Good Friday homily

Hebrews 10:16-25

2 April 2010

What a curious phrase that is, at the heart of the reading from Hebrews …

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

It is a quote … albeit, a misremembered one … from the prophet Jeremiah.  There, in chapter 31, God declares to his people that he will “forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”

Close enough.

It’s still the same basic message.

God promises that he will not remember sin.

How totally the opposite of the way we operate.

Because we love to remember sin.

It is in every fibre of our being that we hold onto those past mistakes, foibles, or full blown disasters.  Indeed, the legal profession is built upon this elephant-like foundation … never forgetting.  Always remembering.  Desiring exact justice – eye for eye, tooth for tooth, dollar for dollar … and beyond.

To Reptevye in “Fiddler On The Roof,” this kind of retribution only ended up with the world being blind and toothless.

But not to us.  We remember.

Sometimes, we can “get back” at them, “they’ll get theirs.”  Sometimes, they do.  Sometimes, from others.  Sometimes, from us.  Sometimes, it makes us feel better.  For a little while.

Grudges.  Disconnections.  Ends of relationships.

And blame.  Bushel baskets and wheelbarrows and truckloads of blame.  Her fault.  His fault.  Their fault.

Politics.  Workplace.  Government.  Family.  And church.

One of the best, most faithful pastors I know serves a parish in rural SW Minnesota.  And she’s barely hanging on.  Her church is evenly divided on whether or not to leave the ELCA over last summer’s sexuality vote.  She doesn’t agree with the outcome of the vote, but neither does she believe she should leave the ELCA.  Half of the parish she serves disagrees with her … they want to leave … and they have decided on a scorched earth policy that will, most certainly, destroy that parish.  And that small town.  And perhaps my friend, too, if she lasts that long.  But they just don’t care.  They’re right, everyone else is wrong, and they’ll fight to the end, even until nothing and no one is left standing.

But it’s not just the sins of others of which we can’t let go.

It‘s also our own.

How many times have we played the “coulda woulda shoulda” game.

If only I hadn’t taken that job.

If only I’d loved my children more.

If only I hadn’t run away from my life.

If only I hadn’t made such a mess of things.

If only.

The tape in our heads of all our past mistakes, it rewinds and plays, rewinds and plays, over and over and over again.  We screwed up once … more than once … and it doesn’t matter, even if we’ve gone back and asked for forgiveness from the people we’ve wronged and received it … we just can’t forgive ourselves … and we keep beating ourselves up, again and again and again.

That’s my buddy in Portland.  He’s been my buddy for a long, long time.  He made some poor choices in his life … as have we all … but he doesn’t, he can’t, see a way around, through, out of them.  They are old, old choices … some of them go back to when we were kids together, in Southeast Portland … but he just can’t let go.  And his life, his health, and his relationships … they all suffer.  I love my friend, but it’s so hard to be around him.  He’s so sad, and his sadness just seeps out of every pore of his body, and surrounds him like a cloud.

And yet … here, tonight, we have this utterly contradictory word.  Contradictory to the way we feel, and think, and operate, with and for others, for and within ourselves.

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

What is this that our God is saying?

Is it … some kind of forgetfulness?  Dementia?  Old age?

That, of course, is what our own behavior, in and of ourselves, toward others … that is what that says.

But it’s not what God is saying.

The word here for “remember” … in the writer’s Greek, it recalls our English “mnemonic,” as in “mnemonic phrase.”  A trick some people use to remember names.  “Blonde Barbara.”  Repeat the phrase over and over, and then, when you see that certain yellow-haired woman, you can say with confidence, “Hi, Barb!”

So when God says “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more,” it means that God is turning a negative memory trick.  Instead of speaking about their sins and lawless deeds, our sins and lawless deeds, God is not going to speak of them again.  Ever.

Think about this for a minute.  This is the letter to the Hebrews.  Jewish believers in Jesus.

For these people, the only way one would never be spoken of again, would be if they had been put out of the community.  Like in the story of the prodigal son … how the older brother speaks of his younger errant brother as “this son of yours” … he can’t (and won’t) say “my brother” because, to him, the prodigal is dead.  Not a part of his life anymore.

Ironically, it’s the same way some people of faith … Jews … Christians … some, devout, orthodox, even today, would speak (or, rather, not speak) of family members, children, who married “outside the faith.”  To them, they are dead.  It is the ultimate offense against the community, against their faith.  They shall not be spoken of again.

Yet, in the greatest irony and reversal, the total opposite of how we operate … that is precisely the word, the way that this verse says God is, toward our “sins and lawless deeds.”

To God, they are dead.  Not ever to be spoken of again.

Not by God.  Not by others, against us.  Not by us, against others.  And most certainly not by us, against ourselves.

Our sins and lawless deeds … to God, they are dead.

And so they shall be to us, too.

Because of the blood of Jesus, on this contradictory Friday we call Good.

And so … since they are dead … what shall be alive in us?

Well, that’s the easy part.

“Full assurance of faith.”

“Provoking one another to love and good deeds.”

“Encouraging one another.”

An endless store of riches.  Enough, more than enough, to fill all the days of our lives.

“… and all the more, as you see the Day approaching.”

And so on this Good Friday, a day when we mark and celebrate the death of death itself … because of the blood of Jesus … we once more confess that in Jesus, our sins and lawless deeds are dead – and we, with Jesus, have risen to new life …

so, once more, we may proclaim with confidence the wonderful, cross-shaped mystery of our faith:

Christ has died.

Christ is risen.

Christ will come again.

Amen.