Sunday
September 13
Liberal Grace
By Marsh Chapel
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Please forgive the intrusive nature of this sermon. For I want to begin by taking a walk with you into the attic of your soul. Though we are friends, it is not my right to initiate such a visit. Though we are pastors and parishioners, it is not our right to force such a trek back up through the mist of time. You would need to make an invitation, yourself. Even to suggest the climb, without any initiative on your part, is rude of me. I apologize.
The Gospel, however, intrudes upon our very souls, whether the preacher has a right or not. As kingfishers catch fire, and dragonflies draw flame, so truth—that liberal grace, that light in which we see light—advances upon us. So we go ahead. We walk together upstairs to the landing. You kindly have turned on the hall light. Thank you. I wonder if this is a sign from you that you will welcome this joint venture? We pull down on the chain that loosens the attic portal. You know how that little door in the ceiling falls open, and slowly a flank of wooden stairs comes down, and down, and down, and touches our feet. We are ready to climb up into the darkness.
Watch your step. You have not been up into the cobwebs and the dust of memory, the mothballs and the coverlets of history, the grime and the darkness of the past. It is a little slow going. This is your attic, though. You know it as well as you know your own past. In fact, it is your past, box by box, and crate by crate. I have no right to be here, and if you ask me, I will leave. A man has a right to his own regrets. A woman has a right to her own regrets. They are not common property. They are yours, these boxes and labels and shoes and hangers and records and amulets and souvenirs from the dusty past. One of you is looking over at an old service uniform from the great war—brown and rumpled. Another sees bobby sox and a political poster—I LIKE IKE. She has stumbled past three old Beatles albums—greatest hits, Abbey Road, the White album. I notice a Jim Croce tape. I wonder if it still plays? He thumbs through a pile of other newer albums. She has a 2004 World Series Fenway ticket. He has a ball marked deflate-gate. Of course there are lots of photographs. What kind of an attic would it be without boxes and records and photographs?
This is the attic of memory. No, we won’t stop at the wardrobe
Today. The wardrobe is for another day, a day of hope and imagination. Lions and witches come from wardrobes. Today we are looking back, though. We are going to stumble and claw our way over into the back corner. There is not much light here. It is a long time since anyone came back in, all this way. Dust, cobwebs—it makes you sneeze.
Over in the corner there is a small, low box, carefully closed, and tied around with a little bailer’s twine. This is yours. No one else knows it is here, or if they do, they have forgotten or never understood or just don’t care. But you know and remember and understand and care. I really do not want to be here, and you probably don’t want to either. I—for it is not my business. You—because in black ink, now dusty, is penned across the top of the box a single, awful, hellish word—regret. Regret is a short synonym for hell. And up here in the attic of memory, off in the corner, sits this stupid box, which means nothing to anyone, except to you. There it is—a single box labeled “regret”.
Open it.
Go ahead. Try it. If you want. I think you have wanted to come up here, but just never had 20 minutes of quiet to do so. Remember last summer when you thought about the box? And remember that early morning dream? That was a strange thing. I want to encourage you to open it. Hold it in both hands. Untie the twine. Loosen the top. Turn it over, and let it all fall out.
Good. That was a gutsy thing to do. Good for you.
The reason the box was marked “regret” is that this is one thing you regret. You have a regret. That is part of being human. Can you live with being human? Can you live with being a little lower than the angels? How do I know all this? As my great aunt would say, “If you’re so smart how come you aren’t rich?” A real good question. I know because I have boxes in my attic too. They too are covered with cobwebs. I too make my visits, my attic climbs, very seldom. And, yes, I know about regret. Not just vicariously, either. There is nothing quite as bitter. If only…If only…If only…
I asked to come up here with you for a reason. Up in the attic here, with that swinging bare light bulb and the Johnny Mathis record, and the 2018 election lawn sign, and all this dust, we may feel God.
Look at the box again, and all its contents spread across the floor. In the dark I cannot see the floor, but after 44 years and 10 pulpits I truly doubt if any of it would surprise me. After reading the Bible and Shakespeare and a few decades worth of the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, there is not much that surprises. But it is different for you. This is your attic, your memory, your box, your regret. It is YOURS. In a way, this box is more yours than any of the others.
In this box are the articles of impeachment brought by life against us. They are multiple and they are damning and unlike civil and criminal law, the laws of the soul do not give way to lawyerly cunning. And there is no vote, no 2/3 majority needed. And the impeachment may not have led to conviction, except in the heart. Yours.
What is that you say? Not you? Never a cutting word? Never a selfish deed? Never an unhealthy habit? Never a compulsive trend? Never a myopic judgment? Never a temptation accepted? Never an ungenerous year? Never a vote you wish, truly wish, you had not made? You meant one thing, it meant another. Never a non-giving decade? Not you? Never a misspent dollar or day or dream? You don’t go to enough funerals.
But the box doesn’t lie. Nor does the conscience. Nor does the memory. Nor does life.
It simply spells “regret”. That, I regret.
There is something that both can and must be said, as we pack up the regret box. Read about it sometime in Matthew 18: 21-35. It is not a human thing to say, though we are the only saying beings around so we do the best we can. It is a God word. And only God speaks God words.
First, looking down at the dusty cardboard of past regret—something that if not removed can fester and infect and cripple—first there is this. God forgives you. It is, according to the Scripture, the divine promise and intention to forgive and to forgive. It is the first and last and only unreplaceable word of faith. Abraham felt it. Miriam sang it with all her might. Joseph practiced it. Hosea proclaimed it. Jesus taught us to pray for it. And for 2000 years the church has tried to exemplify, embody this one word. God forgives. John Wesley asked his preachers one initial question. “Do you know God to be a pardoning God?” Now that, in the face of a box marked “regret”, that is good news. In the face of the worst rejection and the most regrettable misjudgment on earth, God practices a powerful forgiveness.
You know in the midst of all the harshness of the religious right and the flightiness of the religious left, it can be hard to hear the central truth about God and about us. God forgives.
God forgives before we are up in the attic at all. God forgives when we realize what we have to regret. God forgives as we carry the regret around. God forgives when we hear and when we do not and it does not depend on our hearing.
Do you know God to be a pardoning God? If so, you know God, the God of Jesus Christ.
Here are some Scriptures worth memorizing about God who forgives….
If you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.
Lord how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times? … I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.
But maybe that is not what keeps you awake, not what makes you linger today in the attic. You may well believe and trust that God forgives. But what about those you have regrettably hurt?
This can be particularly hard for those who have grown up around especially hardened parents and other adults. If you have not heard an encouraging word much growing up, it can be hard later in life to believe that those other humans around you can practice a liberal grace, that they can be gracious.
They can be.
As a matter of fact, most of the time they are. More than most of the time. People forgive, more than you know and more than you may think you deserve. It really delights me. People have a profound capacity to forgive and forget. It is God given, and it is real and it is good.
I think of the waiting father and the prodigal son.
I think of Paul forgiving Peter’s two-faced behavior.
I think of Augustine’s mother forgiving his selfishness.
I think of Erasmus forgiving the wayward Popes.
I think of Grant and Lee at Appomattox.
I think of Abraham Lincoln walking through Richmond.
I think of the Marshall Plan and rebuilding of Germany and Japan in the 1940’s.
I think of women and men, night after day, for millenia.
You may have to ask sometime for forgiveness. You probably should. Say, “I’m sorry”. Like the ancient TV character ‘The Fonz’, who could never utter the word, “I was wrong..” But my experience is that most people most of the time when confronted with a heartfelt, sincere apology from a person of integrity will simply, directly and kindly say, “Don’t worry about it. I forgive you.” It is one of the greatest things about other people. You may have to give it a little time. You may have to pray about it. You may have to trust a little. You may have to try more than once. But—other people will forgive you.
But that may not be what holds you here in the attic. As a matter of fact, I bet that the box is still up here, wrapped in twine and covered with dirt and marked regret, for another reason. It’s one thing for God to forgive you. It’s one thing to accept another’s kindness. But in the end, that still leaves you a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and a few french fries short of a happy meal. God has forgiven you! Your neighbor has forgiven you! Now comes the hard part.
You have to forgive yourself. You have to let yourself off the hook. You have to find a way to admit to yourself that you are not 101% perfect. You have to, well, accept your own acceptance. And that can be a lot easier said than done. Because we have a way of holding onto what poisons us. Why is that? We have a way of clinging to that which poisons us. We have a way of just wrapping ourselves in a miserable kind of self-conceited self-condemnation. Up in the attic.
Sunday is a good time to dump your guilt. God doesn’t want it. No neighbor finally has much use for it. So why is it still in the box? What good is it? Get rid of it. When it doubt, throw it out.
God forgives you. So does your neighbor. Forgive yourself.
Matter of fact, while we are here, up in the attic—let’s just take that box out of here. I’ll hold the ladder for you while you are coming down. You can carry it, with a little homiletical help. If we hurry we can get out on the curb before noon. The heavenly garbage truck always comes by this part of your mental world Sunday at noon. There, it’s out on the curb, and soon it will be gone for good. Sang
William Blake:
And throughout all eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.
And throughout all eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.
And throughout all eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.
-The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel
