Forgiveness in Families

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was from Genesis as Joseph forgives his brothers.

So far as we have walked this journey of forgiveness, we have looked at what forgiveness is not, some of the reasons why we need to forgive and then last week we looked at the steps of forgiveness, if ever so briefly, and we are going to return to that today as we move onto the idea of forgiveness in families. Now the steps to forgiveness in families are not different from those to forgiving others, but the hurts we have in our families are often bigger or deeper because we have greater expectations from those we love, or whom are supposed to love us, than we do for others in our lives. And so, when there are breaches of trust or loss, and most often that’s what happens with our family hurts, they dig deeper into our lives and the stones that we carry as a result and bigger and heavier, and so I thought it necessary to try and deal with these issues specifically. But, before we get into those hurts and how we forgive them, I wanted to switch things up a bit, because while we’ve talked about how to give forgiveness we haven’t talked about how to seek forgiveness, and while that too could probably be its own message, we’re not going to spend that much time discussing it, but it is important to at least talk about because as I said just as we carry rocks around representing the hurts that others have given us, so too others carry around the rocks of hurt that have our names on them.

Rev. Adam Hamilton says that there are six words everyone needs to know to be able to keep a relationship together. The first three are hard, and that is, as we’ve been working on, “I forgive you.” But the other three may be even harder, and so we’re going to practice saying them, and that is “Please forgive me.” Can we say that together? Now while I think that’s a good start, I do disagree with him and think that there’s six other words that have to go along with this. The first of those three is “I was wrong.” Can we say that together? And the final three are “I am sorry.” Now how about we say all three of them? I wanted to practice here because it’s easier to practice it when there’s nothing on the line then saying it without practice when it really matters.  And it doesn’t matter which order you say them in, but they are the start. Just as one of the steps of giving forgiveness is to name exactly what it is that happened and why it hurt, and the same is true in seeking forgiveness. If we are truly seeking forgiveness, then we have to be able to say what we did and why it was wrong. If we cannot admit that, then we’re not actually seeking forgives, we’re just seeking to be absolved of our guilt, and those are not the same thing. This is also the not the time in which you seek to explain yourself, or make excuses. The one exception to that is if it’s to use that to say what you learned from it so you can try and not have it happen again.

Forgiveness

 Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Genesis 50:15-21:

There is a story told about a new minister to a congregation and on his first Sunday there he preached a sermon on forgiveness, which was well received. The next Sunday he preached exactly the same sermon, which left people a little puzzled, but wondering what he would do the next week. But on the third week, he delivered exactly the same sermon of forgiveness, and so that week some leaders of the church paid a nice visit told him to tell him that while they appreciated the message the first time, they wanted to make it known that they expected to hear something different the next Sunday. But, for the fourth time he delivered the same message, only this time he added at the end, and when we start practicing forgiveness in all that we do, then we’ll move onto a new topic.

Now giving the same sermon on forgiveness over and over again is probably over-kill, although it does make sermon prep really easy, we can’t really hear about forgiveness enough because while we very often talk about God forgiving us, it’s also, and just as importantly as us forgiving others and us seeking forgiveness. Indeed, Jesus says that unless you forgive you will not be forgiven. Pretty high standards. But here is some good news. The first is that holding a grudge, the desire to get revenge is actually programmed into us by evolution. We want retribution for what has wronged us. We want vengeance. We want something bad to happen to the other person. This is a natural part coming from the base part of our feelings. Even people who are opposed to this, still feel it, as maybe perhaps summed up by an essay written by Rev. Mary Lynn Tobin in response to September 11, called “Vengeance is the Lord’s (but something inside me wants to ‘bomb the hell out of them’).” and so if you judge yourself because you hold grudges and want revenge, you can let that go because it’s natural. But it’s a matter of what you do with those feelings.

And so here is even better news. Forgiveness is also a part of who we are. It too has been programmed into us by evolution. The desire to heal and rebuild relationship and community are just as much, or maybe even more, a part of who we are as revenge is. In fact, in every animal that has been studied except for one, they have demonstrated acts of forgiveness, conciliation and reconciliation.  The one animal that doesn’t do this is the house cat, and for those who own cats, and those who dislike cats, this should not come as a surprise.  The reason why it is found in other animals, including humans, is because we live in community, and to stay in community which is necessary if we are to survive, we have to have the ability to forgive wrongs.

Speaking Out

 Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28:

In the book of Numbers and in Exodus, we are told that God will punish the sins of parents to the third and fourth generation (Num 14:18; Exod. 34:7), and while there are other passages that counteract that, in particular Deuteronomy, and then Jesus saying that the blind man was not born blind because of the sins of his parents, we can still see if maybe not punishing to future generations, that the sins the parents committed keep happening generation after generation. That is even true today. There have been some very interesting sociological studies of crime extending through multiple generations. In one study in England it found that 2/3 of all male youths convicted of crimes came from just 10% of families. And while there were many reasons, much of it was about expectations and also about learned behaviors. The same way that families will have multiple generations of doctors or lawyers or even preachers. We imitate what we see our parents do. There are learned behaviors that we follow. The same is also true in churches.

Every church has a unique DNA that is learned about how things happen and how we do things. One church I served had a particular way that they handled conflict, and so you could read back through the history of the church, which was over 100 years old, and keep seeing the same things happening over and over again, especially when it came to conflict. People learned the behavior of how that church operated. But, what I can also say about that church is that in knowing that history, they were making a concerted effort to stop it. To break the pattern, and learning and teaching healthy and appropriate ways to deal with conflict. And so sometimes the sins continue, and sometimes they can be stopped. We see this in families as well. Linda’s father was physically abused when he was a child by his father, as, more than likely, his father had been abused, and his father had been abused, for who knows how long. But you know what he didn’t do to Linda or her sisters? Abuse them. He stopped the pattern of behavior and hopefully that behavior has now been wiped out of the family line. It is no longer being perpetuated and carried on generation after generation.

Giving Up on Perfect

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The scripture reading was Philippians 1:3-11:

Freedom from Want
by Norman Rockwell

This is one of Norman Rockwell’s most famous paintings, and it has been seen to sort of represent the perfect holiday gathering. Grandma and grandpa serving the turkey with the entire family gathered around the table.  It, along with much else that Rockwell had to paint, has become a symbol of a sort of lost time in America, except for the fact that these times never really existed.  This image is a fantasy. It’s not even an event that ever took place.  The woman serving the turkey is Rockwell’s cook and housecleaner, and Rockwell took a picture of her with the family turkey.  While her husband is in the picture, it is not the man next to her playing the role of the grandfather, he is the older man at the front left of the painting.  And none of them were ever sitting at one table at the same time.  He posed them by themselves in his studio and then took pictures to later use to compose the image he wanted.  Rockwell himself said that he didn’t paint what was, but instead what he hoped to be.

We have sanitized, idealized and idolized this image, just as we have done with Rockwell’s other paintings, that this is what things are supposed to look like.  This is what we are to strive for.  And if we don’t make it look like this then we are missing something, because surely others are having these types of holidays aren’t they?  And so we strive to have that perfect Christmas, and we strive and we strive and we strive, and yet we never quite get there, it’s always that allusive thing that’s just beyond our grasp, and so we simply say, “well next year, this is what we will do differently in order to make it perfect.”  We try and live into this perfect picture, this perfect world, this perfect ideal, but not only can it never be, it never was either.  And we’ve done the same thing with our story of the nativity as well, in order to sentimentalize it, we have removed it from reality.

Standing Up and Speaking Out

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Genesis 37:1-28:

In the high school I attended, athletics reigned supreme.  To give you a small sample, our football and basketball teams played for the state championship in two of my four years, our soccer and golf teams won the state championship, and our softball team won several, and the level of play was high.  One of the members of our basketball and track team could dunk the basketball after beginning his jump at the top of the key, and he went on to the University of Arizona. The quarterback who graduated the year before I did, went on to become the starting quarterback for Ohio State, and the quarterback who graduated the same year I did went to play for Utah.  Our kicker was all-American, and two people from my graduating class of 336 played in the NFL.  And, as you might guess, when athletics rule supreme, the players who play them also rule supreme.  Jocks were the BMOC’s, the big men on campus, looked up to by many, supported, lauded and favored by much of the administration and some of the teachers.  Allowed to do things and get away with things that other students couldn’t and administrators often turned a blind eye to how some of them treated other students, causing them to be loathed or even hated for the special treatment they received.  I was thinking of that this week as I pondered the beginning of another school year, and as we continually hear stories about bullying and other inappropriate behaviors that take place at school, and as I thought about this story of Joseph that we just heard.

In Numbers we read that the sins of the father will be passed onto the third and fourth generations.  And while we could argue about that, or perhaps argue about what that really means, we do see those sins continuing through the Abrahamic line, into this the third generation from Abraham.  There is a DNA in their behaviors that continues to repeat itself, and so they keep making the same mistakes, although it also allows them to keep doing some things well.  The same thing happens in our families and in other organizations as well.  Churches and other social organizations, like schools, will develop a certain DNA, and if you track through the history of a church you will see the same things happening over and over again.  And those things will continue happening until someone steps up and stops it.  Until someone says enough is enough and begins to move things in a different direction, or at the very least says this is wrong, the same things will repeat themselves over and over again.  And that certainly is happening with Jacob’s family.

Jacob was the favored son of his mother Rebekah, while his father Isaac, favored his older brother Esau.  Plotting together with his mother, Jacob is able to steal both Esau’s birthright and also the blessing due to him as the first born son, causing Esau to hate Jacob and to plot to kill him.  Sounding familiar?  Isaac too was the favored son, at the very least by his mother, who plots to have the older son Ishmael expelled from the household so that only Isaac will inherit from his father, even though he is the second born son.  And while we don’t know anything about what Ishmael things about all of this, we might surmise that he has some hate in him for his brother, and his people the Ishmaelites become contenders with the Israelites and also play a part at the end of this story.

Setting the Scene

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Matthew 2:13-23:

Today is one of those days when I don’t like the lectionary, because we have to take stories out of order.  Next week we will hear of the arrival of the magi or the wise-men, because next Sunday is Epiphany Sunday, the day we celebrate the arrival of the wise men.  But today’s passage tells us what happens after the wise men have already left, and there is so much going on in today’s passage that we could actually cover this for several weeks and still not plumb all the way to the bottom of its depths.  Matthew is doing something very specific in these stories, which are commonly referred to as the flight to Egypt and also as the slaughter of the innocents, that is crucial to understand for the entirety of the telling of his particular gospel message, and since we will be working our way through Matthew’s gospel this year, it’s important to know what Matthew is doing, how he is setting the scene not only for the rest of his gospel but also for who he is saying that Jesus is.

The only two gospels which tell a birth narrative are Matthew and Luke, and their stories are very different from each other because they have different things about Jesus they want to emphasize.  Matthew begins his story with a genealogy.  Compare that to Luke who’s genealogy doesn’t come until the third chapter.  In addition, Luke’s genealogy begins with Joseph, whose father he says was Heli, and he works backward to Adam.  In Matthew, on the other hand, he begins with Abraham, who it should be noted comes from the East, just like the wise men, and works down to Jacob, who is the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary.  Now think back, why are Joseph and Jacob significant?  That’s right; Jacob is the father of Joseph back in the story of the patriarchs in Genesis.  And what do we know about Joseph?  He was sold into slavery in Egypt and rises in power there, and what did Joseph become known for?  For interpreting dreams? And then what happens?  He saves his family by bringing them down to Egypt during a famine in Canaan, where they live; they are saved by Joseph, the son of Jacob, who interprets dreams which allows him to save his family by bringing them to Egypt.  And so what has Matthew just told us about this Joseph?  I see some light bulbs going off in your heads.  Joseph, the son of Jacob, has an angel appear to him in a dream, which he then follows, and first marries Mary, then he has another dream, leading his family into Egypt in order to save them, and later a third dream that tells him that it is safe to go back to Israel.

Anonymous In A Crowd

Here is my sermon from Christmas Eve.  The text was Luke 2:1-20:

As we just added Jesus to our nativity, we completed the typical scene found in nearly every nativity, not matter what the material or the subject matter.  There was a list making its way around Facebook this year that purported to list the 50 worst or weirdest nativity sets, which some of you may have seen.  There were the typical weird ones, the dog or cat nativity, ones with frogs and ducks; I think the dragons and the one carved out of spam were the worst, although nothing really says Christmas to me like Jesus made from a shotgun shell.  But as I was thinking about nativity sets, and what sort of spurred the idea for this message, I was thinking of the figures who sort of play critical and important roles in the Christmas story.

If we were to tell the story, or to create a set, without the shepherds, you might ask what was going on where they were, after all they are the ones that the angels make the announcement to as we just heard from Luke.  Likewise if we were to have a nativity scene with the shepherds, but without the magi, also known as the three wise-men, you might also wonder where they were.  We need them because they are the ones who bring the gifts, one of the reasons we share gifts at Christmas.  Now the fact that this combines two different stories, one from Matthew and one from Luke, and that the shepherds and the magi never would have been there at the same time doesn’t matter, we need them in the scene together.  So we need the shepherds, we need the wise-men, of course we need Mary, nothing happens with the mother, and obviously Jesus must be there, they all play critical roles.  But that leaves Joseph.  Is Joseph necessary for this story?  What role does he play?  While he certainly does things, in the words of the old Negro spiritual, he never says a mumbling word.  His role in the scene seems to be to simply be there to look adoringly at a child that is not even his own.  If Joseph wasn’t to be there would it matter?  He is truly anonymous in a crowd.