Sermonstudio

Our text is part of a sermon preached by Peter following the healing of a crippled man. The witnesses assumed Peter himself had accomplished the healing. Peter, though, was quick to attribute it to Jesus whom God had raised from death. There are a number of ways to explain the ill man's recovery but what's important here is Peter's commentary to the gathered crowd. He first reprimanded them for taking part in the death of Jesus, but hurriedly, he acknowledged that they probably didn't realize the gravity of that event. So Peter immediately went on to assure the listeners that all is not lost. For one thing, the entire drama was "foretold," and because God is kind and forgiving, they could escape any disastrous consequences if they would repent of their sins. In fact, he made a profoundly sweeping promise: "Your sins may be blotted out."

There's a lot to think about here and to understand the full measure of this promise we need to define some of our terms. Words like "repent" and "sin" are not easily defined words for the average person today, even those who take seriously their Christian faith. One theologian has observed that sin is a darkness discernible only by the light of salvation. I suppose the concept of sin wouldn't mean much apart from the hope we find in the promise about which Peter was speaking. So, in order to end on a high note, we should begin by looking at the darkness.

Assuming that few if any of the individuals within the sound of Peter's voice were literally involved in Jesus' death, inasmuch as many years had now passed since that event, he must have been referring to what we might call corporate guilt. In other words, while they had not literally "delivered up" Jesus, yet the same values and emotions, the same characteristics of human nature which had been at work in the people involved in the crucifixion, are working in human hearts today. The relevance for us is that it's no less true for us than for Peter's hearers. It's a mistake to assign responsibility for Jesus' death to the Jews or the Roman soldiers any more than to the rest of us who, had we been present, would almost surely have done much the same as those who were there.

I once visited Dachau concentration camp near Munich. I recall standing outside in a cold rain following the tour. Having just seen the furnaces and the photographs of the unthinkable atrocities committed by the Nazis, I stood in stunned silence and my overwhelming reaction was rage -- rage at the perpetrators, but rage, too, at the residents of the town. The camp wasn't located a great distance from civilian habitation, as one might have supposed. It was in the middle of a neighborhood. Obviously, the residents, regardless of their protestations to the contrary, had to have had a fairly good idea what was happening. They could hear the cries. They could see the smoke. They must have talked to off-duty guards and administrative people in the bars and restaurants. They knew. Why didn't they rise up in protest? I thought, "How can God ever forgive such as this?" But I also began to ask myself what I would have done in that situation. People who made too much noise about such things tended to disappear. Many German residents perished there, too. It's easy to judge after the fact. Yet the same fears, the same tendencies to rationalize that must have been in those people, are in me.

There are other parallels in our common experience. Many of us exonerate ourselves from racism. After all, we reason, I wasn't around when slaves were brought over from Africa, or when Japanese civilians were interned in 1942, or when the treaties with the Indian tribes were almost always dishonored. Don't blame me. Yes, but the people who did those things were part of the common humanity of which I'm a part. Don't let us kid ourselves. It's what is sometimes referred to as Original Sin. That's not a reference to the sexual origin of our lives, or to something some first persons on earth are thought to have done. It refers to the universal inclination to think and act always in terms of our own welfare, our own best interests. There's an old song from an earlier era: "You always hurt the one you love, the one you wouldn't hurt at all." That's part of it. That's what sin is all about, not little naughty acts, nor even acts of high crime, only. Those are the consequences of sin. Sin itself is the inherent self-centeredness that dominates us. Is that an overstatement? Is that an overly grim view of one's fellow creatures? Not if the New Testament is true.

Sin so dominates the human soul that our situation is hopeless without some redeeming force from outside us, entering in to heal and overcome. Good Christians have been known to ask, "Is there such a thing as an unforgivable sin?" The answer is, "Yes!" It's the sin of thinking I'm not sinful. I can't be forgiven if I think I don't need to be forgiven.

I once attended a meeting of pastors, at which a well-known evangelist was scolding us in a friendly way for the fact that most preaching is phrased in generalities that laity often find confusing. He then asked: "Is there someone here who can give us a concrete illustration of grace?" An elderly pastor stood up, drew a coin from his pocket, offered it to the man seated next to him. That man, however, suspecting a trick of some kind, didn't take the coin. The first pastor tossed it in the air a couple times, then said: "Grace is like this coin. I offered it to my friend here, but it isn't in his possession because he didn't accept it." So it is with the free forgiveness offered us. It's ours, yet it's never really ours until we reach out and accept it.

How do we do that? Peter explained that when he said, "Repent É turn again." Ah, there's that unpopular word again. Repent. I can have my sins blotted out. But it isn't automatic. I am to reach out in the form of a self-recognition, then a desire to be different, coupled with admission of my guilt, and a willingness to allow a higher power to send me off in a new direction. That's repentance. Mere remorse is not repentance.

I'll always remember a haunting little story told years ago by a well-known radio preacher. It happened in a slum neighborhood, one of those blazing hot nights, too many people living together, no air-conditioning, too much booze. A father and son got into a terrible fight. The son, furious at his father, grabbed a revolver and shot him. The father fell and died. Police arrived shortly and took the son into custody. The young man was outwardly defiant, unremorseful. But one night a guard heard the sounds of weeping. There in the corner of the darkened cell, crouching forlorn and alone, was the young fellow. As the guard stood just out of sight, he heard the boy's words: "I want my dad."

Yes. Our words and actions cannot be recalled. The harm, once inflicted, is done. Melodramatic example? Perhaps. But all of us, under the impulse of such a variety of unwholesome driving forces, do and say things which hurt. And then we must live with them. There are those people, we are told, who do not experience remorse for these things. I have no idea what fate is theirs. But if we see it, and allow ourselves to endure the pain of it, there is a healing power which in due course can blot out those wrongs, make us refreshed and new. Thank God for that. Who among us does not struggle with remembered wrongs? Our failures with parents, or with our children. The things we did or failed to do that eroded our marriages. Our dishonesties in our work. The subtle betrayal of friends in ways they'll never know.

Oh, yes, that's a great part of what Peter knew. He knew what you and I are like. He's the man who deserted his friend in the garden, who lacked the courage to bear witness in the courtyard. He knew. But he also knew the miracle of a new life, a gift from the forgiving God.

Perhaps this will sound cynical in view of our modern optimistic estimate of human character (an optimism, albeit, beginning to erode in the face of the current moral crisis in the world). But it's the gospel word. Jesus himself once replied to a man who called him "good teacher," "Why do you call me good? No one is good." It doesn't get any plainer than that. Or the apostle Paul wrote: "All, both Jews and Greeks (gentiles), are under the power of sin, as it is written: 'There is no one who is righteous, not even oneÉ.' " Or for a more contemporary observation of the same truth, humorist Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegon fame had this to say in a recent interview: "You can't live life without making mistakes. You can't live life without hurting other people. And they'll get mad at you and they'll be right and you'll just have to ask them to forgive you." True, there's a bit of exaggeration in all of this. By my measure, there are many good people. But by the standards of Jesus' example, no. We are all dependent on that freely offered grace of God.

One of the great heroes of World War II was Corrie ten Boom, a gallant Dutch woman who, though relatively advanced in age, shielded many people from the Nazis until she was betrayed and placed in Ravensbruck concentration camp, along with her sister Betsie. Their terrible experiences are detailed in ten Boom's fine book, The Hiding Place. She tells about the death of Betsie at the hands of the guards. Finally, after a long incredible period of mistreatment and suffering, she survived and was released. She tells of the one power that enabled her to do all she did: her absolute faith in the power of Jesus Christ. One night she gave a speech in a church in Munich, sharing her experiences. When she finished, she was appalled to see a man who as a camp guard had humiliated her and Betsie. He had heard the speech and offered his hand, saying, "To think, that as you say, He has washed my sins away."

Corrie ten Boom said she felt a terrible anger toward the man, none of the charity about which she had just preached. "Vengeful thoughts boiled through me," she wrote. Yet as she stood there in that crisis moment of faith, she knew that Jesus Christ taught and promised only forgiveness. She inwardly prayed that somehow she could receive the power to forgive the man. But she felt no warmth, no sign of charity. She could not even raise her hand. With a prayer for the power to do what she was unable to do on her own, by sheer effort of will, she forced her hand into his. And then she wrote this:

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on HisÉHe gives the love itself."


So, our hope is finally in the gift of love from a source beyond us. One poet caught the flavor of this:

There flickered once within my heart emotion I called "love."
I felt it for another and it seemed born from above.
But time eroded what I felt, my "self" got in the way.
My "needs" cried out "take care of me," and joy dimmed day by day.
I thought, "There must be more than this, I've spoiled what seemed so true
And now I'm where I was before, Oh God, what did I do?"
My selfishness has ruined what had blessed my life, until
I learned that something deep within will try, true love, to kill.
But love did something else in me, refused to die, I guess.
It said, "I am your only hope, I have the power to bless."
Love has a life that is its own, when given from above.
And taught me once it's born in you, your destiny is love.
So something else took place within the selfish part of me.
It captured my eternal soul, and now my soul is free.
I now know what I thought was "love" was blemished by my sin.
But God has filled me with real love, now new life can begin.