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Passion Sunday
SERMON - 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 2nd April 2006
Revd. Matthew Vernon
John 12.20-33
Forgiveness is at the heart of our understanding of Jesus' death.
We can think about Jesus' death in different ways.
But forgiveness is central.
Whether we see Jesus' death as the way we are forgiven.
Or whether Jesus forgiving his executors is an example we should follow.
remember in Luke's Gospel: "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing".
Forgiveness is at the heart of our faith.
Yet its something we find so difficult.
I can't even forgive a police camera for catching me speeding.
2 weeks ago driving down the hill to Aberdeen
• doing 62 in a 50 zone.
I saw the camera flash in the rear-view mirror.
It dominated by thoughts for the rest of the journey:
I flipped between rationalising my behaviour
• and accusing the police of being unforgiving!
And sure enough the accusing paper was sent to the Cathedral office two days later.
We tend to think of forgiveness as individuals acts:
• forgiving an angry word,
• or a forgotten birthday,
• or a car prang.
In contrast, Martin Luther King said
• "Forgiveness is not an occasional act it is a permanent attitude."
Being Christian means being forgiving.
It's about who we are –
• our nature as changed people.
For us, forgiveness shouldn't be extraordinary, but everyday –
• a normal response.
We slip so easily into criticising and judging other people.
We need to heed the advice of a spiritual guru to his pupil.
The pupil asked his master how he could be more forgiving.
The master replied "if you didn't blame so much you wouldn't have so much to forgive".
You, I'm sure, have heard many wonderful stories of forgiveness.
Stories that inspire us and reveal love in action.
Leonard Wilson was a Bishop.
But before that he had been a prisoner of war in Singapore.
In the prison he was beaten and humiliated by a Japanese Officer.
He survived the war and years later was faced with the Officer wanting to become a Christian. As a bishop he was his job to confirm the Officer and welcome him into God's family –
• literally laying hands on him to confirm him.
Somehow he was able to forgive what had happened in the prison.
Closer to home, last year a man died in Queen Mary Hospital.
He had cancer.
His wife (of 35 years) was with him in his final days;
• as was his girlfriend.
It's not an uncommon situation in Hong Kong.
He and his girlfriend had a young daughter.
What's remarkable is his wife learnt about this only 2 months before he died
• and yet was determined that provision be made for the little girl's education.
His wife knew that was what he wanted and she was able to forgive what she had learned.
What I'm saying is all good stuff –
• powerful; true; Christian.
Here's a different example.
Julie Nicholson is a priest in the Church of England.
Her daughter, Jenny, was killed in the terrorist bombs in London last July.
Jenny was just 24 years old.
Can you imagine the pain and anger of loosing your child like that?
For Julie, the priest, the pain and anger are so great she has now resigned from her duties as a parish priest.
Resigned because she cannot square her inner turmoil
• with the forgiveness she is supposed to preach.
She has said,
"Forgiving another human being for violating your child is almost beyond human capabilities.
"It's very difficult for me to stand behind an altar and celebrate the Eucharist and lead people in words of peace and reconciliation and forgiveness when I feel very far from that myself.
"So for the time being the wound in me is having to heal."
I find Julie's story both tragic and disturbing.
It disturbs our Christian ideal of forgiveness.
Julie's story teaches me that it's easy to be romantic about forgiveness.
There are many people, like Julie Nicholson, whose experience is so painful that they just can't bring themselves to forgive.
I can't imagine the pain and anger of loosing a child to a terrorist bomb.
Let alone, trying to forgive something of that enormity.
We tend to exalt those who forgive
• and regard those who cannot as guilty of a kind of moral weakness.
It's as if those who suffer the most must also be the most generous.
We expect those who have been brought low to reach the highest.
C.S. Lewis said,
• Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive."
We know that's true, don't we?
Like Jesus' words
• "before you leave your gift at the altar, go and be reconciled with your brother or sister".
How hard we find this.
What have you forgiven?
Who do you need to forgive?
God calls us to forgive those things we find it so hard to let go of.
Those things that cause us deep pain: those emotional scars; those dark experiences.
Forgiveness is difficult and complicated.
Reflecting from another perspective,
• often what we think we have to forgive says more about us than about the person we feel has offended us.
Often we are looking in a mirror,
• rather than through the window.
As the master in the story says, "if you didn't blame so much you wouldn't have so much to forgive".
I'll finish with some words of another priest in England.
Michael Counsell wrote this letter to The Times newspaper a few weeks ago.
It echoes Jesus' words in this morning's Gospel.
"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."
"My child was killed by a drunk driver
• [and] a year later, after the culprit's life had gone to pieces with remorse, I felt bound to publicly forgive him.
But we are often confused about what forgiveness means.
I embraced the driver because my life, too, was being consumed by hatred,
• and I wanted both of us to be able to rebuild.
(Saying) "I forgive you" does not mean that what you have done does not matter.
To take another life, accidentally or deliberately, is a terribly wrong thing to do.
Forgiveness is a determination to move on from the past,
• because compassion is better than bitterness.
Perhaps what we mean by forgiving unrepentant people is that, for our own sake, we shall not dwell for ever on what they have done,
• but instead concentrate on our happy memories of those we have lost.
Neither God nor anybody else can expect more of us than that.
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