Your Sins Are Forgiven

Luke 7:36-50
The Third Sunday after Pentecost 2010

Forgive us, Lord, for we have sinned and broken vows in two
When we have let our lesser loves come before our love for you.
Until our bond has been restored our hearts will never rest.
Remove our sin as far from us as the East is from the West.

Forgive us, Lord, for wounds we made by careless word and deed
And our small part in global sin when we take more than we need.
And we confess that we have failed to do the good we know.
So, most of all, forgive us for the love we failed to show.

Forgive us, Lord, as we forgive; our bravest prayer we pray.
For if our lives the standard be, we have no hope but grace,
And let us bear the joyful news that Christ stands in the breach
And that none of us can fall below the depths your love can reach.
– Kyle Matthews

The year after I graduated from seminary, I took a week off from preaching at the small Baptist Church I was pastoring to visit the Lutheran church where father had recently begun a pastorate. It had been ten years since I had worshiped in a Lutheran church. I hadn’t really noticed how Baptist I had become during that decade, until we came in the course of worship to the confession of sin and the declaration of grace. Facing the altar, my father led the congregation in the general confession of sin, and then he turned to face us and said, “If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Your sins are forgiven, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Even as he was making the sign of the cross over his flock, a voice inside my head was hollering, “Hey, you can’t do that! You don’t have the authority to forgive sin! Only God can forgive sin!” At lunch that afternoon, we laughed together about my reaction. Among other things, he said with a laugh, “Yep, attending a Baptist seminary turned you into a Pharisee, didn’t it?” He thought that was a lot funnier than I did. But the voice inside my head had hollered exactly what the Pharisees did in the gospel of Luke two chapters before this morning’s gospel lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary.

When a paralyzed man’s friends lowered him through the roof of a house where Jesus was teaching in the hope that Jesus would heal him of his paralysis, Jesus said to the man, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.” And just like me, the scribes and the Pharisees in attendance went off on those words. “Who is this who is speaking blasphemies?” they asked. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” they cried (Luke 5:20-21). In this morning’s gospel lesson from Luke 7, when Jesus says to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven,” the people at the dinner table begin to say in amazement and scandal, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” They might as well have said, “Who does he think he is? Only God can forgive sins!” In the decades since the voice of the Pharisees hollered in my head, I have developed a doctrine of the forgiveness of sins that no Pharisee would ever endorse. I only have time this morning to share four points of my doctrine of forgiveness, so here they are.

Point #1. We don’t need a priest to mediate our forgiveness. We don’t need a priest to mediate our forgiveness. The Baptist doctrine of “soul competency” declares that every believer stands in an individual, direct, and immediate relationship with God so that there is no need for a priestly intermediary or go-between. We each stand individually, directly, and immediately in relationship with God with no one necessary in between. But at the same time, in the “priesthood of all believers,” as Baptists understand that originally Lutheran idea, we all stand together before God both needing no priest and being priests to one another. Do you hear those two parts? Part one: needing no priest, and part two: being all priests to one another. We don’t need a priest to mediate our forgiveness, and we are all priests to each other.

Point #2. Forgiveness is about who God is. Forgiveness is about who God is. 1 John 1:9 asserts in the words my father recited in his declaration of absolution, “If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Forgiveness is at the core of God’s nature. God forgives because that’s just who God is. Exodus 34:6-7 tells us who God is in God’s own words, according to the book of Exodus. In Exodus 34:6-7, God defines God’s own self as “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” What is God, like, you ask? God is like this, says God: “I am merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” Now, verse 7 of Exodus 34 goes on to talk about the corrosive staying power of guilt and the insidious sustainability of sin, but that’s a topic for another sermon. What I want to be sure you hear this morning is that by God’s own self-definition, God is forgiving—“forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteous simply because that’s who God is.

Point #3. Confession changes us, not God. Confession changes us, not God. The way some people talk about it, you might think that confession makes an angry God soft-hearted or a vengeful God weak-kneed or a judging God spineless. But we’ve already seen that God is by nature forgiving, so the point of confession is not about changing God; it’s about changing us. Sin separates. In a friendship, in a marriage, in a business relationship, in international relations, in environmental interdependence, sin is a breach, a break that spews and spreads toxicity and pathology into every system of interactions that it touches. Sin is a darkness that destroys from the inside out. Sin is a secret that sabotages the soul as well as the body. But confession connects. Confession connects by acknowledging the our error of our ways to God and to ourselves and to those against whom we have erred. Confession acknowledges that we are accountable to God and to ourselves and to others. It is only in that acknowledgement and that accountability that we can be fully restored to right relationship. On the other side of the separation and breach, the darkness, destruction, and sabotage that is sin, confession restores, reconciles, rebuilds by changing us, not God.

If you were to read all the forgiveness passages in the gospels at one sitting, you might be surprised how seldom confession enters the picture. Remember those words on the cross that Jesus spoke in Luke 23:34, “Father, forgive them, for they know do not know what they are doing”? The people for whom Jesus asks forgiveness don’t even know that they are sinning—much less have they confessed it—but the forgiving Christ, the forgiving God, the forgiving Spirit, goes there anyway. My prayers for you as your pastor have nothing to do with the sins that you have confessed. My prayers for you have to do with your sins that you don’t even recognize as sin, much less have confessed them. Jesus tells us from the cross that the forgiveness even of those sins is possible.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, there is no mention of the woman “confessing her sins.” Instead of “confessing” in this passage, she weeps and kisses and wipes Jesus’ unwashed feet with her hair. Instead of confessing, she acts with love and devotion and contrition, and Jesus says to her, “Your sins are forgiven. . . . Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Jesus says it was her faith, not her confession, that saved her from her sin. In the story of the paralyzed man who was let down through the roof, we are told that Jesus was moved to forgive his sins not when the man confessed them but when Jesus “saw the faith of his friends.” Dare we say as the gospel of Luke does that the faith of a person’s friends can save a person from their sins? No Pharisee would say that, but the gospel of Luke clearly does. Never underestimate the power of your faith! You don’t often hear it preached, but hear it this morning: as the gospels tell it, forgiveness can happen whether there is confession or not because forgiveness is about who God is. The point of confession, on the other hand, is to change us, not to change God.

Point #4. Forgiveness is an act of community. Forgiveness is an act of community. Nowhere in the gospels does Jesus engage in a private act of absolution of a person’s sins. Dying the death of a common criminal in a public place of horror and execution, Jesus announced to all who could hear, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” In a crowded house where Jesus was teaching surrounded by “the public,” Jesus said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.” At a dinner party where the best religious people in town mingled with each other and looked down their noses at a woman among them, Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven. . . . Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” Forgiveness is always about “us,” not just “me”; forgiveness is never just about “I”; it’s always also about “we.” Forgiveness is always an act of community.

In this season of Pentecost, I would remind you that in the twentieth chapter of the gospel of John, when Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit onto the disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” the very next thing he says is, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven” (John 20:22-23). Imagine that. Jesus says that the community of Jesus’ followers has the authority to forgive sins. We are as priests to one another. The church is the public place where the cross still stands from which Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” The cross hangs in this place as a sign that you are forgiven. The church is the place where the teachings of Jesus are still promulgated in a crowd, where Jesus’ words, “Friend, your sins are forgiven,” are still repeated. The church is the place where good religious people still gather to mingle with each other and look down their noses at some of the persons among us and who are the ones who still hear the voice of Jesus say to the one who needs it most, Your sins are forgiven. . . . Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

This Lord’s Table in front of us is the dinner table that Pharisees like you and me set. This is the meal we host in Jesus’ presence. And every time we do, there is someone among us who needs more than anything else in the world to hear to the words of our Lord and Savior say, “Your sins are forgiven!” If you are that one today, then this is your community of forgiveness, this is the cross from which you were forgiven, this is the place of teaching where you heard those words, this is the meal at which it happens, and this is your song this day.

Forgiven, Lord, and free at last! How can we take it in?
We cast aside our broken chains to start our lives again.
Let all our days be filled with praise with love and gratitude
In celebration of the grace that we have found in you.
--Kyle Matthews



The text, "Forgive us, Lord," is used by permission of Kyle Matthews (http://www.kylematthews.com/index.html). This sermon material is Copyrighted © 2010 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.