Forgiveness

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Sarah: Today's reading comes from the book of John chapter 21 verses 15 to 19:

When they had finished breakfast Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes Lord you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes Lord you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep."(...) He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he had said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord you know everything. You know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep. Very truly I tell you when you are younger you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished but when you grow old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go." He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God. After this he said to him, "Follow me."

J: Turn that pack back on…I always turn it off in my pocket just in case you don't turn that back there and then during a song everybody has to listen to me sing. Because I have a great anxiety about that, so thank you. Thank you, though Sara, and thank you to you, Sarah, for reading this morning we're trying out this new thing we're gonna invite people in our community to be part of reading the word each week and so I appreciate you trying that out for the first time.

This morning we're going through John 21:15-19 for a third time as Cody pointed out to us last week this is not a Groundhog Day moment where it seems like all of us accidentally all chose the same Bible passage. But rather this is an intentional series in which we're walking through the same text over and over and over and over again so that we can have opportunities to hear something new inside of it. So that there might be a moment where we show up a little bit differently one Sunday than we did the last Sunday. So that perhaps in all of the life that you lived between last Sunday and this Sunday there might be a new thing that you need to discover inside of the same text.

And also because even though this is a very simple conversation between Jesus and Peter, it holds a lot for us in a journey to understand what it means to follow Jesus, or what these weighty words in the Christian tradition mean. The series is rooted in confession, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation all of those words arguably are some of the most core concepts the Christian ethic to a Christian life. Or words that very frequently come up maybe in Christian thought think, pieces that end up online, on whatever digital media you might be reading. But they're weighty.

And so today we're talking about forgiveness, and when I start I want to be very clear about what this text is and it isn't. And what the idea of forgiveness is and it isn't. And maybe what the call in the Christian life could be and what it doesn't have to be. Forgiveness, much like the experience of grief, is a long and windy path. Forgiveness, much like the experience of grief, is something so intimate and personal to you and the relationships that you have to a person who has passed or a person who has done harm.

And so I won't stand up here and aim to know anything about the most intimate and vulnerable parts of the harm you've experienced or the harm that you've caused. I won't stand up here pretending to know that I—someone who went to seminary and was trained in how to talk to people about forgiveness in their life—somehow was imbued with the secret to life's path to forgiveness and the exact way that Jesus wanted you to forgive. Because for those of you who have been to seminary, you know that that is just simply not what we did there.

So what am I up here to do? It is to go through this text with you this morning and see if there's anything about forgiveness that you might discover or rediscover yourself with the Spirit of God and through the story of Jesus. It's not to give you the five quickest best ways. I thought while I was writing this sermon that I had to find all of these different examples of forgiveness or all of the science behind forgiveness to convince those of you who are more science-minded that the spiritual paths of forgiveness is one that still matters in an objective way.

I thought maybe I could tell long stories about films that I've seen that have the thematics of forgiveness, but then I remembered what I just said which is that the role of this sermon isn't to tell you how to forgive. Because I cannot ever come close to knowing the things in your life which you need forgiveness for or the things that you have to forgive in others. And so let's just look simply at the text.

Patti, you can, you can put or if Patti's back there, you can put up the text you don't have to, I'll just kind of say it. I mean if anybody has a Bible with them revival on their phone you can feel free to follow in your copy as well but I'm curious what stands out to all of you as something that distinctly is lacking in this text, when it comes to forgiveness. We have a conversation where there's this question asked over and over again and this answer given over and over again and a new commission offered each time.

But I'm curious I don't want to put anyone too deeply on the spot but maybe middle schoolers or I see Greyson here or Jack’s in the back, you could just shout out what is one thing related to forgiveness in this story that is really completely lacking it doesn't exist there at all in the slightest even a little bit what in your experience of apologies or forgiveness lacks? Lil? “The direct words Jesus I'm sorry.” And on the other side, what else is lacking? Jack shout it out! “I forgive you.” Nowhere in this text in John 21 does Jesus absolve Peter and nowhere in this text does Peter seek to be absolved.

What might that offer us for the idea of forgiveness? Because when you if you just Google and then Google AI comes up with an answer for you you can ask what are the themes present in this text and it will very surely tell you forgiveness. But as these two just pointed out, forgiveness in the way that we might have experienced lacks entirely. There is no absolution there is no apology directly. We see this threefold question, we see this threefold response, and we see the three calls that Jesus is giving to Peter.

And it might seem to us perhaps especially on Mother's Day that a visceral memory that might come back to you is—especially if you grew up in the Midwest—maybe some passive aggressive comments made by mothering figures in your life: “Well it would just be nice if somebody, if, you know, if you loved me as a mother, that you remember to do the dishes.” And “If you loved me couldn't somebody please plan this instead of me?” I want you to know, I want to be very clear A) that you know, those comments are made out of deep frustration and we still love you mothers that wasn't a deep dig at you. And number two that Jesus is not trying to be passive-aggressive. We are reading into our text sometimes when we read it with our eyes our own cultural place which is that sometimes when people do stuff like this to us, it's to try to shame us. It's to try to poke us hard enough into doing something we should have been doing.

Jesus is not asking this question three times “Do you love me?” to make Peter feel as though he's failed. Both Jesus's appearance on the shores and the breakfast he has with Peter as Cody pointed out his calling him again Simon son of John in this text, these questions he poses, and the calling he gives is actually not that new. It is a reminder to Peter of who he is and who he's always been despite his denial by the charcoal fire in the night. Of who he knew himself to be.

I read this great commentary by Dr. Karoline Lewis who is a preaching professor over at Luther Seminary and she posits that perhaps forgiveness in the way that we understand it is not the exact point of John 21:15 -19. That it’s not so much that Peter needs to crawl and repent of his betrayal of a friend, but perhaps the true forgiveness happening in this text is Peter of himself for the ways that he denied his identity in his discipleship to Christ. Perhaps instead there could be a focus, a new way of viewing this, that isn't just about our direct understanding of “you hurt me as a friend, I'm sorry, I forgive you.” But rather Jesus saying “I know you and I have known you from the beginning. I called you Peter.”

Which if you don't know the word Peter comes from a Greek word petros or petra and it means stone or rock and when Jesus gives him that name the text he says, “And this is the rock on which, right? this movement shall be built.” Some interpret that as Peter's supposed to build the church. Some interpret that that Peter's discipleship and his faith in Christ is the type of faith on which the church shall be built, but either way Peter this person who's actually quite impetuous and impulsive is supposed to be a rock, Karoline points out. And that, even in his human failings, who Jesus has known him to be who Jesus has called him to be, who Jesus still knows he can be.

And so when asking him, “Simon son of John do you love me?” it's giving Peter an opportunity to hear out loud his new and renewed agreement of who he has also known himself always to be. It's giving Peter an opening to say “Yes Lord this is who I am a disciple who loves you, a disciple who can be trusted to be called to do these things: to feed your sheep your lambs to tend the flock.” He says, “Lord you know everything you know that I love you,” and Karoline Lewis in the commentary that I was reading asks what are all those things that Christ knows about us that, like Peter, in moments of fear, in moments of self-doubt, in moments of wondering whether or not we are worthy or good enough to be called rock, or to be called to what we're doing, or to be in leadership, or to be a disciple, or to be perhaps on this day to be mother, to be child to be anything to anyone. On those days when you're doubting those things, on those days when you are worried you're not good enough on those days when you answer out of fear and instead of your empowerment what are those things that Lord you know everything you know that I love you are that we've denied in the darkness of our night near the charcoal fire as other people are recognizing out loud the thing we also know to be true but that we're too afraid to say?

How often, on the side quests of the path to forgiveness, is one of the most difficult things recognizing in yourself the places where you have denied the truth all along because it was too difficult to name aloud? The betrayals of yourself and of your truth that you've made along the way to try to contort yourself for other people. The realities of life that you've hidden because you were too afraid to accept that that was what was going on. Sometimes the hardest part of forgiving other people or asking for forgiveness in our relationships isn't so much the moment of harm it's not the acute situation but rather sometimes it might be the ways that you pushed down the truth for a false peace. Sometimes it might be the things about yourself that you hid away to try and avoid the harm that came eventually in the darkness of the night near the charcoal fire.

Peter yelled at people “I am NOT” as they said, “Peter aren't you a friend of Jesus? Aren't you one of the people who's been with him all along? Haven't you been following from all the days since your fishing days till now? Didn't you have dinner with him just the other night?” Observable truths that other people were saying, Peter this is your opportunity to say that that's what you're with, to abide in Christ. Peter, in his difficulties, in his fear, in his maybe self-doubt of being bearing the name of Peter yelled “I am NOT. I am NOT. I do not know him.”

And often maybe we view Peter's response in the garden on that night and maybe we've heard it before from other people as an example of a failure of faith. Rather than in a faith to Jesus rather than maybe even a faithfulness to your calling to yourself, to your body, to who you know that you are in Christ, who you've been created to be and the work that you know you're committed to, that you care about.

So that's just one view on it. And this is just one of many texts. like I said I want to be clear about what this text is and what it isn't this is not a prescription for the way that you are supposed to forgive people, this is not a prescribed path to anything. This is one of the many examples we have of the way that Jesus shows up in a relationship with other people in the messiness of being human. This is an example of one example of relationship that required repair and forgiveness. It is not the only. And so today and every day, you should be looking to so many other sources to know and to review to discover and to have it be revealed to you, the type of forgiveness that you might need in the type of harm or hurt that you're dealing with.

Some of you might know that there's a lot going on in my life that requires a deep reflection on forgiveness and this is not the text for me. And that's okay instead I found it helpful Caroline's Lewis Caroline Lewis's words of just a new way to maybe read it. And for you maybe this morning that's all that this is going to be a different interpretation and that's okay. Maybe for some of you all of this is washing over your head. That's okay. The text is never meant to be a prescription to you, it is meant to be an invitation and a conversation with you and with God together, seeking the best way forward in faith together.

And at the end of the text Jesus narrates perhaps what Peter's greatest fear was all along: that the result of this love for him will be the end. And I think in narrating and stating this to Peter, Jesus says, “Are you ready now, even though you were not in the garden on the night near the charcoal fire, are you ready now for this calling?” And so he says to him “Follow me.”

So I wonder for you today as we went through John 21:15-19 together this week, last week, and the week before that and as you prepare—if you know you're coming next week—to hear it one more time, what does this text have for you? Where on your side quests of forgiveness are you finding it most difficult to remember the ways that perhaps not only did you betray a sense of faith to something greater but betrayed yourself? Where in life have you said “I am not” with your whole chest even though deep inside you wanted to also scream “I am! I am!” What good news might it be for you this morning that Jesus approaches Peter not to shame him in love but to say, “Peter, I'm gonna give you the chance to say aloud what was too hard in front of the charcoal fire with people that you did not know but for you to say it again to me out loud that you are.”

What good news is it that Jesus is not doing this for his own sake but to give Peter an opportunity to proclaim who he knows himself to be. Are there moments in your life right now that you for a while have been saying “I am NOT, I am NOT, I am NOT.” Where this week, or in your near future, you much like Peter could turn around and instead be truthful maybe still in the quiet of the night on your own in a bedroom you can say, “You know what? I am. Or this is the truth.”

I have a lot of friends with stories like that from things that are identity related to things that are career related to things that are just related to the relationship to church and to faith those moments where you wake up in the middle of the night and nobody else is around but you say to yourself either whispering in the night writing in a journal to yourself “I am.” I am ready for this next step, I am ready to show up differently, I am ready to tell people who I am, I am ready to live life differently, I'm ready for something new.

And in this text you see again and again, and we're reminded of all the other opportunities Jesus offers prior to this and that we hear about after this, through other leaders of faith in the scripture over and over again, that there are opportunities to—even if you have said in the past I am not—to have the truth revealed to you and to accept it. And to say “I am.”

This is a break away from the deeply serious thing I was just saying, but one of the only illustrations I could think of when I read this text is deeply stupid, but if anyone in here ever watched SpongeBob. I know that there's some millennials in the room although I know that some of you grew up in church backgrounds that did not allow you to have cable television so perhaps this illustration will be lost on you. There's this episode in SpongeBob where SpongeBob's not having the worst day because he ate this disgusting cocktail of onions and ketchup and weird garbage, and everyone's avoiding him and he's just trying to you know be himself. And so Patrick encourages him to get up on the top of a roof and start yelling “I'm ugly and I'm proud!”

He gets up on this roof and he yells “I'm ugly and I'm proud! I'm ugly and I'm proud!” over and over and over again and it is a deeply dumb illustration but I'm gonna bring it back around: in some ways it's beautiful. Why? Because even in a kids show, after that, it's the only thing that he could get to free himself from feeling like everyone hated him it's the only thing that freedom in that little kids show timeline of feeling like he was a failure at talking to people or being enjoyable to be around, was for him to get up on—where he thought that the reason people don't want talking because he ugly not because he had terrible breath—and for him to get up and just yell it over and over and over again into the night into the day.

That's kind of the only illustration that could come to mind when I was reading this and thinking, “what's like a good example of that?” I mean I know there's good examples in each of our lives but some of them perhaps too intimate to share and so I leave you with that what are those things that if you could if someone said to you I think you'd feel a lot freer if you got up on the roof and yelled “I am ____ and I'm proud.” For Peter it was being able to stand up and say I am a disciple and I am proud I am a disciple and I will take it to the cross.

What are those things for you? that even in the silliness of that imagery if your friend asked you to get up on a roof and yell it from the rooftop “I am ____ and I am proud” or “I am ____ and I need healing.” “I am ____ and I am sorry.” “I am ____ and I'm beautiful.” “I'm ____ and I'm moving on.” What are those things for you? I'm just gonna end us in prayer quickly here this morning and I invite you to whether it's just with yourself or with someone else share that thing that you are ready to say, “I am.”

Gracious God, thank you for this time this morning and to reflect on the ways that we are and the ways that we can show up to say even after we have said all along I am not the ways we can now be empowered to say “I am.” We love you and we pray this in your name, Amen.