'Member when mom used to say, "Say you're sorry ... and mean it." (Sermon from Sunday, July 1, 2018)

(This week begins a summer series of sermons on a variety of Psalms -- not necessarily anyone's favourite Psalms, or Psalms of especial theological or spiritual import, but Psalms that have been significant to me in my life -- either Psalms I have turned to at critical times in my life, or that put into words some spiritual truth or process that has been important for me in my journey.  I call it "Psalms of (my) life;" in worship yesterday someone suggested we call it "the life of Brian.")

Reading:  Psalm 32 

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.

Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

In the mid-1800’s a lot of people knew at least one place in the world they could go, to find forgiveness and spiritual cleansing.  Fr. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney was the parish priest in Ars, a little town on the eastern edge of France, and in his confessional from 1818 when he was appointed priest there to 1859 when he died, hundreds of thousands of souls from France and beyond found the freedom and release they were looking for, from guilt and regret that they carried in their lives.

Jean Vianney was not the best-educated or brilliant of priests – maybe one reason he was settled in Ars.  At the time of his arrival, the town’s population was 230 – a size of parish his superiors thought Fr. Jean might be able to handle.  But what he lacked in learning, he more than made up for in piety, in extreme openness to God, and in passionate commitment to lead people back to God and to godly living in a time that was known for its anti-Church sentiment and its increasingly immoral and anti-moral behaviour. 

The way he did this was to encourage people to confess their sins, to know in a deep way God’s forgiveness of their mistakes and waywardness, and then – freed from guilt and regret, to be able to start living happily in more godly ways.  The confessional was the heart of his ministry to his parish, and once his parishioners got past their initial resistance and resentment, the changes that their visits to his confessional began to make in their lives and the life of the parish were noticeable. 

Word spread, and in the early 1820’s a trickle of penitents began coming from neighbouring parishes, asking of Fr. Vianney what their own priests seemed unable to offer.  Then people started coming from farther away, and soon Fr. Vianney was spending up to 11 hours a day in the confessional in the winter, up to 16 in summer, and through the last ten years of his life it’s estimated he heard the confessions of up to 20,000 penitents a year.  He helped thousands and hundreds of thousands of people to find what they were looking for.

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.

Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

I wonder where we can go today.  Or have we outgrown the need for forgiveness?  Do we no longer feel burdened by guilt and regret?  Have we found other ways of dealing with stuff like that?  Or in the absence of places to go for deep forgiveness and real freedom from whatever shame or imperfection or guilt we feel, have we simply found new kinds of fig leaves to patch together as best we can to cover ourselves up into feeling okay?

It’s a question for us as persons, because without getting into old-style moralistic preaching designed to make us feel bad, is it reasonable to think that what people are addicted to today -- and why we are such an addictive society, is because we look for things outside ourselves to help us feel better about what we feel – or don’t feel, inside ourselves?  Am I the only one – even here, who at times is still bothered by guilt and racked by regret about this thing or that – or is that still a pretty general human experience?

And whether it’s real forgiveness or just fig leaves that we live with today, is a question for us also as people – as a country and a nation.  In Canada we’ve been living for some time in the Age of Apology because we’re old enough now to have outgrown our innocence and to see pretty clearly at least some of our sins and shortcomings.  Only the young or the morally bankrupt are unable to see their own sins, and for some time now we’ve been noticing and trying to come to terms with our historical mistreatment and abuse of the First Nations, of Japanese Canadians, and of other groups that we have too easily seen as “other” than us.  Our misuse and destruction of the land, water and air of this country as well.  Canada is a good country, but it has also been a sinful country, and where do we go to find the deep forgiveness we need, and the real freedom we need to start living the kind of life we know we are called to?

It’s not easy, and not quick – on either a personal or a political level, in either our individual or our national life.  Because just saying we’re sorry and then getting on with business as usual – whether it’s in Parliament or in our own home, just doesn’t do it.

It’s like what our moms always told us – that we have to not only say sorry, but say sorry and really mean it. 

It’s like what the elders of the First Nations gathered in Sudbury in 1986 told the United Church after General Council offered our apology for the way our Church mistreated the First Nations for hundreds of years.  The apology was offered to the gathered elders, they thanked the Church for it, took a few days to discuss it among themselves, and then brought back the message that they would wait to see if we really meant it, and were really ready to start living in right relationship with them.  Forty years later, we’re still working on it.  And those who are engaged in the work, say it’s a truly liberating experience.  In the work towards right relations, comes a feeling a deepening forgiveness for what was, and increasing freedom for what is meant to be.

It’s important to have places and ways of finding forgiveness – no matter where it may be, how it may happen, and how long it might take to be real.

Five or six years ago I was part of something called the Jubilee program – a two-year program to help train people to serve as spiritual directors.  And it was during one of the weeks when the whole group of us – about twenty in all, was in residence at Five Oaks for a series of workshops that I had perhaps the most profound experience of God’s forgiveness of me that I’ve had in my life.  It came during a time of personal reading and journaling when I was reading Isaiah 40:

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her

that she has served her term,

that her penalty is paid,

that she has received from the Lord’s hand

double for all her sins.

Suddenly it was real for me in a way it never had been before.  God wanting to comfort me, against all I feel bad about.  Telling me I’ve served my term, that the penalty is paid, that I’ve actually made myself suffer at least double what was really needed.  And the point of it all – that now I can start living free of guilt, free of regret, free for the kind of love and life and relationship I am made for, and that I long for.

It was not easy, nor quick in coming.  I was 12 years old when I “gave my life to Jesus as my personal Saviour” at a Baptist evangelistic meeting, and was promised forgiveness of my sins.  Forgiveness is something I’ve believed in, read about, and preached to others all my adult life.  I’ve read Isaiah 40 at least once a year as part of the Advent cycle.  But it took until I was almost 60 years old – and only then after four or five days of intense workshops and exercises to help open me up to my own body, mind and spirit, and to God, that I could finally really receive the good news God has been wanting to give me for years.

Deep forgiveness of sin, thorough-going freedom from regret and guilt, and thorough-going freedom to live as we are called to, are not all that natural to us.  So it’s good to know, whether on a personal or a political level, as individuals or as a country, if there’s somewhere we can go, and something we can do to find what we need – deep forgiveness of the past, and real freedom for the future.

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.

Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.