Text: Galatians 5:13-26; John 8:31-39
By: Rev. Terry Carty
Date: 7-1-2012
Place: Kingston Springs United Methodist Church Season: Independence Day
Main Point: Independence Day gives us the opportunity to think about our freedom and what we do with it. The Christian response to freedom comes with forgiveness – grace.
This week as we anticipate 4th of July activities and find ourselves energized by the red, white and blue, we also find ourselves oppressed by anger at the leadership of our country.
Whether we are Republican, Democrat, or just in the wide middle ground, we are being held hostage by our leaders’ inability to get along so they can focus on finding the best solutions to the problems of our country and the world beyond.
This week I have spent 16 arduous hours in training to be able to teach courses about Healthy Congregations. This training looks at families, congregations and even countries as emotional systems. The very feeling of freedom is determined by the way we handle the anxieties in these emotional systems.
At age 43, Sarah came to grips with her long-held anger with her parents. She resented her mother who repeatedly ridiculed and shamed her. As a child, Sarah wondered what was so awful about herself that it caused her mother to shout demeaning and hurtful things.
In her teens, Sarah blocked out her mother’s tirades by escaping in activities.
By that time she was beginning to resent her father too. Over the years, he had passively stood by during the mother’s attacks. He did whatever he could to please his wife. His silence contributed to her senseless attacks on Sarah. While Sarah realized that this was his way of staying out of her target area, relieved that someone other than himself was receiving his wife’s verbal abuse.
Now, 20 years later, Sarah felt that she was not as mad at her family as she had been.
“I finally understand where my mother and father come from,” she said, “Their backgrounds, their behaviors.”
But over the years Sarah would withdraw from the situation. Then she started to attack them and vigorously defend herself in doing so. Sarah had become locked in the confinement of anger and blame.
After seeking therapeutic help for her anger, she said, “I understand they are individuals and I am an individual. Mother is a mother. Father is father. I am me. At one time everything she did affected me. I know that her critical remarks are not intentional. She learned them from her family when she was growing up. My father came from a “nice family.” Everyone kept the peace. I wanted to get back at him for not protecting me. But he did what he did. Now things my parents say or do don’t hurt me as much. So when my mother calls and says, ‘You never did appreciate everything I did for you,’ I don’t react and go crazy. I don’t have to act on everything she says.”
Sarah is finally letting go of her anger – her blame. Sarah is coming to freedom.
As we talked in our seminar about the key role that forgiveness takes in every aspect of our lives, it became obvious to me that the capacity to forgive is the capacity to find freedom in our lives.
One of the Old Testament words for forgiveness means to remove a weight. One of the New Testament words means to let go. Forgiveness is an act of release or removal. Forgiveness is a freeing action that opens the door to new life.
In order to forgive, we are in need of changing the way we react in those binding situations. We can only move toward forgiveness by intentionally changing our stance in relationship to others.
It was helpful to me to hear this: To forgive another is to say in some way:
- I have been wronged by you.
- I have the right and reason to end any connection between us
- I have the right and reason to demand from you a payment or an apology
- My sense of dignity and my values require nothing less
- Nonetheless I refuse to let the wrong consume me in resentment
- And I refuse to let the wrong come between us
- I give no assurance that I’ll be able to forget the wrong that you’ve done
- I demand no conditions. Whether or not you accept my forgiveness or ask for it has nothing to do with my offer
- I want to be at peace with myself and be glad in your presence I want to open the door to tomorrow
I realized that God’s grace says these words to us. And we are called as Christians to approach all of our relationships the same way.
Forgiveness is the distinguishing mark of the Christian community. With God’s generous mercy at the center of a congregation, we have our model for the mercy we are to show among ourselves and in the way we encounter the world. We are uniquely blessed by our faith in God who came in Christ to show us how to forgive.
Politically, we are the third party trapped in relationship with two unrelenting forces. What would freedom look like if Democrats could find a way to say “I want to be at peace with myself and be glad in your presence?” What would freedom look like if Republicans could say “I refuse to let the wrong come between us?”
What would freedom look like if we could consider our own broken relationships – in families, at work, at school, among friends – and say “I want to open the door to tomorrow?”
As we follow Jesus into our Independence Day world, may we seek to live the true freedom that begins with grace.
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