Where There is Forgiveness

Sunday, November 19th, 2006
Proper 28 B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Hebrews 10:11-25

11And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. 12But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” 13and since then has been waiting “until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.” 14For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. 15And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, 16“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds,” 17he also adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” 18Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. 19Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, 20by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), 21and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. 24And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, 25not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

How can we communicate what it feels like to carry the weight of sin on our shoulders? What can we say, what image can we portray that will express in words that are understandable to those to whom we are speaking that will crystallize the feeling of walking around with … a millstone around our necks?

I could read to you from the letter that Ted Haggard, former pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, as well as former President of the National Association of Evangelicals, as he stepped down as both in the wake of the scandal that broke in the news a couple of weeks ago… the letter is heart rending. In part, he says “I am a deceiver and a liar. There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life.” When I first read that sentence, it brought to mind another, found in the 51st Psalm: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone have I sinned”

What have we been seeing over the last few weeks in our study of Hebrews? What prompted the constant repetition of the sacrifices and offerings practiced by the people of Israel, in trying to maintain their relationship to God? It was an awareness that there is something in the human spirit that longs for cleansing, for restoration, for … forgiveness.

The question might be asked, forgiveness from what? And it is a valid question, if one has no sense of one’s own brokenness, one’s own selfishness, one’s own … failure to BE who God intended one to BE. In short, if I have no sense of wrongness about what I am doing or who I am or how I live out my life, it is terribly difficult if not impossible to UNDERSTAND that there is even a need FOR that cleansing, that restoration, that forgiveness. We cannot live in the awareness of grace unless we have ourselves experienced the forgiveness of God – we cannot understand grace – nor can we share it – unless we have had the experience of receiving it firsthand.

And how do we come to the place where we recognize that need? I would propose to you that, while it CAN happen through … shall we call it a … directive approach? Someone stands up, sometimes from a pulpit, sometimes from somewhere else, in the case of Reverend Haggard, a television studio, and calls a spade a spade. Either way can be effective. But I think the most effective truth teller is one’s own voice, one’s own spirit.

And you know what? As Baptists, we believe that. We believe that the Holy Spirit nudges our own spirits, and makes us realize – or at least BEGIN to realize – all that needs to change in us. And that nudging becomes a chorus, and the chorus plays continually, and we finally realize that, however good a person we thought we were … well, it’s no good. Not that we aren’t good, but that goodness is … self-defined, inadequate for the purpose of giving us a sense of purity … later in his letter, Reverend Haggard says something very interesting, he says, “The public person I was wasn't a lie; it was just incomplete. When I stopped communicating about my problems, the darkness increased and finally dominated me.”

What we are faced with is an awareness of wrongness, of brokenness, of a disconnect, in this case, between the public and the private person. And what is so heartbreaking is that this man felt so much shame at what he did that he closed it up inside and stopped looking for help in coming to terms with it, or overcoming it, or facing it and settling in his mind what it meant for him as a follower of Christ and as the leader of a congregation and in that self-imposed exile he lost himself.

The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that even for this prodigal son, there is an expectant father, anxiously waiting his return.

In 1980, after I graduated from high school, we were living in Hermitage, TN, outside of Nashville. We attended my Aunt Lala’s church, Hermitage Hills Baptist, and one of the parent youth leaders … Gene Johnson … I remember one Bible Study, I THINK it was a Wednesday night, he stood up and said something that has stayed with me; he said he NEEDED to come to Church on Wednesday nights to make it through the rest of the week. I think what struck me most was the sincerity with which he said it. He really meant it. He truly felt it. It caught my attention, but it also made me start to think about what it might BE that he GOT from church on Wednesday nights that made him look forward to going … and what WAS it about the evening that helped him through the rest of the week.

We find the answer here in the last couple of verses of the passage this morning. The New Revised Standard Version doesn’t do the term justice, at the beginning of verse 24, where it says ‘And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds,’ The thought would more accurately be translated ‘Let us RIVAL one another’. Let’s have a show of hands: how many would, off the top of your heads, and in no specific context, consider yourselves to be competitive?

We’re used to hearing about competition in sports, of course, notably HERE between, oh, Virginia Tech and UVA, or the Redskins and the Cowboys. There is also a competition we witness daily in our society, the competition to own the biggest house, the nicest car, the coolest gadget; it’s called ‘keeping up with the Jones’… and it preys on our weakness for the next new thing, the latest fashion, or the most expensive toys. In the best of circumstances, it can be frivolous, in the worst, it can be idolatrous.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Can you imagine an all-out competition, a rivalry in which we pledged all our spiritual, physical, and material resources to see who could do the most good works for one another? It is that drawing together for a common purpose that spurs us on to better, deeper, more meaningful relationships, higher goals, purer motives, and it all comes from being together, from being family, from being community for and to each other. But not JUST being together. Hanging out with people – even people you love – isn’t in and of itself a recipe for enhancing our spiritual awareness.

There needs to be a studied awareness of the purpose for the gathering. Last night was a prime example of that being put into practice. We began the meal with a time of thanksgiving in prayer, and for me, at least, it set the tone for the evening. Looking around the tables at you who were there made me aware of how grateful I am for your presence in my and Leslie’s and the kid’s lives. How much you mean to me not simply as your pastor, but as your brother in Christ, as a fellow pilgrim. You know as well as I do that I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I am comfortable with both wrestling with questions as well as leaving some unanswerable questions … unanswered. That sometimes makes for silences where we would LIKE to hear words, but we are learning to come to grips with the silences as well.

A couple of weeks ago we went through some of the things we as a body of believers are engaged in doing that are moving us forward into this inbreaking Kingdom of God we talk about … through different things we do, we let our community know we are here and God is there. Can we, beginning today, think of ways in which we can indiscriminately shower each other with God’s love as a body of believers, and do that in such a way that … in the BEST sense of the word, we become … addicted to getting together, being in the care of one another, sharing our lives, our joys and our sorrows with each other, not out of a sense of obligation or duty or tradition, let those be a PART of our motivation, but because we truly, deeply CARE for each other?

If we get a handle on how to do that, and do it well and consistently, I truly believe we would fulfill the paradigm, we would complete the model of being known as a body of Christ, not for how nice our sanctuary is, or how many people are here on a given Sunday, or even on how much we do in the community, not that any of that is necessarily bad, but it would be so much BETTER if we were know as a body of Christ – as a church – for how much we LOVE – each other, and the rest of the world. How we show that and live that would be a natural outgrowth of that love in action.

Can we rise to the challenge?

I have full confidence that we can. Let’s make it our mission to outdo each other in love and good deeds, and keep pushing each other on to that goal by gathering, whether for a meal or for prayer or for Bible study, the purpose of those meetings is twofold: and it is the unspoken purpose that is the primary one: we may BE praying together, we may BE studying together, we may BE sharing a meal together, but in that activity, we are ultimately encouraging each other, building each other up, strengthening each other’s faith, and spurring each other on to love and good deeds.

Let’s pray.

Lord we hear your command to love one another
And we know ourselves to not always be loveable.
So help us extend grace, to share your love, from a true heart,
Recognizing that we have all received grace
Through Jesus Christ our Lord
Amen