free her. He did not ignore the law. In fact he said the law should apply to everyone there. He speaks to the woman and says: “Go and sin no more.”
Now, let’s read again the words of Jesus from the gospel of Luke: “Forgive us our sin, just as we have forgiven those who sin against us.” This is a challenge. When we refuse to forgive we in effect are asking God not to forgive us.
Here are three steps of forgiveness:
1. I relinquish my “right to get even”.
Never avenge yourselves. Leave that to God, for he said that he will repay those who deserve it. (Romans 12:19)
You don’t hurt the other person with your resentment… you’re only hurting yourself. If you don’t forgive, bitterness will eat up your soul, your life, your health.
Three reasons to forgive others:
• God has “forgiven you.”
• Bitterness makes you “miserable”.
• You are going to need “more forgiveness” in the future.
Don’t we pray: “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
2. I respond to evil “with good.”
Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (Luke 6:27-28) Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21)
3. I “forgive” as long as necessary.
Remember the Lord has forgiven you so you must forgive others. Colossians 3:13
“Lord how often should I forgive someone who sins against me?” “Seven times?” No Seventy times seven.
The first and most obvious reason Christians need to be forgivers is the simple command of Jesus himself. Not only are we told to forgive anyone who has provoked us; we also learn we cannot enjoy God’s forgiveness if we are not exercising it toward others.
And again Jesus in Mark 11:25 says: “and when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
God forgives us because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross. “God….forgave us all our sins….he canceled the written code, (the commandments we have broken) he took them away, nailing them to the cross.”
“The primary act of faith is forgiving. It is the characteristic act of God, the Father of Jesus Christ. If we follow him in faith, it is the first thing we do in our following. It is the one thing we do in faith which we would not do if we had no faith.
Prayer: Lord, I thank you for your forgiveness. Help me to bury the handle of the hatchet. Amen.
