Being Human

Fifth Sunday of Lent
 Psalm 51
March 25, 2012

 One of my favorite television shows is the science fiction/horror series "Being Human." The series is based on a British TV show of the same name and features a vampire, werewolf and a ghost living together in an apartment in Boston. The whole premise of the show sounds like the start of a joke and at times, there is a lot of humor as the three try to live life as humans even though they are no longer human. But the main thrust of the show is how hard it is for them to be normal. Time and time again, they get thrown into situations where they are confronted with what they have become and how hard it is to live life as it was before they left the human race. This little campy television show tells a story of the supernatural, but at its core the message is very human: we are not always who we seem to be or even who we want to be. Sooner or later, we will face the reality of how far we have fallen and how hard it is to get back up.

Psalm 51 is the passage we hear every Ash Wednesday. If there ever was a downer passage, this it is. "Have mercy on me, God,according to your faithful love! Wipe away my wrongdoings according to your great compassion!" writes the psalmist. This is a guy who realizes that he's been caught. He's not offering a simple or formal apology, he's being incredibly honest. He messed up. He got himself into a mess that he can't get himself out of. He asks God for help because only God can get this writer out of the pickle that he constructed.

Our culture doesn't really like to talk about sin. I'm not talking about sin in the I-ate-too-much-chocolate kind of way. I'm talking about how we are able to get ourselves into messes even when we don't mean to. We want to think that we can solve any problem that comes our way and if we can't, well, then weren't smart enough. But the psalmist knew better. All of the pretense had gone away and the writer is left with the fact that no matter what, she will make mistakes that will hurt others and hurt God. She realize that it is only God that can make her clean and can right the relationship which has been broken.

As we journey towards the cross, we are reminded that salvation comes only not through us trying to make things right, though we will try. Salvation comes in the one that washes us daily, that makes us able to praise God with a right and renewed spirit. It is in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that we can become healed and human.

 Go and be church.

Dennis Sanders is the Associate Pastor at First Christian Church in Minneapolis.

Forgive and Forget. Not.

Thirteenth Sunday of Pentecost
Matthew 18:21-35
September 11, 2011

1Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” ²²Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.


I found out about it on the bus.

On that late summer morning 10 years ago, I was on a bus heading towards work. I had graduated from seminary the previous May and was getting ready to do my 9 month experience in Clinical Pastoral Education in a week. As the bus made its way past the University of Minnesota and towards downtown Minneapolis I heard the news about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. I didn't think much about it, at first. I thought about the incident in the closing days of World War II when a military plane crashed into the Empire State Building and thought it was just a small plane that got lost.

But we now know that what happened on September 11, 2001 was not just a little event. Hell opened up and swallowed us whole on that day.

It's interesting that the gospel text this Sunday is about forgiveness. It seems like an odd that on the day we remember the horror that took place in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, we are faced with a question: how many times can we forgive?

How do we forgive when someone offends us?  How do we deal when someone is hurtful to us?  How do we learn to "forget" the other's sin?

God calls us to be a people who are forgiving, but it's hard to be forgiving in a world where people hijack airplanes and drive them into buildings. 

Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Webber notes in her blog post on the lectionary text that the ability to forgive is not in our human nature and she's right.  The natural response to being hurt is to not forgive, to not forget.  We want to remember our hurt and we want to lash back. Forgiveness is not about being moral, it is supernatural.

Jesus calls us to being a loving and forgiving people.  God call us to be a people that doesn't remember people's sin.  But the fact is, we fall short and with good reason.  We can't forget that hurt and we want to hurt back. 

It's only in Christ that we can forgive and love. 

We can't forget September 11.  We can't forget the hurts that we are dealt in life.  We can't do it.  We just can't.

But because we are forgiven through Christ, we can forgive and live as a forgiven people. 

So on this Sunday when we stop to remember the past, let us also remember we are forgiven, give thanks and then live in that forgiveness.

Go and be church.

Dennis Sanders is the Associate Pastor at First Christian Church in Minneapolis.