Intro to Preaching
Sermon #1
Luke 23:26-46
“The Message Bible”
"How Can Even I Be Forgiven?"
Have you noticed how hard it is to forgive at times? I mean there are things that happen in our lives and we just can’t let them go. You may feel as if people out to “get you” in so many ways. How are we expected to forgive someone who has wronged us? Imagine with me for a moment, you are a mother of a child who has been shot in a drive by shooting. Your child had been just playing in the yard, minding their own business, when someone drives by shooting up the neighborhood. Your child was an unexpected recipient of a stray bullet. You are now sitting in a courtroom where the person who shot your child is on trial. From the witness stand, you hear the words from this shooter asking for your forgiveness. They didn’t mean to do it. They were just trying to scare a rival gang. You hear, “Please forgive me. If I had known your child was there I never would have shot the gun off.” Please forgive me…what do you do?
This thought process reminds me of my daughters. They need to hear that they are forgiven in order for their world s to be set right again. More times I have heard them apologize to each other and if the other doesn’t say “I forgive you”, their world comes crashing down around them. Let alone if they apologize to my husband and I and the y don’t hear that “immediate” I forgive you. I can remember one time our youngest, Shanequa, did something to her sister Shyanne. Now let me tell you, our daughter Shyanne can harbor unforgiveness in her. Well, Shyanne decided that this was going to be one of those times when her sister was not going to receive her forgiveness. I can remember the look on poor Shanequa’s eyes, full of tears, as she exclaimed, “Mom…I told Shyanne that I am sorry and she won’t say ‘that’s OK, I forgive you’.” It was not until I talked to Shyanne about forgiveness and she said those immortal words to Shanequa, that Shanequa’s world was set right again and she could be “best buds” with Shyanne once more.
Forgiveness…why do our lives depend so much on this feel, this release of guilt, in our lives? I think that sometimes it is hardest to forgive ourselves. We think that what we said or have done is something that we can’t forgive ourselves for. Never mind someone else forgiving us for something we had done to them. We also have times in our lives that we feel that we are so unredeemable that even God can’t forgive us. God could never forgive all that we have done in our life. Oh sure, God can give this person or that person but I have done much more than they have done. How even I be forgiven? There is no way on earth that God will ever think of forgiving me. Well, we have part of that statement correct. There is no way on “earth” that God can forgive us. The key words here are “on earth”, there is no way that God would forgive us by the world’s standards, the earthly regulations that tell us who are and who are not forgivable. But praise be to God that the God of all compassion doesn’t judge by the worlds standards but by the ones our Judge of all mankind sets. (AMEN)
In the Scripture passage from this afternoon, we see God made flesh beginning that forgiving, redemptive part of why Jesus came to earth. Here we have two criminals and Jesus, the Word made Flesh, hanging on the cross. There are people around, jeering and laughing at Jesus. They are telling Him to save Himself if He is the Son of the Most High. Even one of the men on a cross with Him starts making fun of Him, telling Him to not only save Himself but him and the other guy there. But something strange happened while they were hanging there on their crosses, the man to His right told the other to shut-up, he doesn’t know what he was talking about, what he was playing with or whom he is speaking too. This man on Jesus’ right understood, he looked at Jesus not with the eyes of man but with the eyes of faith and hope. Through these eyes He saw who Jesus really was and with a repentive heart he asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His Kingdom. Jesus forgive me for what I have done and remember me, the one who sees who you really are, when you come into your kingdom. I want to be where you are from this day forward.
The next part of the story is what gives this piece of Luke’s Gospel hope for me. Jesus says to the man “Don’t worry, I’ll remember you. Today you join me in paradise.” Don’t worry, I forgive you. There is nothing too large or too small that I won’t forgive. All you have to do is ask. You can and will be with me from this day forward, no matter what. The beginning of that forgiving, redemptive power of our God and King…is here…at the cross. I like the way that John ends the Crucifixion story. In the Message Bible it ends with Jesus saying “It is done…Completed.” The beginning of that redemptive power is past…it’s just forward from here. Jesus completed that action needed to begin the healing process. The curtain has been torn, the gap has been bridge by the forgiving blood of the Lamb slain, our Risen Lord, Jesus Christ (hallelujah…AMEN!) We shall be with Him in paradise.
How can even I be forgiven? Before this miraculous event took place there was another event just as miraculous as this one. As the “fans” were jeering and laughing at Jesus, He did something that I count as nothing short of a miracle in itself. As they tortured and jeered, Jesus looked up in heaven and said “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.” Forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing. Now I don’t know about you but if that was me I would be up there like “OK dad…smite them all! I am done with trying to teach these people the right way to live. I did nothing to deserve this so I need you to come to my rescue, I’ll come back home and we’ll talk about it over a cup of cappuccino and all will be good.” Forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing. They knew exactly what they were doing in my book, they were killing an innocent man is what they were doing, all because He went against the status quo of the time. What can we do that is worse than that and still be forgiven by God?
Beloved, there is nothing that you or I can do that makes us unforgiveable, unredeemable, in God’s eyes. In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome states “I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.” You see, while we were sinners, Christ died for us so that we may be restored to a right relationship with the God of forgiveness and understanding.
But it doesn’t stop here. You see, we are forgiven so that we may also extend that forgiveness to one another. You know that question I asked about what you would do if being asked to forgive someone who had wronged you. I think the answer lies in this equation. I am not saying that it has to be an instantaneous thing and sometimes we have to “fake it till we make it” but it is something that has to happen to begin the healing process. This also applies when we are taking about ourselves. It may take time but it is a crucial part of our walk with God. If we can’t forgive ourselves as God has forgiven us, how can we forgive others as God has forgiven us?
Forgiveness, it is like a balm in Gilead that can heal deep wounds that we inflict on others as well as on ourselves. Let us model our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and put on His likeness as we say “forgive them (and ourselves), they didn’t (we didn’t) know what they (we) are doing.”
AMEN
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