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My heart beats for love. I want to be different. I want to be who I am called to be. WORTHY and LOVED!

Sunday, June 14, 2015

1 John 1:9 “How Do We Forgive Ourselves”

Way back before Lent we entered into our mini sermon series on forgiveness  by asking how we can forgive others when they hurt us. But this week we are going to flip the question, instead asking, how can we forgive ourselves when we hurt others.
When we are in relationship with others, we tend to hurt them from time to time. But after we wrong someone we have a choice to make - or rather a series of choice. First, we need to decide if we will humble ourselves to say “I’m sorry” or not. Second, if we choose to say “I’m sorry” we have to decide how we will say it and how we will respond to the one we have hurt.
Because we are all in relationships, we need to learn how to say “I’m sorry” - yet it seems that for some of us, these can be the hardest words to ever utter. They admit our shortcomings. They make us vulnerable. So some people avoid admitting that they have hurt anyone in life, refusing to say “I’m sorry”, and eventually causing even more pain. 
But others choose to say “I’m sorry”. After examining the distant that they are feeling from someone close to them and considering the part they have to play in creating that distance, they begin to ask how can I be reconciled to the one I’ve wronged? Reconcile is a difficult word. It means restoration of friendship or relationship. But such simple definition can trick us into thinking that reconciliation is easy - which is far from the truth. Reconciliation is difficult because it is beyond our control. We cannot make someone we have wronged restore relationship with us - we can only put our best foot forward. We can only control our part in seeking the reconciliation, not if someone else will it accept it, what terms they may present, or the timing. And that is hard to swallow. When we say “I’m sorry” to another person, we cannot expect the automatic response to be “I forgive you”, especially if we have deeply wounded someone. Forgiveness, like healing, takes time.
So why would we want to take the risk of saying “I’m sorry”, not knowing if the other person will accept our apology or not? Because right relationships matter to God. I often tell people that for Christians, our relationships with God and others are linked together. When we are feeling closer to God, when we are in right relationship with God, after confessing our sin and seeking to restore our relationship with the Holy One, we are usually in better relationship with the people who are important in our lives. The reverse is also true. When we seek to be reconciled to those important people in our lives who we have hurt, we often find ourselves growing closer to God. It is very difficult to love God and hate our neighbor, or to love our neighbor and be estranged from God.
We are meant to be loving, truthful, and kind to one another, but when we slip into the sin of selfishness, putting our needs and focus first, we are bound to hurt other people. I can think of no sin that is a private sin, for many times such sins end up unintentionally hurting others and most certainly hurt God. This is why we are told in today’s scripture verse to confess our sins. When we confess our sins earnestly to God, God meets us with grace and purifies us. This doesn’t mean that we will never make a mistake or sin again, it simply means that God, through Jesus Christ, intervene on our behalf. While we do not know if another person will accept our apologies, we know God will. According to Pastor Adam Hamilton, we must talk about sin, forgiveness, and reconciliation all together when he states, “But the process of forgiveness begins with our awareness and understanding of sin, for if we are not aware of our sin, we go on living self-absorbed lives hurting others. So the purpose of preaching and learning about sin is to open the door to healing!”
A caveat, however. Our confession to God and apologies must be sincere. How many of us have seen a little child hurt another person, only to have the parent demand that they say they are sorry? While this is certainly teaching a good skill, the child often half heartedly says “I’m sorry” without admitting what they did wrong or how it hurt another person. This is a bad trait we carry into our adult relationships. Making statements such as “I’m sorry, but….”, or making an excuse with our apology, or gloss over your mistakes, or seeking to place blame on the other person. Part of apologizing is thinking about and stating what you wish you would have done differently. Thinking about how you can seek through not only words, but also actions, to be in right relationship, as you answer the question, will I do my best to not harm this person in this way again?
But what if the wrong or the burden lies in the past? Too many of us are carrying around loads of unconfessed and unforgiven sin against other people. How can the burden of guilt from such instances be removed? Through prayer. And through seeking a right relationship with God through confession. If the person you have wronged is still living, try to seek them out and reconcile. I was reading a book this week and approaching death in the hospice program from a chaplain’s perspective. In one of the vignettes, the chaplain tells of a woman who was estranged from her brother for twenty years, but wanted to be reconciled to him before she died. Not knowing how to do so, she wrote him letter, essentially saying, I forget why we are estranged, but I am sorry that I continue to hurt you by keeping my distance. Before she died, he brother wrote back, saying he too, did not remember why they were estranged, and wanted to be in relationship again with her. When we confess our sins to God and others, we lighten our load and lay the burden of our guilt down. Part of the reason we pray a corporate prayer of confession each week is to get us in the habit of confessing and to remind us that we have fallen short in our relationship with God and with other people.
But what if the person we have hurt is no longer living or will not forgive us? Then take it to God in prayer. We may not be able to have the relationship with the person we once had, but we can ask God to keep us from committing the same sins against people in other relationships. We still need to lay the burden of guilt down. As long as we have tried our very best to restore the relationship and have earnestly repented, we can be assured of our pardon. 
The journey of seeking forgiveness for wrongs you have committed against others is not something we should enter into alone. Just as there are no private sins, there too are really no private confessions. For too often, we confess our sins to God alone, we do not have accountability from other people, which we deserpately need. This is why we need the Church. I’ve heard far too many people tell me that they are not good enough, too bad or too broken to come to Church. But the Church is for sinners. The Church exists to support one another on this journey towards forgiveness because we’ve all been there. We need a place to put what God has touched our heart with into action. To practice reconciliation. To seek to lay our burdens down. To both ask for and accept forgiveness.
I can think of no better way to end my time with you than with this sermon. To say I am sorry for the times you feel that I have not made the right decisions. To say I’m sorry for not being the pastor that some of you wanted or was able to fulfill your every expectation. But I ask that you do not carry any un-forgiveness you may be feeling towards me into your relationship with Pastor Tim. God has given you a clean slate - a fresh start. Embrace it. Learn from him. Love him and Brittany. And let him be the pastor God has called him to be. 

Brothers and sisters, what guilt of damaged relationships are you carrying around? Who do you need to say “I’m sorry” to? What unconfessed sins do you need to bring before God? May we leave this place, knowing that we have the support of one another as we seek to restore the relationships in our lives in need of healing - be it with God or with other people. Amen. 

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