September 14, 2008 + Generations Bound by Forgiveness + Frank Alton

Genesis 50:15-21, Romans 14:1-12



MP3 File

I want to begin this sermon with a confession. Last July when I first looked at the lectionary texts assigned for this morning, one by one I decided I couldn’t preach on any of them. The subject matter of each passage was too closely tied to what our community has been dealing with around my disclosure regarding my sexual identity. I figured people would think I was that my choice of texts was an attempt to manipulate things in my self interest. I shared that thought with one of our elders a couple of weeks ago. The response was that maybe it would be manipulation not to preach on the lectionary texts and that we as a congregation need to let the Scriptures speak to what we are dealing with. So there it is. I’ve chosen two of the four lectionary texts. At this evening’s congregational meeting I will share more thoughts about what has been going on these last two months.

This morning we’re celebrating 120 years of ministry at Immanuel. Ten years ago when we celebrated the 110th anniversary members offered blessings from one generation to another. Today we are again focusing on the generations of Immanuel. The two passages deal with two aspects of the word generations. The Genesis passage calls to mind the generations that have passed away and the generations to come. During our All Together Worship we remembered the generations of Immanuel that brought us to where we are today, but have now passed away.

The Romans passage speaks of generations that overlap each other at the same time. For example, Immanuel today has members who are part of what is called the Builders Generation, the Baby Boomer Generation, Generation X, Y and Z. Paul in Romans is dealing with differences between contemporary generations in the church, and their different cultural values, which tend to get moral values attached to them.

What binds together the generations in both senses of the word is forgiveness. Forgiveness is one of the most difficult tasks that human beings encounter throughout their lives. It’s made even more difficult by confusion about who needs to forgive whom, when forgiveness is appropriate, and the relationship between power and forgiveness. Sometimes the wrong party is manipulated into doing the forgiving, when the other party actually bears more responsibility because of the power differential. We don’t have time to develop that this morning but I want us to be aware of those dynamics. Instead I want to examine the dynamics of forgiveness across generations in these two senses of the word.

Let’s start with the Genesis story. In case you forget or don’t know that story, Joseph was the golden boy of Jacob’s twelve sons. Jacob made no secret of the fact that Joseph was his favorite child. That doesn’t usually make for great relationships among siblings. Joseph didn’t help matters either. At one point Joseph had a dream that all of his siblings bowed down to him. Now some of us might have dreams like that; but we’re usually relationally wise enough to keep them to ourselves. Joseph decided to share his dream with his brothers – and that after tattling on them to their father. They already didn’t like him; now they were furious. One day they decided to take their revenge by throwing him in a pit and selling him as a slave. Joseph managed to get noticed by the King of Egypt and ended up being the Minister of Finance. As a result he was in a position to save Egypt as well as his own family.

In this morning’s passage their father Jacob has just died. The brothers realize that their father might have been the only one who kept Joseph from taking revenge on them. They are consumed by guilt, which leads them to focus on the past and on the generation that just passed with the death of their father. Joseph, on the other hand, is focused on the dream that has now become clearer to him. The dream is not about people bowing down to him but about preserving numerous people, and providing for “you and your little ones.”

The enduring power of guilt and its resultant fear is a matter which every family knows all too well. Like other families, this one knows that the only one who can break the cycle and banish the guilt is the wronged party, the one whom they most fear. We are told they “came and fell down before Joseph and said, ‘Behold we are your servants.’” The dream that Joseph shared with them way back in Chapter 37 is now unwittingly fulfilled by the brothers. They are guilty and afraid, majoring in the minor. The politics of the family are not the major concern of the storyteller. They are subordinated to the power of the dream. Joseph’s siblings are preoccupied with guilt and fear in part because they don’t know about the larger agenda of the dream, but also because they are busy with their betrayals which have such destructive staying power.

The storyteller is helping us understand that the dream has been at work all along, and hasn’t been diminished by the moral issues of the brothers or of anyone else. Joseph finally understood the centrality of the dream, even though he hadn’t understood much about family dynamics around golden boys. Walter Breuggemann points out that the storyteller is showing that one of the conversions we need is from guilt which restricts on the one hand to dreams which liberate on the other. As we think about the subject of forgiveness, one of the ways to make it more possible is to make guilt less important. If we focus less on guilt and more on God’s dream and call on our lives to serve the future, perhaps our eyes will be opened to notice how God accomplishes her purpose in ways that surprise us. It doesn’t eliminate the need for forgiveness, but puts it in a different perspective.

The church hasn’t always understood this. We’ve often wasted our birthright of grace by trying to make sure people feel guilty enough about their sins so they will turn away from them. The Gospel – whether in the Hebrew Scriptures or the Greek – invites us to focus on the promise and dream of the reign of God more than on the guilt.

What does this mean for us at Immanuel? Past generations made many mistakes. We have heard stories about how racist they were about membership and how sexist they were about women in leadership. From a scriptural perspective what matters is that they carried the dream forward so that we could inherit it from them and take it to the next stage. We also know that we have made mistakes. Sometimes we’ve squandered the inheritance prior generations left us. We could wallow in guilt around that and become fearful about the call of God to develop the dream. Or we can follow in Joseph’s foot steps and focus on the centrality of the dream. That means we focus on our work for justice and inclusion, on our ministries of compassion and service, and on the task of peacemaking and reconciliation. One very small way we are engaging that truth today is with our mugs. We are expressing our commitment to the future of the earth by finally reducing our contribution to landfills with all the Styrofoam cups we use. It’s not a perfect solution, but it matters, and it moves in the right direction.

I’ve focused on the life of Immanuel so far because we are celebrating our anniversary. But each of us needs to figure out what this means in other parts of our lives. What does it mean for your family? What does it mean for other communities of which you are a part? What does it mean for your own life? Do you allow guilt to distract you from the call of your unique life?

The Romans passage addresses the other dimension of forgiveness – generations that have to live together in the same community. Perhaps more than in any previous generation being a multi-generational church is challenging. We don’t like the same music. We don’t like the same length of sermons. We don’t dress the same. We care more or less about different things that the church does. And the tendency throughout history has been to judge those who are different. For some reason, differences awaken our fears and insecurities and our defense mechanism is judgment. “I can’t understand how those old fuddy duddies can like that music.” “Those kids are going to go deaf listening to that loud music.” “Why do they always want to change things – like the way we do communion? Why can’t they leave good enough alone?” “Why do they make such a big deal about the way we dress? Isn’t what really matters how we practice justice once we leave?

Back in the 80s people started creating single generation churches. There were boomer churches and generation x churches. And they grew into huge megachurches. They could go ahead and choose the music everyone would like. They could dress up or dress down. They could have long sermons or no sermons. But at what cost? The New Testament is all about churches figuring out how to be multicultural and multigenerational. Certainly it’s easier to be a single generation church. But does it really allow us to grow in the ways we need to grow? I don’t think so. Being a multigenerational church is one of the beautiful things about Immanuel.

Change the examples and this is precisely what Paul is addressing in Romans 14. Some people believe it’s okay to eat anything, whereas others are vegetarian. Some people like to keep a special day for worship, whereas others think one day is as good as the next. Those who have a good meal have regard for Jesus by saying thank you to God before eating. Those who make a special point of going without food also do it out of regard for Jesus. They could have created vegetarian churches. They could have made churches for those who worship on Saturday and those who worship on Sundays. (Oh, I guess we’ve done that, haven’t we?) Paul’s point is relevant for us: “Those who eat meat shouldn’t sneer at vegetarians; vegetarians, you shouldn’t adopt a superior attitude. Why do you criticize your Christian brother? Why do you look down on your Christian sister? We’ll all have to answer to God.” We’ve got to figure out how to be church together.

That is the challenge the Presbyterian Church is facing right now (Along with the Anglican Church and the Lutheran Church, among others). One of the commissioners who spoke up at last June’s General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the discussion about ordination named the issue of fear: “I stand to speak in favor of faith and in opposition to fear. We have all seen how a national climate and a culture of fear has led us into war, talked us into building walls and told us that letting go of cherished civil liberties and looking at strangers as the enemy is not only ok, not only necessary, but our duty. The things that we have allowed to happen because of our fear of what might happen are a source of shame for us as American citizens. As citizens of the kindom of Christ we ought to be even more ashamed of how we have allowed our fear of what might happen to trump our faith in the One who indeed makes all things happen, makes all things new, and brings life out of death and hope out of despair. But we are afraid. We are so afraid we cannot even hear the Gospel proclamation to “Fear Not!” For too long we have allowed fear to trump our faith. Our conversations are heavy with fear. We see others operating out of fear and we allow it to erode our confidence and trust in God alone. Our willingness to maintain an unjust system is an offense to the Gospel of grace we proclaim. I, for one, am tired of being afraid. Our constitutional safeguards have not saved us. They have only oppressed all of us and allowed many of us to be comfortable with our condemnation of others.” (David Young, quoted in the Covenant Network Newsletter, September 2008).

Well said, David Young. The apostle Paul couldn’t have said it any better. Friends, we need to put the dream ahead of our guilt, and our faith ahead of our fear. Only then we will be able to forgive each other across generations and cultures and accomplish the mission to which we have been called – moving the dream forward just a little. Can we do that here at Immanuel? I certainly hope so.