Monthly Archives: July 2015

Who is my Neighbor? (Luke 10:25-37)

Posted on by
1

If I asked you to take a quiz and list all of your immediate neighbors by name, could you do it? I have to admit that I could not. I just thought it through and will say that, of the five properties that have someone “on the other side of the fence,” I can only name two of them. Two others I can tell you a few things about their lives; and the final neighbors just moved in a few weeks ago and I have not met them yet.

That probably doesn’t speak well of me, though I’ll say that our situation is a bit different due to the size of the properties around us. Three of the five get to their houses by using different roads than do I. So I don’t even see them. And the two that I do see, it is usually related to exchanging lost pets or livestock!

This is very different than it used to be in America. And we’ll be talking about that difference a bit on Sunday as we turn to the sixth parable in our series – that of The Good Samaritan.

You may recall that the story Jesus tells is set up by a question given him by “an expert in the law.” Here is the setting from Luke 10 …

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

One bane of the pastoral and ministry profession is this thing called “the ordination counsel.” To be ordained into the ministry, one must go through a thorough examination wherein you present a detailed doctrinal statement and paper, and then a group of already ordained fellows get to ask you anything they want to.

The only reasonable one of these I’ve ever seen was my own – in 1982 at the church where I was minister of music in Dallas; there were two other fellow seminary grads and myself seeking official ministry credentialing. The church knew all three of us very, very well; and they figured that if you survived Dallas Theological Seminary, you were pretty much theologically okay.

But over the years I have been asked to sit in and participate in a few of these, including for our former staff pastors Tom Savage and Bill Nelson. At every one of these I’ve ever been at, there is some wise guy who asks a ridiculously remote question about which there either is no firm answer, or, the answer is only known by someone who has meticulously studied some detail of theological minutia. Of course, the candidate mumbles through a futile attempt at an answer, while everyone else quietly thinks to themselves, “Good night, I have no idea what that is about.” And finally, the moderator asks the questioner, “Could you explain that to the candidate more clearly?”  And this is the very moment the questioner desired from the beginning – an opportunity to look good in front of everyone … to look smarter than the others.

If you can picture that, you can picture the setting that led to the parable.

But the question is a timeless one to ask in terms of application. Who is our neighbor? It is a somewhat clear and easy thing to love these beautiful people over here, but to love THOSE dirty people over there? That’s a different story. We have categories, just as the Pharisees had categories of people. But Jesus messes with their categories, and he may mess with our own as we enter into this study and think about what it means for life in the Tri-State area in 2015.

If I forgive, do I have to forget? (1 Corinthians 13:5)

Posted on by
1

“I will forgive, but I will never forget.”  It’s tempting to think of “forgiveness” as somehow equivalent to a legal acquittal.  It’s why it’s often so difficult to overcome past hurt.  Yesterday, we discussed the way that the forgiveness makes reconciliation ideal, though there may be circumstances in which reconciliation is simply not possible.

We looked at David Brooks’ fourfold process of reconciliation:

  • Pre-emptive mercy
  • Judgment
  • Confession and repentance
  • Reconciliation and re-trust

Again, when true repentance does not happen, then forgiveness cannot lead to true reconciliation.

“Ok,” you might be thinking, “but how do I know if my offender has truly repented?   And how do I react if my offender repeats the same offense?”

These are great questions, and ultimately are tied to our central question: does forgiving mean forgetting?  That is, if my offender wrongs me again, should I not see this as part of a larger pattern of sin or abuse?

Let’s look at what the Bible says about God’s forgiving of human sin:

“I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” (Isaiah 43:25)

Does this mean that God “forgets” human sin?

Assume for a moment that the answer to this question is “yes.”  If God forgets sin, and I don’t, then don’t I now know more than God?  But that’s simply not possible—nor is it necessary.  No; God says that he “will not remember.”  God doesn’t forget human sin; he chooses not to remember sin. 

So how might we apply this to the famous passage from Corinthians?

“Love…is not irritable or resentful…” (1 Corinthians 13:5)

Some older translations actually deal with the Greek just a bit better, saying that love “does not keep record of wrongs.”

We’re talking, of course, about the “judgment” phase of Brooks’ process.  There are two extremes we must avoid here:

  • Minimizing the offense: Brushing it aside as “no big deal,” “it won’t happen again,” or “that’s just the way men/women are.”
  • Maximizing the offense: Seeing the offense as part of a larger pattern of misbehavior: “You never listen to me” or “You always do this.”

Neither extreme deals realistically with the actual offense, therefore neither extreme is a straight road toward repentance.  One of the great tragedies of domestic abuse is that women often too quickly enter into re-trust without a genuine change on the part of their abuser.  This is—at least partially—why Rowan Williams, a former church official from South Africa, reminds us that “forgetting” an offense can actually be quite damaging:

“The monument at Auschwitz to the Jews killed there has the inscription, ‘O earth, cover not their blood.’  There are things that should never, never be forgotten…real forgiveness is something that changes things and so gives hope….If someone says to me, ‘Yes, you have hurt me, but that doesn’t mean it’s all over.  I forgive you.  I still love you,’ then that is a moment of enormous liberation.   It recognizes the reality of the past, the irreversibility of things, the seriousness of damage done, but then it is all the more joyful and hopeful because of that.”

As Christians, forgiveness should push us toward reconciliation, but only if the offense has been dealt with.  The problem, of course, is that our offenders will often repeat their trespasses.  What then?

  • In some cases, an offender repeats his crimes because his repentance is This person may be in process, but stumble along the way.  This is especially true if that offender is consumed with some addicting behavior such as alcohol or pornography.
  • In other cases, an offender repeats his crimes because his repentance is entirely absent. An abuser may do an excellent job at manipulating others into seeing his/her greatness, but ultimately they’ve only gotten better at hiding their offense.

What might this mean?

  • First, even if your offender is seeking help, there may be times when repentance needs to be total before trust is re-offered. This is especially true in cases of domestic/child abuse, when the presence of an offender can actually do further damage if his/her healing is less than total.
  • Second, this also presents the essential value of community. For instance, if your spouse is caught with pornography, and vows not to repeat his/her offense, the surest sign of that commitment is personal accountability with another person.
  • Third, this also means that we might have to deal with the pain of repeat offenses as we lovingly walk with another person along the path of repentance. Each time will be a new occasion for confrontation and healing.
  • Finally, there may be times when we realize that our offender’s repentance has been haphazard—or absent. In those times we have to step back and reconsider whether a true relationship will be possible until true repentance takes place.  This is at least partially why the Bible labels divorce as permissible in the context of marital infidelity.

We cannot possibly cover every circumstance in a series of devotionals.  I only hope that this has been at least a good starting point to thinking about what life looks like in community.  For some of you, this means that reconciliation is possible; for others of you your journey can only go as far as forgiveness.  But if you experience a rift between yourself and another Christian, then remember that even if you can’t be friends/spouses now, you will be spiritual siblings forever.  There will be a day when all repentance is made complete when we become perfect in the presence of the Savior.

 

 

Is reconciliation always possible? (Ephesians 2:12-16)

Posted on by
1

What comes after forgiveness?  Depending on the nature of the offense, there may be a prolonged struggle.  After all, forgiveness might not come all at once; it may be a daily struggle to forgive that other person.  A number of years ago the nation of Rwanda was torn apart by tribal conflict and genocide—you may remember this from the film Hotel Rwanda.  After it was all over, the healing had to begin.  I say had to, because the nature of the conflict meant that individuals would return home, and literally move back in next to neighbors that had taken the lives of their family members.   In her excellent book As We Forgive, Catherine Claire Lawson shares the real-life stories of many who came to understand forgiveness only through the workshops offered through Christian relief workers.  One such story comes from “Monique:”

At the workshops, they read stories of forgiveness from the Bible.  Monique remembered the stories from childhood, but the words came alive to her again as she heard how Jesus Christ had taken our sins and our sorrows to the cross.  [The group leader] explained how this meant that Christ had taken both the sins of the genocidaires and the sorrows of the victims carried those with him to the cross.  As an innocent victim, Christ identified with those like Monique who suffered wrongfully.  But by laying upon him the sins of the world, Christ also took away the reproach of sinners who would look to him in faith.  He forgives.  ….Little by little, Monique felt she too could extend forgiveness to the people who had wronged her.  (Catherine Claire Lawson, As We Forgive, p. 152-3)

In the ancient city of Ephesus, Paul likewise uses the sacrifice of Christ to describe how Jews and non-Jews could be united despite past cultural differences.

Read Ephesians 2:12-16:

“…remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” (Ephesians 2:12-16)

The New Testament describes reconciliation—a restored relationship—as the ideal.  Why might this be so difficult to achieve?

In recent months, a nation expressed outrage over the deception of Brian Williams.  But in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, David Brooks raises the possibility of forgiveness.  He asks:

“…the larger question is how we build community in the face of scandal. Do we exile the offender or heal the relationship? Would you rather become the sort of person who excludes, or one who offers tough but healing love?” (David Brooks, “The Art of Rigorous Forgiveness,” in The New York Times, February 10, 2015)

Brooks goes on to describe a four-stage process of reconciliation:

  • Pre-emptive mercy: the act of extending forgiveness before the offender does a single thing.
  • Judgment: being willing to label the offense as wrong, and seeing it without exaggerating or minimizing the offense.
  • Confession and repentance: when the offender recognizes and changes their attitude toward their wrongdoing.
  • Reconciliation and re-trust: a restored relationship between myself and my offender.

Again, the New Testament ideal is to move us to stage 4.  But let’s pause for a second—is this even possible in every situation?  For some, reconciliation without confession and judgment only serves to enable my offender.  It hasn’t healed the problem, only sugared over it.  So there may be situations where the offender refuses—for whatever reason—to come to terms with their offense.  In such situations, it may actually be unloving to pursue a relationship with that person until that offense has been dealt with.

We’ll return to this question in tomorrow’s post.  For now we can simply recognize that for Christians, forgiveness is an extension of God’s love; but reconciliation is not always possible.  What forgiveness means is that I no longer hold the past as a barrier to future relationship, though always recognizing that future relationships can be made possible through ongoing behavior.

 

The initial challenge, therefore, is to practice that “pre-emptive mercy” and to lay aside the anger we feel toward our offender.  Only then can we be released from carrying a grudge and can extend a hand in love.