The reading
2
Corinthians 2:1-11
So I made up my mind that I would not make
another painful visit to you. For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad
but you whom I have grieved? I wrote as
I did, so that when I came I would not be distressed by those who should have
made me rejoice. I had confidence in all of you, that you would all share my
joy. For I wrote you out of great
distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let
you know the depth of my love for you.
If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has
grieved all of you to some extent—not to put it too severely. The punishment inflicted on him by the
majority is sufficient. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so
that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to
reaffirm your love for him. Another reason I wrote you was to see if you would
stand the test and be obedient in everything. Anyone you forgive, I also
forgive. And what I have forgiven—if there was anything to forgive—I have
forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake
The
message
(I changed some of this as I was
preaching to clarify the point that Jesus invites us to see the world differently. I tried to update this manuscript accordingly)
I
had 2 very strange days this week. On
Wednesday night I had volunteered to work at the tutoring center at the Pam Am
Shelter on Queens Boulevard. The program started at 6:30 and Jen was off that
day, so we went to an early dinner. As we entered the restaurant, I accidently
dropped my eyeglasses and the frame broke in half. At that time, I did what any normal person
would do, I asked the waitress if she had some tape we could borrow. All she had was some masking tape so I taped
my glasses back together with that.
This repair lasted about 20 minutes and then they fell apart again.
Without glasses my vision is really terrible. I went to the tutoring program
anyway. At tutoring, things were sort
off, I had a hard time seeing the people around me and seeing the work (this
was also my first night working with the Wednesday group, so they must have
thought “wow the new guy is really weird”). After tutoring, I took a very slow,
cautious walk home. When I got home, I
finally had the appropriate tools and equipment to repair my glasses. I got the
duck tape from the draw and put them back together. The break was in a really awkward spot so
even duck tape didn’t really last long or fix it well. Over the next few hours and on Thursday morning,
I was hardly able to see. Even with the taped glasses, things looked really
funny and were hard to make out.
Thursday afternoon, I went to the eye doctor (which I was long overdue
for anyway) and ordered new glasses. They also taught me how to properly use
duck tape to repair eyeglasses (You don’t, to help for the next few days they
just moved the lenses to a loaner frame). Things were back to normal. After
having glasses on virtually every day since first or second grade, it was
strange to be without them. For those
hours, the world looked very different to me.
Even streets I had walked down 1000’s of times looked weird or strange. Crossing streets, especially Queens boulevard,
was more frightening than usual. I didn’t really feel quite right either. With
the broken glasses, I always felt like something was wrong or off.
There
are the literal eyeglasses that many of us wear, lenses that help us use our
sense of sight properly and help us experience the world around us. There are also more figurative glasses many
of us wear, lenses that filter and influence our relationships with each other
and how we experience the world around us.
Some of these figurative lenses are very dangerous and sad. There are
lenses like racism or other prejudices, which prevent us from seeing each other
as children loved by the same God. There are lenses like justice or fairness,
both of which are important to maintaining order in society but often abused to
prevent forgiveness or create real change. There are lenses that allow us to
see ourselves as great and our power as the ultimate. These things prevent us
from acknowledging our sinful brokenness and from experiencing God’s grace
(after all if we are too special to sin, how can we experience the joy of God’s
forgiveness).
In
Paul’s communications with the church in Corinth, he is constantly challenging their
lenses or perceptions of the world. He
is inviting people to see things differently, even uncomfortably. With faith
and with the knowledge that Christ is Risen from the dead, the world should
look very different. Paul is inviting them to see the world as a
place where God’s love covers all people, a world of real affliction and serious
sin but also true consolation and complete forgiveness.
Last
week, 2 Corinthians began with Paul
writing on affliction and consolation. This was an attempt to improve the
relationship between the church and its founder. There Paul recounts the ways
he has suffered during his ministry, not to brag but to show them endurance and
the depth of his love for Christ, for the church and even for them (although he
often has a tough love approach there). He does not want them to just see
frustration, annoyance, dislike or hatred. .
He invites them to see the world through the lens of consolation, not
the lens of suffering. The people are
called to draw their hope for something better from God’s promises of healing
and ultimately the resurrection of the dead to eternal life
This
week Paul goes on to talk about forgiveness. In particular Paul is advocating
for the church to forgive an unspecified person who had led them away from
Paul’s own teachings (it appears that after the letter of tears, the community
turned on and inflicted some sort of punishment on the person who led them away
from the faith). Paul writes “the punishment inflicted on him by the majority
is sufficient. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he
will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm
your love for him”. Here, the lens we
see the world with is often crime, punishment and protection. The normal, human
thing is to not let stuff go, to not forgive and certainly not to forget. After
all, leaving this guy in the community, leaves him the opportunity to go back
to his old ways and sharing false teachings.
It’s not safe. For Paul to not
only forgive but also advocate for others to forgive someone who had seriously
wronged him is an invitation to look beyond their previous disputes and look
forward together to their shared experience of God’s joy. Paul invites them to see the world in a
dangerous and unsafe way, with forgiveness and trust in others you probably
should not trust.
Now
forgiveness should be an easy topic for a pastor to talk about. After all most
of us say the Lord’s prayer, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin
against us” a lot. At every church service I say “I declare to you the entire forgiveness
of all your sins” ( Not because I have some magic powers, but because Jesus died and rose again). Over the past few months, I have added an
invitation to reflect on the times when we have failed to love God and neighbor
as ourselves and I have added “with great joy: to “I declare to you the
forgiveness of all your sins”. These changes are meant to help highlight the
renewing joy we experience when we become aware that our real sins are really
forgiven. Forgiveness is also a central
idea for a lot of work that psychologists and other mental health professionals
do with people who are struggling to experience joy in their lives. The idea is that forgiving lets you move on,
restart your life and and it stops letting anger eat away at you. As it turns
out, forgiveness is not that easy to talk about and do.. We must also see the
world differently. Its not about being safe, it’s about being loving, its not
about being fair, forgiveness is unfair.
Almost 500 years ago, Martin Luther shared
these thoughts in a sermon: There is no greater theme for a preacher
than the grace of God and the forgiveness of sin, yet we are such wicked
people, that, when we have once heard or read it, we think we know it, are
immediately masters and doctors, keep looking for something greater, as though
we had done everything, and thus we made new factions and division. I think I have forgiven people. I have now been teaching and studying this
subject with all diligence for many years (more than any one of those who
imagine they know it all), in preaching, writing and reading, yet I cannot
boast of having mastered it and am glad that I still remain a pupil with those
who are just beginning to learn.
To
forgive takes trust, faith, and seeing the world in a different way. It means taking off those glasses we have worn
for so long and seeing the world as of place of uncertainty but faith that God
is in charge, a place of sin but also forgiveness.
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