Malcolm C. YoungMicah 6:1-8

Christ Church, Los Altos, CA Sermon P24Ps. 111

Sung Evensong 4:00 p.m.Ps. 112, 113

Sunday 11 October 2009Lk. 7:36-50

Righteousness and Forgiveness

“Then he said to her, your sins are forgiven…” (Luke 7).

When my wife Heidi and I were first married I had the responsibility to come up with names for our pets and houseplants.  We had Anselm, Perpetua, Habbakuk, Hildegaard, Tertullian, Athenagoras and Ambrose.  She told everyone that I got to name our pets but that she would be the one to choose names for our children.  In 1999 today’s first reading came up in the Sunday lectionary.  After I preached that day, I felt so moved by the text that I asked Heidi if we could name our son after this prophet.  I was surprised when she said yes.  There is something about righteousness that moves us.

“…[W]hat does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8).”  Justice, kindness and humility.  These virtues along with the Ten Commandments define righteousness.

It’s a shame that we no longer use the word righteousness in a positive way in our ordinary conversations.  Not having a name for this quality makes it harder for us to identify and maybe even, harder to attain.

When Jesus goes to Simon’s house he recognizes the righteousness of his host, just as he acknowledges the sin of the woman who anointed him and kissed his feet.  He does not say that sin doesn’t matter, or that we’re all equally good or that we should just give up on the Ten Commandments.

He is trying to make a far more radical point.  It is not the love of the woman that brings about her forgiveness.  Instead, it is her reception of forgiveness (of greater than ordinary forgiveness) that creates her love.  The twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich says that, “nothing greater can happen to a human being than [to be] forgiven.  [F]orgivness means reconciliation in spite of estrangement; it means reunion in spite of hostility; it means acceptance of those who are unacceptable...” 

I am the kind of person who agonizes over my own mistakes.  When I screw up something at church or in my family life, I know I can’t turn back the clock and redo it.  There is no way to make ourselves worthy of forgiveness.  We can emotionally punish ourselves, we can reject ourselves and wallow in feelings of guilt.  But this self-punishment will not help us.  It will not make us any more worthy before God.  “God’s forgiveness is independent of anything we do.”

But here’s the strange thing.  Forgiveness creates repentance.  It’s not like we change our minds about our lives and then go to God as changed creatures.  We ask for forgiveness, and if we are able to receive it, then God gives us the strength to make our life new.

Forgiveness is the experience of being brought together again.  It is the healing of the greatest sorrow in our lives.  “Forgiveness is what makes love possible.  We cannot love unless we have accepted forgiveness, and the deeper our experience of forgiveness is, the greater is our love.”

When we feel rejected by God we are not capable of loving God, ourselves or anybody else.  Being forgiven makes it possible for us to know what it feels like to love God.  Loving God allows us to accept life and to love it.  The puritans and other religious people through history were able to love God and hate this world.  But the kind of love I’m talking about is a form of being reunited not only to God but to the power of life in everything that we experience (especially in each other).

This life in God accepts you and “loves you as a separated part of itself.”  This experience of being forgiven by God ultimately makes it possible for us to accept ourselves.

Being righteous in the way that Micah describes it is wonderful.  But there is more to our existence than righteousness.  New life and our greatest power comes to us in seeking God’s forgiveness and receiving it.