All Is Forgiven

All Is Forgiven--March 13, 2019

"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.  So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." [2 Corinthians 5:18-21]

From God's vantage point, all is forgiven.  All.  Really.

We are the ones who so often still have a problem.  Maybe we can't dare to recieve a free gift without some sense that we "earned" it by doing something religious on our part, or at least giving ourselves credit for being smart or spiritual enough to say "yes" to God's great offer.  Maybe we can't bring ourselves to swallow the idea that God has forgiven the most terrible, horrible actions of history, whether in our own lives or over the centuries.  Maybe it just sounds too good to be true, or like there has to be a catch, or some signs of moral improvement for those applying for forgiveness before it can be granted (conditionally, of course, in our minds, with a fine-print section of escape-clauses for God to cancel the forgiveness if it turns out we are bad investments).  There are lots of reasons we may be skeptical about this notion that all is forgiven.  Maybe the number of broken promises we had pinned our hopes on in life, only to be let down have just beaten the optimism and trust out of us.

But for whatever reasons we bring that keep us from daring to believe it, here is none other than the apostle Paul himself making a full-throated declaration that all is forgiven. God has repaired (from God's side) the bridges that we burned (from our side).  And to be clear, if these verses are to be believed, God has done it for "the world." Yep--the world. Not just me.  Not just current church-attenders.  Not just people in my country.  Not just people with my skin color, language, philosophy, or politics.  There is no place for Me-and-My-Group-First thinking in the gospel. The question, then, is whether we'll tell the rest of the world about what God has already done.

So... this happens with my son from time to time.  When my son gets caught doing something he knows he should not, often his reaction looks like anger (at everybody else around, who can call him on it), but really there is a lot of shame underneath.  He gets embarrassed, and then angry that he's been found out, and often, he will go storming up to his room in a show of protest and seven-year-old-style outrage.  There was a time not long ago when I called to him, while he was up in his room, and he was dead-set on staying angry with the door shut.  And I called to him. Not to yell at him, but with the hope of telling him it was OK, and that if he was ready for the hurricane of anger to be over, we could start again.  He wouldn't have it.  He was still wanting to be mad, or thought he had to be mad, or didn't know how to unclench the anger like it was a charley-horse in his heart.  So he stayed mad.  And I kept calling up.  Eventually, I had to knock on his door, letting him continue to be mad while I knocked, letting him be mad as I opened the door, and letting him be mad while I sat down next to him to ask him to tell me again what was upsetting him.  

And of course, from his vantage point, I was the bad guy.  I was the one who was mean (for insisting on things like not hitting his sister, needing to do his spelling homework, and not having endless hours of television, or whatever else we cruel parents do.  But I needed to let him be mad--I needed to let him say out loud that he thought I was the mean one, the angry one--the one, in other words, who had sinned.  I needed to bear the wrath of my son, fuming and frustrated, in order to hold him and tell him I loved him, and that we were starting over.  I had forgiven him, if you want to use that word, before he had ever stomped upstairs in a huff.  But in order for him to be able to hear it, I needed to let him be mad at me and direct all his childish fire and fury at me, and I needed to be the one to keep knocking, speaking the forgiveness and new beginning that was already his.  Maybe one day he will see that it was his before he even accepted it. But for now, he may well need to think that he set it all into motion by letting me open his door.  Love is funny that way--you don't really care if you get the proper credit for your efforts.

This, in a manner of speaking, is what the apostle says God has done for us.  Reconciliation, from God's vantage point, is already a done deal.  Already an accomplished fact.  Apart from our efforts, and even apart from our approval or acceptance of it.  In fact, while we were all stomping upstairs in a huff, trying to cut off relationship, there was God already saying, "We are starting over now."  And when we refused to listen, God let us be mad.  God let us pour out all our anger, all of our rage, and all of our accusation onto God's very own self in Jesus, even to the point where we accused God of being the one in the wrong, of being sinful.  Paul says it this way: "God made him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God."  Jesus bears all of our rage and accusation while he is in the act of saying, "All is forgiven.  Already."  And the ongoing work of Jesus' people is to announce that same news to the world that is already completely forgiven, while we are all shut inside our rooms, huffing and fuming and unwilling to dare to believe it could be true.

What happens at the cross, in other words, is that the living God bears all the outrage we think God should get because we are childishly throwing a temper tantrum, while God all the while keeps saying nothing but, "We are OK now.  We are starting over.  All is forgiven.  All of it.  Always."  All the church was ever meant to say is a coda to that--just to say again to a world that cannot dare to believe it that God has built the bridge all over again from God's side.

And that is the work of this day, too.  Let's get to it.

Lord Jesus, let us dare to believe your gift and to share it... with all.