Tag Archive - forgiveness

Behold the… Lobster?

November 23, 2011 in Culture with 0 Comments

Last night Laura and I engaged in a moment of post-SBL de-tox by watching Brooklyn Lobster. A film about a lobster company that is on the verge of going under is a film about family, raw reality, and forgiveness.

The father figure in the film, Frank Giorgio, is depicted as rather lobster-like himself in a couple of scenes. In one, he is sitting in his car at a stoplight, and the red light makes him as red as any lobster in the film.

Frank is attempting, through various shenanigans, to save his business. And he is refusing the help of everyone around him–many of whom actually offer viable ideas for keeping the business afloat.

The turning point in the movie comes when Frank confronts a wayward lobster on the floor of his shop. As the scene begins, we get the God’s eye view of the escapee, which has its claws out a curiously right angles from his body. Cruciform lobster, anyone?

When Frank goes to apprehend the culprit, it pinches him. Frank shrinks back, but then as he grabs the lobster to put it back in the tank he says, “It’s o.k. I forgive you. It wasn’t your fault.”

Frank needed to forgive; most of all, I think, he needed to forgive himself.

Not everything becomes perfect at this moment, but the needful transformation has begun.

Frank is the lobster. And the lobster is forgiven.

Can’t God Just Forgive?

November 14, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 16 Comments

When people wrestle with atonement theology (i.e., how does the cross, in particular, bring about forgiveness of sins), the objection to atonement theology as a whole is sometimes voiced: why can’t God just forgive? Does God really need some sort of payment?

On the one hand, yes, God can do whatever God wants. This is possible.

On the other hand, we develop our understanding of how the cross works ex post facto. We’re not setting up parameters that have to be met, but trying to understand the biblical witness about how the death of Jesus did, in fact, function. We have books like Hebrews that say things like, “You could almost say that without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” We have the language of Jesus’ death as atoning sacrifice.

So atonement theology is our attempt to make sense of what did happen, not to set requirements on God.

But there’s another piece of the biblical puzzle as well. That piece is Luke-Acts.

Luke seems to go out of his way to mute the idea that Jesus’ death is somehow a ransom or payment for sins. You know that, “Son of Man didn’t come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” saying? It’s replaced by the son of man being among his people as one who serves the table.

Look at the sermons in Acts. Here, of all places, we should get a clear exposition of the purpose of the cross. And we do! But its focused purpose is to fulfill the scripture about Israel rejecting its own Messiah, so that Israel will see that they, as much as the Gentiles, stand in need of the forgiveness of God.

God forgives.

God isn’t paid.

Sin isn’t covered.

Blood doesn’t cleanse.

Canonically, this is not enough. There is more to be said, other developments of the significance of Jesus’ death that need to be incorporated into a fully developed understanding of the atonement.

But here’s the question: is this atonement-free forgiveness a viable starting point for us to take with people who find the idea of God needing payment to be barbaric, weird, etc.? Can we set aside the other angles on Jesus’ death and cultivate a Lukan theology of the God who forgives, and who is at work in the world through Christ and the Spirit, as the gospel with which we begin?

Discuss.

Theology Hub Podcast

May 31, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 7 Comments

Theology Hub.

Image: Paul / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Theology that sits at the center, supporting the realities of everyday life where the rubber meets the road.

Or,

Theology conversations that take place at The Hub in San Francisco.

Either way, it’s what Mark Scandrette and I are collaborating on this summer. The first episode is up. We talked forgiveness.

The point of these round-tables is to bring theology and practice into closer connection. Take a listen and let us know what you think.

I realize that if this gets serious we’ll need a different format so that we can RSS feed to the iTunes store and all that. But please accept this, our baby step and first offering, as a token of what we hope will be good things to come.

Theology Hub Episode 1: Forgiveness

Forgiveness, Blessing, and… Wrath?

May 26, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church with 1 Comment

Yesterday I shared some thoughts about the importance of resurrection in our understanding of the call to forgive. The economy of the world is not the container within which justice will be done. God must intervene. God must reverse the judgments of the world.

The powerful must be thrown down from their thrones.

The dead must be raised.

This brings up one particularly challenging dynamic in the story: the idea that our forgiveness and blessing of those who have wronged us might play into an economy of reversal. Paul puts it like this in Romans 12:

Do not repay evil for evil to anyone, respecting what is right in the sight of all people…. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. But “If your enemy hungers–feed him! If she thirsts–give her something to drink! For doing thus you will heap burning coals upon his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Some of this is more palatable to us than other parts.

The idea that our calling is never to get drawn into the game of retribution is crucial. Echoing the sermon on the mount, where Jesus tells people to go the extra mile and give tunic as well as cloak, Paul says that defending ourselves in kind is out, and repaying evil with blessing is a vital element of our calling.

As Paul contextualizes Proverbs 25:21 in the letter to Rome, he writes it into the narrative of the cross by which he believes God has saved the world. Through the goodness of self-giving love, the sin and death of the world have been overcome.

But then there’s the other part.

The bit about heaping up burning coals on their heads.

Here we perhaps catch a glimpse of something that reminds us of the peculiar position we are in, most of us, as people with access to computers and internets, and education, and money. We forget that the Bible was written in a time when only a few could even hope for the sort of freedom we enjoy. We live in a time when justice is assumed to be the norm from which only a few deviate.

The space we are called to leave for God’s wrath seems unbecoming because the reality of injustice is an idea that we are too far removed from to know deep in our bones.

Of course, there is another reason many of us don’t like the idea as well: we hope that God’s capacity for forgiveness is larger than ours. We hope that our own failures to give up a grudge don’t reflect the truest intent of the heart of God. We hope that the capacious forgiveness and reconciliation on offer in the cross will break even the hardest of hearts and that God’s work of reconciliation will outstrip all our own feeble attempts.

But there seems to be a storyline in this world in which the powerful and the true enemies continue to see the very work of God before their eyes, continue to see the cross of Christ embodied in a blessing, persecuted people–and continue to pour out their evil upon this incarnation of good.

The people of God, in forgiving and blessing in the midst of persecution, are reenacting the Jesus story, the Jesus who offered forgiveness from the cross. This is our calling–to renarrate the life of Jesus in our lives, in our communities.

And, it is possible for this incarnation of Christ to be spurned and treated with contempt–and for the wrath of God to be kindled, a wrath that will be made known in the end.

This is tricky.

If we bless in hopes of bringing condemnation, it is no blessing but a curse. So our gifts must, it seems to me, be offered as genuine offers of forgiveness and blessing–even as Jesus’ own cry on Golgotha; an offer that can be embraced in repentance or spurned unto judgment.

Forgiveness and Resurrection

May 25, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church with 4 Comments

Yesterday I did a little co-conspiring with Mark Scandrette and the guys from ikon here in San Francisco. We recorded a podcast about forgiveness (stay tuned for download details).

The conversation generated a number of thoughts and questions, not all of them worked out in our short time recording. Perhaps one of the most important has to do with entrusting judgment to God. At some level, especially for people who have been badly wounded, abused, left behind after a loved one has been killed, forgiveness will be tied to a conviction that the God of all the earth will do what is right.

Is that really the God who composes the Christian story? Is that really the God who beckons us to forgive and even to bless those who persecute us?

In my estimation, we have too often surrendered a major resource for answering this question because we have built our theology of forgiveness so much around the cross that we have neglected the crucial place of the resurrection.

Resurrection means not only that God has accepted and forgiven us in Christ. This much is true. But it also means, more generally, that the economy of this world is not equipped to bring about the just judgment of God.

The God of all the earth will do what is right, but this mortal life and its systems of power and even of justice are not the heavenly court.

Resurrection promises that there will be reversal. Injustice cannot escape the righteous judgment of God.

Who You Are, At Peace with God

April 6, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Church, Spirituality & Prayer with 9 Comments

Yesterday I had one of those marvelous moments of the information age. Reviewing documents before heading to a meeting I got a Facebook chat pop-up that went something like, “So, professor, how do we experience God’s pleasure?”

After stalling by asking such questions as, “What do you mean?” and “Isn’t the pollen count murder on the nose?” I started working through the challenges she was facing as a youth pastor.

Our children too often hear messages of where they have failed. There is a chorus around them suggesting, indicating, sometimes even directly saying, that they have failed, that they are not good enough, that they need to achieve more, that they need to be more.

And within such a chorus, it is easy to ascribe a voice to God. If this is how all the people “up there” see me, then this must be God’s view, too.

As we talked through the challenges she was facing, I began to wonder if the answer she and her youth group needed at this point wasn’t “peace.” How do we know God’s pleasure in us, his approval of his, his delight in us as his children?

One significant part of the puzzle, it seems to me, is the discovery that we are at peace–knowing that God accepts us in the beloved son, we know, too, that we are God’s beloved daughters and sons. And in that knowledge, we rest.

Here is where the pastoral payoff of Luther’s angst-ridden conscience comes to the fore. We are all too often confronted–by voices around us or, just as frequently, by voices within–telling us that we are not good enough. And it is only natural that when we so conceive of ourselves as “not good enough” that God becomes one source of the common chorus of voices.

So we need to change our internal monologues, and change the message to the body of Christ around us.

Stop beating yourself up: God loves you. Stop talking to yourself as if you’re a stupid failure. You are embraced by God into the very person of his dearly beloved Son.

And stop talking to your children, and the children around you, and your pastor, and your parents, and your spouse, as if they are consistent failures. We must be to one another messengers of peace. And this, in turn, means being messengers of grace.

In Jesus Christ we are forgiven. And loved. And cherished. And celebrated.

Thanks be to God.

Forgiveness

October 29, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Church with 0 Comments

In case you’ve missed it, there is a fantastic article on Forgiveness by Christine Scheller in the October issue of Christianity Today.

Here’s one quote:
Living a life of holiness and learning the ways of God sometimes mean letting go of our need for justice and instead embracing a world that groans in anticipation of the day when it, and we, will be redeemed.

I commend the whole article to you. We need more serious thinking about this business of leaning into our identity as a “forgiveness” people. It demands the sort of honest story telling, and living into the Christian story, in which Scheller engages in this article.

A Forgiveness People

October 14, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Church with 3 Comments

Two different things got me thinking yesterday got me thinking about the role of forgiveness in Christian identity.

I was at a “marketing summit” with a number of folks from Fuller, and our time was being led by Michael Hyatt. He was fantastic: he both gave us narratives to spur our thinking and respected / anticipated that Fuller would have a different narrative that may or may not fit with parts of the story he was telling.

At one point we got to talking about social media, and the problems that can arise when we start associating our Tweets and Blogs and Facebook worlds with our work. What happens when we make mistakes? What happens when we blast people who shouldn’t be blasted?

Michael talked about a time when he pulled out the guns out of frustration with a certain company and then felt compelled to follow up with phone calls of apology. He talked about feeling badly that, as a Christian especially, he had used social media destructively.

But his response was the more important point to me. To be a Christian is to be part of the “forgiveness” people. One of the reasons why we must not give up on the vital role of forgiveness in our story of coming into the people of God is that who God and Christ are for us when we come in is who we are to continue to be for one another, and who we are to continue to be before God and Christ as well.

In other words: the story that begins, “God forgives you” continues with us embodying the posture of our need to be forgiven before each other, with our extending forgiveness to one another, and continuing also to seek forgiveness from God as stumble in along the way.

There is one part of this that is as glorious as it is counter-intuitive: both asking for and extending forgiveness are powerful. You feel so weak when you ask, like you’re giving yourself up, like you’re dying. And maybe you are. But life springs up on the other side.

This all ties in with some comments in response to one of yesterday’s posts, comments about the importance of forgiveness in our communities. As a forgiveness people, our receiving of forgiveness is inseparable from our extending it to others.

That great prayer, “…forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespassed against us” is followed by the great caveat: for if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive you. Our identity as a forgiveness people is not something that we hoard for our own benefit, it is the grace of God that we are called to carry into the world.

Grace on the Ground

March 16, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 3 Comments

A final foray into this month’s Christianity Today takes us to the moving story of Chris Rice, chronicling the low-point and turning-point of his famous partnership (and friendship) with Spencer Perkins.

Their efforts at leading an interracial Christian community had pushed them to the breaking point in their relationship with each other. Before chucking everything and parting ways, they called in some mediators to help hold them together. Spencer had an epiphany:

“Yeah, yeah, I know all about grace, I thought… Grace is God’s love demonstrated to us, even though we don’t deserve it. But in all my 43 years of evangelical teaching, I never understood until now that God intended grace to be a way of life for his followers… Sure, I knew that we were supposed to love one another as Christ loved us. But somehow it was much easier for me to swallow the lofty untested notion of dying for each other than simply giving grace to brothers and sisters on a daily basis, the way God gives us grace” (36).

I take two things away from this. First, all the talk about “dying” might not have the payoff that I might hope. Of course, if someone “gets it,” it will be a powerful motivator and metaphor, but someone can hold onto the idea that we’re supposed to die for each other and use that as an excuse not to live for one another. Spencer confesses to such a short-changing of the gospel here.

The other thing, though, is that we must keep coming back to the idea that means by which God forms us into a people when he calls us to himself in Christ determines our identity as God’s people, which in turn delineates what it means to live as God’s faithful people. We are a people saved by grace–and therefore we are to be grace to one another. We are a people saved by the self-giving love of Christ and therefore we are to give up our lives in love of one another. We are a people saved as God lavishes forgiveness upon us, and we are called in turn to be a forgiveness people, forgiving one another from the heart.

Any idea of “grace” or “forgiveness” or “self-giving” or “cruciformity” that does not immediately call us to be for others what we have received from Christ is a selling-short of the faithful life to which God calls us. If we have received grace from above, we are called to be grace on the ground here below.