March 10, 2013
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church, San Francisco.
There are many instances of confession in the public media today. We see the straying politician confessing their marital infidelities. There are the athletes who confess to using steroids and priests and pastors who confess to pedophile and sex scandals. There is the constant feed of talk shows and reality television that bad news is good news for publicity and ratings.
Remember the late Noel Coward’s infamous prank. The English playwright sent an identical note to twenty of the most famous men in London. The anonymous note read simply: ‘Everybody has found out what you are doing. If I were you I would get out of town.’ Supposedly, all twenty men actually left town!
What if you opened your mail one day and found such a note? What would race through your mind? Do we all have something to repent, some guilt that is hidden, some true confessions to make?
There’s a story of a boy who experienced the burden of guilt, the difficulty of confession and the joy of forgiveness. Ben, a seventh grader, and two classmates planned to “TP” another friend’s house. After his parents were asleep, Ben snuck out of his house, retrieved his Raleigh BMX from the bushes in which he had hidden it earlier, and set off to meet his friends. They never showed. Ben rode around on darkened streets looking for them, and got farther and farther away from home. Eventually he came to his senses, and turned his bike around to head back when he noticed a car going slowly along beside him, keeping pace whether he slowed down or speeded up.
In a panic, he kept going as fast as he could, crying, and terrified. Suddenly another car turned a corner into his path. The driver rolled down his window and asked, “Are you OK?”
Ben said he was fine. “Are you sure? You are out awfully late. Do you want a ride home?”
Ben said, “No.” That driver may have saved him from the predator following him, but he wasn’t about to get into a stranger’s car, nonetheless. As soon as the car was out of his path, Ben pedaled so fast that those three miles home flew by. The tears streaming down his face, he wasn’t going to slow down. He just wanted to get back home.
When he reached home, without really thinking about what he was doing, he went right up into his parents’ bedroom, crying, sobbing, panicking, waking them up to tell them the whole story.
In retelling the tale, Ben admits that he doesn’t really remember what punishment his parents meted out. He remembered only that they comforted him when he was so scared, assured him that he was safe, and showed him that they still loved him.
This is a good story that explains Psalm 32. When we confess, admit our sins to God, we receive God’s forgiving love. The psalmist says,
“Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave
the guilt of my sin.”
Commentators point out that Psalm 32 is often referred to not just as a “psalm of penitence” but as a “psalm of instruction.” When it comes to forgiveness and how is our relationship with God is and how life works, there is a teaching component here. In verses 8-9, the psalmist says, “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.”
Wanting us to learn, the psalmist says, “Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle.” The psalmist makes it clear that we don’t act like a stubborn mule or senseless horse, unable to follow instructions.
Here is the point that I would like you to learn today—forgiveness is not dependent on repentance. We know that repentance and forgiveness is intertwined. But forgiveness is also independent of repentance, or in other words, we should forgive someone whether or not they are sorry and have changed their ways.
In An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics, Donald Shriver regards forgiveness as prior to the repentance of the other. He states that forgiveness consists of several elements:
1. The recognition and naming of a moral wrong committed,
2. Willingness of the offended to forgo vengeance (and hence abort the cycle of violence and counter-violence),
3. A recognition of the humanity of the offender or enemy, and
4. A renewed willingness to walk together in a new and emerging relationship.
The notion of “willingness” implies forgiveness can be unilateral and not dependent on the other. This is becoming the prevalent thinking in Christian circles. We are encouraged to forgive, whether or not the offender has apologized or repented.
With this notion of forgiveness in mind, let’s look at Psalm 32. The psalmist’s hidden sin and guilt eat away at him until he confesses them and receives forgiveness. The sequence is this:
- The psalmist experiences guilt (vv. 3-4)
- The psalmist confesses his transgression or sin (v. 5)
- The psalmist receives forgiveness (v. 5)
- The psalmist finds relief and safety (v. 7) and
- The psalmist learns the way to go (v. 8)
This psalm implies that repentance comes prior to forgiveness.
Now God forgives us after we confess and repent of our sins. But the point for today is that does this sequence in the psalm necessarily imply a similar sequence for human forgiveness? While we know that it’s easier to forgive someone who is remorseful than the one who is not, can we forgive first even when the offender hasn’t shown remorse?
I know that Asian parents and specifically Chinese fathers have an iron-fist rule with their children—“Never apologize.” I heard that this is Rule #6 in the NCIS television drama series of young investigators. While “never apologize” might make a terrific TV show, it can make family life sheer hell, turn our workplaces into trenched battlefields, and isolate us from God who would so graciously heal us even of our lack of virtues.
Far from the truth, “Never Apologize” is not a sign of weakness. It is not true to the good news of God, and it does not square with reality. If there were some parents out here who might need to apologize to their children for something that they did wrongly, imagine how thankful your children would be and how greater your stature would become in the eyes of your family.
How can we learn how to say, “What I said was wrong and it was not fair. Please forgive me. I’m sorry.” When we apologize, we tap into the vast power of God whose forgiveness of us knows no limits. The truth proposed by Psalm 32 is: apologize gladly and you will find power from God.
And what if there is someone you have been waiting to apologize to you has already gone home to God, you can forgive without the person repenting. What if you want to apologize to someone and unfortunately that person has already gone home to God, you can offer apology and believe in God’s grace that God hears your sincerity. You don’t need to wait forever to accept forgiveness or to offer forgiveness.
Peter asks, “How often should I forgive?” Jesus said, “As many as seventy-times seven times” (Mt. 18:21-22). Forgiveness is far more abundant than we dare to imagine.
There was a 2005 movie titled, Our Fathers. Based on David France’s book, Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal, it chronicles the campaign of a lawyer who mounts a class action suit on behalf of men who had been abused by priests when the former were students and/or altar boys in the 1970s and 80s in Boston.
Without going deeply into the story, something remarkable happens that reveals the meaning of the psalm about forgiveness. One of the men, Tom is in a bar with some of his fellow victims when he tells them that he has visited the priest who had abused him and several of them.
Fr. Birmingham, now an old man, is in a hospital dying, required to breathe through a nose tube. Tom awakens the gaunt-looking man and, after telling him his name, states how he has hated him. “What you did to me and all those other boys at Sudsbury, was wrong.” His face contorted by his sobbing, Tom asks, “How could you do that?” Barely able to continue, Tom surprises the mute priest and the viewers by saying, “I want you to forgive me.” The priest closes his eyes in pain and shock. Tom says that he wants forgiveness for all that I have felt for you all this time. “I believe, Father, the promise that Jesus Christ made to us is true.” Asking if it would be all right for him to pray, Tom takes the priest’s hand in his own and prays for the priest’s healing and for the priest’s forgiveness so that God will have a place for him in heaven.
Tom’s friends are surprised and deeply moved. Even in the face of such awful tragedy as priests’ abuse of boys that have led to countless victims to encounter mental problems, ruined marriages, suicide and exit from the church, Tom offers forgiveness before repentance was heard.
The Psalmist said, “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (vv. 1-2).
Four Steps
If we all received one of those Noel Coward’s letters, we would all leave town. We all have sins, guilt, transgressions that we have been hiding from ourselves and from each other. You are not hiding anything from God. Frederick Buechner once wrote about confession: “To confess your sins to God is not to tell God anything God doesn’t already know. Until you confess them, however, they are like the abyss between you and God. When you confess them, they become the Golden Gate Bridge.” I like that.
Here are four steps from Psalm 32 to remove your guilt of the sins that you are carrying. First, admit you have sins. The first step on the road to recovery is admitting that something is wrong in our life. Just like the 12 steps in Alcohol Anonymous, we say, “Hello, my name is Don. I am a sinner.”
Secondly, confront your sin. To overcome the guilt of sin, we can’t continue to hide its reality. We have to deal with it. Our guilt may affect us psychologically, spiritually, and physically. The truth is that if we don’t deal with our guilt, then our guilt will deal with us.
Third, confess your sin. Our guilt of being sinful is dispelled only when the truth is told. This is the reason why we say the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday together so that we confess our sins to God and to each other. It’s like an ice sculpture. Guilt, the weight of our sin is like that huge block of ice. Kept in the dark, a cold place, it remains hard. But brought out into the light, identified, and confessed, it begins to melt and soon is gone. You are free and no longer frozen by unaddressed guilt and sin.
And lastly, forget your sin. That’s what God did for David. When David confessed his sins to God, suddenly his sin and guilt were gone forever. It’s like when your computer crashes and you rush to the Geek Squad to see if you can recover your files only to learn that it’s gone to nowhere forever.
That’s exactly what Psalm 32 says God did for David. And that’s exactly how it is for us. When we confess our sin, God erases the sin and guilt. We need to forget it and get on with our life. If God doesn’t remember any of our confessed sins, why should we?
This is Lent, the season of soul spring-cleaning in preparation for the holiest of weeks, the most liberating of days. What sinful behavior do you cling to, unwilling and resisting to give up, not interested in bringing it into the light? It’s time to let it go!
In Dante’s Inferno, Dante goes on a journey through hell. Circle after circle he travels, seeing one grotesque horror after another. At the bottom circle is Satan himself. He is frozen up to his chest in ice. He flaps his wings to try to break free, but it is the flapping that is keeping the ice frozen. Did you get that? The very act that Satan is doing to try to break free is what’s keeping him frozen. If Satan stopped flapping, the ice would melt, and he’d have freedom.
Let’s stop flapping, stop straining against the will of God, stop thinking that we can hide our sins from God and from each other. God calls us to repent of our sins, let go, and allow God to forgive us and renew us.
Let us pray.
Humbly we come before you, O God, with gratitude for all of us have sinned. Our thanksgiving rests not only because we have been forgiven, but because we have been given this opportunity to forgive. Lord, you make all things new, remake us, not only as individuals, but as your body, present and alive in this community, that all may come to know you through our witness of faith, action, and words that you have come to redeem us all. Amen.