Teenage boys were always looking for something to do on a warm summer’s day, and so the clanking sounds and the laughter got to me that day. I walked across the street to where my best friend lived, and found him in the back yard, with his father, engaged in something new: they were throwing oddly-shaped pieces of metal at an iron stake a few yards away. The closer the strange looking piece got to the stake, the louder they shouted for joy. I had never seen anything quite like it.
My friend Brooke told me that the game was horseshoes. The object was to pitch the horseshoes at the post and try to get them to hang around that post, or maybe lean on it, or at least get close to it. I watched them play for a while; it
looked easy. I said, "This doesn’t look hard. Can I try?" Brooke said, "Not yet. Let me finish playing with my dad. He’s showing me how to hold the shoe and how to swing it." How to hold the shoe? For heaven’s sake, I thought, just hold it. Anywhere, anyway. How can it matter how you hold it? And as for how to swing, well, hey, I had been working all summer on my softball batting swing; just turn that around a little bit and I should be all right. I didn’t pay any attention as Mr. Griffith patiently coached his son in the art of horseshoes. I did notice that Brooke got close to the post nearly every time, and managed to throw two or three ringers. Just proved to me that it was an easy game.
Finally the waiting was over, and they invited me to throw. Mr. Griffith started to give me all the same lessons he had given his son, but I brushed them off. I could do this. Nothing to it. Just let me at it.
Wow! This thing was heavy. And with these little bumps and irregularities on it, it was a little hard to hold. But come on! The other post was only a few yards away. I gripped, I swung, I threw. The horseshoe went out about three feet and fell with a dull thud, closer to the post where I was standing than to the target. The Griffiths, father and son, both laughed, and Brooke said, "This one doesn’t count. Try again."
I could see that I needed to put more oomph on the thing, so I swung once, swung twice, swung three times, and let go. The shoe took off with a mighty whiz, arching high in the air, and curving, curving, over to the right, not very far from where Mr. Griffith was standing. He jumped back, said something not entirely right for the vocabulary of a teacher of a teenage Sunday School class, but then called out, "Whoa. You hooked it. Try again. Get it straight. That one doesn’t count either’
I was beginning to get some messages here. The first message was that the horseshoes game was not as easy as it looked. And the second message was that there were really no consequences. Nothing seemed to count. No matter how wild my pitch, they were not keeping score. What could I lose? This pitch, that pitch, didn’t count. So keep on going, full steam ahead!
One more time. I had figured out by now how I wanted to grip the shoe. Not exactly what Mr. Griffith said I ought to do, but I knew how I wanted to do it. And I had figured out the stuff about power and arc and curve and all the rest. This one would be great, this one would be a dead ringer, this one would be the pitch to end all pitches.
Well, it was. Because this time, when I let go of that stupid shoe, the next sound I heard was the sickening shattering of glass, as Mrs. Griffith’s kitchen window went to window heaven. The screams of Brooke’s mother and sisters inside the house could be heard, I was sure, all the way across the street to my house, and, very likely, to every house on the block.
Guess what? This time no one said, "This one doesn’t count." This time no one said, "Go ahead. Try one more time.’ This time they said, first, if you cannot take
instructions, you cannot play this game. And second, this one counts. This one will cost you the price of a new window!
I
A whole lot of us blunder through life, taking passes and collecting freebies, because we think it doesn’t count. We cheat a little on a test in school, and we don’t get caught, so we assume, "This one doesn’t count." We fudge the factors on our income taxes, and no auditor calls, so we conclude, "This one doesn’t count." We take some liberties and go beyond the bounds of morality, but no unwanted pregnancy, no AIDS diagnosis, so, we think, "This one doesn’t count." A whole lot of us blunder through life, refusing the Father’s instructions, insisting that we know how to live.. how hard could it be anyway? And if we do get into a tight spot, and maybe think to pray, the essence of our prayer is, "Does this one count?" We’d like to think it doesn’t.
But we must remember that actions do have consequences. There is a price to be paid for whatever we do. Especially there is a price to be paid for our willful insistence on doing whatever we want to do, whenever we want to do it, however we care to do it. There is a price to pay. God has constructed a moral universe, where ultimately, some day and some way, there will be consequences from sin. It will count.
But the very heart and soul of the Christian faith is that, wonder of wonders, you and I do not have to pay the price. We should. By all logic we should. Common sense says we should. But deeply rooted in our Christian faith good news rings out: "This one does not count." No matter how wrong it has gone, no matter how heavy the guilt, this one does not count against us.
How? How does that work? Listen:
In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.
In Christ, God has done the work of reconciliation. We should have to do it, you know, because we are the ones who have broken faith. But in Christ, God has done the work of reconciliation, and does not count our trespasses against us. The burden which we ought to bear, he has chosen to carry. The shame which ought to be in our hearts, he has elected to assume. The guilt which might very well weigh us down all our days, He has lifted. Incredible, but true! Beyond description, but there it is! And, as if that were not enough, the Scripture describes all of this in words so awesome, so agonizingly beautiful, that they ought to penetrate the heart of every believer:
For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin.
In a moral universe, sin counts. But so that our sin would not have to count against us, it counted against the sinless Son of God instead. "Not counting our trespasses against us."
II
But somebody has to pay the consequences. Somebody has to pay the cost. Remember, actions always have consequences. Sin always has a payout.
In 1993 Amy Biehl, a young American Fulbright scholar, went to South Africa to study and to work toward helping a long oppressed people prepare for freedom. One afternoon, as she drove to drop off supplies at Gugulethu, a rampaging mob began to throw stones at her car. They did not know or care who she was; they were just out of control, pitching pain in every direction. When Amy stopped her car, they dragged her out and continued to throw stones until she died.
Justice demanded that someone pay, and the police arrested four men, all of whom confessed to their guilt in this crime. No question about it. But then something totally unexpected happened. Amy Biehl’s parents came from the United States to meet their daughter’s friends and to see her killers brought to trial. They needed to feel the situation, they wanted to understand it. Peter and Edna Biehl spent a few days in South Africa, and began to discover the needs of the people there. They went home, but soon returned for a longer stay and lived with their daughter’s legacy. They came back a third time and announced some decisions. Do you know what Peter and Edna Biehl have now done? Two things: they used their resources and their connections in America to organize a Foundation to build community services for the people of Gugulethu, the very village which took their daughter’s life. And, as if that were not enough, they stood before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and pleaded for amnesty. They asked forgiveness for their daughter’s killers!
Can you believe that? Can you fathom that? That innocent parents who had already lost a child would themselves accept the costs of others’ sin? And then would plead, "Don’t let this one count?" It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? Except that that is exactly what our Father God did in Jesus Christ.
In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.
What can we say? How can we understand it? I only know to sing, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see!" I only know to sing, "What wondrous love is this, oh my soul, oh my soul, what wondrous love is this, that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul." The penalty that should have been mine doesn’t count against me! What kind of love is this? What kind of love is this? That the innocent pays the price for the guilty, the victim chooses pain? What kind of love is this?
III
Perhaps you saw on television this week the story of a mother whose daughter was murdered some twenty years ago. The killer was arrested, tried, sentenced, and imprisoned on death row in Texas. For years appeals plodded through the courts, but, in the end, he exhausted all appeals and a date for his execution was set.
This mother felt a need to see and confront her daughter’s killer. She felt a burning need to tell him what he had done to her and to her family. Somehow it was important to her that he feel the depth of her anguish. It was not easy to get that privilege, but because Texas has a victims’ mediation program, she did get some time to visit the one man she had more reason to hate than any other on the face of the earth.
The mother described herself as a Christian; so, by now, did the killer. The mother wept bitterly as she faced him and told the truth about what she felt; and he also wept. She confronted him bluntly about the price she and her family had paid, the consequences of his sin; and he too spoke of the agony in his soul for his unspeakable crime.
As the hours and days wore on, something began to happen. This mother, who had entered into these conversations with anger in her heart, began to feel a profound compassion for the prisoner who was about to die. She began to pray for him, and, by her own confession, to love him. She could not and would not change the court’s decision; he would be executed. But she could and would do something else. She forgave him. She made sure that he went out into that good night knowing that the one whom he had offended in ways too horrible to describe had forgiven him. She did not have to do this, she chose to do this. She forgave him. She did not count even this, the most terrible of all offenses, against him.
For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. .... So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
As I picked up the shards of broken glass, glumly thinking about how much a window might cost, and how many weeks of my 50-cent a week allowance would be spent in repairing the damage, I noticed Brooke and Mr. Griffith in a whispered huddle off to the side. They were exchanging some kind of confidences I was not privileged to hear. I was too embarrassed anyway, and really wanted just to melt down and disappear. I looked up, however, as both of them came toward me. Mr. Griffith said quietly, "Don’t worry about it, Joe. Just pick up the pieces and go on home. Brooke says he wants you to be around to play with all summer, and so he will pay for the window. Just clean it up and go on home."
In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Just go home. This one doesn’t count. Jesus paid it all. Be reconciled.
