Nothing You Can Do

 Nothing You Can Do

Psalm 145[1]

I meet a lot of people who seem to think that there’s some “line” out there they can cross over that will put them forever outside God’s grace, mercy, and love. Of course, the church has spent centuries not only engraving that message into our souls, but also spelling out just exactly what kinds of things constitute crossing the “line.” There was a time when “drinkin’, dancin’, and card-playin’” were high on the list. And, of course, anyone who didn’t come to church on the Lord’s Day had crossed the line. In fact, that’s still true in some churches to this day! The funny thing about those “lines” and the people draw them is that they always point the finger at what somebody else is doing. They always conveniently overlook their own faults.

Of course, that’s given people the idea that God is the ultimate nitpicker, the definitive fault-finder. The idea that there’s a line we can cross that puts us outside God’s grace, mercy, and love leads to the image of God just waiting to “strike” us. With that kind of image of God, it’s no wonder people have been leaving the church in droves for the last fifty years. Who wants to go to church only to be criticized and berated for always failing to measure up? Who wants to live in constant fear of stepping over some unseen line that puts them outside God’s love forever? Who wants to be beaten over the head with the message that they have no hope? Not many people I know!

All of this is introduction to one of my favorite chapters of Scripture: Psalm 145. I’ve been reading the Psalms on a regular basis since I was a freshman in college. But I didn’t really “discover” this Psalm until my first year as a pastor in the PCUSA, 2006. I think what caught my attention was the statement, “The LORD is gracious, kind and tender. He is slow to get angry and full of love” (Ps 145:8, NIrV). The reason that verse caught my attention is because I know it’s an echo of the original revelation God gave to Moses: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex 34:6). That’s a statement about who God is that echoes again and again throughout the Bible.

Unfortunately, in the original setting, that “revelation” about God is complicated. It follows the incident when the people who had just come out of Egypt and promised to love and serve only God made a golden calf to worship as their “god.” God’s response isn’t “slow to anger,” but rather God immediately gets angry enough to threaten to destroy the people of Israel! I think that may have actually been a test of Moses’ commitment to the people, because Moses pleads with God for them, and God “changes his mind” (Ex 32:14). But then Moses leads the tribe of Levi to slaughter those who had worshipped the calf, 3000 people in all. It’s not a very inspiring story!

By way of reassurance that God would not abandon them, Moses asks God to “show me your glory” (Ex 33:18). God fulfills his promise to “make all my goodness pass before you and … proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’” (Ex 33:19) as God “covered” Moses in the “cleft of the rock.” And the revelation of God’s very “goodness” is found in the statement I quoted earlier: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex 34:6). But in this original context, it goes on: “keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation” (Ex 34:7)! On the surface, at least, it doesn’t sound very assuring. How do you know whether you get to be one of the ones whose “iniquity” or sin gets forgiven or the ones whose guilt is passed down to their children’s children’s children?

For one thing, in that situation, God forgave even those who were guilty. The whole people took part in worshipping the golden calf, breaking their promise to be true to God. And in response to Moses’ prayers and the people’s repentance, God forgave them all and restored the relationship they’d broken. I think that’s why, in the echoes of this basic statement of God’s character, it’s the first part that gets repeated over and over: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” That was Israel’s experience with God. They continually went astray, and God continually forgave them and restored them.

By the time this Psalm came to be written, that had become the focal point for God’s true character. As we heard in our Scripture reading for today, the Psalmist praises God for being “gracious, kind and tender. He is slow to get angry and full of love” (Ps 145:8, NIrV). The Psalmist expands on that theme: God is good to everyone and “He shows deep concern” for all creation (Ps 145:9, NIrV). God is trustworthy in all his words, “faithful in everything he does,” the one who always acts out of his unfailing love (Ps. 145:13, 17). God “takes good care of all those who fall” and “He lifts up all those who feel helpless”; God “opens” his “hand” and satisfies “the needs of every living creature” (Ps. 145:14, 16). And the point is that God does all of this and more for us because of who God is, not because of anything we’ve done.

By the time we get to Jesus, this is clearly what he emphasizes about who God is: God is full of grace, mercy, and love. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, God pours out his blessings of sun and rain, which are necessary for us to have food, equally on those who do what is right and those who do wrong (Mt 5:45). And if that seems unfair, we hear in the parable of the workers in the vineyard from our Gospel lesson for today a story that illustrates how God gives us all what we don’t deserve. And he does so simply because he is “generous” (Mt 20:15). That’s what grace means: God freely gives his blessing to all of us equally, and he does so simply because that’s who God is!

With this in mind, I want to take us back to our original question: is there some line out there that we can cross that will forever put us outside God’s grace, mercy, and love? I’ve known people who think so. I’ve known people who seem to be afraid that the answer is, “yes.” The answer from Psalm 145 is a resounding “No, there is not!” And Jesus gives us the same answer, “No, there is not some line out there you can cross.” So does St. Paul. He assures us that God has demonstrated once and for all by sending his Son Jesus to die for us that he is “God-who-is-for-us,” not a God who is just waiting to “strike” us. And Paul asks, “if God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom 8:31). The whole intent behind everything God has done for us is to restore us to himself. Since that’s God’s purpose, Paul concludes that there is nothing “in all creation that will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:29). The reason for that is because there is nothing and no one who change who God is or undo what God has done for us in Jesus. That’s why I love the blessing that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has handed down to us: “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more” and “there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.”[2]

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 9/24/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Desmond Tutu, God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time, 32.

Forgiveness Doesn't Count

Forgiveness Doesn’t Count

Matthew 18:21-34[1]

We have a saying about forgiveness. Or, at least, we used to: “Forgive and forget.” The idea is that when you forgive someone, you wipe the slate clean and forget that they ever wronged you in the first place. I think there’s a reason why that “used” to be a saying for us. If we’re honest about it, we have to admit that there are some things we really can never forget. Last week I told you the story about the decades-long process by which I forgave my father. And while I certainly don’t dwell on the things he did to me, I can never forget them. I just can’t. It’s what happens to us when we experience trauma, especially at a young age.

These days it seems that our attitude is more one of “Forgive, but never forget.” It’s okay to forgive someone when they harm you. But in this day when taking care of ourselves takes priority over everything else, we tell ourselves that it’s best never to forget what others have done to harm us. There is some wisdom in that. If someone is still harming you, you need to remember that they aren’t safe, even if you’ve forgiven them for what they’ve done. But I’m afraid “Forgive, but never forget” too easily turns into keeping track of what others have done to us. Holding a grudge and harboring bitterness basically amounts to counting up the wrongs that have been done to us.

Our Gospel lesson for this week talks about forgiveness that doesn’t count up the wrongs done to us. You may recall that our lesson for last week was about how forgiveness calls us to take the first step in making things right when our relationships are broken. This week our lesson begins with a question from Peter: “Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me, how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times?” (Mt 18:21, GNT). I like the way the Good News Translation puts it here: “how many times do I have to forgive?” Peter assumed there was a limit to how many times a person could reasonably be expected to forgive. And in Peter’s mind, forgiving someone “as many as” seven times would have been considered generous. The implication is that no one should “have” to forgive someone more than seven times.

But Jesus answered Peter in a way that pushed him way beyond what he thought was “reasonable” or even “generous.” Jesus said, “No, not seven times, … but seventy times seven” (Mt 18:22, GNT). I think it’s safe to say that Peter and the others were shocked. This went beyond anything they could imagine. The idea is that forgiveness doesn’t count. When we really forgive others, we don’t “keep score” of what they’ve done against us. As St. Paul said, when we love someone, we “keep no record of wrongs” they’ve done to us (1 Cor. 13:5, NIV). And since Jesus commands us to love others, it sounds to me like he calls us all to “keep no record of wrongs”. We can’t truly “love” our neighbors unless we also forgive them.

To help us understand what it looks like to forgive without counting, Jesus tells a parable. Because of the way Matthew arranges his Gospel, it’s easy for us to think that Jesus meant this parable to be about God. But it’s not. It’s a story about a cruel and heartless tyrant, one who wouldn’t hesitate to sell someone into slavery or even resort to torture. It’s a story the people would have been all too familiar with, since they had been ruled by cruel and heartless tyrants for centuries. Kings in those days were by definition tyrants. Their word constituted the law of the land, so whatever they wanted defined right and wrong. The people of Jesus’ day had lots of experience with that.

This tyrant decided to settle accounts with those who owed him money. That would also have been a familiar scene. When we’re told that one of his debtors owed him 10,000 talents, we may not realize we’re talking about a fortune beyond imagining. These days it would have to be measured in billions of dollars. The shocking part of this story is that when called to account, the debtor asked the tyrant king for more time. It must have been a painful scene to watch. There was no way he could have ever repaid such a huge debt. His life and the lives of his family were hanging in the balance. The real shock came when this cruel and heartless tyrant “felt sorry” for the man. He went beyond giving him more time to pay; he forgave the entire debt! That kind of thing would have been unheard of. No one would have expected this tyrant king to show such generous mercy.

That part of the story is all preparation. The real story is about this man who owed a fortune beyond imagining, and who begged for more time to pay but instead walked away a free man. It would stand to reason that anyone who was handed such a generous gift would walk away a changed man. But as we see, the story goes on to tell us that the first thing he did was go find someone who owed him money and try to force him to pay! What kind of person would do that? Didn’t he learn anything from the mercy that had been shown to him?

It was outrageous. And it outraged not only his peers, but when they reported it to the king, it outraged him as well. It outraged him enough to call the man back in, revoke his earlier mercy, and consign him to punishment and torture until that whole unimaginable fortune he owed was repaid, in all likelihood, for the rest of his life. That’s why we know this isn’t a story about God, but about a cruel and heartless tyrant. God’s mercy never fails, he never revokes his forgiveness. The point of the story is that even a cruel and heartless tyrant knows that it’s only reasonable for those who benefit from mercy to pay it forward to others. As the tyrant king said, “You should have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you” (Mt 18:33).

This story reinforces Jesus’ shocking demand that we forgive one another “seventy times seven” times. That’s the kind of mercy God has shown us. As the Psalmist said in our reading today, “He has taken our sins away from us as far as the east is from west” (Ps 103:12, NCV). The prophet Isaiah declares in the name of the LORD that God doesn’t even remember our sins any longer (Isa 43:25)! That’s who God is: merciful and generous beyond our ability to imagine. And because God forgives us without counting, Jesus teaches us to forgive each other in the same way. We who have received the gift of God’s incredibly generous mercy are called to forgive each other without counting.

If you’re thinking that’s impossible, I’m sure you’re not alone. In fact, from the time Jesus spoke these powerful words the Church has struggled with them. It doesn’t seem practical: won’t unlimited forgiveness encourage people to go right on doing whatever they please? But Jesus isn’t looking at things from a human point of view. He’s talking about the way things are meant to be from God’s point of view. Forgiveness received is to be shared freely as forgiveness given to others. And those of us who know God’s incredibly generous mercy in the complete and irrevocable forgiveness he has given us are to forgive each other in the same generous way. We’re to forgive without counting.

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 9/17/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Take the First Step

Take the First Step

Matthew 18:10-20[1]

As is too often the case with men, my most difficult relationship was with my father, Harold Brehm, who passed away in May. For me, it seemed that no matter how hard I tried to do my best, it was never good enough. It’s a dilemma I’ve heard from other men and women regarding their relationships with their parents. I haven’t kept it secret that I was never close to my parents. That happens. My case was not simply one of normal “tension” between parents and children. There’s a lot I could say about that, but I choose not to out of respect for them. I will say this, the distance I kept from my father was not without cause. If I told the whole story, I’m quite sure some of you might be shocked. I’ve never spoken of this in a sermon. I refrained from doing so while he was alive out of respect for him. But now that he’s in the presence of Christ, where he’s whole and healed, I feel that I can tell my story.

I realized many years ago that it was up to me to forgive my father. I’m not ashamed to admit the process took decades. It began when I was a young man. I realized that holding on to bitterness toward my father was hurting me and my relationships. But it’s one thing to recognize the need for forgiveness. It’s another thing to actually forgive. I continued to take steps toward that goal over the years as I grew in my understanding of myself, and in my understanding of my father. I’m deeply grateful that the process led to my ability to fully forgive my father about five years ago or so. To be sure, he never apologized or asked for forgiveness. And I never confronted him for what he had done. I didn’t think it would do any good. Nevertheless, I am grateful to God for giving me the ability to let him be who was, flaws and all, and to love him despite what had happened.

It may be hard to see this, but I believe our Gospel lesson is about forgiveness. I think the reason why it may be difficult to see this is because the lesson outlines a procedure for “admonishing” or “rebuking” another person may seem impractical to us. As the basis for the practice of “excommunication” in its various forms, our lesson for today seems to be at odds with what we know of Jesus. These verses have been used to justify everything from excluding people from the Lord’s Supper to completely shunning them. I would say when Christians cut off someone else in the name of Jesus, we’ve missed something. Our lives are meant to be directed toward loving God and loving others.

I think Matthew was aware of this problem. I think we see this in the way Matthew has arranged Jesus’ teaching in this chapter. We have to take Matthew chapter 18 as a whole. When we do, we find that Matthew himself has “couched” this difficult passage about admonishing others in the context of humility, compassion, and forgiveness. We who follow Jesus are called to become “humble like a child” (Mt 18:4). We’re called to practice concern for the “little ones” by taking care that we not cause anyone to “stumble” (Mt 18:6). We’re reminded that God does not look down on any of his “sheep” who may have “gone astray” (Mt 18:10-14). And we’re called to forgive one another not seven times but “seventy-seven times” or as some translations render it, “seventy times seven” (Mt 18:22). Whatever the situation was behind this procedure for admonishing others, it was meant to be carried out with humility, compassion, and forgiveness.

We can see a similar situation with the Apostle Paul, where the question of eating meat was one that caused Gentile converts to “stumble.” In response, Paul actually urged both sides to take the first step: if you’re the one who is offended, he asks, “who are you to judge”? The idea is that rather than holding a grudge or harboring bitterness, we’re to take the first step toward resolving the problem. And if you’re the one who has offended another, he urges us to “never put a stumbling block or hindrance” in the way of another (Rom 14:13). Paul himself insisted that if he did anything to give offense to anyone, he was going to take the first step by avoiding anything that might harm others (1 Cor 8:13). The basic principle here was one of humility, compassion, and forgiveness for others.

Jesus said something similar in the Sermon on the Mount. He said that if we come to worship and remember that we have done something to offend someone, we must first be reconciled before we can rightly worship God (Mt 5:23-24). Think about it: how can we truly worship God while we’re harboring bitterness or a grudge against someone? It just doesn’t work. Jesus may have been following the lead of some of the Old Testament prophets here, like Isaiah or Jeremiah. That we cannot truly worship God without making things right with the people in our lives is a theme that they emphasized. And Jesus also insisted that we take the first step toward making things right.

I think Matthew knew what he was doing when he based the step-by-step process for setting things right on humility, compassion, and forgiveness. I think he had some keen insight into who we are as human beings. Humility enables us to look at ourselves and recognize that my attitude or my actions may be the problem, not the other person. That’s not something that comes easily. Compassion enables us to see things through the perspective of those with whom we may be at odds. It also enables us to care about them as people, and so to care about their wellbeing. Forgiveness enables us to drop any sense that we may feel we have a right to judge or to blame the other person. And when we take the first step to make things right prayerfully, we can hardly do so without a change of heart from one of blame and bitterness to one of humility, compassion and forgiveness.[2]

I’m not going to pretend that the process of healing broken relationships is one that can be undertaken lightly or carried out easily. The deeper the hurt, the more work it’s going to take from us. It took me decades to forgive my father. There were times when I wasn’t sure I was ever going to be able to get there. The key for me was that I continued to pray, and I continued to try to see him through eyes of compassion. It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t happen quickly, but I can honestly say that I’m grateful for all the many “first steps” that God helped me to take over the years. For me, forgiving my father was crucial to my ability to “live and breathe a spirit of forgiveness”[3] toward everyone, which I would say is at the heart of following Jesus.

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 9/10/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Ulrich Luz, A Commentary on Matthew 8-20, 458. He reasons that we can hardly “pray” for the punishment of offenders, but rather for their salvation and restoration to the community!

[3] W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Matthew 8-18.

My Hope is Built on Nothing Less

My Hope is Built on Nothing Less

Psalm 36:5-6[1]

It was a conversation like countless others. And the key question was, “If God doesn’t answer my prayers, what’s the point of trying to live for him?” Of course, the real question was about when “God doesn’t answer my prayers by giving me what I want.” To be sure, this was someone who was desperate—desperate—to find a way to save a loved one. The prayer wasn’t about landing a better job or buying a dream home. It was about saving a life, and the lives of all those affected. Surely God wants the same thing we want when it comes to something like that. And if God doesn’t come through for us when we pour out our hearts in prayer, then why pray at all? More than that, why even make the effort to hold onto our faith?

My answer was one that didn’t satisfy. My answer was that, like Job, we may ask the question, “Why?”, but we may never get an answer. My answer was that we cannot tie our faith in God to the outcome of our prayers. My answer was that we can’t know why God sometimes answers our prayers the way we hope, and sometimes doesn’t. When we’re desperate to save someone we love, that’s not what we usually want to hear. But in my experience, the reason we pray is because we place our hope in God’s love for us that never fails. The reason we keep practicing our faith is to remind ourselves that, come what may, God’s love for us never fails. The one thing we can always hold onto is the hope that God’s love for us never fails. Our hope is based on nothing less!

You may have noticed that we’ve been saying the same Assurance of Pardon all Summer. I don’t normally do that, but I wanted us to have the chance to really let the ideas of Psalm 36:5-6 sink into our hearts and minds. I like the way the New Living Translation puts it: “Your unfailing love, O LORD, is as vast as the heavens; your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the ocean depths.” It’s one of my favorite Bible verses. It reminds me that we’re never outside God’s unfailing love. God’s faithfulness continues to embrace all of us, come what may. God’s purpose to set things right stands as unshakable as the highest mountains. And God’s work to right all wrongs will one day sweep over the whole world.

That’s a lot to take in, so let’s break it down. First, “Your unfailing love, O LORD, is as vast as the heavens.” This affirmation starts out with God’s character. The fact that God’s character is defined by “unfailing love,” “faithfulness,” “righteousness,” and “justice” serves as the basis for everything we believe. This Psalm reminds us that our hope is based on nothing less than who God was and is and ever shall be, world without end! And the starting point for that hope is that God’s love never fails and never ends. More than that, the Psalmist says God’s love is as vast as the heavens. It extends to everyone and everything everywhere in all creation. This is the quality of God’s love: God loves us all with a love that will never let us go. The amazing kindness and generosity that God continually shows us every day isn’t accidental.[2] It’s based on who God is: “Your unfailing love, O LORD, is as vast as the heavens.”

The next affirmation is, “your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.” That might seem obvious to us, but in a time when people could only speculate what was up there in the sky, the idea was that God’s faithfulness extends even beyond the limits of our knowledge. Like God’s love, God’s faithfulness extends to everyone and everything. In a world where promises are made to be broken, it may be hard for us to believe that the God who loves us is completely trustworthy and reliable. But this is another of those foundational declarations about God: God is the one who never, ever gives up on us. Whether or not it comes when we expect it, God will make good on every promise.[3] “Your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.”

The next affirmation is “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains.” We assume that God’s “righteousness” also refers to his character. And it does. God is the one who always does what is right. But it goes beyond that. God is also the one who is always working to make all things right. You have to read carefully, and it’s sometimes hidden in our English bibles, but God’s character as “righteous” leads him to always work to make things right.[4] And because this is a matter of who God is, his intention to make all things right in this world is as firm and unshakeable as “the mighty mountains.” You could sooner bring down Mount Everest than you could thwart God’s purpose to make things right! “Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains.”

Finally, this verse affirms that “your justice [is] like the ocean depths.” We’re familiar with the idea that God’s character is “just.” But it may not be one that we find comforting. For us, “justice” equals punishment. But in the Hebrew Bible, God’s justice sets out to help the helpless and to heal those who are hurting. God’s justice brings peace to those who are oppressed and freedom to those who are bound in any way. Even when it comes to those who may be in the wrong, God’s justice comes as grace and mercy. God’s justice is about his determination to right all the wrongs in this world. And this intention is as powerful and unstoppable as the force of water in the ocean! “Your justice [is] like the ocean depths.”

This is the reason why I keep putting my faith in God, no matter what life may bring. It’s because God’s unfailing love upholds everything and everyone in all creation! That includes the whole universe![5] I keep hoping for God’s kingdom to prevail despite all that’s wrong in this world because God is always faithful to everyone, everywhere! When what is happening feels discouraging or even beyond the limits of my faith, I remember that God’s purpose to set all things right is as firm and sure as the mighty mountains! And I also remember that God’s justice, peace, and freedom will one day sweep over the whole world like the waters of the ocean! When life is such that it feels like “all around, my soul gives way,” I return to this verse to keep anchoring my faith and my hope on nothing less than God’s unfailing love, faithfulness, righteousness, and justice! I hope that this verse might inspire you to do the same!

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[1] © 2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 9/3/2023 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. H.-J. Kraus, Theology of the Book of Psalms, 44.

[3] Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 115:God is the one on whom we can continue to rely “all the way from promise to fulfillment.”

[4] Moltman, Theology of Hope, 204: “The ‘righteousness of God’ is God’s faithful love directed toward the goal of setting all humans right with God, with themselves, with each other, and with the whole of creation; thus it refers to God’s redemptive purpose to bring about a new creation.”

[5] James L. Mays, Psalms, 156: the “attributes of the LORD are said to be cosmic in dimension. Heavens and clouds mark the upper limit of the world; mountains of God and the great deep are terms of immensity.”