ExtraChristy

A Child is Born A Christmas Worship Experience of the Christ-Light

Christmas is when God is with us. This transforms people. As part of the Christmas musical program, Pastor Christy tells three stories of transformation among the members and friends of Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church. Names and some details have been changed to protect the transformed.

I'm Lynn. I came to church because of my friend. While here, I made other friends but never was a friend of God. For instead of rejecting and judging me, the people loved me and welcomed me, saying that God loved the whole world and came himself to save it, not condemn it. Well thanks to God's spirit working through these heavenly folks, I found God. I am a Christian now and welcoming others as I was welcomed into God's love.

I'm Debbie, I lived for drugs and drugs gladly took my life in exchange. Police almost took me away one day. As I was hiding from the lights and sirens, I looked at my worthless self. Money, job, friends, my marriage all were drowned and washed away by booze. I was no good to anyone, Except here, they not only let me in, they let me sing!! And pray! And help others! – God don't make no junk. But I was almost threw myself away. Born again, sure, I like to think I was recycled from trash I grew into being blessed to be blessing.

I'm Cindy. I gave up. So far removed from the church lady I was. I was such a lost soul, I would have had to make a great effort to be a heathen. Church seemed to be a fight to the world instead of a light. I had been there done that. I knew church people were way behind the times, stuck in a world gone by. Then my comfortable world crashed when wellness was stolen from me, and left my health bankrupted. Heath insurance is fine until you lose your job for being sick. The insurance goes..but not the illness. Everything else goes…friends, neighbors when you have to move, associates who don't want to catch poverty from you. When the world left, God arrived, Now I can see God, and I have found not only friends, but people who can see God too, my tribe who follow God and love people. I lost my home, but I have myself a home in God's house here.

This work by J. Christy Ramsey is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Mark 2:1-12

Making A Way For The Disabled

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Thanks to Marissa Hover and Mary Lu Ramsey for the transcription below

When I was a teenager and driving around, I always liked to have my friend, Paul, in the backseat. It wasn't because he was good company—he was; the reason I liked to have Paul in the front seat was because he never complained about my driving. No second-guessing, no directions, he was perfectly fine with whatever I did. In fact, at one point I turned left into six lanes of oncoming traffic. I had to tell him later to scream because, you see, Paul is blind. I used to worry about him. I used to worry about what he could and couldn't do and I thought I'd have to watch out for him. Then one night we went to a movie and as he was paying for his ticket, I tried to watch to make sure he got the right change. When we went in, he turned to me and said, “She gave me an extra $5.00.” I didn't worry about how he knew that. I just said, “No, she gave you the right change.” He insisted that she gave him an extra $5.00 so I had to confess to him that I'd been watching and had seen the entire transaction. He still argued with me. It came out that his sister had been in his wallet and had refolded the bills which threw him off.

One time, we were walking from his house just after he got his seeing-eye dog. So, it's a little bit after dusk and we're out walking along and the dog is keeping him on the sidewalk and all of the sudden the crazy dog pulls Paul off the walk and onto the grass and then he pulls Paul back on the sidewalk. I'm walking behind them trying to figure out what this crazy dog is doing and Wham! I walk into a branch. The dog had seen the branch but I didn't. After 4 or 5 times of this kind of thing happening I quit worrying about him too much. How do we treat the disabled? When we think we are helping, are we really? I wondered about the paralytic. I wanted to ask the paralytic,” Did you want to go see Jesus, or did they just take you?” I wonder because it's almost like he isn't there. It says in Scripture, “Jesus saw THEIR faith.” Didn't the guy on the mat have any faith? Jesus didn't see it or comment on it. Jesus saw their faith and said “Your sins are forgiven.” First you come to Jesus and you think you're going to be healed and get all fixed-up, restored, fulfilled, healthy, and Jesus says,” Your sins are forgiven.” But he still can't walk. Here we find out that sometimes even though we have a lot of faith and we go to the source, Jesus Christ; we may not be healed. Instead, your sins will be forgiven.

Back then disabilities and sin were connected. Today, most of us are more sophisticated and have separated sin from disability. We don't think, “You sinned, therefore you can't walk.” Back then it was, “Why can't you walk? You must have sinned” So when Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven,” They didn't believe him. They said that only God could forgive sin. Then he said, “Rise, take-up your pallet and walk.” So he stood up and walked. They then said, “Well, I guess his sins are forgiven; Look, he's walking.” In a way, we still do the same thing. The question here is the question we struggle with in almost all of the major controversies and movements throughout our lifetime and hundreds of years before: What is fully human? What is the image of God? Is this person this way because God wants this person to be this way? Is this person this way through no fault of himself or is this person something lesser because of sin: We can see the sin in there life by the way they live and the disease of their body. What about Aids and the view that Aids must be sin? Sin is making them sick and only God can forgive them.

You know how we can tell that we've made an idol of God? It's when we're sure that God hates the same things that we do. That's not God, that's an idol we've made. This is the greatest issue of our time. What is the image of God? Then we'll talk about what human is. What is fully human? What is “a person” who has all the rights? Isn't that what all of our great movements and problems are? What do the gays say now? We want to be fully human. What did the women say when they wanted to vote, to own property and have their own name on their driver's license after they were married? The women said they wanted to be fully human. What did the black people say in the Civil Rights Movement? They said, “We no longer want to be counted as 3/5ths of a person: we want to be 5/5ths of a person. We want to be fully human.” What is the abortion controversy and debate about if not, “When does fully human start? One answer is humanness starts at the time of conception. Does it start a millisecond before conception? Is there a great moral difference between stopping conception a millisecond before it happens and stopping it after? Is it, as the Catholic Church ruled for centuries, a baby becomes human once it moves. The Bible itself makes another distinction. The Bible gives different penalties for causing the death of an unborn baby as opposed to a baby that had been born.

We are in the midst of that and it's only to get worse, friends. The question of what is human, what is the image of God, what names someone worthy of humanity or not; is only going to get worse. How many parts can you replace in a person to still remain a person? How many parts? How many organs? How many limbs? How long before a computer is human? If you talk and interact with a computer and cannot tell whether it was human or not, how far is it from being human? If you're in to Google, check out the China-Brain project. They plan to have a motion-laden computer by April of next year. Is it human? What makes a human? What is the image of God? Is it the first breath or the conception? Now, we have cloning. What are we going to do with cloning now? I swab my mouth and I've killed a thousand potential cells that could have been clones and fully human given the right environment and nurturing. Am I a murderer? Is it all right to do that? All of these questions go back to: “What is the image of God?” What if we, at some time, are able at birth or before birth to choose genetically every part of our child's humanity and we choose for them to never need glasses or have a problem with obesity? We might choose for them to be right-handed and choose for them to be a perfect human specimen. Then what about those children who are conceived in the usual way and don't have the stacked deck? Who would be disabled?

In the movie clip we're going to see in second service, they have a child who isn't up to snuff, that isn't programmed, isn't safe and we see very graphically him being locked out of the daycare. The daycare says their insurance won't allow them to take the risk. What if he got hurt? Disabled – it's all in the definition. Depending on the definition; anyone of us could be considered disabled and not fully human, not in the image of God,

Here is where the church and faith and Christianity have so much to offer the world. Yet we are still arguing and discussing and worrying over the same old controversies. We're not even close to the issues we need to be talking about, such as: How does the image of God relate to cloning? What are ethical ramifications of companies patenting parts of DNA in our cells that makes us human? Do you think slavery is bad? How about someone who owns an entire species and their DNA code? In the future, if you need a cure for Parkinson's or diabetes—well, there's a fee for that. If you want to do research on cancer- well, you can send money over here.

We have so much over the world because we know what makes us human. We have the answer. We know exactly and we say it every week. We know exactly what humanity is. Our very core bedrock belief is that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine. So when people ask us what human is, when humanity begins and what the image of God is we have an answer. We say, “Jesus Christ! We know him and we would like for you to know him too.” Well how is he human? If we think about it we could tell them how is anyone human, how is anyone fully human? I would say this: It isn't in the genes. It isn't in the number of weeks that it takes for development. And it isn't in any other genetic trait you list. It isn't whether they can walk. It isn't whether or not they have a certain disease that we've assigned to a moral category. Being fully human is how close you are to the fully human, Jesus Christ. The closer you come to him, the closer you are to being truly human.

Jesus Christ showed us that to be fully human you should take the worst that the world can give you and die on behalf of others. No greater love has anyone that he would die for those he does not know. The crosses all over our sanctuary answer that question. If you look at the cross, you have the answer. We ask how much has he died for others. How much has she sacrificed for the good of the community and humanity? How much has she given of herself to help others? That is what humanity is and Jesus saw that in our scripture today. What made the disabled broken, sinful, less-than-a-man “human”? THEIR faith; THEIR sacrifice; THEIR work; THEIR love for him; what makes humanity? The love of others. The love of God. This is still the greatest commandment. We need not be scared of the future. We need to claim the future in our faith. We know what the image of God is. It's not a list of DNA given from some corporate company that says, “This is it”. It's not a list of perfect traits. It is not a certain skin color. It is love for humanity as Jesus Christ loved humanity. When you love like Jesus Christ, then you are fully human. When you love like Jesus Christ, you make others that you love fully human. Go with love and be in the image of God and be fully human. Share that humanity with those you love.

AMEN

John 4:1-30, 39-42

Gender Roles and Why Men Shouldn't Be Ministers

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Transcribed by Marissa Hoover and Mary Lu Ramsey
Bulletin title: Truth Will Makes Us Free

On the front of our bulletin is a picture of an actual poster from Thailand of how to ride an elevator. In all the pictures there are normal stick figures except the last one. That one has a skirt and a smaller stick figure. It's obvious from the poster that women are to care for the children. Is this the way we roll? Role differences. This would be an appropriate sign if the last picture didn't have a skirt. They put a skirt on a stick figure to say caring for children is women's work. We know that isn't true. Today we don't think twice about fathers caring for their kids.

It was a little different when my daughter was younger. I was at home taking care of our daughter while Bette Lynn was working. I'd take my daughter to the grocery store and I'd take her to the doctor's office. It never failed; everywhere I went they'd take the baby from me. They were absolutely horrified that I was trying to take care of a baby. Some of you have met my daughter, Rachel. She came out screaming and hasn't really slowed down. The child was very vocal and she would let you know what was going on. She would scream and I'd spent enough time with her that I knew what the screams meant; whether she was hungry, needed changed or tired. So, we were at the doctor and she started the “ I- really-don't-want-to-be- here” cry. The women were going on and on. I told them she was just crying because she's upset and they're telling me to feed her. I told them that it wasn't her hunger cry and they looked at me like I had just grown antennas. So, they tried to give her a bottle and she kept screaming. So they thought she was just wet and they changed her. She still kept screaming. That's what I was trying to tell them. They just wouldn't listen.

I found an update for a list that first came out in the mid ‘90s of Ten Good Reasons Why Men Should Not be Ordained in the Church.

#10) A man's place is in the army.
#9) When men have children, their duties might distract them from their responsibilities as a parent.
#8) Their physical build indicates that men are more suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be “unnatural” for them to do other forms of work.
#7) Man was created before woman. It is, therefore, obvious that man was a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowning achievement of creation.
#6) Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. This is easily demonstrated by their conduct at football games or watching basketball tournaments.
#5) Some men are handsome; they will distract women worshippers.
#4) An ordained pastor is to nurture the congregation. But this is not a traditional male role. Rather, throughout history, women have been considered to be not only more skilled then men at nurturing, but also more frequently attracted to it. This makes them the obvious choice for ordination.
#3) Men are overly prone to violence. No really manly man wants to settle disputes by any means other than by fighting about it. Thus, they would be poor role models, as well as being dangerously unstable in positions of leadership.
#2) Men can still be involved in church activities, even without being ordained. They can sweep paths, repair the church roof, change the oil in the church vans, and maybe even lead the singing on Father's Day. By confining themselves to such traditional male roles, they can still be vitally important in the life of the Church.
#1) In the New Testament account, the person who betrayed Jesus was a man. Thus, his lack of faith and ensuing punishment stands as a symbol of the subordinated position that all men should take.

This is just a flip of what has been talked about with women's ordination. Previously in our church and still in other church bodies, women are not to be in positions of leadership. There are just as many good reasons if you look at it the other way. In John, we have a story that we may not see as unusual, looking at it from our prospective. Back then, though, it was an amazing thing that Jesus spoke to the woman. She came to the well in a very traditional role; a subservient role; a role that is still prevalent throughout much of the world today: women are in charge of getting the daily water – going to the well, filling up the pots and taking water back home. That was women's' work. Jesus talks to her and engages her in that role. He asks her for a drink. That's another huge event because Samaritans and Jews didn't use the same utensils, they didn't talk to each other and things were very racial. Did you notice what happened after her encounter with Jesus? It says that she left the water jar there and went back to the village. She told them, “Here's a man who told me everything I've done. He couldn't be the Messiah, could he?” She left the traditional women's work of carrying water, of providing, cooking, and cleaning – she left the jar there but took with her the good news of the Gospel. Here in John is the first place where Jesus reveals himself saying, “I am Christ.” In a tremendous upsetting of roles, the Samaritan woman is now entrusted with the Good News and goes home to spread the good news. She may not have done it as forcibly as we would have thought, but she was effective and brought people to Jesus Christ.

How much in the church have we missed because we put men and women in different places and don't allow them to exercise their gifts and callings the way that Jesus did in this Scripture. How often do we look beyond the way people present themselves, as to whether they are man or woman, or as to what their gifts or callings are? Jesus wasn't like that. He was up against a lot more male domination and traditional roles then we will ever imagine. Yet, he still found a way to bring out the gifts of men and woman. The first scripture reading we had was so powerful. It packs into it so much. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female – we are all one in Jesus Christ. Jew and Greek. We have religious, cultural and ethnic differences? The Bible says there are none in Jesus Christ. When you are in Christ, your ethnic background and identity is not as important as your identity in Jesus Christ.

There was a huge division in the early church between the Jews and the Greeks. Remember, the Christians were still meeting inside of the Jewish synagogues. They were like a little club – “The Jesus Club”. They started bringing in their friends, some of them Greeks, and the Jews at the synagogues said the Greeks had to be Jews and follow all the Jewish laws which caused a big fight as reported in Acts. We find, in Galatians, there is no Jew or Greek. It's the same way we also see a division between economic status, between classes, between those who work with their hands and those who work with their heads, those who are retired and those who are still working, those riding the bus and those with their own transportation, between all of the economic classes, between slavery and the free – there is no slave or free in Jesus Christ. We are all one. Finally, there is no male or female in Jesus Christ. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that there are no differences any more than we lose our ethniticity or heritage. It doesn't mean we lose our social status and our place in life when we say there is no slave or free. It does say that those differences are not important when we're in Christ.

When I started out in Presbytery 25 years ago, it was right about the time the first women were being ordained. When Presbytery met we'd have about 100 ministers and elders attending — all men. At the worship service, we'd sing as a huge male chorus. It was an amazing thing. Gradually more and more women joined in leadership roles as elders and ministers. Now when you go to Presbytery it sounds just like church. It sounds like all of God's people singing praises to God. It's not that we lost anything or that we're doing anything better – it's that we have grown, become more inclusive, working together in Jesus Christ. We are all singing the same song praising God. We have great things to offer people.

It's in the scripture about how many husbands the Samaritan woman had. Some discuss why it is she had all these husbands. We automatically assume the worst. We think of how she must not have good morals. Why? What if there were other reasons? What if her first husband was a drug addict and she left him? What if her second husband beat her? What if the next husband was elderly whom she married to care for until his death? What if one of her husbands was gay and she married him thinking she could change him and make him all better? What if one of her husbands cheated on her with her best friend? That kind of changes the story. It helps us to understand why she doesn't want to set herself up for hurt #6. Back then a woman had to be with a man for any kind of life or economic status. Our church can be a place where we don't discriminate against gender or have a double standard, either.

Also in the gospel of John, Chapter 8, is the famous story of a woman caught in adultery. It says in John 8:3-4 that she was caught in the act of adultery and there was a man involved. However, only the woman is brought before Jesus for punishment. Perhaps that is why Jesus is lenient. The church needs to be a place where there is safety and acceptance of gender, without double standards. We can offer a good and safe space for the community and an example for our world of how we treat one another, realizing that in Christ there is no male or female. Amen.

Numbers 12:1-15
Acts 8:26-36

Working Through Issues of Race

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Transcribed by Marissa Hoover from a sermon by Rev. J. Christy Ramsey on Sept. 20, 2009, Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church, Akron, OH

Numbers 12: 1-15:.… Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he'd had married….

In Numbers we have a leader of the people who, because of race issues, gets criticism about his leadership. Thank goodness we've come far from that today! It's a very interesting scripture in Numbers 12. The interesting part isn't the race issue, not that Moses' own family – Aaron and Miriam, his brother and sister – objected to a mixed marriage. We need to remember that a mixed marriage, back then, was pretty serious because, not only was she not of the Hebrew people, but she was a Cushite – an Ethiopian, of dark skin. Aaron and Miriam, his family, were the most upset among all the people. Don't we see that today? You'd think that the families who love them would be the most accepting, but they are the most condemning. Look what happens and how God handles the situation. The author of Numbers says straight out it was because of race, but that's not what Miriam and Aaron say. They don't say, “Look at him. He married this black woman.” They made a very correct statement. They formed it in a question. They say, “Does God talk to Moses only? Does he not also speak to us? It was true; God had spoken to Aaron and Miriam. God handles this by actually speaking to Aaron and Miriam. God addresses their concern. “Yes, I have spoken to other prophets and yes, Moses is special and these are the reasons. I speak to him clearly, not in riddles. I speak to him face-to-face. He sees my form and not a dream like others. Then he leaves. The Lord answered what was said about Moses being special. He seems a little annoyed that it was brought up, but he addresses it. “Why did you not fear speaking against Moses? Why did you not fear and respect my prophet?”

God doesn't stop there. The thing about God is that when you ask him one thing, he'll tell you and then he'll tell you things you don't want to know but need to. God says, “You know I know what you're going through. I know this is because of you're upset–not because of his leadership ability–although that is a legitimate issue and I will address it. I know what's really in your heart and you're really upset. Now, he could have made Miriam black so she would know how it feels to be an outcast. That would have been an easy thing to do., but God made her white. He made her so white, they thought she was diseased. Leprosy back then was any kind of skin discoloration or rash on the skin. They didn't have any sophisticated techniques back then to find out what these were. If you had any kind of skin problem you went into quarantine. God says, “You think white is so good – I'll make you whiter than snow. God pointed out the fallacy of judging someone's character by their skin color. “Look, you're as white as snow. You're not good – you're diseased.”

Race is a big problem in America. It's part of our heritage, our history and our legacy. Now, not every argument or disagreement in society is racial. Not every issue has racial motivation. Don't get on that train! There are legitimate concerns. Just like God, we need to address those “legitimate” concerns at face value. We need to say to people respectfully that these are the reasons I did what I did and these are the reasons you should respect it. But we should not ignore the intensity of the objections. Why are you so mad about this? Why does this consume you so much? Both of these need to be addressed. People say it's free speech. We can say what we want. That is absolutely true. For centuries, it's one of the things service people have fought and died for. To quote Andrew Manis, “I believe in free speech but how long till we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners? How long until we white people stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, and educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review and work harder to become the President of the United States – only to threaten to assassinate them when they do.” Andrew Manis is in Macon, Georgia. He knows something about racism in our history.

What's the answer? One answer is to see everything as race. People say if you even bring that up you're making things worse. You're seeing black against white. Another answer would be to say, “It's nothing about racism. We should ignore it.” We should be like Stephen Colbert and not even see race. We should ignore it all and discount it and be upset about using the race card and never let anyone say anything is racism. Those two extremes are the problems. Either say it for everything or say it never. I believe we have to follow what God does: to respectfully talk about the issues at hand but also address the motivations that make it so passionate and important to people. Here's a little bit of what former President Carter said. “I think the overwhelming portion of the intensity demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man. I live in the South. I've seen the South come a long way. I've seen the rest of the country that shared the South's attitude toward minority groups, at the time, particularly African-Americans. That racism inclination still exists. I think it's bubbled up to the surface because there's a belief among many white people – not just in the South but around the country – that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance that grieves me and concerns me very deeply.” That's Jimmy Carter, the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace closer between Palestinians and Israelis. He knows something about how people get along.

What's the answer? The answer I think is the same as that of our friends at Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. Step 1 is to acknowledge it. The first step in overcoming a problem is to say that I participated. I know that I have racist views that you cannot help when you have grown-up in America and have them unconsciously below the surface. I have to fight them and work with them. First thing we need to do it to look at it and to say what we have done and make sure we can struggle and rise above it because none of us wants to be this way. If you ask any of us, all of us want to judge one another not by what they look like, but how they act and the content of their character. First thing we have to do is say, “Yeah there's a little bit of racism in all of us. Black, white, yellow, red, blue, green, orange, purple- we got it in all of us.” It doesn't mean it causes everything and it doesn't mean it causes nothing. It means just a little bit of everything. As Presbyterians, we believe that sin taints everything we do — that nothing we do is perfect and without sin. We believe that everything we do is a little less than what God wants us to do. Yet we struggle to be better than we are every day, better than yesterday and not as good as tomorrow. We have to do that with racism as well. The New Testament lesson has a strange encounter between Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch. The Ethiopian eunuch was wrong on several counts. He was not a Hebrew. He was a disabled person – which you know back then meant you could not be a holy person. He worked for the government – which as today, is a horrible thing. All those things working against him and he asked the question that still is in front of us today. “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Instead of Phillip listing all the reasons, when they come near to water, he baptizes the eunuch.

We're working on community for this fall. One of the things we have to work on is to figure out how we can have community with people who are different from us. It seems that we are now with those churches – and I say this to our shame – that have found that we make community by gathering people who are like us together and putting off people who aren't like us. We make our little citadels and our fortresses. We say we're going to heaven and to hell with the rest of them. This is something we have to struggle against and something we have to repent of as a church. It doesn't mean everything we do is color biased, but in everything we do, we have to make sure it is not controlled by bias. There is a lot of hope. The nation is grand. I look at the Armed Forces and the strides they have made when they were forced to desegregate. Look at our own work here at Goodyear Heights. We've become less uncomfortable with people who aren't like us. It's tough to do, but I believe we are trying to do it. I believe we are making progress. I believe that Goodyear Heights Presbyterian Church can be an example – not only to the community – but to this town and to the nation — to provide an example of how to welcome people that are strangers. We answer the question, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” with the answer: Nothing! – Welcome!

Today's Bible Readings: Romans 12:14-21 & Luke 6:37-38

The road OUT of hell is paved with forgiveness.

This message is available as a podcast recorded live at our worship service. Click the podcast image to listen now or right click the image and choose "Save As" to save this message in mp3 file format on your computer for playing later. Below is a text version transcribed by Marissa Hoover and edited by Mary Lu Ramsey. Pastor Christy thanks both of these volunteers for their ministry.[/i]

Is there unforgivable sin? The Bible gives only one unforgivable sin – blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is when you deny the one thing that can save you and restore you. If you deny what can save you then you won't be saved. Our lists of unforgivable sins are probably much longer. I'm sure there are several factors to determine whether lesser offenses can be forgiven. Someone pointed out that we don't forgive sex offenders. We don't forgive them because we require them to register for the rest of their lives.

How can we tell that we are forgiving someone? Are there sins that are unforgivable? What determines whether or not someone gets forgiven? There are several ways that people have used over time about forgiveness and about whether someone deserves forgiveness. One way to tell is if they show remorse – are they sorry? Another way is through repentance – the eternal way to change what they are doing. For some, this is what we want to see in forgiveness. Others of us want a pound of flesh. We want to be paid back and them to be punished. We want them to feel the hurt and the horror that they did. We want them to suffer as their victims did. Maybe when they've paid their debt then maybe they will be forgiven. If there is violence that occurs or a crime that is committed or something awful that happens, we often feel that it is the states job to exact vengeance and punishment. We use the statement, “You have committed a crime against the state.” Murder is not committed by one family against another or by the victim's family against another. We say that it is against the laws of the state, so we're going to prosecute you for it – you owe us money and fines and several years of your life in prison. If the crime is committed against us, is it the state that needs to go after that person? Is it the state that has been harmed?

I've been trying to think of the greatest and biggest forgiveness that I've seen and I come to two of the greatest horrors from the end of the last millennia – South Africa and Rwanda. Here we see violence, terror and genocide on an unimaginable scale for Americans. Americans missed what was going on because it was so awful no one could believe the things that were happening. Over a million people were killed – 10,000 people a day. What do you do for forgiveness in a situation where neighbors rose-up against neighbors and took knives to one another? What can you do to forgive? So Africa had a longer experience of injustice, power and persecution. People were uprooted and moved. People were denied their birth rite. They couldn't vote. They were killed by terrorism. They wanted to cause terror and frighten them and they caused people to betray one another – using spies, killing and retribution. It went on for decades and no one could sort it out. People just disappeared. Where's forgiveness there? Rwanda started prosecuting people for was crimes. Then people wouldn't say anything. Then, after five years, they convicted less than twenty people. Hundreds of thousands of deaths went unavenged. No one knows what happened to them. There is no way a handful of people killed over a million people. That's what they got in Rwanda because they went for justice of retribution. They wanted to get them.
South Africa, on the other hand, went for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In the west, we didn't think they knew that they were doing. They said what they wanted was the truth. We want to know that happened to our sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. We want to know. They said that instead of going after someone or punishing someone, they just wanted the truth. If they come and tell the truth, they get amnesty. They get excused not only from criminal penalties but also from civil penalties. They listened to both victims and perpetrators. They came and told the truth and the commission gave them amnesty. One might say that justice fails to be done.

We contend that there is another type of justice. The concern is not for retribution and punishment. The concern is for healing and redressing of unbalances and the restoration of broken relationships by seeking to rehabilitate both the victims and their perpetrators – who should be given a chance to be reintegrated into the community he has injured. This is by far the more personal approach, regarding the offenses that happened to persons and whose consequences are a rupture in relationships. In the scripture reading, it talked about what you get if you forgive. It says if you forgive, you are forgiven. If you give, it will be given to you. If we give in to hatred and all the things that are wrong and seek to get the balances the offender gets another victim. The perpetrator has another life he's destroyed.

If we come to a place where our only hope for the future is revenge, then our life has been taken over by the perpetrator. If we repay evil for evil, instead of giving good for evil, then we have been sucked in by evil. Then we have become what we hate the most. As Christians there is a little bit of faithfullessness. If we go after vengeance for ourselves – because Scripture tells us that vengeance belongs to God – God will get you. If you believe God is good and that God is working for goodness in the world and trust in God then you don't have to seek vengeance. Now, I'm not saying you won't want to because that's the normal, human reaction. Which is more courageous? Which is more spiritual? Which is more mature and harder to do?

There was a story about a little girl that is abducted on a camping trip and is later found tortured and dead. That really happened to a family and their story is included in Bishop Tutu's book. The woman, who lost her seven year old daughter, Susan, met the killer and told him she forgave him. This is how she describes the experience. She says, “I have finally come to believe that real justice is not punishment, but restoration. Not necessarily to how things use to be, but to how they really should be. In both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, from where my beliefs come, the God that rises up to them is a God of mercy and compassion. A God who seeks not to punish, destroy or put us to death, but a God that works constantly to help heal up, rehabilitate and reconcile us. Restore us to the richness and fullness of life for which we have been created. This is the justice I wanted for this man, who had taken my little girl.” She spoke at the sentencing and was able to get the death sentence reduced to life in prison for the man who killed her daughter. She said, “Even though I wanted to kill this man with my bare hands, by the time of the resolution of his crimes, I was convinced that my best option was to forgive.”

She says that in the twenty years she has been working with victims, she has found this to be true. Anger, hatred, resentment, bitterness and revenge are all death driven spirits and they will take our lives. The only way to be whole, happy and healthy is to forgive. Some of you will wonder, “Doesn't that let people take advantage of us?” My answer would be that forgive and forget is not the message. I'm not saying to trust a person who stole your credit card or to marry a person that beat you. I'm saying, forgive and remember; remember who you are; who you are meant to be; who you want to be and who you should be. How do you know you have forgiven somebody? When you have truly forgiven someone, you wish the best for them. You wish that God would be gracious to them. Then you will be at peace with them. You don't have to let them back into your life or trust them. You do have to give up your thoughts on revenge and vengeance. If you don't forgive then you won't be forgiven.

We'll be showing a clip from the movie Gandhi at the eleven o'clock service. The clip shows a clip of Gandhi fasting for violence. When the violence breaks out in India, Gandhi stops eating until the violence stops. One of the men that had been fighting in India comes up to him and tells him to eat. He says, “I am going to hell and I won't go to hell with your death on my conscience. Now, just eat.” Gandhi said, “Only God decides who dies. “ The man said, “I am going to hell because I killed a child. I took his head and I bashed it against the wall.” Gandhi asked, “Why?” The man said, “The Muslims killed my child so I killed one of theirs.” Then Gandhi said, “I know a way out of that hell. Find a child, whose mother and father have been killed and raise him as your own. Make sure he is a Muslim and raise him as a Muslim.”

The way out of hell is to restore things: not to balance the scale again in retribution and vengeance, but to restore relationships and to work for the restoration of creation as God would want it. That's the way out of hell – follow the path of forgiveness.