Now I want to transition to our sermon for this morning.
We are continuing in our One Another series, looking at God's
invitation to community and what it means to be a people marked
by love. Our scripture reading today is
from Colossians 312 to 14. Therefore, as God's chosen
people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourself with compassion,
kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.
Bear with each other and forgive one another.
If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the
Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put
on love which binds them all together in perfect unity.
This is the word of the Lord all.
Right. Good morning.
How's everyone doing? Morning.
Good morning. So many exciting summer tables.
Vera did a great job. Yeah, you guys should come and
have lunch with us after the service that that wasn't already
your plan. It'll be super fun.
I'm sure there will be some very inspiring and helpful questions
to help you. Too deep to dive right into
friendship. If you haven't met already, My
name is Mandy. I'm on staff here at Reality
Church Boston, and today I'm going to be continuing our
sermon series on the One Another Commands.
That we see in the New Testament, and together these
commands show us what it looks like to love one another, which
is the overarching theme of our sermon theories.
So, so far this summer, we've talked about what it means to
belong, to serve, to encourage, to care for, and to humble
ourselves before one another. And so I really appreciate how
each of these topics kind of gives us a different angle and
perspective on what love is, because we don't want our
concept of love. To accidentally become
one-dimensional or to be based solely on what's?
Comfortable or convenient for us because love is God's very
nature and character. So to grow in love is actually
to grow in our knowledge of God. And by pressing into these one
another commands, we are slowly but surely being shaped into a
people who reflect God's transformative love.
So today, as Vera read, we have not one, but actually 2/1 and
other statements that are just packed in the same verse.
So Colossians 313 calls us to both bear with one another and
to forgive one another. And so the good news is that
they're both incredibly challenging and WAVY topics.
So here's the thing, here's the thing about the topic I signed
myself up for. Patience and forgiveness are so
important. That we could do an entire
sermon series just on these. So I know that my 30 minute
message here is not going to be exhausted by any stretch of the
imagination. So really we're just going to
ask you this to meet us where we are right here, right now with
these topics. And even if we only manage to
kind of dip our toes into the waters today, it's still worth
it because patience and forgiveness are two of the most
powerful expressions of God's love.
They are integral. To the life of Jesus.
And they have the power to bring real healing and change into our
lives, into the lives of those around us.
But to respond to this call, we are definitely going to need
some supernatural assistance. So let me first open us with a
word of prayer and we will just ask God to meet us in our time
of need and my time of need this morning let me pray for us.
Lord, we thank you that your very character, your very
nature. Is forgiveness, is patience.
You even call yourself that a God as a God who is slow to
anger, but you are full of mercy and long-suffering and
compassion and God. We just pray that we would have
an encounter with you this morning, that we would see more
clearly the beauty of who. You are Lord, we know that there
are so many things that each of us carries into a moment like
this, into a Sunday morning, things from far in our past.
Things, maybe even from the last week.
Things that we've wrestled with that we've brought before.
Mentors and and elders and therapists and people who we've
just poured our hearts out out to and Lord.
There might also be things that we haven't even begun to
address. Things that are in our hearts.
Unforgiveness and in pain and in difficulty that we haven't even
brought before you yet, Lord. And so we recognize that we
might be there in very different places here today.
We just ask that you are Good Shepherd would meet us.
That you would show that you care for the healing of our
hearts, for the restoration of our souls, that you desire to
draw us near to yourself. God, we believe that you are
present here today. We believe that you want to meet
with us, so we just pray that you would speak your word
directly. To each of us today.
And that again that you would show us that you desire for your
people to come near to you, and that we can trust that you are
the Good Shepherd of our souls. So please meet with us today,
Jesus. We pray all these things in your
name. Amen.
I'm going to move this up just a little bit, if I can.
It's kind of squeaky. All right.
So as we read our passage today is from the book of Colossians.
So now the church at Colossi was started by this man named
Epiphris, who was a friend of Paul the Apostle.
And Epiphris writes a letter to Paul, kind of updating him on
all the great things that are happening within this church,
but also the struggles and temptations that they were
facing, presumably to ask Paul's advice.
So Paul's response is this letter that we have, that we
call Colossians. And so the Colossians, this
church was experiencing these pressures, these external
pressures to turn away from Jesus and to turn toward these
alternate philosophies and these kind of competing ideologies
were critiquing the way that the Christians were pursuing God.
The message that they were hearing was that faith in Jesus
and their Christian way of life was not enough.
They needed to do more, like observe certain festivals and
religious days, or avoid certain foods, or worship angels, or
have supernatural visions. So in response, Paul basically
cautions this church not to be taken captive by these hollow
and deceptive philosophies which may have an appearance of
wisdom, but in reality they lack any value because your faith.
Paul reminds them it's not merely about checking off the
right religious boxes, or about like transcending the world with
these mystical experiences. Our phase is rooted in Christ.
He is the one who created and who sustains all things.
He brought us from darkness into light.
He gave us redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
So Christ has done it all and nothing is lacking in him.
So Paul's basically calling the Clausians to fix their eyes upon
Jesus to look to his goodness and power.
Christ has given them new life, and renewed people live in
renewed ways. So don't turn back to your old
behavior. He's saying walk in the ways of
Jesus. So to clarify what this looks
like, Paul emphasizes certain Christ like virtues and invites
the Colossians to pursue them. So he says clothe yourselves
with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and
patience. Bear with one another and
forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance
against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you, and then over
all these virtues put on love which binds them together in
perfect unity. So the call to bear with each
other and to forgive one another is what it looks.
Like to put these virtues into practice?
Compassion, Kindness, Humility, gentleness, patience.
And it's not a beautiful list. I mean, it sounds it sounds
appealing to me. A life in the community that are
centered on these things would be awesome.
But the question is how do we get there?
Even if we buy into this and we want to become patient and
forgiving people, how do we do this?
So I was starting to kind of get, you know, like analysis
paralysis I suppose, just trying to decide how to even enter into
these really weighty topics until I basically realized that
we can start with the call of Jesus and the message that he
preached, very Simply put, was repent and believe.
So I'm going to gently steal that framework today, and we
will look at forgiveness and patience through these two
lenses. A call to repent, so to come to
Jesus and to receive his transformative forgiveness, and
a call to believe, to trust in the power and the promises of
Jesus. So these two items.
Just by themselves are a lot to cover.
And I actually considered not spending quite as much time on
repentance, partly because it's an intimidating word and just to
kind of hone in on patience and forgiveness.
But then I realized that we really can't have a well-rounded
conversation about one without the other.
Forgiveness is not a natural, instinctive reaction, becoming a
forgiving person. It's often the fruit of having
received forgiveness, becoming a patient person.
Is often the byproduct of having witnessed the beauty of a
patient, humble, compassionate spirit.
And repentance is a pathway to both of those things.
So this is where we need Jesus so badly.
Jesus is the embodiment of forgiveness and patience.
And we can see what this looks like by reading through the
Gospels, these biblical stories, accounts of Jesus's life.
And so I want to point us to one story in particular that can
help us see how Jesus forgiveness has the power to
transform us. To this story is from the gospel
of Luke and at this point in the narrative we're pretty far in.
So Jesus has been in ministry for years.
We're in kind of the final stretch before he's going to go
to Jerusalem and walk that hard road to the cross.
So in Luke 19 we meet a man who has heard about Jesus, how Jesus
has traveled all over the country, healing the sick,
touching lepers, forgiving sins, and welcoming in the despised in
society. So this man is desperate to see
Jesus because he knows that he. Is in need of forgiveness
because he is a tax collector, which to the Jewish community,
to the community, made him the chief of sinners.
Tax collectors were traitors. They worked for the Roman
government, the oppressors of the common people.
They abused their power to make themselves rich, and they
extracted money from people who had less so.
Nobody likes this guy, but he has heard that Jesus has a
reputation for being a holy man, a healer, a prophet who shares
his dinner table with tax collectors and with sinners.
So when he learns that Jesus has come to town, he is so eager to
see him that when he can't get through the crowd, he climbs a
tree just to get a glimpse of Jesus.
So Jesus sees him, and he calls out Zakiyas, come and hurry
down, for I must stay at your house today.
So this man, Zakiyas, is overjoyed to be welcomed by
Jesus, but others who overhear the invitation start to grumble.
This man isn't worthy to have this great teacher and healer
under his roof, but Zakia seems to understand the weight of
having Jesus as a houseguest. He isn't worthy, he he knows
that. So he does something to make it
clear that he understands the honor that is being bestowed
upon him, and he doesn't intend to take it lightly.
Zakia's promises then and there to give half his fortune to the
poor, and if he has defrauded anyone, he will repay them four
times as much. So Jesus responds to Zakhya's
repentant heart. Today's salvation has come to
this house. So two things are important
here. First, when Zakhya sees Jesus,
he knows who he's looking at. He sees that somebody who has
the ability to change his identity, to cleanse him from
the past, that he's ashamed of. Repentance is not just about
fear of being punished or wanting to escape consequences.
It's about recognizing that we are broken.
And wanting to be made new. And secondly, Jesus or Zachius's
repentant heart is evidence at how he jumps at the chance for
forgiveness. His desire to be worthy of
Jesus's presence, to be able to enter into that community, that
that relationship with him, causes him to behave like a
completely different person, to no longer be the traitor who
takes advantage of others for his own gain.
Instead, he puts on new clothing the clothes of justice and
generosity. Because he sees in Jesus a God
who forgives and restores so this invitation to bear with one
another and to forgive one another.
It begins with receiving those things from Jesus.
Jesus, the Son of God, came to serve a human race that rejected
him, despised him, betrayed him, abandoned him, and crucified
him. But even as he hung from the
cross and the people watching him die.
Scoffed at him. His response was Father, forgive
them, for they do not know what they do.
What kind of love is that? He's presently dying unjustly,
accused of these fabricated crimes, and he's praying to God
the Father on behalf of his murderers right now.
They are not repentant, but it says that Jesus were saying.
If only they were. If only they would turn away
from the darkness inside them, they would be healed.
They would be able to receive what I'm offering them.
They would be made new. What kind of?
Radical love is this. This invitation to be restored
is at the heart of the call to repentance.
Jesus offers us transformative forgiveness.
He compares himself. To a doctor of the soul in Mark
chapter 2, when the religious leaders are criticizing him for
having meals with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus's response is
those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are
sick. I came not to call the righteous
but sinners. So Jesus invitation to repent is
like him saying your soul is sick.
Come to me. Let me heal you.
There's a pastor who I follow an Instagram.
His name is Ian Simpkins, and he recently shared this post where
he references the Greek word for repentance, metanoia, which
means a change of mind or direction.
So for example, if you were going South on a freeway and
suddenly you realize you're supposed to be going north, what
would you do? You would look for an off ramp.
You would turn around. So he goes on to say that
Metanoia carries the idea not only of a different trajectory,
but also of transformation. A new mind, a new heart, a new
will. And this is key.
Metanoia is a forward-looking word.
It looks toward the promises of God, toward a future where Jesus
offers fresh hope. And so, as Simkin says, Jesus
isn't merely inviting us to turn from brokenness, but also to
turn toward wholeness, not merely away from sickness, but
toward healing. Because the gospel isn't just
freedom from something. It's freedom for something.
So he's saying that Jesus is inviting us to renewal.
So we have, because we have these kind of defective coping
mechanisms to try to protect ourselves from a broken world,
to give us a sense of self worth to battle against the anxiety of
not really being in control. And maybe we cling to these
patterns because they're all we know and we fear how vulnerable
we might become if we don't have those things to fall back on.
But Jesus says let go, come to me.
Receive my transformative forgiveness.
So this call to repent is followed by a call to believe,
to trust in the power and the promises of Jesus.
So it's one thing to realize that we need to turn away from
our patterns of brokenness, and it's another to actually walk in
Jesus footsteps and learn to do what he would have done.
So this past week, the more that I studied and reflected on
patience and forgiveness, the more convicted I felt about how
wobbly I am in practicing both. I see the healing work of Jesus
and I'm captivated by it. It's so beautiful.
I want to live into that, to become like him.
But then I think, if I can't even exercise patience and
forgiveness in Boston traffic, how am I supposed to do it in
other situations? Do you know what I mean?
I know some of you definitely in this room drive, right?
If not, you have. You know, there are people doing
it, It's just I can't. Tell you how many times someone
has honked at me, and a quick survey of our circumstances made
it clear to me that they were honking because they wanted me
to break a traffic law and they were angry that I was not doing
so. And I'm just like, what kind of
lawless? Rage Field movie from the Fast
and Furious franchise. Are we living in SO?
I get I get frustrated and it's just easy to sometimes even find
myself wishing ill towards people who cut me off or
actively endanger my life. And as I'm wishing them ill,
I've of course developed complete amnesia about the times
that I've made very questionable decisions while driving to save
time. So I'm obviously trying to pick
what is is potentially A relatable example.
But at the heart of it, and this is true for all sorts of
offenses that we experience, the way that we respond can reveal a
lot about what's in our hearts. When I start angrily fantasizing
that the person who zoomed around me to save 5 seconds will
find themselves stuck in a traffic jam, they'll make them
30 minutes late. Realistically, the seed that I'm
nurturing in my heart. Is vengeance.
And because it's a common situation, and because someone
may have actually broken the law and done something dangerous,
it's so easy to 1st justify my anger, but then to justify my
vengeful thoughts and ultimately to justify my bitterness and
myself righteousness that I'm using to cope with with a
lawbreaking world. So whether it's kind of an
everyday frustration like Boston traffic or it's the
relationships where. People we wanted to trust cause
us harm, take advantage of us, neglect us, maybe abuse us.
Forgiveness is not instinctive, and I think we have to start by
acknowledging that what Jesus is asking us to do by forgiving is
an immense act of faith. It is a trust fall from a
dizzying height. Jesus is asking just to do
something radical because he intends to work through us to
bring about. Radical change in this world,
and this is incredibly important, so I'm going to say
it again. Jesus is asking us to practice
radical forgiveness and patience because he intends to use that
to bring about radical change in our world.
The game plan of Christianity, of Jesus's way of life, is to
reconcile literal enemies to the point where they view one
another as brothers and sisters. This is radical.
So forgiveness is really an act of trust in God's plan, and that
includes trusting that God cares deeply about both justice and
compassion. And this, I think, can be a
major blocker in our journey of forgiveness, the fact that we do
have to live with the reality of injustice.
So I was thinking about the phenomenon of cancel culture.
It's quite hard to go too many sermons, whether you're
listening to them online or in person, without talking about
things like cancel culture. But you know, it's where we
ostracize or boycott anyone who's rumored or has done
something that we consider unacceptable.
And so as I was thinking about it, I kind of imagine that one
of the main motivators behind cancel culture is the sentiment
that nobody's going to hold wrongdoers accountable for their
sins. They will have free reign in
this world unless we take back power from them.
So even if we see the flaws that we see playing out in cancel
culture, the relatable part here is a desire for justice, a
desire to protect the vulnerable, even a desire not to
allow sin to go unchecked. But in this case, what role does
forgiveness play? Does it have a role if our end
goal is a more just society? So this week I was reading
through Tim Keller's book titled Forgive Very Appropriate Title,
and I found this quote from a conversation between the author
and professor, bell hooks and the poet and civil right
activist Maya Angelou. And I think it's bell hooks
who's speaking when they say this.
But it says for me, forgiveness and compassion are always
linked. How do we hold people
accountable for rounddoing and yet at the same time remain in
touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to
be transformed? Isn't that the $1,000,000
question? Can we pursue justice and
forgiveness at the same time? I believe that the Bible says we
have to because our call is to pursue God, to walk in the way
of Jesus and Jesus embodies both.
The cross is about the intersection between forgiveness
and justice. In Jesus, we encounter a God who
intends to deal with every sin and who offers the path of
restoration and mercy for those who are willing to take it.
I think when we set justice and forgiveness in opposition,
perhaps sometimes it's because so far our understanding of
forgiveness, what we've learned from the people around us, from
the culture, it just has remained too shallow.
Because the call to forgive is not just another way of saying
get over it and move on. It's not a call to only have
positive feelings towards an offender from this moment
forward. I think that the call to forgive
can be better understood as a decision to walk a path.
It's about resisting the temptation to walk the path of
revenge and bitterness, or just letting a desire to reclaim
power and protect yourself harden you against others.
And I think This is why I appreciate the term the phrase
bear with one another because it sounds like an ongoing process.
It sounds like this burden that you carry, but it is a burden
that Jesus carries with us. We see that in his life and he
is telling us that he has the ability to make it lighter.
Walking the path of forgiveness is choosing to believe in the
hope that Jesus is offering, and that hope is this, that God can
make all things new. If God cannot or is not in the
business of making all things new, maybe cancel culture is our
best option. Nobody's going to hold
wrongdoers accountable. We have to take back control.
But if Jesus is a God who paid for all of our sins, if
offenders like this, Achias can be transformed into these
emblems of grace, if God is enacting a plan of renewal for
humanity even as we speak, then we are living in a different
kind of story. If we believe that God can make
all things new, no one is beyond hope.
If we believe that God can make all things new.
We can be courageous when the Spirit leads us in steps of
reconciliation, and also if we recognize that God is the healer
and transformation is His work, we may not be necessary to every
stage of His plan. Maybe we are called in a certain
season to engage with someone who wronged us.
Or maybe it's not safe and the why is this action is to create
space and to trust God to keep working no matter what the path
looks like. On that day-to-day basis, we can
choose the trajectory of forgiveness to come to God's
journey with him and to trust that he could heal and restore.
To ask him to do those things and to believe that he can
strengthen our desire for renewal to the point where, like
Jesus, we want renewal even in the lives of those who willfully
act as our enemies. And This is why we're framing
forgiveness and patience within the context of trusting in the
power and the promises of Jesus. To rock this path.
We need more than willpower. We need the kind of forgiveness
and patience that lives inside of Jesus to basically flow
through us. We are actually counting on the
power of God to meet us and to sustain us when we choose to do
this as an act of love and as an act of worship to Jesus.
So you may be familiar with this, but if not, I'm going to
tell you her story on the story of Cory 10.
Boom. So her book, The Hiding Place,
The Hiding Place is phenomenal. And if you haven't read it, this
is just going to be my one book recommendation.
I could do more, but this one of the books I read in seminary, I
think if I had to pick only one that I said changed my life, I
would say it was the hiding place.
It is a phenomenal book and it's an autobiography.
So it's an account of her life in the Netherlands during World
War 2. So Cory and her family were
Christians, and they hid Jewish friends, neighbors, and
ultimately actually even strangers in their home.
And they were ultimately found out by the Nazis and sent to a
concentration camp. And so during that time, Cory?
Saw her father, her sister, obviously countless others die
and suffered, as you probably can imagine.
Just atrocities, pains, indignities, losses.
At the same time, she writes about also experiencing
incredible moments of grace and seeing God work forgiveness in
her heart. And so many people, years after
this happens, would want to hear Corey tell her story.
And so on a particular, in a particular instance, she
recounts this The war is over, Years have passed, and she has
this unexpected encounter at a church service.
So she had been invited to speak there.
And part of her talk, as you might expect, centered on God's
forgiveness and the need to forgive others.
And so after the service, Corey recognizes in the crowd a former
guard from a concentration camp, an s s man who had actually
stood guard at the shower door at one of the processing centers
she had gone through. So he was the first of her
jailers that she had seen since that time.
So this man comes up to Corey and as she puts it, he is
beaming and bowing to her. And he keeps saying how grateful
he is for the message that she had just given, That Jesus has
washed away our sins and the man clearly wants to shake her hand.
The Corey is struggling internally.
These angry, vengeful thoughts start boiling in her memories of
the mockery and the cruelty of the guards.
But at the same time, she was acutely aware of the message
that she had just shared. So in the midst of this
incredible tension, she prays silently.
She records the prayer that she prays to Jesus, and she just
says, Jesus, I cannot forgive him.
Give me your forgiveness. And then Corey writes this, she
says as I took his hand. The most incredible thing
happened from my shoulder, along my arm, and through my hand, a
current seem to pass from me to him, Well into my heart sprang a
love for the stranger that almost overwhelms me.
And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more
than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on
his. When he tells us to love our
enemies, he gives along with the command, the love itself.
And that line is so incredible it's almost breathtaking.
So I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness that the
world's healing hinges, but on his on Jesus.
When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives the love
itself. So again, I am so aware of the
need to not minimize the reality of the evils that happen in this
world, or to treat forgiveness like it's a simple thing.
But if there's anyone who had a reason to withhold forgiveness,
I would probably give that immunity pin to someone like
Corey. But her story shows that
forgiveness is not like a like a social theory or an abstract
philosophy. It is a power of God meeting us
in our deepest pain. Jesus.
Forgiveness is not a small or a timid thing.
It is a rushing tidal wave that sweeps people off their feet and
plants them somewhere completely new.
It is a powerful force that cleanses everything it touches
for everyone who will repent and receive it.
Corey got to experience the immensity of God's provision as
she chose to walk the seemingly impossible path and.
What we see in her story, and we need to believe this, is that
forgiveness is strength. It's freedom.
It's healing. Corey's anger was righteous.
Her pain was justified. But her decision to ask Jesus
for his love is life changing. That is a faith that can move
mountains, that can change the way that other people like you
and me actually live our lives. And if she had clung to
bitterness, the story may not have been worth telling.
Instead, she lived out the message of forgiveness that she
preached, and the story that she tells shines like this, radiant
testimony to the power of God. And it may be true that the road
will be different, maybe it'll be longer and harder than what
we see in her example in some ways.
But we need to believe that the same power is available to us.
We need our faith to fuel our forgiveness and patience.
All right, so we are in the final stretch here.
But the last story, some of you have heard me teach before, so
you will not be surprised by this, but it's a personal one.
Sometimes when I pray to God as I'm preparing, I asked him to
exempt me from this, to Get Me Out of it.
He puts a very a story very clearly on my heart.
And so then I'm like, I think, I I think I have to, I think I
have to tell it anyway. So this story actually starts
with what I would consider the first miracle that God ever
worked in my life. So even if you do know me, I
don't talk a lot about my relationship with my dad, I
think because it feels complicated to explain.
And sometimes when I've tried, I I feel like I'm just telling
kind of the stereotypical story that you might see in the movies
about a formerly absent or unreliable father who wants to
change and reconnect with his kid.
And maybe it is a common story, unfortunately for many of us.
But it's part of my story. And my relationship with my
father colored my childhood with a lot of hurt and a lot of
sadness. And then as I became a teenager,
the sadness turned into anger and I stopped wanting to have
anything to do with him. I felt justified and holding his
failures against him. I was trying to protect myself
from getting hurt again, but during my high school years, he
really tried to reengage with me and my mom, even though they
were divorced, encouraged me to say yes to his invitations to
get ice cream or to go on a hike.
So I would say yes sometimes, but I still mostly felt
resentment in my heart. So when I was about 17, my dad
and I went on this hike and about 2/3 of the way up it
started to kind of drizzle to rain.
And so we were kind of sheltering underneath a large
tree. And nailed to this tree is this
picture of a teenage girl about my age and kind of a description
of her life story. And it's very clearly the way
that it's written, a memoriam to someone who has passed.
And my dad recognizes the name of the story of this woman, this
girl, and he had seen her in the local papers and learned that
she had recently taken her own life.
So at that time, I hadn't really been confronted with mortality,
especially while looking at a picture in the life story of
someone my age. And it was like something spoke
to me and kind of woke up, this part of my brain that had been
muted by resentment and anger. And now I actually see this as
God's gracious intervention. But at the time, it kind of just
felt like this uncharacteristic thought, this like strong but
sudden conviction that life is fragile and short.
And I actually didn't know how many days I or anyone else had
left. So I should I should try to
forgive my father. Surprisingly, that sentiment
actually stuck with me. In the years to come, I slowly,
probably mostly painfully, moved towards forgiveness.
I would try to give my dad the benefit of the doubt more often
when he wanted to make up for things.
I would create more space to spend time together, maybe even
more than I was inclined to. And through that, we did form
new and better memories, even though certain things would
definitely rekindle my anger. The more that I saw good in our
current relationship, the more I was able to hope.
And then many of you know the story.
But when I was a sophomore in college, I began following
Jesus, and his message of forgiveness changed my
understanding. It showed me the ways that I had
been cold or selfish, and it softened my heart more and more.
And then when I was a junior, my dad was diagnosed with Stage 4
cancer and he passed away before I finished the school year.
Honestly, some of my last memories of him were not great
ones. There are a lot of things I
regret not doing and not saying there are things that he did or
that he said that hurt me. And overall, it left me in a
very strange place emotionally to have done, especially at that
age, all this work to repair a relationship that was suddenly
over. So probably four years later.
This was my first year living in Boston, and I experienced what I
would probably characterize now as a nudge from the Holy Spirit
He's just hanging out, intervening unexpectedly.
But it was to do this very specific writing challenge that
I'd come across, and it basically became this, like,
literary healing journey where I tried to make sense of all the
complicated feelings I had about my relationship with my father.
And God met me as I wrote about the pain and the healing and the
strange kind of in between places.
And through that I found myself journeying deeper and deeper
into this concept of understanding what forgiveness
looks like. And so I remember after
finishing it, talking to one of my best friends.
She was someone I knew in college, and so she was actually
one of the people who consoled me after my father passed away.
And so I was telling her that the conclusion of the story I
had written was basically me owning the fact that I could
feel hurt by my father and still acknowledge how much I loved him
at the same time. And she started to cry.
Which startled me. But she's just explained that
she was so overwhelmed to see how much healing God had done in
my heart. And she said, Mandy, in the
years that I've known you, I've never heard you say out loud
that you love your father. This is a really big deal.
And I hadn't realized that, but it was true.
And in the wake of that conversation, I started to feel
more and more peace reflecting on my story and just learning to
hold that tension. And so a few years later, I was
at a Sunday gathering at Reality in one of our old spaces, and it
was Father's Day, which was usually an emotionally complex
day for me. I mean, sometimes I felt numb,
sometimes I felt brief all over again.
That day I was overcome with kind of strange and unexpected
emotion. And so I went up to two of our
elders at the time, both of whom were fathers, and asked them for
prayer. And it wasn't until I, like,
wasn't really sure what I was feeling until I just, the words
were coming out of my mouth and I was asking, giving them my
prayer request. And I found myself just saying
that this was the first Father's Day I could remember where all I
felt was that I missed my dad. I didn't feel anger.
I didn't feel pain. I didn't feel numbness.
I just missed him. And I hadn't realized until then
just how far God had brought me. Now, I mean, of course you may
be able to predict and understand that.
I wouldn't say that. That means that my journey is
over, because the reality is that dealing with pain from a
close relationship, like a parent, is something that you
might work through for an entire lifetime.
But it is true that the level of freedom and heart change that I
experienced just step by step as God led me forward, showed me
that forgiveness had won in my heart.
It had taken root and it was flourishing, and I recognized
other stories may have a different timeline, a different
landscape, but in Christ, I have to believe that the trajectory
is the same. God moves us toward wholeness
because restoration is his desire for his children.
There's this metaphor that Jesus uses and one of his parables,
and it's about a good tree. A tree that is fundamentally
healthy and vibrant, he says will produce good fruit, and I
think a similar metaphor works here.
Forgiveness is the character of Jesus.
It is his work and his lifelong passion.
When you plant the seed, the Christ like seed of forgiveness
and tend to it patiently, over time you will get a good tree
that will bear good fruit. It may take a long time to grow
as trees do, but I think we will always be surprised to discover
what God can do through the faithful watering and in the
patient waiting. By walking that long, hard road
to forgiveness, we can experience the invitation that
we hear in the Psalms to taste and see that the Lord is good.
Pursue forgiveness and you will taste His goodness.
Practice patience and you will taste His kindness.
Bear with one another and you will experience His love working
in you. So this is my closing invitation
for us. I recognize we are all likely in
very different places meditating on these themes and hearing this
message. So I'm going to offer you three
different prayers. This is going to be our closing
prayer, but there's going to be 3 different kind of focal
points. And so I just invite you to
listen. If it's helpful for you to close
your eyes as you listen and just kind of enter into a posture of
receiving, feel free to do that. And I'm just going to invite you
to pay attention to the one that stands out to you as we
transition to our time of response.
So this is the first prayer Jesus.
Help me to sincerely ask for forgiveness.
Help me not to fear owning up to what I've done, as if the weight
of shame will crush me. Help me to trust that my
repentance can bring healing into my life and the lives of
others. Please meet me now with your
transformative grace. Secondly, Jesus, help me to
choose the path of forgiveness. I'm not sure what lies ahead,
and part of me is afraid that I'll turn a corner and find
myself facing pain or disappointment again.
Show me that you walk this road with me.
Remind me that it is the power of your forgiveness that will
heal the world. Fill my heart with the merciful
love that only you can give and the wisdom to follow your
leading. Lastly, Jesus, help me to become
a person of patience. Remind me of the ways that you
have loved me at my most unlovable.
Help me to bear with others. And to believe that you were
able to transform and heal. Even if I can't see it now.
Help me to trust that you were working renewal in my heart and
in those I struggle to have compassion toward.
Help me to put on the new self you have created and to walk in
compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience even
today. So we pray for all of these
things in Jesus name. Amen.
I'm just going to do a quick invitation as the band begins to
play. This time of response is so is
so key. I can stand up here and talk
about it, talk about these things for another half hour and
I will not. But there I believe that there
is some kind of seed of forgiveness, whether that's to
forgive, to receive forgiveness, to walk with embarrassed people
that Jesus is planting in our hearts now.
And I'm just inviting you right now to listen, to listen for
what that might be. It might be helpful for you to
sing the words of the song that we're about to play.
It might be hopeful for you to come down to the carpets and
just take a moment to focus on The Voice of God that is present
to us in these moments. If you would like prayers, there
will be leaders at the front. I'll be over here at the side
and I would be happy to pray with you, but I just want to
invite you now to take this moment and ask God to meet with
you. Ask him what he wants to say.