Song: Iris DeMent Sweet Forgiveness | Politics and Lefty Christianity

Friends,

I'm in beautiful Kalamazoo Michigan. Worth it just for the name! But I'm excited to be offering workshops on small church mission for the Episcopal Province V gathering.

Liz

Forgiveness Helps us Act

In Mark 2:1-12 Jesus is preaching to a crowd and some friends, certain that getting their paralyzed friend to Jesus would result in his healing, lower the friend through the roof. While Jesus focuses on his ability to forgive sins, every time I have preached on this I have spoken about the role of friends.

But over the years I've evolved and now my words of forgiveness after the unison prayer of confession has invokes this story. Because what stand out to me is that forgiveness is needed to be able to really do the work of changing the world. Friends, your sins are forgiven. Pick up your mat and walk into the world, taking chances, making mistakes, trying to do what is right.

Often people who focus on the role of Jesus as forgiver are emphasizing that his death resulted in forgiveness. But in this story and others it is the living Jesus that offers forgiveness. Others who fcous on Jesus as forgiver are concerned with original sin. Their emphasis is that we all need forgiveness because we all are innately sinners. I don't want to get into the details of that--and I don't need to! I am confident that I need forgivenss with or without the theory of original sin.

Because my fear of doing things wrong is overbearing.

For many of us, well certainly for me, the fear that my actions and words will not be right, precise, or exactly the best thing for this moment, this fear keeps me from speaking and from acting. I fear that I will accidentally hurt others, or will be not enough, or would have should have, could have been better. I speak honestly of imperfections, but for myself, I expect perfection. I imagine that acting wrong is a larger threat than not acting.

(This is a trait of white supremacy culture. It grows from the idea that I must know all the answers before proceeding, and that being wrong is the most embarrassing thing. This is a myth! There are cultures that do not demand this perfection. In fact we see this every day with our interactions with children--we recognize that learning to walk includes falling down, that learning to speak means using words incorrectly, that trying something, and then trying again, is exactly how we learn. And yet many adults in western culture somehow get to the place that we must know and act perfectly or not speak or act at all.)

Here is the good news: it is okay to try something. It is okay to fail. Failure is just one of the steps toward finding the best path forward. For me, the way I can hang onto that idea is by remembering that I am forgiven. All the things I do that are harmful, embarrassing, less than enough. All the things that make the problem bigger, or leave people confused, or simply go the wrong direction. These are all forgiven.

And if God forgives me, who am I to think I should hold onto that guilt, that shame, that power that keeps me from acting.

It is in my identity as someone forgiven that I can be instructed to pick up my mat and get out into the world, creating change for God's rule, one mistake at a time.

How does forgiveness lead you to more action? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening. ​
​

Iris DeMent shares a song about human forgiveness but I think it works with God, too.

I mostly look start as a Christian, wondering how we can make a different in the political arena. This article is about why the political arena should engage the religious left.

Please forward this email to others who might be interested. If you got this from someone else, use the button below to subscribe to the free Act! Be Church Now email newsletter.