Forgivness and reconciliation

 

Reflection Sunday 16^th August 2020 Genesis 45: 1 – 15

 

If you’ve ever seen the musical “Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat” I defy you not to start humming some of the songs as we look at our passage for scripture today.

Last Sunday’s Genesis passage introduced us to Joseph, with his brightly coloured coat, and his brothers. We learned how the brothers plotted against Joseph and sold him into slavery.

Today we’ve skipped on – towards the end of the musical if you like – and we find Joseph reunited with his brothers. The brothers have come to Egypt to seek help – there is a famine in their homeland. As you’ll see in the preceding chapters, at first, they have no idea who Joseph is. They think he is an important Egyptian official who ensures that they are given plenty of food to return home with. Though not before Joseph plays some tricks on them. Joseph hides a silver goblet in Benjamin’s sack and pretends Benjamin has stolen it to ensure Benjamin is left behind to become a slave. (See chapter 44.)

Only after all this does Joseph come clean “I am Joseph!” Genesis 45:3

At this point, it might be understandable if Joseph sought revenge on his brothers for what they did. After all he is in a position to do with his brothers what he pleases. Yet his language and demeanour show no evidence of anger. (“He wept loudly” Genesis 45:2) He sets aside his trappings of royalty and brings himself down to the level of his brothers.

Note that earlier I said, “we find Joseph reunited with his brothers”. I purposely didn’t say “reconciled” which might have been a more suitable a word. Reconciled implies I think that people have put aside their differences. And often reconciliation comes about following forgiveness or in some instances reconciliation leads to forgiveness.

You may recall that in South Africa, after the end of Apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The mandate of the commission was to bear witness to, record, and in some cases grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations, as well as offering reparation and rehabilitation to the victims. There were some remarkable stories of forgiveness following the work of the Commission.

I think it’s also worth remembering that we can be “reconciled” to a situation. Meaning we are content with it. It might not be perfect, but it is liveable with.

Here Joseph forgives. (Reconciliation will have to wait until chapter 50.) Joseph’s forgiveness comes about because he believes the brothers’ actions were part of God’s plans.

⁵ And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. ……  ⁷ But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.^{[a] 8} ‘So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. Genesis 45: 5 – 8

Joseph is exhibiting Gospel forgiveness, the Good News forgiveness we think of with Jesus. God, acting through Joseph, has ensured life rather than death. Life in the sense of the family not going hungry as opposed to death via the famine. Life in Joseph not taking revenge and putting his brothers to death. But also new life that follows forgiveness. God has used the actions of the brothers, no matter how reprehensible that action was, as a way of sustaining the life of this family.

You may know the name Corrie ten Boom. She was a remarkable woman. The ten Booms hid Jewish people in their home in the Netherlands during the Second World War. The ten Booms were betrayed and sent to a concentration camp. Only Corrie survived and after the war she developed a ministry preaching about forgiveness and reconciliation.

In her book The Hiding Place, in which she tells her story, there is a remarkable scene. It is 1947 and Corrie has been speaking at a church in Munich about forgiveness. After the talk she was approached by a man who she recognised as having been a camp guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp. (During her talk Corrie said she’d been in the camp.) The man didn’t recognise her. He explained how he’d been a guard and asked for her forgiveness.

Corrie says that when the man offered his hand she froze. Until by saying a silent prayer asking for strength to forgive.

And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”

That was not the end. Corrie – naturally – felt angry towards the man, and this anger stayed with her for some time. She wrote:

Help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks.

“Up in that church tower,” he said, “is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops.

“I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive someone, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.”

And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversation. But the force–which was my willingness in the matter–had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at last stopped altogether.

We know we are to forgive others. We pray it every time we say the Lord’s Prayer. But equally we all know it is sometimes not an easy thing to do. Maybe some of you reading this will relate to Corrie ten Boom’s story. Not the horror of a concentration camp, but in the difficulty in forgiving or being reconciled with someone who has hurt you.

If you find yourself having difficulty forgiving someone, or being reconciled, please pray about it. But equally know that once we let go of the rope of your grievances, eventually they will stop. And more over, we are all loved deeply by God and forgiven by him as his precious children.

Covidiots and sinners

 

This Reflection was produced for Sunday 12th July 2020. It looks at Romans 8: 1 - 11

I wonder what you’ve made of the photographs and TV footage of the vast crowds on the beach at Bournemouth or crowds gathered outside pubs? I have to say these images made me cross. Like many of you, we’ve had to “shield” over these last 3 months. It’s not been too bad, but it has certainly been frustrating at times. Nevertheless, we’ve done it to protect our own health and also in consideration of the NHS and other people.

No doubt those people on the beach in Bournemouth or gathered in pubs all feel justified in what they’ve done. No doubt some of them have been stuck at home for weeks. No doubt their children have been driving them to distraction. No doubt there are all manner of reasons why people felt they could do what they do, including testing their eyesight! But they’ve “sinned” haven’t they?

When I looked at the Bible passages for this Sunday, I was immediately drawn to Romans 8: 1 – 11, In particular verses 6 and 6 which, in the Contemporary English Version read:

⁵ People who are ruled by their desires think only of themselves. Everyone who is ruled by the Holy Spirit thinks about spiritual things. ⁶ If our minds are ruled by our desires, we will die. But if our minds are ruled by the Spirit, we will have life and peace. Romans 8: 5 – 6 CEV

Oh yes I thought, those words of Paul entitle me to write a stinging rebuke of a sermon to those “Covidiots” on Bournemouth beach or in pubs. (Covidiots is a phrase coined to describe the behaviour of those who appear to be unconcerned with the risk of catching Covid 19.)

But then I thought “Wait a minute. Which one of us at some point in our lives has not behaved in a way when we’ve thought only of ourselves as opposed to others? Which one of us at some point in our lives has sinned we have sinned against God or against our neighbour in thought and word and deed, through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault?” (If you feel you haven’t, I suspect you’re suffering from severe headaches as your halo is too tight!) And it’s quite possible that amongst those hundreds of thousands of people there were some Christians.

We’ve all sinned. It might not be majorly, but we all have sinned. And we know that God hates sin. And by rights, we should be punished for that sin. We should be condemned. But Paul reminds us

“… there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Romans 8:1 NIV

The key part of that verse are those three words “in Christ Jesus”. There is no condemnation from sin for those who are in Christ Jesus.

What does that little phrase “in Christ Jesus” mean?

To be in Christ Jesus is to be part of something far larger than oneself. As David M. Greenham puts it in the Feasting on the Word Bible commentary for this passage

“To be in Christ Jesus is to encounter a power astronomically greater than the sum of all the will power you have ever mustered, added to all the physical power you have ever exerted, added to all the clout you’ve ever had”.

To be in Christ Jesus, is to be swept up by the power of the Holy Spirit and to be free from the things of the flesh that bind us. In other words, to be in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit means the the things of the world, “the flesh” has no control over us. To be in Christ Jesus means we see things from Christ’s perspective not the world’s perspective.

This is good news. But it is difficult to believe. Yet it is not impossible to believe. To believe we are in Christ means that we have reoriented our lives toward a power greater than ourselves. A power greater than any in the world. (And that, Paul reminds us, is the power of death. Even that power has no control over us if we are in Christ Jesus.)

The Spirit we have in Christ Jesus can do so much more than we are able to do. On our own we are not able to get it all done; so much is left undone. By this tiny phrase “in Christ Jesus” Paul shows us we are not constrained by our own limitations or shortcomings or failings. We are not even condemned for our cruelties, our hurtful ways or our hateful actions. There is no condemnation for our sins. We are forgiven. In Christ Jesus we are free.

That is not to say we can sin without impunity. Paul reminds us that

“… those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” Romans 8:5

We are frail people. Even when we are in the Spirit we will sometimes sin in some shape or form. But we have the assurance of forgiveness if we seek it and if we are in Christ Jesus.

In 1973 a gang of bank robbers held up the Kreditbanken in Stockholm, Sweden. The police interrupted their heist, but the bank robbers proceeded to hold several bank employees hostage for six long days. When at last they were rescued these kidnap victims, who had been terrorized and abused by their captors, stunned the authorities by demonstrating considerable emotional attachment to their victimizers. Swedish criminologist Nils Bejrot termed what had happened as Stockholm syndrome.

Since 1973 Stockholm Syndrome - a captive showing loyalty and concern for the captor — has been repeated and recognised thousands of times. Including in domestic abuse cases. The captives get their own identity so wrapped up in that of their captors that no matter how bad their reality, it seems better than facing the fear of an unknown, undefined future.

One of the dominant sicknesses facing our world today is a kind of cultural "Stockholm Syndrome," blindly defending and claiming as good for ourselves the very things that keep us captive. Whether it is not caring for our neighbour, lying, cheating, or whatever.

It is only recognition of being held captive by sin and the need to be freed from sin by Christ Jesus that can help us. Whether we’re Covidiots, or sinners, or both!

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;
Alive in Him, my living head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th’eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.

You'll be surprised who God lets into heaven .....

This blog is adapated from a sermon preached on Sunday 14th April 2013 at St Andrews Methodist Church Swindon.

One of the passages of scripture for use this Sunday is John 21: 1 – 19. In this passage we hear of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples while they are fishing on the Sea of Tiberius. The passage is sometimes referred to as the epilogue to John’s Gospel. And, if you’re interested, it is thought by some that it was added by another writer after John. The reason for this is that John 20:31 suggests the end of the book:

31 But these are written that you may believe[a] that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

I’m not too hung up about that. What I’m more interested in is the truths contains in John 21. And for me the most important part of the epilogue comes with Christ asking Peter three times if Peter loves him. When we hear this, we recall Christ’ prediction that Peter would deny him three times and the sad scene where the prediction comes to fruition.

It would be so easy to think only of Peter’s unfaithfulness. But the epilogue reminds us, that far more important than Peter’s denials, is the grace of Christ. The willingness to forgive and then to entrust such an important ministry to Peter – a man whose life so far has been marked by impetuosity and denial that shows the power of grace.

The grace expressed so famously in John Newton’s hymn “Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me.”

It is Christ’s grace, so vividly expressed in this passage of scripture, that for me is the key to this passage. The grace that forgives Peter. The grace that forgave John Newton his sins. The grace that forgives you and me.

I think it is helpful to think of a definition of grace

Grace in Christianity is the free and unmerited favour of God as shown in the salvation of sinners and the bestowing of blessings. It is God's gift of salvation granted to sinners for their salvation.

And it is useful to hear Paul’s words

Ephesians 2:8-9

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.


It may have escaped your attention, but last week Margaret Thatcher died. For the most part the press, the TV and the radio were all falling over themselves to be complimentary about her.

You know me well enough by now to know that I am not a fan of Margaret Thatcher and all she stood for. And I find I cannot agree with David Cameron’s comment that

"Margaret Thatcher didn’t just lead our country – she saved our country."

And according to Ian Duncan Smith she “changed Britain for the better.”

I am not denying that when she came to power this country needed some changes. But I wish I could take David Cameron, Ian Duncan Smith and all the others that have made a saint out of Margaret Thatcher to the Valleys I grew up in and show them what the towns and villages were like before Thatcher and since Thatcher.

I could have a real rant. But I am not going to!

Any criticism of Mrs Thatcher was few and far between and tucked away in the newspapers. Glenda Jackson’s speech in the House of Commons the other day was given coverage.

Given the way most of the press idolised her, it is perhaps inevitable that the only criticisms given publicity was those from the “looney left” as The Sun would put it. People such as George Gallaway who was quoted as saying that he hoped she would burn in hell’s fires. (I make no comment about her being cremated!) But the burning in hell’s fires comment is interesting, for it suggests in our terms a final judgment of God with punishment if needs be.

None of us know how we are judged by God. I know many Christians (let alone non-Christians) find the idea of God sitting in judgment a difficult concept. All I can say to that is we have to look at Jesus’ teachings to form the idea that God does judge. In the famous passage in Matthew 25 where Jesus speaks of the sheep and the goats, Jesus makes it clear there will be some kind of judgment:

44 ‘They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or ill or in prison, and did not help you?”
45 ‘He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”
46 ‘Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.’

And it is so tempting when we hear those verses and think “Yes! Thatcher’s off to somewhere warmer!”

It is so tempting to think that someone we dislike will get their comeuppance. That they will stand before God on the day of judgment and God will send them to the hellfires. But there is small obstacle to thinking this way – Grace.

I don’t know of course what Margaret Thatcher’s beliefs were. We’ve been reminded over the last week, in case we didn’t know, that she was raised in a Methodist household. She was married in a Methodist church – Wesley’s Chapel in London and, so I’ve been told, Mark and Carol Thatcher were baptised there. But she seems to have long ago given up her Methodist connections and had become an Anglican. Whether she practised as an Anglican and whether she was in fact a Christian – the two don’t always go together – I can’t tell you.

(As Tony Benn once remarked “There are some Christians in the Church of England just as there are some socialists in the Labour Party.”)

But we’ll assume she did profess to being a Christian. And, assuming once again she was, then grace plays a
part. For grace can redeem sinners and provide salvation. And yes I am saying she was a sinner. But then again aren’t we all?
So my friends don’t be surprised that when we arrive in heaven we find Mrs Thatcher is there. As Desmond Tutu once said:

“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”

And God’s standards are quite low because of grace.

However, I believe that there is a price to be paid for receiving God’s grace and that is repentance.

Going back to our scripture for a moment, it seems to me that implicit in Simon Peter’s reaction to Jesus, is a request by Peter to be forgiven and a statement of saying sorry. All this it seems to me is bundled up with Simon Peter saying that he loves Jesus. So grace is bestowed following this request for forgiveness.

And most Christian teachings would uphold that view. Forgiveness through grace comes about following repentance. However, can forgiveness through grace come without repentance? Or without a change of heart?

The German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a book called “Discipleship”. And one of the most quoted parts of the book deals with the distinction which Bonhoeffer makes between "cheap" and "costly" grace. But what is "cheap" grace? In Bonhoeffer's words:

"cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ."

Or, even more clearly, cheap grace is to hear the gospel preached as follows:

"Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness."

The main defect of such a proclamation is that it contains no demand for discipleship. That is living the life of a disciple of Jesus. And discipleship means saying sorry. It means a change of life.

In contrast to cheap grace is costly grace. Bonhoeffer said:

"costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." "

The forgiveness is there, the grace is there, but it comes with the person who has been forgiven becoming a true disciple.
I am of the view that grace should be costly. Grace should be received and should then mean becoming a true follower of Jesus. Of wanting to live a life of discipleship. Of wanting to live by the values of God’s kingdom. Not just accepting the gift and do nothing in return.

For Peter, Christ’s grace was costly. Peter ultimately gave his life for his Lord. Christ’s grace was costly for Paul. Christ’s grace was costly for all the disciples. Grace shouldn’t come cheap.

In his book, Remember Who You Are, William H. Willimon of Duke University says that he recalls one thing his mother always told him whenever he left the house to go on a date during his high school days. As he left the house, she would stand at the front door and call after him, "Will, don't forget who you are."

We know what Mrs Willimon meant, don't we? She didn't think Will was in danger of forgetting his name and street address. But she knew that, alone on a date, or in the midst of some party, or while joined by friends, he might forget who he was. She knew that sometimes all of us are tempted to answer to some alien name and to be who we are not. "Don't forget who you are," was the maternal benediction.

We are often told that Margaret Hilda Roberts was raised in a strict Methodist household. Only God will know whether Margaret Hilda Roberts forgot who she was. And only she and God know whether his grace has been afforded to her.