John
8:1-11,
Woman caught in adultery
A Sunday School teacher had
just concluded her lesson and wanted to make sure she had made her point. She
said, "Can anyone tell me what you must do before you can obtain
forgiveness of sin?" There was a short pause and then, from the back of
the room, a small boy spoke up. "Sin," he said.
Who are we in this
story? The Pharisees or the woman
standing in shame? Perhaps we are
both. Sometimes we are like Pharisees. It seems to me that as Christians we are
often the most judgmental of each other.
I must admit to getting disappointed with the number of times that I
hear people complaining against others for things like moving of certain table
in the church or doing a reading in a way which they don't like. But we are called to show the same
forgiveness to others that we have received ourselves. To be forgiven is our greatest need, by God
and by each other. So perhaps sometimes
maybe we need to be like the woman.
Because perhaps the key is understanding our own need of forgiveness and
how the grace and mercy of God reaches into our own lives. A psychologist has said that if 75 % of
people in mental hospitals knew they were forgiven then they would be able to
leave.
Do we know that we are forgiven? Forgiveness is our greatest need. If our greatest need had been information,
God would have sent us an educator; If our greatest need had been technology,
God would have sent us a scientist; If our greatest need had been money, God
would have sent us an economist; If our greatest need had been pleasure, God
would have sent us an entertainer; But our greatest need was forgiveness, so
God sent us a Saviour.
It is forgiveness that
reaches deeper than anything we can experience in a human way. It is forgiveness that goes the extra
mile. That knows the depths of our
rottenness and yet loves us all the more.
In A Forgiving God in an
Unforgiving World, Ron Lee Davis retells the true story of a priest in the
Philippines, a much- loved man of God who carried the burden of a secret sin he
had committed many years before. He had repented but still had no peace, no
sense of God's forgiveness.
In his parish was a woman who
deeply loved God and who claimed to have visions in which she spoke with Christ
and he with her. The priest, however, was sceptical. To test her he said,
"The next time you speak with Christ, I want you to ask him what sin your
priest committed while he was in seminary." The woman agreed. A few days
later the priest asked., "Well, did Christ visit you in your dreams?"
"Yes, he did," she
replied.
"And did you ask him
what sin I committed in seminary?"
"Yes."
"Well, what did he
say?"
"He said, 'I don't
remember'"
What God forgives, He
forgets.
When we know truly inside
that Jesus has said to us I do not condemn you, then we will be able to accept
others. Not just to accept the faults of those in the church who wind
us up, but to be known as a community in which even those who are seen as
outcast by the rest of society-refugees, drug addicts, prostitutes, those who
have come out of prison, will find a welcome in our midst. What would it take for Christchurch and St
Mary's to be places where people like that could feel at home, could know that
we weren't going to stone them? It is only
as forgiven people that will be able to offer that kind of home for those whom
Jesus died.