Scripture Lesson: Matthew 28:16-20; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Sermon Transcript for May 18, 2008

By Pastor Bob Coleman

First Fruit Sunday – in looking at that I was thinking, “What can I say that will tie in with the campaign?” And I finally decided that we’ve said enough about the campaign. We’ve talked about it, we’ve presented it, I don’t need to say anything more than what I hope we said earlier with the singing of My Tribute and the Doxology as a thanks to God. So I thought then, “But the firsts fruit is a good theme, let me see how that might develop.” And I thought of the first fruit of love—the gift of God’s love to us. And what is the first fruit that we receive from that? This has been a strange week in a variety of ways. Sometimes I know three, four weeks ahead clearly what’s the main point, the theme, of what I believe God wants me to say out of the Scripture. Well, this week it started on Monday with one theme and by Wednesday when I met with the Worship Team it was a bit of a different theme. By Thursday it was different again; and by Friday when working with Laura and looking at some of the visuals for today it was sort of back to ground zero, back to where I should have stayed probably on Monday.

And it came because of the two scriptures that I want to share with you. One a very familiar one; it’s foundational, it’s called the commission, the statement of Jesus’ commission where at the end of the chapter in Matthew 28 Jesus is getting ready to ascend to heaven. Now he’s been walking along with and living with His disciples for three years in formal ministry and public ministry and then He faces what we call Holy Week and all the difficulties of that, His final crucifixion but not the final of His life with His resurrection, and then the post resurrection experiences. So it’s a powerful thing to be there, to be one of those disciples to see Jesus say these parting words and then to ascend to heaven. And in that is the most obvious piece which everyone seems to go to, but I want you to hear something else.

And then the other piece that’s part of the Lectionary for this week is a benediction by Paul in 2 Corinthians. And the two don’t seem to go together right at first, but the more I look at them, at least from my vantage point and I hope you’ll see that by the end. So I want to read to you now Matthew 28:16-20. Jesus is with His disciples and it starts in Verse 16. “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw Him, they worshiped Him. But some doubted.” Even after everything that’s gone on there are still people who don’t always believe. “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

Let me stop there. What most people hear is the baptizing. We’ve got that down. We can identify what that is. And almost universally within the body of Christ the phrase, “I baptize you in the name of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit” or some very close connection with those words is used. When you are baptized it is almost universal. Maybe the amount of water changes but those words are there. Go make disciples—that’s our mission thrust, offering the gospel of Jesus Christ, calling people to follow Jesus as the Messiah and to be a disciple of Jesus. All well and good, but the most difficult part of all of this is not just the entry beginning point of baptism or professing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It’s that phrase “and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you”, that is a big order. Jesus commanded many things. He commanded us to be His followers of course.

But I want to talk about just one part that seems to keep coming back and back to me again almost as if you can’t say too much about forgiveness. Some events this week, almost every week, remind me that there are people walking around with a great burden of guilt. They are not forgiven or not living like it or definitely at least not accepting forgiveness. You see, Paul in his benediction at the end of Chapter 13, 2 Corinthians…benediction means a good word and it’s his leading point, it’s his statement of goodbye. In fact, it starts off in Verse 11, “Finally, brothers, goodbye. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal. Be of one mind. Live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints send their greetings.” We jump to peace and justice. As important as they are, we want to live in peace in this world. We want to be of one mind. And those are grand banners that we can follow. But until we understand forgiveness, I don’t think Paul’s benediction is livable. And by the way, the holy kiss piece. I’m not going to ask you to turn and give a kiss to the person next to you. If you are married that’s okay; if it’s a family member that’s okay, you can do that. But this is greater than anything that you might imagine. It’s the holy kiss of forgiveness. I believe Jesus commands us to be forgiven and to forgive.

The first fruit of love! Jesus commands us to be baptized, yes, but also to teach “what I have commanded you.” And who do we teach? We teach those who are in our midst. We think about teaching children; easy to think about. We think about the confirmands a couple of weeks ago when some were baptized and all were reaffirmed and affirmed for the first time for them to make their public statement in their baptism. In fact I think we have a picture that I took on that confirmation retreat where, yes, I got them lost. I admit that. And their names, and you can’t quite see their pictures well because their names overpower but I told them to just pose in a tree and they did. And those names are the ones that we are teaching them what Jesus is commanding.

But I ask you a question today, “Are we teaching them to be forgiven? Are we teaching them to forgive?” And it doesn’t stop with just the confirmands or children; it’s all of us. Lord Herbert said, “If you can not forgive others, destroy the bridge over which he himself must pass.” Think of that. You are taking a journey. You need to cross a chasm and there is a bridge before you but because of unforgiving thoughts and feelings that you have about someone else, that bridge is now destroyed and you can not pass over it. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.” Forgiveness is the quality in a human being that separates us from all the rest of creation. We were given freedom of choice, the will, the determination to know because we wanted to the difference between right and wrong. Animals do not know that but we do. That’s the separating point. But as soon as you know what is right and what is wrong as human beings with the freedom of will and choice that we have, we tend to choose wrong. We sin. But God says, “Even before you have done so, I have forgiven you.” But some people can’t live, not live fully, without God’s forgiveness.

To preach forgiveness though is a simple task. To be able to practice forgiveness in real life is the essence of life. And it is two stages. I think a person can’t fully forgive others until they feel that sense of forgiveness on their own. So Jesus commands to us and through Paul’s words in Colossians 3:13, “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Freely, full of grace, unmerited, without question, even before as we say in our Wesleyan tradition, prevenient grace. You were forgiven even before you were born. With that powerful understanding, here we are asked to forgive as the Lord has forgiven us. Which would mean literally we are to forgive people before they even do something wrong to us. Now that’s hard! God can do it but I’ve got to allow for human beings to be who we are. And yet Vijay Kumar says, “Practicing forgiveness is the biggest boon to mankind from God, the Almighty. One can exercise this power and reach for the higher goals of life by discriminating between good and bad. Harboring ill will against one never yields positive results.” That’s a command to give as the Lord has forgiven you.

And another understanding and a way to use forgiveness is that the sins that you forgive are forgiven by God. Now that’s a powerful tool. Forgiving ourselves for past sins is an important step. Forgiving others for past sins and freeing them from that by our forgiveness. Think of that! We become God’s change agents to make a difference in somebody else’s life. I came across a story that is from another culture and I adapted it as I have a habit of doing. So I’m going to read you this story or tell you this story. It’s about a Christian who was fishing, why he was, along a river that had been swollen through heavy rains, but fishing nonetheless. And all of a sudden the water washed down a snake. Being a kind-hearted person who loved animals, he reached out to rescue that snake from the waters that were flowing past. As he picked up the snake, the snake bit him. And he threw it down. Just an obvious reaction, but he threw it down into the edge of the water and it started to wash away again. And so he grabbed him and pulled him back out and the snake bit him again. And he threw him down. And it happened three times. A passerby happened to see this all going on. He was very curious; couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. So he came up to the Christian and he said, “Why in the world are you trying to save that nasty snake? It’s bitten you three times!” The Christian gave him an answer that was even more of a confusion. He said, “Well, this poor snake is not able to let go his habit of biting me. How could I, a follower of Christ, let go of Jesus’ habit of helping even those who bite him?” Think about that! He forgave them because they didn’t know what they were doing. He forgave people even before they deserved to be forgiven. He forgave people of sins they didn’t even know they had. He forgave snakes for biting him. So, in spite of being bitten three times, he was able to practice forgiveness because compassion helped to drive him forward. The true practitioner of forgiveness never thinks of the results of the acts of what they do but remains concentrated on the goal of life and that’s to have forgiveness central to what you do.

My first response to that was “stupid Christian, pretty naïve, you don’t fool me, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. You’re not going to catch me the third time.” Until I read and found, and this is where God keeps pulling you back around and saying, “There’s something that I told you.” When Peter asked in Matthew 18, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?” How many times should I pick up that snake when he keeps biting? Up to seven times, not three, but he’ll go seven. And you know Jesus’ answer, “I tell you not seven times but seventy times seven.” Not that there is some magical number of 490, that’s not the point. It’s almost like an infinity you keep forgetting. But in our human way of thinking and our culture and our society says, “Hey, you can only go so far.” And I do believe that you can say, “No more will you do this sin to me, but I forgive you.” But when a person keeps repeating, that’s when the command of Jesus Christ becomes difficult to live by.

But Jesus is clearly saying that forgiveness is not an option in our Christian life; it is a command. In fact, the one that you know I’ll quote to you is Matthew 5:43 in the Beatitudes. “You’ve heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” Did you ever do that? If your enemy is my enemy, then I’m your friend at least as long as we have the same common enemy. “Love your neighbor but hate your enemy.” But Jesus said, “I tell you, ‘Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” In fact, a later manuscript says, “Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you.” You pick up the snake again even if it bites you.

I got an email from a friend and member of the church that asked the question, “How can we understand killing as being justified?” She said, “I can not call myself a follower of Christ if I believe killing in a war or otherwise is justified.” In the pure sense of what Jesus said, it’s better to lay down your life for someone than it is to take their life.

I came across an example of a changed life that I want to remind you of. And again it’s not that we were all so ready to do this or that we had been preparing a long time necessarily for this one particular individual that we had raised them up in our congregation. The way Michael Jones came to us a few weeks ago from Franklin College; he’d had an experience where God was transforming his life through mission work that he had gone on. Kurt Bixler recommended that he come to this church. And he showed up and listened to that sermon that Saturday evening. He worked on Sunday; that was the only time he could come. And at the end he said to me, “You were speaking directly to me.” And I said, “Well, no I can’t say I was doing that because I don’t know you, but I believe God was.” He said, “Yes, he was and I want to be baptized because I don’t want to live my old life any more.” And he admitted to me some of those things that he had been doing in his old life. And he’s struggling to make those changes. But Michael Wayne Jones is leaving to go serve in Washington, D.C. for a year. It’s going to be a hard year for him. He’s going with a new sense of hope and opportunity. But we’re going to need to support him. So I’ve got a picture that shows Michael on the left and me because he wanted to take a picture with him that he could remember this church by and he wants to be on our mailing list or the prayer list by the way of e-mail. He wants to be a part of this congregation because he just loves me and accepts me. We didn’t know what he needed but God did and he sent him this way so that we could be the congregation that he heard and he saw. At least we speak on the outside, although some of us may be carrying heavy burdens of unforgiving feelings about others, maybe someone in this church, maybe someone outside.

And, as God was preparing through this, He led me to a website. Marietta Jaeger—you may have heard of this story. 1973—I want to read her story because it is so clear the way she states it. But in 1973 Marietta Jaeger’s daughter, Susie, was abducted at the age of seven during a family camping trip in Montana. For over a year afterwards, the family knew nothing of Susie’s whereabouts. Shortly before the one year anniversary of Suzie’s disappearance, Marietta stated to the press that she wanted to speak with the person who had taken her child. On the anniversary date she received a call from a young man who taunted her by saying, “So, what do you want to talk to me about?” The kidnapper! Now note she does not know the fate of her daughter. True, she has felt great rage and anger at him. But she’s come to a point where she’s asked him to call her and you’ll hear why. During the year, Marietta struggled with that rage. But her immediate response to the young man was to ask how he was feeling since his actions must have placed a heavy burden on his soul. Her caring words disarmed him and he broke down in tears on the phone. He subsequently spoke with Marietta for over an hour revealing details about himself and the crime that ultimately allowed the FBI to solve the case. Her focus wasn’t to solve the case; it was to find her daughter, which she learned through that conversation in the later closing of the case, the little girl had been killed just two weeks following her kidnapping. She, Marietta, had let go of that anger to be able to ask for that call and to be able to ask that kind of a question instead of yelling, instead of condemning him. Now her husband couldn’t seem to let it go. He let the anger eat him up inside and at the age of 56 he died from a heart attach and bleeding ulcers. Marietta, by God’s grace, she says very clearly it was her faith in God and Jesus Christ that led her to be able to make that phone call and talk to him. And then, even though the man committed suicide shortly following, she now has gone to the gravesite of her daughter and with the mother of the man who kidnapped her. She and his mother go to visit the graves of their children. Marietta was to learn that her daughter, yes, had been killed by this man but despite the family’s tragedy she remains committed to forgiveness. And God has led her to be an ardent opponent of the death penalty. Whatever you feel about the death penalty, don’t let that become the leading piece. Hear the story of forgiveness. And she will speak very pointed when she meets with parents who have lost children in similar circumstances or other loved ones. She says, “I know what you’re feeling because I felt every bit of that. I wanted to kill him myself. But God’s grace allowed me to forgive because I understood I had been forgiven.” Only God’s peace and of one mind could bring us to that.

And I thought, “I’ve not experienced anything like that. I’ve never had anyone do that to a loved one of mine.” I thought until I just want you to know that we have a relative, a grandniece, who I was there at her father’s bedside shortly before he died at the age of 26 when this little girl was only three months old. And by their request, even though her father was in a coma and not able to respond, I baptized the little girl at his bedside. Well, the mother went through the grief and met another man and remarried and things were going well. But unfortunately the story is that the second man has now been arrested for abusing that same little girl ten years later. Somebody has a right to be angry; and I don’t question that. But as Christians we don’t have a right not to some time, some way, some how, forgive. For you see, it’s easy to preach forgiveness but it is very hard if you pick up that snake when it bites you again. We’d like to just kill the snake and get it over with.

Why Jesus seems to make it so hard is because the first fruit of love is the cleansing of our past and that’s not easy. But it also sends us on a journey that takes us down a different road, one that will be challenged and not easy again to live by. But it’s the one that gives us that sense of Paul’s closing words as a good benediction. “Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you.” And I believe that one mind and in peace is tied to forgiveness--to receive the holy kiss of forgiveness from God in the grace of Jesus Christ and then to pass on that holy kiss of forgiveness to others.

I don’t know where you are in your lives. You may have had some very hard and painful experience and I would not question you saying to me, “But you don’t understand.” No, I do not. But I do understand that Jesus says, “And I will be with you to the end of the age. By my spirit you can be forgiven and by my spirit you can forgive.” Let’s join together in prayer, “An old spiritual says, ‘Let us not practice Lord no more.’ Oh, Lord, the base of war is hatred and the base of hatred is an unforgiving feeling. Someone has done something to us and we want to get back. But let us remember that is we are devoid of forgiveness, we will also be devoid of love. Help us each as only you can to live a forgiven life and a life of forgiveness. Amen.”

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