Calvary Episcopal Church

Sermon - Good Friday; Hebrews 10:1-25

April 13, 2001

Deacon Jean Chess

"After those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts and I write them on their minds"

Every morning on my way to work I stop to get a cup of coffee. There are an awful lot of choices, these days, when ordering coffee. The other day, I was amused when the person in front of me placed their order "I want a small Latte in a large cup, with skim milk, extra hot". I still can't figure out what "extra hot" means, but my thought was - there goes a high maintenance kind of person. Someone who definitely lives life on their own terms - at least where their morning coffee is concerned.

The Scripture we just heard from Hebrews was addressed to a group of Christians who wanted God's forgiveness - but on their own terms. They are reprimanded for being overly focused on the Mosaic law and spending their time and energy repeatedly offering sacrifices to God in order to cleanse themselves of their sin. They don't get it. "Christ offered - for all time - a single sacrifice for sin". They - and we - are all forgiven people.

William Countryman, in his book "Forgiven and Forgiving" writes about forgiveness as conversion - as having our minds and our hearts transformed according to the mind of God.

But we resist it. We build barricades between ourself and God and between ourselves and other people.

We build barricades between ourselves and God's forgiveness by being convinced that we know better than God - and that we aren't "good enough" - yet - to be forgiven. Just like the people in the story from Hebrews, we keep offering our sacrifices over and over again with the hopes that we'll be made "good enough".

Let's practice being converted to the mind of God. I'd like you to think of someone you believe to be very "holy" and "Christian" Think of someone specific.... Do you believe that person is beloved by God and forgiven by God? You - are just as dearly loved and forgiven by God as that person.

Another way that we build barricades is by believing that we are somehow superior to others. It's really nice of God to forgive "them", but I don't need God's forgiveness in quite the same way- I've never done anything "that" bad. We're on one side of the barricade, "those" people are on the other - and God, of course, is on our side.

I'd like you to think of someone on the "other" side of your barricade - maybe it's someone who has hurt you or has hurt someone you love, perhaps it's someone you've heard about via the news media that has committed a horrible crime, it can even be someone whom you just find perpetually annoying. Think of someone specific.... The person you are thinking of is just as dearly loved and forgiven by God as you are.

Forgiveness is about being converted to the mind and heart of Christ.

Countryman puts it this way - "The message of forgiveness says to us "Get over yourself! Get over your goodness and your righteousness, if they threaten to keep you from full participation in your humanity. Get over you faults, your inadequacy, if they're what hold you back. Get over whatever it is that makes you self-obsessed, whatever makes you feel like you belong to some separate and superior race of beings, whatever makes you feel like an eternal victim, whatever keeps you from living a real human life, whatever makes you imagine that there's something in this world more important and more fundamental than love."

As we, with God's grace, live into acceptance of God's forgiveness, we are converted and our lives in the world are transformed. We take our past - both the suffering we have endured and the suffering we have inflicted - and make it part of God's ongoing story of redemption. That does not mean that we minimize or pretend that events never happened, or that they don't affect the present situation. Accepting God's forgiveness does mean that we let go of that kind of useless, self-centered guilt and self-pity that keeps us stuck and focused on ourselves and we let ourselves be converted and see the world with the heart of God.

Are you familiar with the book "Les Miserables" or the show "Les Mis"? It's a wonderful story about how forgiveness transforms lives. Jean Valjean is released - on parole - after serving 19 years on the chain gang for having stolen a loaf of bread to feed his sister's child. Javert, the police officer who releases him sees such a barricade between Jean Valjean - the thief - and himself as the righteous upholder of the law, that Javert doesn't even use his name - he calls him prisoner 24601.

Valjean, upon his release, discovers that the mark of the thief is always with him - people pay him less and they treat him with suspicion even though he has earned his forgiveness. A Bishop takes pity on him, takes Valjean into his home for a night and feeds him. Valjean repays him by stealing the silver cup and running away - but he is caught. The constable brings him to the bishop and says - this guy tells me that you gave him the silver. The Bishop, much to Valjean's suprise, says "I did give him that silver cup, in fact he left in such a hurry that I didn't get to give him the rest of the silver." He gives Valjean the candlesticks as well".

Valjean is transformed by the Bishop's love and forgiveness and goes on to live a new life caring for God's people as a factory foreman, a mayor and the adoptive father of Cosette.

Javert, on the other hand, continues to hunt Valjean in order to enforce the law. Their paths cross again when Javert is caught as an infiltrator of the resistance and handed over to Valjean to kill.

Javert taunts his potential killer: "Once a thief forever a thief What you want you'll always steal! You would trade your life for mine - Yes Valjean, you want a deal. Shoot me now for all I care. If you let me go, beware. You'll still answer to Javert"

But Valjean recognizes that there are no barriers between them "You are wrong, and always have been wrong. I'm a man, no worse than any man. You are free, and there are no conditions. No bargains or petitions. There's nothing I blame you for - You've done your duty, nothing more." And Valjean releases Javert, telling him where to find him when the revolution is over and Javert pursues his responsibility to bring Valjean to justice.

Their paths cross again when Valjean runs into Javert as he is trying to get the wounded Marius to a hospital. He pleads with Javert to give him time to get the boy to the hospital rather than arresting him on the spot. And Javert relents. But Javert's unbending principles of justice are so shattered - one might say transformed - that Javert is unable to cope with this new reality.

Accepting God's gift of unconditional forgiveness shatters our reality. It shatters the barricades we place between ourselves and God, and it shatters the barricades we place between ourselves and other people. We are invited, by God, to move beyond the barricades into new life. The lyrics from the end of the musical have speak to me of this invitation we are all offered.

"Do you hear the people sing Lost in the valley of the night? It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light.

For the wretched of the earth

There is a flame that never dies

Even the darkest night will end

and the sun will rise.

Will you join in our crusade?

Who will be strong and stand with me?

Somewhere beyond the barricade

Is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing

Say do you hear the distant drums?

It is the future that we bring

When tomorrow comes.

Amen.