An elderly woman walked into the local country church. A friendly usher greeted her at the door and helped her up the flight of steps.
"Where would you like to sit?" he asked.
"The front row please," she answered.
"You really don’t want to do that," the usher said. "The pastor is really boring."
"Do you happen to know who I am?" asked the woman.
"No," said the usher.
"I’m the pastor’s mother," she replied indignantly.
"Do you know who I am?" the usher asked.
"No," she said.
"Good."
We all make mistakes, but none of us like to be caught making those mistakes!
Several years ago, my then-13-year-old son came home from school one day and asked me to cut his hair.
Now I know a no-win situation when I see one. I told him there was no way I was going to cut his hair. I knew the slightest problem with the hair cut would lead to him blaming me for days on end.
My son had suddenly realized he had the world’s ugliest hair cut. I could have told him that. In fact, I think I had tried to on several occasions. He looked like someone had put a bowl on top of his head and shaved the lower part of his head – think Moe from the Three Stooges. That was my son.
Now all of a sudden he wanted a military hair cut. You know the style, almost bald headed. And for some reason he wanted to save money and he wanted me to take my clippers that I occasionally use for trimming my beard, and shave his head.
Well, as I said, I know trouble when it comes knocking at the door and I refused to be involved at all. So my son took my clippers and started giving himself a hair cut.
I made him go outside in the back yard so he wouldn’t make a mess in the house and I watched him from the safety of the den.
Zzzzzzzzzz. Right down the ear line.
Zzzzzzzzzz. Moving up to the center.
Zzzzzzzzzz. Trimming around the forehead.
So far, so good.
Zzzzz – fffttttt. Suddenly there was no sound at all.
My trimmers, which were rechargeable, had died on him
He no longer looked like Moe from the Three Stooges, but more like an alien from another world. He was almost completely bald except for a clump of hair sticking out of the left side of his head.
In a panic he ran inside and asked me how long it took to recharge the clippers.
“Well son,” I said, “I usually leave it plugged up overnight.”
I had to drive him to the nearest barber for emergency attention. We went in and the barber looked at my son and said, “What in the world happened to you.”
Without a moment’s hesitation my son looked this man in the eye and said, “My Dad tried to give me a haircut.”
We all hate to admit mistakes!
And the Apostle John addresses this human quality in today’s passage when he says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
Most of us find it hard to admit that we have sinned or made any mistakes at all.
If a barber makes a mistake, he calls it a new hairstyle.
If your boss makes a mistake, it’s not his mistake — it’s your mistake.
If a driver makes a mistake, it’s probably an accident.
But if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
1. Be honest with yourself.
We need honesty in our lives, which among other things means we need to be honest with ourselves.
How many of us, if a lump were felt on the breast, or a mole began to look suspicious, or we felt a pain in our chest would ignore it?
Well, actually a lot of people ignore those health signs. They do nothing about them. They deny any possibility that they could be sick.
So what happens? Often the lump grows to a cancer that cannot be treated. The chest pains stop with a fatal heart attack.
But healthy people know that the thing to do is not to deny these warning signs, but to attend to them. Address them. Be honest with yourself. Take care of your physical health.
You cannot take care of your spiritual health if you deny you have any problems.
There are things in your life that separate you from God and from one another. If we say they are not there, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
The hatred you feel for someone you see every day.
The lies you tell.
The theft of something that does not belong to you.
The lust in your heart, or the affair you have behind the back of your spouse.
The racism.
The selfishness.
Be honest with yourself. We need to address these mistakes, errors and sins if we are to be spiritually healthy. We need to be honest with ourselves.
2. Be honest with God.
But that is just the fist step in the right direction.
If we have a pain in our chest and admit that to ourselves – “Yes I have chest pains and there is something wrong with my physical health,” and that is all we do, then we haven’t gone far enough.
We need to go to the doctor and say, “I have chest pains, there is something wrong with my physical health.”
If we admit there are sins in our lives that is good, but the next step is to be honest to God – Go to God and say, “I have sinned, there is something wrong with my spiritual health.”
Being honest with ourselves is one thing, but confessing our sins to God is another.
It is hard enough to admit our mistakes to ourselves – but to admit them to anyone else, even God, is difficult.
In The Essential Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, the cartoon character Calvin says to his tiger friend, Hobbes, "I feel bad that I called Susie names and hurt her feelings. I’m sorry I did it."
"Maybe you should apologize to her," the tiger suggests.
Calvin ponders this for a moment and replies, "I keep hoping there’s a less obvious solution."
When we want to restore our relationship with God, we need to remember that he has a liking for the obvious solution. Confession! An apology to Him!
According to legend, Frederick the Great, who was a king back in the 18th Century, was conducting an inspection of a prison in Berlin. Most prisoners begged the king for mercy, protesting their innocence, but one man stayed silent. Frederick asked the man what crime he had been accused of, and whether he was guilty of it.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the man replied humbly. “I’m a thief, and I deserve my punishment.”
Frederick reportedly summoned the warden of the prison and ordered him to release the guilty man at once. “I will not have him kept in this prison, where he will corrupt all of its innocent occupants.”
We are only out of prison when we confess and acknowledge that we are not innocent.
But it is our usual human nature to refuse to admit that we have done anything wrong. We say we have no sin – which means, we deceive ourselves.
We need to do the obvious thing – admit to ourselves, and to God.
I read an article in Time magazine not long ago that said that many medical centers are now encouraging their doctors to apologize for major medical errors — as a tactic for heading off lawsuits.
That’s big news! With malpractice insurance costing some doctors as much as $200,000 a year and with so many lawsuits filed every year, the long-standing advice from insurers and hospital lawyers has been that doctors should never apologize or admit fault. The fear was that to do so would spark even more lawsuits or give ammunition to plaintiffs.
This shift to admitting mistakes and apologizing can be traced back to a 1999 study of a Veterans Affairs Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. After losing two big lawsuits, the hospital ruled that its staff should disclose every medical mistake. Staff members began apologizing to harmed patients and their families, and even discussing with the victims ways to prevent future errors.
After putting that policy into effect, the hospital discovered that its court-ordered payouts dropped significantly. Many patients who had grounds to sue either chose not to or settled out of court for lesser amounts than they would likely have received if they had gone to trial.
It is human to think we are better off if we admit no wrong doing, but reality is that admission and apology is a healing process.
God is waiting for us to apologize. God is waiting for us to confess our sins.
John Alexander wrote in a magazine a few years ago, “Sin is the best news there is. Because with sin there’s a way out. You can’t repent of confusion or psychological flaws inflicted by your parents - you’re stuck with them. But you can repent of sin. Sin and repentance are the only grounds for hope and joy, the grounds for reconciled, joyful relationships.” (John Alexander, quoted in Student Leadership Journal, Fall 2000, 23.)
It’s time to be honest to God.
3. Time for a change.
But confession is not the last step.
Imagine a husband and wife are driving in a car and she says “Honey, the map says to turn left at the light.” And then by mistake he turns right.
Simple mistake.
But now imagine the husband saying, “I know I turned the wrong direction, but I think if we stay on this road, it’ll be a short cut!”
Wrong.
The driver needs to make a U-Turn.
Which is what repentance is.
Admitting a mistake is not enough. You have to turn around and go the right direction.
That is essentially what the word “repent” means in Scripture. Turn around. Turn away from sin, and turn toward God. Turn from going in one direction, and turn into the correct direction.
Several years ago the Peanuts comic strip had Lucy and Charlie Brown practicing football.
Lucy would hold the ball for Charlie’s placekicking and then Charlie would kick the ball. But every time Lucy had ever held the ball for Charlie, he would approach the ball and kick with all his might. At the precise moment of the point of no return, Lucy would pick up the ball and Charlie would kick and his momentum unchecked by the ball, which was not there to kick, would cause him to fall flat on his back.
This was a running joke in the comic strips, and one day, one particular strip opened with Lucy holding the ball, but Charlie Brown would not kick the ball.
Lucy begged him to kick the ball. But Charlie Brown said, "Every time I try to kick the ball you remove it and I fall on my back."
They went back and forth for the longest time and finally Lucy broke down in tears and admitted, "Charlie Brown I have been so terrible to you over the years, picking up the football like I have. I have played so many mean tricks on you, but I’ve seen the error of my ways! I’ve seen the hurt look in your eyes when I’ve deceived you. I’ve been wrong, so wrong. Won’t you give a poor penitent girl another chance?"
Charlie Brown was moved by her display of grief and responded to her, "Of course, I’ll give you another chance."
He stepped back as she held the ball, and he ran. At the last moment, Lucy picked up the ball and Charlie Brown fell flat on his back. Lucy’s last words were, "Recognizing your faults and actually changing your ways are two different things, Charlie Brown!"
It is time for us to be honest to God – and more than this, it is time for us to change our ways -- to turn our lives back toward Godly ways.
Copyright 2005, The Rev. Dr. Maynard Pittendreigh
All rights reserved.
Sermons are available online and can be found by visiting www.Pittendreigh.com
