The Freedom of Being Forgiven

Scriptures    Micah 7:18-20    Hebrews 10:15-18    Luke 24:36b-48

The sermon message last Sunday and this find their foundation in a similar post-Easter tale – last week from John, this week from Luke. Last Sunday’s message was titled “The Power to Forgive.” In retrospect, I wish today’s message – “The Freedom of Being Forgiven” – had been offered first.

For how can any of us begin to forgive unless we begin to comprehend how profoundly we have been forgiven? In the opening clip of our “The Power of Forgiveness” DVD currently informing our adult Christian education discussions, we hear these sage words from the Pastor Emeritus of New York City’s Riverside Church, James Forbes: “The best way to begin to talk about forgiveness is not to tell folks to forgive their enemies. That's hard as the beginning point.

"First, let them think about how much forgiveness God has had to grant them, from their childhood up to their level of maturation. They've had to make withdrawals from the bank of grace many, many times."¹

For most of his seven chapters, the prophet Micah is full of scathing judgment for the leaders of Israel and Judah. Until, that is, his conclusion we hear today: “(God) delights in showing clemency (and) will again have compassion upon us.” And then, switching to direct address of the Almighty, he writes, “You (O God) will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea … as you have sworn to our ancestors from the days of old.”

To become ready to forgive others, we must first enjoy – and first embrace – the full and profoundly human freedom that comes from being forgiven. To receive the Spirit-breath of freedom the disciples received on that first resurrection night, according to John’s narrative. To listen to Jesus reminding us, “In case of emergency, first, place the oxygen mask over your own mouth and nose – before you help those around you.”

And yet: As we celebrate Earth Day today, I think it helpful to note that in the toxic environment in which we increasingly live, so many of us barely pause – not to mention barely risk – to inhale. We are too busy fumbling first with the masks others insist they must wear …

One more time, I bid you to gaze upon the smiling face of Charlie Brown found on the inside of our bulletin’s back cover. One … more … time.

Had enough yet of the Groover publicity? As one of our faithful recently cracked, “I’m personally a bit overdosed with addiction talk.”

And yet, there’s one addiction that – until this week – was not even referenced in this announcement. An addiction more than any others I would say vexes us as church folk. An addiction as profoundly wounding as any hole-in-our-soul caused by the abuse of any substance – any chemical. It’s an addiction Dr. Brown specializes in spiritually addressing, and one I think he may be best equipped to help us in our healing jouirney.

And that’s the addiction to relationships. Particular relationships in many of our lives. Some of the symptoms of this addiction:

·        A compelling, if not intoxicating, sense of either our own importance or impotence in relation with another.

·        Allowing someone to affect us to the point that we become consumed with managing – perhaps even controlling – his or her behavior.

·        To paraphrase Mark Twain, repeatedly allowing someone else to be our priority while allowing ourselves to be their option.

Addiction to relationships. To particular relationships. It’s the primary compulsion I have found among the faithful in every church I’ve been a member … in every church I’ve served. It’s a place and a space where, in the process, we lose our spiritual centeredness …

·        … by taking someone’s temperature – in order to discover how we feel.

·        … by saying something to an individual to see how he or she responds so we can then know what we meant.

·        … or – in the laughable extreme – by finding ourselves in a life-threatening situation … and someone else’s life flashes before our eyes.

Such addictive relational practices occlude rather than enhance our relationship with our God. It’s an addiction known in the starchy jargon of the psychological trade by a singular and sometimes abused term: codependence.

We are all codependent, to one extent or another. We cannot help it. We are blessedly and belovedly human in that way. And yet I would not hesitate to say that we church folk are more codependent than most.

More addictive to how we people-please to make us feel holy and well. More keenly aware – more than most – of our obligation – our duty – our mandate – to serve. It is how so many of us are hard-wired – or at least programmed, from the moment of our baptism.

Codependent we tend to be. Inclined to forget the second half of the second half of Jesus’ Great Commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Codependent. Relationally addictive. Inclined to forget that, even before we can love our self, God is there ahead of us. To the point that, as the prophet tells us today, all our sins are cast into the depths of the sea. Not just forgiven … but drowned!

Codependent. Relationally addictive. Inclined to forget that, whether we remember our baptisms or not, that that sacrament symbolizes – as a visible means for an invisible grace – the forgiveness of our sins. The freedom of being forgiven.

We church people are inclined to forget these things: “Love your neighbor as yourself”… God loves us even before we can love our self … and that our baptism is for the forgiveness of sins.

Where have we gotten lost in the journey? Perhaps we who tack toward relationship addiction tend to live our discipleship backward: being zealously servile versus humbly serving, to prove to others and ourselves how much God loves us all.

Perhaps, instead, we need to reverse that flow.

First: Instead of striving so hard to show God how good we are, we can daily step back and acknowledge how good God is. That God forgives us – in all our striving – in the most radical way possible.

Second: Having become daily aware of radical compassion of a loving God, we can simply take delight in the freedom of being forgiven.

Third: Liberated by the freedom of being forgiven, we can then – and only then – exercise the power Jesus has given us to freely forgive others. To manifest the radical compassion we have personally come to experience.

Isn’t that the sort of spiritual trajectory God wants us to live? Not to fawn over others zealously, to prove to them and ourselves how much God loves us all. But to know and acknowledge that God loves us regardless, so we can find that love in ourselves, and then pass the word along to others!

“They will know we are Christian by our love?” Perhaps. And yet, for those of us who are relationally addictive, I would like to find a hymn that says something like this: “They will know we are Christian by our capacity to be loved.”

Our capacity to be loved. For that’s where it all begins. To know and acknowledge, on a daily basis, we are radically loved … forgiven to the core.

To then know and practice, on a daily basis, that freedom of being forgiven … through radical compassion for ourselves.

To then know and practice the radical compassion – the Spirit-power – of forgiving others.

Sounds simple? It is.


Sounds easy? Of course not.

A brief story, if I may. It’s not my story … though sometimes I wish it were.

It’s the story of a young man sitting on a bed in his room in a psychiatric hospital. He has devoted his whole life, it seems, to the holy task – or what he was taught was his holy task – of serving others, that he might then reap what he has so altruistically sown.


A chaplain walks in. A hospital chaplain. Not the doctor; not the nurse. He had been expecting one of those two. But who was this woman? Why was she here?

“I heard you were sick,” the chaplain explained. “I heard you might be able to use some spiritual healing.”

The young man was too confused to protest. So the chaplain continued:

“I have some good news and some bad news for you today. The good news is this: That you are forgiven. Forgiven for doing everything you could to love others while you did not even know how you could love yourself – or, more to the point, to be loved.

“And now for the bad news: Knowing now you have the freedom of being forgiven, you have no more excuse. You are responsible now. Responsible to learn, through daily spiritual disciplines, how to receive and experience the love of a God who only wants the best for you. You are responsible now, to daily experience and practice – even before you share it – the freedom of being forgiven.”

Do you find yourself addicted – drawn to compulsively and reactively – to one particular relationship or more in your life? If this might be so: How has your journey with Jesus become occluded by how that relationship, or two, or three, has directed – if not dictated – the course of your life?

If you have not been able to control or change – much less cure – that particular person or persons or institutions, even … with some biblical assurance, I can say to you this: God wants you to know that you are forgiven for trying so hard.

And if you have not been able to control or change or cure him or her or them … I would suggest what our scriptures suggest: Stand back. Relax. Breathe deeply of the Spirit. Experience first – yourself – the freedom of being forgiven.

That experience takes time – and it takes practice. Daily time, and daily practice, to live into that baptismal vow.

Not just our vow. God’s vow, as well. It’s a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It’s our repentance; it’s God’s forgiveness. Our repentance – for many of us – of not acting like we are forgiven. God’s freeing forgiveness – for many of us – of the captivity of trying too hard.

And we are forgiven. And we are set free. Free from … to be free for.

    Go – and pass it on.

¹Martin Doblmeier, “The Power of Forgiveness”, Journey Films, 2008.