NOT Related to Today’s Bible Reading!

            Some of you may know that December 6 is St. Nicholas Day, a day some folks celebrate by placing coins in their children’s shoes or by the giving of gifts.

            It’s all legendary and as such it’s hard to separate truth from fiction.  But St. Nicholas was a fourth-century bishop of Myra, a city in Asia Minor.  The story goes that Nicholas was orphaned at a young age and used his inheritance to help the poor.  One story of his alms-giving has the good bishop tossing a bag of money through a window to prevent three poor, young girls from being forced into a life of prostitution.  Hence, the tradition of gift-giving St. Nick. 

            What I didn’t know was that there is a tradition that says Nicholas attended the Council of Nicea in AD 325.  Legend has it that the good bishop was so ticked off at the heretic Arius (whose false teachings had caused the council to be called in the first place) that he walked across the room and slapped the heretic across the face.  Nicholas was imprisoned for conduct unbefitting a bishop, but Jesus appeared to him, releases his chains, and gave him a copy of the Gospels to occupy him.  When his jailers returned the next morning they were surprised to find him unbound and peacefully reading the Scriptures.

            The moral of the story?  I don’t know.  How does this sound?  Let your faith shine in works of charity and in zeal for the Lord’s truth!

            (For what it’s worth, you can find more here:  http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/home/.)

A Not-So-Cute Story

            Among the worst things we can do to the Scriptures are 1) to tidy them up and 2) to make them ‘cute.’  And the story of Noah and the great flood has certainly endured that treatment!  Many a child’s nursery is decked out in ‘cute-ified’ images from this story—pastel colors, an ark the size of a pontoon boat, and a giraffe sticking his head out the top.

            In that portrayal, we miss some things.  We miss the horror that human sin was working in this story.  I often hear that ‘things are getting worse all the time.’  I do wonder, though, if things are as bad as they were when God flooded they earth.  “Corrupt” is used three times to describe man’s behavior, and “violence” is used twice.  It makes you wonder how bad things must have been, how out of control human behavior was.

            Second, the flood is no spring shower.  The image of 40 days of rain just doesn’t seem like much.  But the story says the springs of the deep opened and that the flood raged over the earth for 40 days.  The waters didn’t begin receding for six months.  I tend to think that the flood is the result of a geologic catastrophe and that rather than think of 40 days of rain showers, we should think about the surface of the earth being ripped apart by earthquakes and of tidal waves that make the worst hurricanes pale in comparison.

            Third, theologically, we should recognize this as what one of my friends calls “the second-worst outpouring of God’s wrath in human history.”  (The greatest outpouring of that wrath is the punishment that Jesus endured in our place on the cross.)  I mean the whole human race, except for 8 people, and the plants and animals, save a handful, were wiped out.

            Once, we’ve “un-cute-ified” the story, we might very well be horrified to read it, and once we’re there, we’re ready to start asking Gospel questions of story.  The Gospel connection is about God’s forbearance.  Driven as He was to anger, He wasn’t blinded by rage.  He recognized that Noah remained faithful.  He acknowledged His own promise that He would redeem and save the human race, not completely obliterate it.  The flood was a devastating punishment, but not a complete one.  And, looking forward to Jesus, when the time came to fully pour out His wrath, the Lord knew that He could not pour that out on us without completely destroying us so He poured it out on His Son, who stood in our place.  The cross became our ark, allowing us to escape the rising flood of God’s wrath.

A Devastating Corruption

            The burden of Genesis 4:1-6:8 is that sin grows like a particularly aggressive cancer in the human race.  The most familiar story of the bunch—the story of Cain and Abel—demonstrates this.  God smiles on Abel’s offering (his gift of the ‘fatty portions’ indicates a gift of the best portions), but not on Cain’s (which, presumably, was not from the best portions).  Jealousy and anger grow, and the Lord warns of the danger: “Sin is crouching at your door.”  Refusing to acknowledge his own faults (either in a second-class offering or in his unfounded resentment), Cain lets his anger burst out into murder.

            Cain’s descendants continue the devolution.  While Cain’s descendants rack up all sorts of accomplishments of technology and art, morally they are bankrupt, as Lamech’s attitude shows.  “Cain, my murdering forefather, is avenged seven times, but me, seventy times that!”  Despite all his accomplishments, man’s violent self-assertion is never far from the surface.

            Finally, there is the devastating note in Genesis 6:5, that ‘every inclination of man’s heart is only evil all the time.’  That seems like an overstatement, doesn’t it?  But that’s what Genesis says.  Sin is not just an occasional misstep, a moral failure, a surface issue.  Sin is a deep corruption of human nature which means that the most basic thoughts of our hearts are turned away from the Lord.  Here’s how the Augsburg Confession, the founding document of Lutheranism, states it:

“Our churches teach that since the fall of Adam all men born in the natural way are born with sin, that is, without the fear of God, without trust in God, and with concupiscence [that is, an inclination to sin], and that this original sin is try sin, even now condemning and bringing eternal death upon those not born again through Baptism and the Holy Spirit.”

It’s only the grace of God and His love for His creation that stays His hand.  Tomorrow we’ll read about the flood that destroys most life from the face of the earth, but the thing to see is despite the devastating corruption of sin, the Lord refuses to give up on His creatures.

            In this Advent season, it’s important to see the importance of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus.  Human nature is so terribly corrupted, and the solution is a human being who does not bear that terrible corruption, One who is not born ‘in the natural way,’ One for whom God is His only Father so that Adam’s corruption doesn’t touch Him.  I noted on Monday that the Scripture is the story of God’s interaction with humanity, and the climax of that story is the coming of the New Human Being, Jesus our brother and savior, in whose life, death, and resurrection, our very nature is recreated.

Genesis 3: The Fall into Sin

            Genesis 3 also deserves a more in-depth commentary than a single blog post can give it.  Genesis 1-2 are absolutely essential in introducing the main characters of the Bible—the God who is without beginning, who has life in Himself, and humanity, with whom He shares His life and whom He creates to be extensions of His gracious presence into His creation.  Genesis 3 sets up the essential conflict between these two characters, namely, humanity’s willful refusal to own and obey their Creator, their refusal to acknowledge themselves to be the creation.  What to do about humanity’s rebellion—that will be the question that drives God’s plans and purposes from Genesis 3 forward.  The story of the Bible—the story of God and man—is the story of God having to heal what Adam so casually broke.  I can’t emphasize this enough:  if you don’t get Genesis 1-3, the rest of the Bible won’t make any sense either.

            Let me just note some of the terrible consequences of Adam’s rebellion.

            First, Adam and the woman (she’s not named Eve until the end of the chapter) recognize their nakedness and cover it up.  This is not a newfound humility; this is a newfound and tragic sense of deception and hiding.  Previously they had had no shame, no self-consciousness.  It’s only in the aftermath of their sin that they consider parts of themselves as ‘unpresentable.’  I think that this is a significant commentary on the sinful condition of humanity.  We hide our motivations and our desires from ourselves and from those who are closest to us.  (I always think of that great Billy Joel song, “The Stranger,” words here:  http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/The-Stranger-lyrics-Billy-Joel/953DB3F466E12BCA48256870001B45F1; music here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnlvPoDU5LY, if you’re interested.)  This lack of transparency, this desire to shield ourselves from one another, this lack of trust—all of that is a consequence of Adam’s fall.

            Second, they hide themselves from God.  Now, there’s an act of self-deception!  God finds them right away: it’s the most one-sided game of hide-and-seek in history.  But the point here is that they tried to keep themselves separate from the God who had given them life and purpose—another terrible effect of sin.

            Third, they completely threw each other under the bus.  When confronted, the man owned nothing.  Instead, he blamed Eve.  “Not me!  Her!”  Here’s the root of what the hymnist called ‘our warring madness.’

            Fourth, the earth itself is caught up in Adam’s rebellion, “Cursed is the ground because of you.”

            This is a chapter filled with bad news.  In trying to assert their independence from God, Adam and Eve brought a terrible corruption into God’s beautifully designed and executed creation.  It is filled with the brokenness of human relationships and with the deadly consequences of a broken relationship with the Lord.

            The only good news is that there are glimmers of good news.  The first glimmer is that the Lord promises that this situation will not last forever, that the woman’s offspring will eventually crush the head of the enemy.  (That’s not just a glimmer, I suppose; that’s a full-blown promise.)  The other glimmer is the Lord’s uncommented, but significant, forbearance:  had you or I been in charge, we may have just started over, but our God chose the more difficult path of redemption, on which the rest of the story focuses.

Genesis 1-2: Creation

There are so many things that deserve commentary in Genesis 1-2!  What I would highlight as the most important is this:  Genesis 1 and 2 set the table for everything that is to follow by establishing the relationship between the Creator God and humanity.

So, observe first that Genesis simply assumes that there is a God who has life in Himself.  There is no argument about the existence of God nor is there any philosophical discussion about Him.  For Genesis, God is the one unmistakable and unmitigated fact.  "In the beginning God . . . " (And, no, I don't think that just reflects the naivete of an ancient people who don't know any better.  We moderns think we're so sophisticated, but I don't accept that radical skepticism about anything I can't see or touch is sophisticated.  Our constant reliance on our senses actually seems a little childish to me.)

Second, observe that that God who has life in Himself shares that life outside of Himself.  God is under no compulsion to create.  He has no need of creation.  He is full and complete in Himself.  On the other hand, since the Triune nature of God is to share His life within Himself, it is also a natural expression of His loving nature to share that life outside of Himself.  He is not compelled to create, but His very nature is such that sharing the free gift of life is normal.  We do well, then, to consider Creation as the first act of God's grace--reaching beyond Himself in an act of pure gift.

Relatedly, we recognize that everything depends on God for its existence.  Paul speaks about all things having their origin and sustenance in the life of God (Col. 1:16-17).  Too often, we think of the world as having an existence apart from God--a sort of 'God-is-in-His-heaven' thing, which disconnects God and His world.Genesis will have none of that.

Finally, observe that humanity is the climax and culmination of God's creation.  Genesis 1 moves climactically towards Day 6 and, on Day 6, things crescendo into God's deliberation to make man in His image.  God's image is a rich metaphor.  Lutherans have understood the image of God as sharing in God's righteousness.  More than that, I'd suggest that it means sharing in God's moral nature.  So, it is only to humanity that God gives the specific command not to eat from one tree; that is a moral command, a choice to obey.  More than that, humanity has a special task within God's creation, that is, to rule it and to take care of it.  To bear God's image is extend His own care and His own gracious rule over His earth.  Humanity is designed to be an extension of God Himself, a gracious and loving presence.

All together, then, Genesis 1-2 establish the foundation on which everything else in the Bible will build.  Because God's purpose for humanity was always that they would share His life and His work, the disruption that we will read about tomorrow in Genesis 3 cannot stand.  The rest of the Bible will revolve around God's  long, slow work of overcoming that disruption and re-establishing His creation as He meant it to be.

Forgive Us Our Trespasses . . .

 “Forgive Us Our Sins . . .”

A Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Pentecost

A. D. 2012

A Challenging Prayer

            When I first introduced this series on the Lord’s Prayer, I mentioned a woman in my vicarage congregation who told me that she didn’t pray the 5^th Petition—at least not 2^nd clause.  It was a long time ago, but if I recall the conversation correctly, it wasn’t that she was nursing some long-standing grudges; it was more along the lines of “why take a chance?”  She apparently noticed something that a lot of people notice:  the 5^th Petition seems to make our being forgiven dependent on our granting forgiveness—and she just was sure she was doing that consistently.

            Here’s the reality:  this petition is very familiar, but it’s very difficult, too.  There are difficulties of translation:  I found myself in Greek grammar books I rarely look at anymore trying to figure out a grammatical problem.  And, there are difficulties of meaning.  Today, let’s take a look at the challenges this petition offers and try to find at least a little insight into what exactly we are praying for here.

The First Clause

            My own difficulty comes in a place that most people probably find relatively easy, and that’s because my struggle is in the first clause.  What does it mean to pray for forgiveness?  Perhaps I’ve just been exposed to too much bad theology in junior high confirmation classes over the years.  Whenever I would ask the question about how God grants forgiveness, I would too often get this answer, “God forgives me when I pray.” Or, worse, “God forgives because I ask for it.”  Both are frankly false.  The first is false because there is no promise of forgiveness attached to the practice of prayer—not like there is for Baptism or Lord’s Supper.  The second is just outright works-righteousness.

            So, here’s the truth:  God forgave your sins when and because Jesus died for you.  Forgiveness comes on no other occasion and for no other reason!  And God distributes that forgiveness, dispenses it, and delivers it through the means of grace.  He distributes forgiveness in the fact of your Baptism and in the faithful reception of the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Lord’s Supper.  He distributes it when His Word of forgiveness is declared, that is, in the act of Absolution, and whenever the Word declares to you what Jesus has done for you.

            This seems perfectly clear to me, but it’s a matter of confusion for a lot of people.

            Let’s be clear.  It is not a bad thing to pray for forgiveness; for goodness’ sake, Jesus tells us to!  But let’s not get cause and effect involved:  that somehow our prayers are the reason for or the instrument of forgiveness.

            But, if prayer is not a cause or an instrument of our forgiveness, then why should we pray for forgiveness?  Let me suggest two reasons.

            First, we pray for forgiveness because we are so aware of our constant need for forgiveness.  That is to say, our frailty, our weakness, and our failings all call out of us a longing for forgiveness.  The Small Catechism puts it this way, “For we daily sin much and deserve nothing but punishment . . but we pray that God would not look at our sins or deny our prayers because of them.”  In this way, we ought to see our prayer for forgiveness as an act of repentance.  In Lutheran theology, repentance is not faith or forgiveness; it is contrition, brokenness and sorrow over our sin.  To be sure, the Gospel must be applied immediately to the repentant.  Repentance belongs together with faith created and sustained by God’s own words of forgiveness.  In terms of our personal prayers, we may find ourselves ‘preaching the Gospel’ to ourselves, saying, even as we utter a prayer for forgiveness, “Nevertheless, I am baptized; I know what my God has done for me in His Son, Jesus.”  But it is the Gospel so proclaimed that delivers forgiveness—not our act of praying.

            A second reason we pray this petition is because we struggle so much to accept the reality of forgiveness.  I have this one specific memory of 3^rd or 4^th grade.  I broke a rule during an inside recess at school and I got caught.  The ridiculous thing is that this was over 30 years ago, and still I kick myself for being so stupid.  It’s just an example of the way our sins stick to us.  God might say that He has removed our sins as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103), but we wonder how He could possibly forget something that we so clearly remember.

            Jesus teaches us to pray for the certainty and the comfort that comes from a faith that truly believes its debts are paid, its sins are forgiven.

The Second Clause

            Those are my struggles with this petition, but I suspect more of us share the struggles of the lady in my vicarage congregation.  I mean, the second part of the petition sure seems to make our being forgiven dependent on granting forgiveness.  An important clarification notes that Jesus gives this prayer to those who are already His disciples in both Matthew and Luke.  It is a prayer that presupposes one has received the forgiveness of God given freely through Jesus.  Therefore, our forgiving is no condition of our being forgiven.

            However, we should take today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 18 into account:  Those who have received the free gift of forgiveness are also expected to grant forgiveness, and the steadfast refusal to grant forgiveness is a danger to faith.  Steadfast refusal to grant forgiveness means a failure to connect with the forgiveness the Lord has offered; it means that one is returning the heart of flesh the Lord gives and hardening one’s heart again into a heart of stone (Ezek. 36).   Ultimately, steadfast refusal to forgive leads to the rejection of the Lord’s own forgiveness and the withdrawal of that forgiveness.

            So, our granting forgiveness does not cause our being forgiven, but our refusing to grant forgiveness can be an indication that we are rejecting the Lord’s forgiveness.

            Many find that last point troubling and wonder if they are in danger of losing forgiveness because of their own incomplete granting of forgiveness.  Here are three lessons that will ease that concern.

            First, we should understand that forgiveness is in our power to give.  It does not depend in any way on the one who requires our forgiveness.  It is possible to forgive a person who is completely unrepentant.  This is so because forgiveness means letting go of our rights against another person. It means choosing not to take revenge, not to hold a grudge, not to demand our rights for retribution, not to repay evil for evil.  A synonym of forgive is release, and in forgiving, we release the other from our vengeance and we release ourselves from our bitterness.  A steadfast refusal to forgive means that both offended and offender are still captive to the other.  Release means your freedom and theirs.

            Certainly this is a matter for our prayers.  Sometimes we feel so bound by the sins committed against us that completely lose sight of fact that forgiveness is ours to give, regardless of other person.  And the longing for the ability to release those hurts so long clutched in our hands is a thing we hold up to the Lord’s care.

            Second, we should learn that there is an important difference between struggling to forgive and refusing to forgive.  Some wounds are so grievous that they don’t heal all at once; some are so deep that they mark us with pain throughout our lives.  In the midst of that pain, it is a difficult thing to release the one who caused that pain from the threat of punishment.  Sometimes it takes months and years.  But the fact that some wounds continue to hurt and that they are hard to let go of completely is not the same thing as refusing to let go.  Part of this prayer is a prayer that the Lord would help us let go of those grudges completely.

            Finally, we should not the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.  Forgiveness is unilateral; reconciliation needs two parties. Sometimes we can let go of the hurt and the desire for revenge and repayment.  But sometimes we also have to acknowledge that things can’t go back to the way they were before, especially if no similar change in offender.  If a friend betrays my trust, I can let the pain go, but I might not want to be friend anymore, at least not as close as once were.  If a spouse betrays a spouse, the wounded party may truly release that debt, but sometimes the marriage can’t be restored, if the breach is too deep and the offender can’t be trusted not to do it again.

            Again this distinction is part of our prayer.  Losing a dear relationship means grief over what is no more, and we pray that we may adapt to that circumstance and deal with that grief.  Sometimes we would really desire to have a relationship fully restored but the other’s recalcitrance stands in the way. In such a case, our prayer is also that the offender would come to a repentance that allows full restoration between us.

            In summary, it is a challenging petition.  It challenges us to focus with laser-like intensity on source of our forgiveness, Jesus.  It challenges us to take seriously the free gift of forgiveness, not doubting it.  It challenges us to become a forgiving people, with all the struggles that might mean as we strive to become more like our gracious God in releasing the debts owed to us and working diligently to become a people at peace with one another and those around us.  It is a challenging petition, but it is an incredibly practical one that touches some of the most sensitive realities of our lives.