The Sermons of Preacher J

Some time in the next couple of months, you will probably find yourself watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas. At the very least you'll be reminded of it, hearing "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch" on the radio or in among the carols played in a store. Especially if you're in a store, you'll hear it while embedded in the materialistic side of the season and you might find yourself wondering "What's with those Whos? They put an enormous amount of work into their Christmas preparations, just like we do, and then they wake up on the big morning and find it was all for nothing. If that happened to me, I wouldn't feel like singing."

So let me reconstruct for you what happened that morning in Whoville after the Grinch hauled everything away.( Read more... )

 When Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"

 Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

 "Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

 "The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

 "But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded.   "His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'  "But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

 "Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

 "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

                                            ~ Matthew 21:35

Forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood ideas in Christian thought.  We say "forgive and forget" as if they went  together naturally.  We urge people who have been wronged to deny their feelings, drop the charges, pretend the wrong didn't happen, and generally get out of touch with reality.  And we imagine that this produces healing.  But forgiveness is a much deeper matter, one which cannot be accomplished without God's grace.  When you lay before God your grievance, the wound it left in your heart, all your feelings of rage and resentment and sorrow and deprivation, and you sincerely ask God to heal all of that, God will provide the healing.  And that healing will go so deep that when it is complete you will be filled with Divine love for this flawed world and all that is in it, including the person who did you wrong and the wrong itself.  Forgiveness in that sense, the conventional sense, will flow naturally from your soul. 

So why is it so often said the other way around, with forgiveness producing healing?  Well, it has to do with this odd little fact of human nature: on some level we know this will happen and if we are not standing in the triple virtue of faith, hope and love, we are liable to decide not to ask for healing because we'd rather have a grudge.  How we love our victimhood!  It's even said to give us moral high ground, as if unhappy emotions were some kind of virtue.  Having a grudge tickles our pride, makes us feel important, and of course it can be used to get attention.  Plenty of cheap, unhealthy, ultimately destructive thrills are available from a grievance.  And when God heals us, he will take away, not the facts of what happened, but the story your flawed human mind built up around what happened.  You just won't be mad anymore.  So the real moment of forgiveness comes when you hold the possibility of healing up against the corrupt pleasures of grievance and you choose the healing.   You can't have both.  Once God has started to answer that prayer, the grievance has got its death sentence.  It's just a matter of time. 

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body."
- 1 Corinthians, Chapter 6, verses 19 and 20

Saint Paul calls the body a temple.  He was specifically warning against polluting the body with sexual sin, but if Christians are to understand that statement as part of God's message to us, then we must consider all that it implies.  So I want to start by pointing out that what makes a building a temple is not how well the builders built it, nor what secular or sinful uses it may have been put to in the past, nor what kind of shape it's in now, nor whether its looks meet our human, fallible, culturally limited standards of beauty.  What matters is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.  Now, when it comes to our bodies, this is the most common mistake Christians make.  We look in the mirror and we say "This body has pain.  This body is the wrong shape.  This body is slowing down as the years go by.  It won't always do what I want it to, and sometimes it does things I don't want it to do.  It makes funny noises and puts out funny smells.  It needs constant maintenance: fueling it, exercising it, keeping it clean, keeping it dressed appropriately."  Even if your body looks good by the world's standards, it has lusts.  It has anger.  It gets tired when you want to do stuff.  Jesus said "the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."  He said that to three of his disciples, Peter, James and John, at Gethsemane when he asked them to keep watch with him, just a few hours before his arrest, and they fell asleep.  Even these men, who experienced the presence of Jesus in the flesh on this Earth, had trouble getting the co-operation of their bodies for His service.  So no body, and I mean no flesh and blood body, is perfect.  ( Read more... )