February 6, 2005

Forgiveness

So how many of you will be watching the Super Bowl tonight? When you watch the game, take a glance at the offensive linemen. The average offensive lineman in the NFL now weighs more than 300 pounds. And that’s just the average. They have linemen in pro football now who are closing in on 400 pounds. Now I really shouldn’t be criticizing anybody else for their weight, but these guys are just PHAT, fat. When I was a kid, pro football linemen would average maybe 220 pounds. Even when the Steelers won Super Bowls back in the 1970s, 250 pounds was considered immense. In fact, I remember in high school we had a couple kids on the football team who weighed around 220, and they both got football scholarships to Notre Dame. Now 220 pounds at Notre Dame will qualify you to be the water boy.

You’re probably wondering if I have a point, and I certainly do. With the growth of girth going past 300 pounds, 350 pounds, even 400 pounds, doctors are seeing an equal growth in the health problems these linemen are fighting. First of all, their joints are giving out quickly. The Steelers lost two starting linemen this year with knee problems. The human knee just wasn’t designed to support all that weight, especially when other 300 pounders are beating on you.

But that’s just the most obvious problem. Doctors are also seeing more and more pro football players with adult onset diabetes, kidney problems, and especially high blood pressure.

A couple summers ago, a pro football player collapsed and died during summer practice. He was up around 350 pounds. In fact, just the other day I read a scary quote from a doctor who treats pro football players. He said: “It won’t be long until a player has a stroke and dies during a game.”

That’s how much damage these players are doing to their hearts by carrying around this extra weight. But some people would say, “They make a lot of money, if they want to take the risk, that’s up to them.” Okay, I can understand why you might say that. But what’s our excuse?

I can hear you already, “What do you mean, pastor? Who among us carries around that kind of weight?”

I can tell you honestly, there’s hardly a soul among us who is not carrying excess weight around the heart. I’m talking about the need for forgiveness. Whether it’s bitterness or resentment or the pain of unresolved hurt, people of all ages, young, old and in between, men and women, rich and poor are lugging around tons of excess weight because they haven’t learned to forgive.

And that emotional flab wraps itself around the heart and constricts it, squeezes it, crushes it.

Here is perhaps the most important thing we can learn from scripture about our own mental and emotional, maybe even our physical health: love can’t flow from a heart that’s carrying excess weight.

There’s no question that forgiveness is THE central relational issue in the Bible. We have to learn to forgive others in order to receive God’s forgiveness. Now scripture tells us that God’s grace and mercy and salvation are unconditional. This is absolutely true in the sense that there is no way to earn God’s grace or love; there are no conditions, we don’t have to please God before his love flows upon us.

Nevertheless, scripture tells us that God expects us to forgive one another even as we are forgiven.

It’s as if God made our hearts so that if we keep them closed up tight and refuse to forgive others, they won’t be open to receive forgiveness. That’s the hidden message when Jesus says, “If you have anything against your brother, leave your gift at the altar and go and reconcile with him first.” Or when he says in today’s gospel reading, “Forgive and you will be forgiven.” Or in the prayer we will share later, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.”

If I get mad and rip out the water pipes to deny my brother a drink, guess what, gang? I can’t drink either. Grace gushes out of God’s heart all the time, but if I can’t take it into my heart, it does me no good at all.

So what are some of the different kinds of excess weight that people carry around, weight that burdens them and makes their life miserable?

The first one is revenge. The desire for revenge is the number one negative emotion that tells us we are living in a fallen world. Ever since Cain killed Abel, people have been eager to even the score. Joe Kennedy, father of President Kennedy, used to have a favorite saying, “Don’t get mad, get even.” The Godfather movies are all about how a thirst for revenge destroys Michael Corleone; it takes away his humanity, then his wife, and finally his daughter’s life.

But one of the greatest stories about forgiveness triumphing over revenge is found in the Book of Genesis.

The story of Joseph and his brothers is one of my favorite Bible tales, because it gives us hope that forgiveness can win out over vengeance, and it shows how God is working to bring good even out of misery. And who was ever more miserable, had been done more wrong than Joseph, who was sold into slavery into Egypt. As if that weren’t enough, he was falsely accused, thrown into jail and left to rot in jail even after he helped one of his fellow inmates win parole.

But God rescued Joseph and put him in position to take revenge on his brothers when they came to Egypt looking for food. Did you catch that? God put Joseph in position to take revenge. That’s one of God’s favorite tactics to make us grow—he puts us at a crossroads and tells us, “Choose.”

But he also sends us grace to help us make the right choice. How could Joseph forgive his brothers? He tells them how, in the passage from Genesis. Listen to Joseph’s four direct references to God: “Do not be distressed. God sent me ahead of you.” “God sent me ahead of you to preserve a remnant.” “You did not send me here, God did.” “Tell Father that God made me Lord over Egypt.”

Joseph felt strongly that God was in control of his life. Armed with that assurance, Joseph was able to forgive his brothers.

My brothers and sisters, God knows what has happened in our lives. God knows the pain we have received and endured. And he is working it out for good.

One of my favorite verses from the Bible applies here: Romans 8:20—“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” If that is the case, there is no longer any need to hold onto the hurt. We can release it to God.

A second heavy weight that people carry around is a need for power over others. Note that Joseph’s brothers had not asked for forgiveness, but Joseph was ready to forgive them anyway. Sometimes people insist “I won’t forgive him until he comes crawling on his hands and knees begging for forgiveness.” That’s not forgiveness. That’s a power trip. Joseph modeled the proper spirit of forgiveness for us: His heart had been working on forgiving his brothers for a long time.

Now that he is in position to take his revenge, he is able to comfort and love them. He asks them to come closer—not just proximity, but relationally, emotionally. He says don’t be distressed or angry. What’s past is past. Now I’m ready to forgive you, and not just forgive you, I’ll feed you and give you a new home.

You see, forgiveness is not an instant thing, it’s a process. God has to work on us, grow us until we’re ready to forgive. And when the time is right, he asks us to give up our right to vengeance. And I use that word, “right” deliberately. Sometimes we’ve been hurt so bad that any neutral observer would call it just to take revenge. We have a right to return pain for pain.

But God’s not a neutral observer. He wants to heal us, and he can’t, as long as we’re ripping the wound open fresh all the time. Jesus said “Pray for those who have hurt you. Return good for evil.” It’s not easy, but it just might release a lot of pain that’s still lurking inside you.

And there’s a third kind of heavy weight that people carry around, especially people getting into their later years, and that’s bitterness. Those who are bitter about past insults, past problems and differences are literally poisoning their own lives. In the letter to the Hebrews it reads, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”

Here’s how Charles Swindoll describes it: “The causes and effects of bitterness seep into the basement of our lives like runoff from a broken sewer pipe. Every form of ugliness begins to float to the surface of those murky waters—prejudice, profanity, suspicion, hate, cruelty and cynicism. There’s no torment like the inner torment of bitterness, which is the byproduct of an unforgiving spirit. It refuses to be soothed, it refuses to be healed, it refuses to forget. There’s no prison more damaging than the bars of bitterness that won’t let the battle end.”

Nobody likes a bitter taste in their mouth, but plenty of people have lived with a bitter heart for so long they don’t even recognize it as a bad taste any more. It’s what Paul was trying to tell the Ephesians in his letter: “Don’t be like the pagans, but take up Christ’s way of living. All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.”

How many of you here are gardeners? When you get weeds in your garden, you’ve got three options: you can start pulling them out when they’re small, you wait until they get rooted in deep or you can ignore them. The first option is easiest, but takes constant vigilance; the second is much harder and takes a lot of work, and the third? Well, you won’t get many vegetables out of your garden if you ignore the weeds that are choking out the good plants.

Same thing with bitterness. It’s not easy to get rid of once it’s taken root, but ignoring bitterness means that your life will bear little good fruit.

So what do we do about some of these heavy burdens? How do we cut down on some of this flab around our hearts? Before I close today I just want to suggest some practical steps to try to drop a couple of these useless pounds:

1—Confess your bitterness before God. Let’s face it, God already knows how you feel. But it might be that you don’t know the full depth of your own feelings. Whoever you resent, whoever brings anger to the surface, tell God about it. We need to acknowledge that bitterness is sinful and repent.

2—Pray for those who have hurt you. Ask God to bless them. Why? Because when you pray for someone you resent, it can’t help but soften your own heart.

3—Find a way to be kind towards those you resent, or if that’s not possible, just do random acts of kindness. Act the way you wish you felt. Forgiveness begins when we can see each other the way we truly are—just flawed and broken people, and yet somehow beautiful in God’s sight. Remember the words of the old spiritual, “Not my brother, not my sister, it’s me, Lord, standing in the need of prayer.”

4—Now you’re ready to release the bitterness through forgiveness. Remember, being bitter isn’t destroying your enemy, it’s destroying you.  Forgiveness is like treating a snakebite—you’ve got to draw the poison away from the wound. You’ll still remember the bite, but you won’t let the poison kill you.

5—Remember what God has done for you. Scripture tells us that as far as the east is from the west, that’s how far God has buried our sins in the past. Look at the example of Christ. He forgave us long before we ever apologized. Even while we were sinners, Christ died for us. He doesn’t demand vengeance, he forgives us even when we don’t deserve it. And that’s exactly what we’re supposed to do—forgive your enemies, even when they don’t deserve it. And never forget that forgiving others is part of God’s plan for your life.

On April 18, 1942, Jacob DeShazer was one of 16 American pilots who flew their B-25 bombers off the aircraft carrier Hornet. Their mission was strictly vengeance, no real military value at all. They were to fly to Japan, bomb the enemy and continue to China. Their bombs would do little damage, but it would be a blow to the enemy and a morale lift at home. The planes did drop their bombs on Japan and headed to China, but no radio signal was received to guide them to safety. It grew dark, they ran out of gas, barely reached the Chinese coast and DeShazer had to bail out of his plane.

Once on the ground, he had no idea where to go and wandered aimlessly until the Japanese captured him. The next three years brought little but torture and agony. He was taken to Nanking, where he thought he would be executed. Instead, they tortured him, pouring water down his nose. Then he was taken to Shanghai for more torture. Months and months passed before he was able to get his hands on a Bible, and he read it voraciously. In 1944 he entered into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. After the war he had trouble forgiving, he needed to process a lot of pain, a lot of bitterness, but he did it, and in 1948 he returned to Japan as a missionary.

And in 1950 DeShazer was responsible for the conversion of Mitsuo Fuchida to Christianity. Who is that? He was the commander of the 350 planes that attacked Pearl Harbor. God had a plan for Jacob DeShazer, even in his prison camp struggles. He came to Christ through those experiences. But DeShazer had to see that God had a plan, just like Joseph saw that God had a plan in ancient Egypt, before he could forgive.

My dear brothers and sisters, I don’t know who you might need to forgive, but I know that the human heart is fragile, easy to hurt, even break. It’s easy to develop these extra layers of useless weight that keep us from enjoying life as God meant us to enjoy it. We have a choice today, we can be bitter, or we can get better. If today we can find within our souls the generosity of spirit to give up revenge, the need for power over others or just ease the resentment against others, if we can take even one step towards true forgiveness, this will truly be a super Sunday.