Part 3 of 3: Forgive You
Pastor Anthony preaching on “Forgive You.” Scripture focus is Luke 6:27-38. Preached on August 22, 2021.
This is the third sermon of a three-part series on: “Words Have Power.”
Copyright 2021 by Rev. Anthony J. Tang and Desert Mission United Methodist Church.
Years ago, as a young adult, I was trying to turn left into shopping center. Both lanes of oncoming traffic stopped and waved me to turn left in front of them, which I did and was then hit by a third driver into my passenger door. I made the youthful mistake of not calling the police, thinking that I must have been wrong since I was making the left turn. The driver later sent me a bill, which I paid. Only afterwards when I went back to the shopping center did I realize that the reason I was hit by this car is because that driver had driven into the bicycle lane in order to go around the two lanes of traffic. So, was that fully my fault? I paid for it.
Another time, I was in a parking lot driving around looking for an open space, when a woman backed out of her space and hit my front right bumper pretty hard. She jumped out of her car screaming at me that it was my fault. Insurance disagreed with her since she was driving in reverse. As I think back to that incident, though, I wonder: was she fully at fault for that accident?
When there’s an accident, it seems to me like drivers, police, insurance agencies, and even bystanders are all trying to determine who’s at fault, but the older I get, the less I’m inclined to think that this is about Truth and Justice and the more I’m inclined to think that this is just about deciding who’s going to pay for the damages.
Or what about marriages that fail? It’s really easy to hear someone’s story and figure out who’s fault it is, right? Perhaps the one who was unfaithful or the one who cheated. But when people are telling me their stories and in humility, they fully discloses to me what had been happening over the years of their marriage, I often find it difficult to make such clear cut assumptions. It takes two to tango, doesn’t it? Relationships are complicated and there are always two sides, two positions, two partners. Now, I’m not trying to assign blame here, just the opposite, but just to recognize that relationships are always more complicated than they seem at the surface level. And, when long term relationships break down, often, someone is asking who’s at fault and who’s going to pay to make things “right.”
In our scripture for today, Jesus gives us a ridiculous commandment: to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, and to pray for those who abuse us. Jesus suggests that if someone strikes us on the cheek that we should offer them our other cheek and if anyone takes our coat from us, that we should not withhold our shirt.
I say that this is ridiculous because in this day and culture, people often wore coats and underneath their full-length coats, they would wear a long shirt. It’s not far off to think of their shirts as their underwear. So, if someone were to steal their coat, it would be like leaving them in their underwear. And if Jesus suggests to give them our shirt as well as our coat, then we’d be left standing in the buff. Surely the disciples who were listening to Jesus were thinking that he was out of his mind, right?
After all, what Jesus is saying is fundamentally unjust, isn’t it? How are we supposed to love our enemies and to give to someone who has already taken from us? Why would he ask us this?
To respond, I would first like to remind us all, that when Jesus call us to love our enemies, this does not include helping others to avoid the consequences of their actions. Helping people to face the consequences of their own actions is usually the most loving choice we could make.
Recently, Katherine and I were watching a television show in which a cop finds herself having to decide whether to arrest her best friend’s son for a terrible crime. The mom was trying to love her son by keeping him out of juvenile detention, prison. But if she succeeded, I’m not convinced his life would have gone well. He would have been harboring the guilt of this dirty secret for ages. He would be constantly remembering what a terrible thing he did, he would be always afraid of someone finding out his secret, he would have to live in hiding not being able to truly confide in another or be fully transparent to friends, he would likely act out his guilt and shame through addiction, depression, or by fully giving into evil. When we protect others from consequences and we refuse to confront bad behavior, we often unintentionally curse them to never get resolution or growth from their actions.
On the other hand, if the cop were to bring the son into juvenile detention, then there is no more secret. There’s no more hiding. He pays for his crime, and then he gets released. I recognize that sometimes the American prison system creates more criminals than it redeems, but I’m not preaching on our penal system today.
My point is that love doesn’t remove us from the consequences of our actions, love helps us to face our consequences with courage and dignity.
If this is the case, then why does Jesus tell us to bless those who curse us and to pray for those who abuse us? Why would Jesus want us to do this?
In the 1983 movie, War Games, Matthew Broderick plays a teenage computer hacker named, David, who uses 8-inch floppy disks and a land line modem to try and find the phone number of a computer game company that he wants to break into. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0) Accidentally, he instead finds the wrong number for a computer named, Joshua, that does have many games on it, including one called “Global Thermal Nuclear War.” What he doesn’t realize is that he’s accidentally broken into an artificial intelligence computer that is connected to the United States NORAD missile defense system. So, he thinks he’s playing a game, the computer thinks it’s playing a game. Unfortunately, as the computer plays the game, it conveys information to the military causing them to think that Russia is actually attacking by shooting all of their missiles at the United States all at once.
In a tense moment as the military is watching the screens showing thousands of missiles heading toward the United States and the general is getting ready to launch a counter strike with our own nuclear weapons pointed toward Russia, the creator of the computer rushes in to try and stop the madness. He says:
Falken: General, are you prepared to destroy the enemy?
General: You betcha.
Falken: Do you think they know that?
General: I believe we’ve made that clear enough.
Falken: Then don’t. Tell the president to ride out the attack. General, do you really believe that the enemy would attack without provocation, using so many missiles, bombers, and subs so that we would have no choice but to totally annihilate them?
Thankfully, they do not launch any missiles and as they watch the screens showing the destruction of the United States, they hear the voices of the different outposts and realize that no one has died. The day has been saved.
Unfortunately, the computer—still thinking that the game is continuing—starts preparing a counter attack of its own and is actually connected to the real nuclear missiles.
In desperation, the teenage David tries desperately to teach the artificial intelligence computer a new lesson by forcing it to play repeated games of tic-tac-toe against itself until computer terminals start shooting sparks and blowing up and the whole system gets rebooted.
The computer having not launched the nuclear missile states the new lesson it has learned. It says:
“Greetings Professor Falken. A strange game. The only winning move… is not to play.”
Bringing this computer’s lesson back to our topic, when we talk about not playing, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t drive a car, or that we shouldn’t get married, or that we shouldn’t live. If we want to do those things, we should. And when I say we shouldn’t play the game, I am also not saying that we shouldn’t protect the innocent and the defenseless. We should live and we should live honorably.
When I suggest that we don’t play the game, I’m suggesting that we don’t play the “who’s at fault” game. I’m suggesting that we walk away from the judgement game, walk away from the blame game. Because any of these games may determine who should pay, but they never help us decide how we’re going to live.
This is why Jesus concludes by saying: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” I believe it would be a mistake to assume that what Jesus is saying is that if we refuse to forgive, then God won’t forgive us; no. Instead, the only way we can do what Jesus asks is to not judge and not condemn. Perhaps the best way to read this scripture is to think of it this way: “Do not judge yourself, and you will not be judged; do not condemn yourself, and you will not be condemned. Forgive yourself, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.”
The truth is God has already forgiven us. God doesn’t need to play the “who’s at fault game” because God has chosen instead to simply love us into our future.
And we can love ourselves into our own futures when we stop playing the judgement game because as long as we play the judgement game, we keep our name at the table. As long as we play the judgement game, we have to keep anteing up, we have to keep increasing how much of our lives we’re going to risk for the sake of being right and risking the possibility that we might be the ones who are wrong or condemned.
Only when we stop playing the game do we fully remove our name from the possibilities of judgement. And the way we stop playing the game is with the words, “I forgive you.”
The power of the words, “I forgive you” if directed at others and especially when we direct it toward ourselves, those words reveal the power of freedom, that the events of the past while never forgotten will have no hold or control over our future. And when we get that, then we understand that the true power of the words, “I forgive you” is to say, “I am free from my own condemnation.”
What God wants for us, what Desert Mission wants for us, is to be free from the shackles of judgement and condemnation, so that we can take a deep breath and live a better today.
