Pentecost 16 Sept 28, 1014. Saying Yes While Living No

+Saying Yes while Living No. That’s how my favorite biblical commentators, known as “Two Bubbas and a Bible,” refer to the parable at the end of today’s gospel—the parable of the two sons.
A man had two sons---he asks them both to go work in the vineyard. The first says, “sure Dad, I’ll head right over,” and then doesn’t go at all. The second says, ”no way, Pops, I’ve got better things to do,” but then proceeds to have a change of heart and goes to work. The first son said yes and lived no, the second son said no, but lived yes.
Jesus asks, which of the sons did the will of his parent?
Of course it’s son #2 --even though he’d said no, he went and did the work, which is what his father wanted.
So, just why did this story infuriate the temple authorities?
Well, maybe they saw way too much of themselves in the first son and not nearly enough in the second.
You see, even though Jesus tells this story in response to his authority being questioned, he’s really telling it to call them out on their hypocrisy and corruption.
  Jesus turns the tables on their so-called righteous indignation by questioning their motives:
• Are they protecting the faith, or are they protecting their status?
• Are they protecting the honor of the temple, or are they protecting their role of prestige in the temple?
• Are they living their faith or are they just spewing their faith?
• Are they living a life of yes, or are they simply saying yes, and living no?
Jesus convicts them with his words and, if we’re honest, he convicts us, too.
But before we shut our ears and close our hearts to this message, hear me out.
It’s certainly easy to point fingers at the hypocrisy of others--our church and political leaders, our sports heroes and matinee idols, our bosses and our neighbors who say yes while most definitely living no. That’s easy.
What’s not so easy, and a whole lot more uncomfortable is to list all the ways we, ourselves, say yes, but live no. But to simply beat ourselves up and say how bad it is that we say yes and live no far more often than we should is, to me, a cop-out. We can say yes we stink, we should do better blah blah blah and then just go on living life as we have—that, in many respects is the easy way out.
And I don’t want to take the easy way out, I’d rather take the tough way in. You see it’s the defeatist attitude of beating ourselves up by admitting that we say yes and live no more often than not that keeps us stuck.
And that, in my opinion, is a major contributor to the decrease in church attendance across the globe.
Too many of us think that because we’ve had times in our life where we’ve said yes, but lived no—that we aren’t welcome, that there is no room for us at the table of our Lord, in a community of faith-- that “true believers” are those who have always, or at least most of the time, said yes and lived yes. That the only way to take a seat in the kingdom of God, in the fellowship of Christ, in a pew at Good Shepherd, is to clean up our acts get all spiffy and bright and “perfect” BEFORE coming to church. That’s completely backwards!
Why do we feel the need to pull ourselves together BEFORE showing up in a place designed to accept our brokenness,  a place designed to heal our hurts,  a place designed to forgive, heal, and renew?
It’s like what my mother always did before a cleaning lady came---she cleaned!!!
It’s nuts!
We’re way too hard on ourselves, assuming that the faith of “true believers” is unshakeable… unwavering.
Thinking that if we say we believe in God, we can’t ever question God.
Thinking that if we say we “love everyone, always no exceptions” that we can’t ever dislike or disagree with another.
Thinking that we can’t volunteer to help out on the altar or in the choir or in Sunday School or the food pantry because we don’t know enough or aren’t faithful enough or aren’t good enough.
The temple authorities don’t like that Jesus eats with prostitutes and tax collectors. The temple authorities want everything to look nice and tidy and bright; they’re way more interested in how things look,  rather than how things really are.
The kingdom of God hereon earth, isn’t nice and tidy and bright, the kingdom of God is full of people like you and me, people who try our best but sometimes fail, people like you and me who sometimes say no, but then find a way to live yes, people like us who make mistakes but get up and try again.
Living into the yes isn’t a place of perfect people, it’s a place of perfect grace.
So perhaps we’ve all “said yes and lived no” more than we want to admit. The good news is, God doesn’t care about the mistakes we’ve made, God cares about the progress we’ve made.
Like the parent in today’s parable, God cares a whole lot more about what we do and how we live, rather than what we say and how we look, because God doesn’t keep score, God cheers us on.+

***Two Bubbas and a Bible: The Lectionary Lab for Sunday September 28, 2014

Pentecost 14 Yr A Sept. 14 Forgiving is Fundamental

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who’ve sinned against us.
No matter how you slice it, Forgiveness IS Fundamental.
Fundamental to our health, fundamental to our faith, fundamental to our life.
Welcome to Forgiveness is Fundamental Sunday.
Many of us are probably like Peter in today’s Gospel, we know that forgiveness is important, that it is something we should do as often as we can but are a little off put by Jesus’ directive to forgive 7 times 70 …to forgive always, forever, everyone and everything, no exceptions… Because that’s what he’s really saying in today’s parable.
We have to forgive everyone and everything, always.
Why?
Because that’s exactly what God does for us.
God forgives us our trespasses, our debts and our sins every single day, every single time, always.

Forgiveness is Fundamental.
To God and to us.
We must forgive all the betrayals and hurts of our lives. All of them…  from the most heneious of crimes to the most biting of slights.
Not just the ones we know we SHOULD forgive.
Not just the ones we want to forgive.
Not just the ones anyone would forgive.
All of them.
Each time. Every day.
No exceptions.
Wow.

Think about it
how in the world can a rape victim forgive her rapist;
how in the world can the people of Ferguson MO forgive the police department;
how in the world can those who lost loved ones in the twin towers, forgive Al Quaeda;
how in the world can a child forgive the abuse of a parent;
how in the world can a spouse forgive infidelity;
how in the world can an employee forgive an unjust dismissal;
how in the world can we forgive an institution like the church when it fails to live as it teaches?
How in the world can we, let alone God, forgive such things?
It’s important to remember this:
forgiving is not condoning a horrid act.
Forgiving is not endorsing abuse
Forgiving is not excusing hate.
Forgiving isn’t erasing the fact, forgiveness is releasing the pain.
And doing that, releasing the pain, the betrayal, the horror is what sets us free. And being set free, is good, right?
Sure, but just because it’s good for us, doesn’t mean it comes easily to us. Sometimes it seems impossible to forgive, sometimes it feels impossible to forgive.
But what our faith teaches us, what our God models for us is this:
Forgiveness is possible, forgiveness is necessary and forgiveness is healing.
Author Sheila Cassidy puts it this way:
I would never say to someone ‘you must forgive’. I can only say: ‘However much we have been wronged, however justified [our] hatred [may feel], if we cherish it, it will poison us……[therefore] We must pray for the power to forgive, for it is in forgiving that we are healed.
When we hold onto our hurts, our betrayals and our pain, we poison ourselves. Clinging to the resentments, bitterness and rage doesn’t hurt the one who betrayed us, it hurts US.
It doesn’t keep the other person from living a full, happy and free life, it keeps us from living a full happy and free life.
Not forgiving sickens us.
Forgiving heals us.
But. As I said, that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Forgiving others is hard and it’s not for the feint of heart.

For five years I’ve had a horrible time forgiving my brother in law Mark for not telling me that my sister Anne had had a stroke.
 For two days I was unable to reach her and for two days I just knew that something must be wrong, but for two days, while she was in ICU,she was  unaware of who she was, unaware that she was married with children, unaware that she had sisters.
 Mark didn’t tell me. For two days she was lost and so was I.
As you can tell, the memory of this still gets to me. It was scary….for Anne, for Mark, for me.
Forgiving Mark has been one of the most difficult things I’ve ever tried to do. Some days are better than others….but a bad day is when I am so weighed down by anger, resentment, bitterness and hurt that I can’t get out of my own way.
On those days, my inability to forgive him, poisons me.



Holding on to hurts, hurts.
So, what can we do to shake free of the shroud of resentment and anger that blocks our way to forgiveness?
Well, first we have to admit that forgiveness is possible. Sure, at times I may not know how to forgive Mark, but I sure as heck know that forgiveness is possible. After all, I am forgiven every single day of my life by the all encompassing never ending love of God. A love that forgives and absolves me all my debts, all my errors, all my sin, all the time, every time, no exceptions.
By accepting the forgiveness granted to us by God, we learn how to forgive others.
To fully forgive Mark I must admit, accept and fully receive God’s forgiveness.
Because it’s only in being forgiven that we can truly and fully and completely forgive.
We must embrace being forgiven before we can forgive.


Listen closely to this section of the Lord’s Prayer:
“forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Do you see the connection?

Being forgiven and forgiving are relational.
The prayer doesn’t say Forgive us our sins so that then we’ll be able to forgive others. No, the prayer says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
It’s one fluid motion, like a beautiful dance----as we are forgiven we forgive….as we are forgiven we forgive.
As we are forgiven, we forgive.
It’s fundamental my friends: forgiving, forgiven, forgiving, forgiven.
What a dance, what a faith, what a God.
Amen.