From Judgement to Forgiveness
Luke 6: 27-38
March 1, 1992
Let me start by asking all of you a question. Aside from the fact that many of these people have contributed to human progress, what do the following have in common: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, David, king of Israel, John F Kennedy period Paul Tillich the theologian, Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, and Martin Luther King junior, the civil rights leader?
Some of you have the answer period if I had put Bill Clinton’s name on that list, most of you probably would have guessed.
What is the common thread? Each of those people has published the allegation that they had affairs with women to whom they were not married.
And why do I bring it up today? It is because the once unmentionable is now unavoidable? Partially. But more than that, in the last few years, we as a nation have been engrossed in digging up the sins of our public figures. We have become a nation of moralists and, if not moralists, at the very least voyeurs. We cannot blame it on the media. They give us what sells. In many respects, what is in the newspapers or on TV is simply a mirror of our culture. Interesting to know that our fascination with people’s morality hasn’t raised our individual standards. People who are moralistic are quick to distinguish the right from the wrong, the good guys from the bad guys. Moralists are those who rapidly and eagerly make judgments. It has been said that a moralist acts as a judge, jury and executioner with little to go on but a few lines in print. Frankly, the clarity of judgment, this readiness to point the finger, this tendency to write off people’s frightens me. It does not signal a return to higher morality. It does not indicate that we are and less evil as a people. It simply signifies a greater spirit of crippling judgmentalism. That weakens us spiritually as a nation.
Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize winner, has written so eloquently and movingly on the ways to discern evil. He says, we know what evil is, and when we know what evil is we know what to do with it. We fight it. That’s easy. But how do we recognize it? Very disturbingly, he suggests evil knows that he is right it has no questions. the good, on the other hand, are unsure and ask questions.
The good ask questions and are not quick to act as judge and jury. The good don’t divide this world to those with white hats and those with black hats. To understand the lines between right and wrong. Heroes and villains are not always so clear. The good are unsure and ask questions.
Why we might ask they are good, unsure and ask questions? Why is tentativeness more to be prized, and all the eminent spiritual writers have found that the primary human sin is not so much in doing wrong as it is in projecting blame on others. Adam and Eve in we garden is our first model for this human tendency. The woman is very clear in the story; the problem is with the snake. The man blames the woman, and so it goes. Whenever we feel guilty, we become crystal clear: it’s someone else’s fault. Saint Augustine said, Never fight evil as if it were something that arose totally outside of yourself. In other words, be aware that the sin you condemn in others and return directions you so clearly see in others lie within yourself.
One of the great examples from scripture is the story of the woman taken in adultery. I think it ought to be required study for the so-called super religious who are quick to condemn and seem to spend an inordinate amount of time accusing and judging who’s in and who’s out. Anyway, in this story, the woman has been caught in the act, and according to Jewish law, she is to be stoned. So they bring her to Jesus, and Jesus looks about at those angry, moralistic, religious men and says who of you would cast the first stone? In other words who here is innocent? Who is without guilt? And they all slink away. Each one realizes that he has projected his own guilt on the woman.
The problem with religious people today is that they have just enough religion to understand the moral law, just enough religion to feel guilty and to make everybody around them feel uncomfortable, but not enough religion to understand.
Carlyle Barney, one of the greatest southern preachers, used to say it is too late to worry about innocence. For most of us that condition disappeared a long time ago. The question is, what do we do about our guilt? For some it is projected on public figures, the others it is swallowed up in the gift of forgiveness.
This morning we are celebrating Shrove Sunday, the Sunday before we enter into the penitential season of Lent. A season where, through fasting and study, we are made aware, painfully aware but how far we have fallen away from God. In some cultures, Shrove means coming from shriven is the day to repent to make one’s confession. We start the 40-day with as clean as late as we can. But this emphasis on being children is not so much on guilt as it is on God’s forgiveness. The point of being shriven is not to make us aware of sin, but to make us thankful that we are forgiven sinners. Judge not and you will not be judged. Condemn not and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. That is the heart of this day. And I would remind you that it does not say repent and you shall be forgiven but rather forgive and you shall be forgiven
. In the next 40 days that start this Wednesday I invite you to join the great adventure, an adventure in which the spirit of Jesus becomes contagious in our lives, and adventure and forgiveness, where we become less sure of who’s right and who’s wrong and more sure of Our Calling to forgive others as we have been forgiven good I would challenge each of you during the 40 days to keep score, not of the wrongs done to us, that’s easy, but to keep score of how many times we have forgiven other people. I want to end our thoughts this morning with some words from Fred Buckner’s novel. One of the principal characters is a woman who has had an affair. It has become the chief item of gossip, so she ran away to a good friend’s house. The young minister, another principal character, who has been falsely linked to her sexually, followed her. She finally located the woman and went to her friend William’s house, and was met at the door by Lillian. They only mastered ministering what he would say. He returned that he would advise the woman to return to her husband and forget her infidelity. Lillian replied, that is so modern so sane, it is just the advice she would want if she wanted advice. But why don’t you give her what she really wants?
Give her what for Christ’s sake, the minister asked. Lillian shook her head. the only thing you have to give forgive her for Christ’s sake, little priest. But she knows I forgive her he said. Lillian continued, she doesn’t know God Forgives her that’s the only power you have period tell her that her sin is forgiven whether she knows it or not. That’s what she wants more than anything else, what all of us want. Why on earth do you think you are ordained?
Let me suggest that all of us here are ordained with the task of forgiving, to declare God’s forgiveness and to act as if every one of us is more to be loved than to be judged. The good ask questions and forgive as they have been forgiven. Dear Lord, father, mother, sister, brother of us all. Forgive us our foolish ways Amen