Give Grace Amidst Your Angst, and Be Healed

Brad Sullivan

4 Easter, Year B

April 22, 2018

Emmanuel, Houston

1 John 3:16-24

John 10:11-18

Give Grace Amidst Angst, and Be Healed

Life is hard.  It’s also great, and we’re in the Easter season, so we’re not going too far down a dark path, but life is, in addition to being great, straight up, plain, old fashioned hard.  We have hurts that happen to us from the moment we are born.  Fears, feelings of abandonment, loss, and that’s for kids with great parents.  People let us down.  We let other people down.  We lose trust and faith in those we love, disease hits us and knocks whole families down, jobs are lost, security is tenuous, and we hurt and have a hard time reconciling with folks even in the best of circumstances.  We end up with a lot of angst.

My desire as a youth was maybe to avoid some of that.  In reading scripture back in high school, I had a strong desire to follow God in all his ways, as Jesus told Satan during his temptations in the desert, “love God and serve only him.”  Man I wanted to do that, and back in high school it felt like I could, like I could resist temptation, do the right thing, be peaceful, kind, and forgiving to all of those around me.  It turns out life was a lot harder than I realized, temptation to soothe life’s hurts far greater than I realized, and I fell pretty far from that ideal.  It was never a very realistic ideal, and I would likely only have really achieved it by being aloof, not overly connected to people so that I couldn’t really hurt them and they couldn’t really hurt me.  I therefore couldn’t have made a very good friend, husband, father, or priest.  I’d have probably ended up as a fairly judgmental person, staying aloof in order to stay, I don’t know…pure, unstained by the world.  That’s really just a shield from harm, a shield which causes harm, and it runs totally counter to the Gospel of Jesus in which God refused to stay aloof in guiding us, but became one of us.  As such, Jesus knows how hard life is, and he knows first hand that we are all broken-hearted and fearful.

We’re broken-hearted, having been harmed by people and things that happen in our lives, and we’re fearful of forgiving those who hurt us, fearful because forgiving means choosing to be wrong ourselves.  If we forgive and accept those who are wrong, then we’re almost condoning the wrong and therefore being wrong ourselves.  What if God isn’t pleased by that?  What a bunch of hooey.  Jesus teaches us to be wrong, to accept back one who is/was wrong.  Forgiving means letting go of our grief, and rightness, and letting our hurt die.  Forgiving means letting go of our sense of control, our shield, and laying down our lives for others.

Forgiveness isn’t easy, like the rest of life, but that place of forgiveness, grace, and love is where Jesus leads us, because it leads us to a place of peace.  He shows us forgiveness, grace, and love that we may be freed to love each other.  Jesus leads us to the ability and gives us permission to love and be loved, to forgive and be forgiven.  Jesus leads us and gives us permission to lay down our hurt, to lay down that which keeps us insular, aloof, and self-protected.  In short, Jesus leads us and gives us permission to lay down our lives, for others, thereby find peace.

Today we talk about Jesus leading us in these ways as Jesus being the good shepherd, and we call this “Good Shepherd” Sunday.  Being good shepherd Sunday, I was going to start off with a quick one liner about how dumb sheep are, something like, “Sheep are dumb.”  Then, I decided to actually do a little bit research into whether or not sheep really are stupid, and it turns out, they really aren’t all that dumb.  In fact, for quadrupeds, they’re pretty intelligent.  They were described instead as intelligent, complex, and sociable.   They can recognize people, voices, even facial expressions, and they help each other out and they clearly exhibit emotional responses to the circumstances in their lives, kinda like us.

We’ve often thought of sheep as stupid because they wander off and get lost, kinda like us, or because they can exhibit herd mentality and panic together when they perceive a threat, kinda like us.  So, sheep aren’t really all that dumb, they’re kinda like us.  It’s easy to discount sheep as dumb, just as it’s easy to discount others as wrong, sinful, bad, whatever else, but Jesus, as our good shepherd, chose not to discount us as dumb, but to lead us as a fellow sheep.

John tells us that Jesus laid down his life for us, and that he most certainly did by becoming human.  By becoming human, God showed us, in ways that we could truly understand, something of God’s self in Jesus’ love, forgiveness, grace, and peace.  Then again, of course God can be all of those things:  loving, forgiving, graceful, peaceful.  Jesus showed us God’s character and nature, and he also showed us our own character and nature, or at least our potential character and nature.  Jesus showed us that we too can be full of love, forgiveness, grace, and peace.

By becoming human, God laid down his life.  Rather than be insular and protected, unhurt and untouched by the terrors of this world, God became human and left himself vulnerable to being hurt, left himself fully immersed in our lives, living with us the joy and the pain that we all feel.

Again, Jesus showed us that we have his permission to love and forgive others.  Folks who have messed up in big ways that we could readily name and label, Jesus would lead us to a place of forgiveness, grace, and love, leading to peace.  Knowing how hard life is, Jesus would lead us to a place of compassion and understanding, knowing that the harm the person caused was brought about in them by their own fears or the harm that they had endured, or maybe even by following the advice of someone who led them in a bad way, someone who had also been led badly and been harmed.

Life is hard, and knowing this, Jesus knows that even forgiveness is hard, grace is hard, love is hard, and Jesus knows that life is even harder when we keep our shields up, keep resentments with us, dragging us down like a dead albatross around our necks.  

Jesus leads us instead to life, peace, joy and greater acceptance and love of ourselves through greater acceptance and love of others.  Jesus leads us to freedom from the tyranny of being shielded, right, or resentful.  Jesus leads us to grace, forgiveness, and love, knowing that if we follow him to that place, we will be healed.  We will be kinder to others, less bothered by the wrong and hurtful things they do and that as a community, we'll be more willing and able to give help to others; their lack of worthiness would not stop us.

This place of forgiveness, grace, and love is not easy, just like the rest of life.  We’ll still have the angst of hurt with us.  In fact, we can’t have grace without angst.  To give grace, to say, “I forgive you, even though I’m still hurting,” there is going to be angst.  The grace says, “I love you despite my angst and my broken heart.  I see you as hurting and trying your best, and I want to love you as a fellow imperfect person in need of love and grace.  I will, therefore, love and accept you and keep working at giving grace and forgiveness, even though doing so causes me angst.  That is my burden to bear.  That is me laying down my life for you.”

Doing so, following Jesus in that way, leads to life, and peace, and joy.  Laying down our lives, laying down our burdens, heals us.  Follow me, Jesus says, as a fellow sheep who understands how hard life is, and give grace, amidst your angst, and be healed.