When We Know Forgiveness, We Know Salvation

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston

December 8, 2024
2 Advent, C
Philippians 1:3-11
Canticle 16
Luke 3:1-6

Have you ever felt guilty about something you did? Ever felt bad about hurting someone, even if they didn’t know it, you lied or cheated, and betrayed someone’s trust or love? Have you then ever been forgiven by the one you’ve harmed for the things you’ve done?

If so, then you know the immense release that comes with forgiveness. The healing that goes on inside of us when we are forgiven, and our guilt recedes, and a weight is lifted because the one we have harmed has restored us to being ok. We’re no longer wracked with guilt. We’re no longer separated from one another. We’ve been restored to the possibility of love between one another. That is salvation.

The problem we see that needs fixing, from the Eden onward, is our disconnection from God and disconnection from one another. As we hurt one another, we pull away from one another, we put up barriers and shields to keep us safe. We walk around with anger in our hearts, showing others that we’re tougher than are so they won’t hurt us. We walk around with fear in our hearts pulling away from others before they have a chance to hurt us.

We see one another as threats, knowing that we’re often right, that others are threats, but mostly because they see us as threats.

We compete with one another out of scarcity for money, jobs, food, shelter. Since we feel we can’t trust others, we tend to go for winner take all, the American Dream of being billionaires while others work for them without enough to pay rent. Even further disconnection.

In our disconnection and mistrust, we turn to drugs, sex, alcohol, and anything else we can in order to feel better or not to feel at all. Those things don’t help, but they disconnect us even further. Angry, afraid, disconnected lives, seeing others as enemies to be feared or conquered…does that sound to anyone like Hell on Earth? That's because it is.

Disconnection is the Hell on Earth we know all too well. Salvation, then, is reconnection, reconnection with God and reconnection with one another.

John the Baptist went out into the wilderness proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and we are told that John did this so that people would know salvation through forgiveness of their sins.

Forgiveness brings us reconnection, and reconnection is salvation from the Hell on Earth that we so often live. When we are restored to one another through repentance and forgiveness, we’re no longer separated from one another, and we are restored to the possibility of love between one another. That is salvation.

When we know forgiveness, we know salvation. 

So, as followers of Jesus, our way of life is the way of forgiveness. Ideally, we follow the way of forgiveness because we actually know the healing and salvation that forgiveness bring. Some folks maybe don’t.

Some folks might say, “no,” to the question, have they ever felt guilty about something they did. Some may be too afraid to face it or admit it. Some are so self-absorbed that they fail to recognize the harm they’ve caused, and some may even be so self-important that they wouldn’t even care much about the harm they’ve done to others even if they did recognize it.

In any case, for folks who refuse to feel guilt or who won’t or are just too unaware to feel guilt, it may be hard to really understand the salvation given by God. Perhaps that’s why John’s baptism wasn’t just a baptism of forgiveness, but a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

With repentance, we first have to understand the harm we’ve done, actually care about those we’ve harmed. Then, we repent. We change our ways. We seek to make amends and bring healing where we can to those we’ve hurt. Repentance and then forgiveness of sins. That brings about healing and restoration. Repentance and forgiveness together are our way of life, the way of healing and love.

Unfortunately, it often feels like we’ve largely divorced repentance and God’s forgiveness from this life and made it all about avoiding punishment after this life. Then we’ve further made rules out of Jesus forgiveness. Don’t feel guilty about anything you’ve done in this life? No problem. Just believe in Jesus, and he’ll forgive you. Don’t believe in Jesus, but you seek to bring about healing through repentance and forgiveness? Well, too bad, since you don’t believe in Jesus, God is going to punish you anyway.

Here's the deal with Jesus and God’s forgiveness. Yes, God forgives us. Yes, we are given forgiveness through Jesus. Yes, we are assured of punishment for the wicked, and at the same time, yes, we get to rest secure in God’s love for us and God’s forgiveness of us. How do we fit God’s punishment of the wicked together with God’s forgiveness and love? We fit God’s punishment and God’s forgiveness and love together with trust and faith.

We trust in God’s punishment, because sometimes, when we don’t realize or don’t care about the people we’ve harmed, we need God’s punishment to give us a kick in the tail, and we need God’s forgiveness and love because that is where healing and reconnection happens. When we truly feel the weight of how we’ve harmed others, and we repent and seek amendment, we feel the release and healing of forgiveness, we have salvation here on earth.

God will one day restore all things, restoring this world so that there will be no more Hell on Earth; there will be no more of us harming one another and disconnecting from one another. One day we will all be restored, God will wipe away every tear from every eye, and we will live fully in the peace and love of restoration with God and one another.

In the mean time, God’s forgiveness and love gets to be lived. We get to live the gift of forgiveness choosing and working to release anger and hurt, to release the debt that is owed, and let forgiveness rule in our hearts. As we do, we know salvation.

Freedom and the Prisons We Carry With Us

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Emmanuel Episcopal Church
February 21, 2021
5 Epiphany, B
Genesis 9:8-17
1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15

Freedom and the Prisons We Carry With Us

So last year, during Lent in the middle of early pandemic lockdown, someone wrote, “This is the lentiest Lent I have ever lented.”  I think we might could say “ditto” at this point.  In all sincerity, we’re still in a pandemic, and we’ve just been through a winter storm that has left us without power, without water, with broken pipes, and during which some have died in their homes from hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning.

There’s a lot of work to be done to fix broken pipes and homes, and there’s work to be done with continued pandemic response, distancing, juggling school and work, juggling work and safety.  With everything going on, now we have the season of Lent?

You bet we do.  The problem with calling this “the lentiest Lent I have ever lented,” is that, while funny, it kinda misses the point of Lent and mischaracterizes Lent as a season of hum drum darkness and sadness.

Lent is a season of joy.  Joy is often thought of as happiness or merriment, a temporary reprieve from the challenges of life, and while there is joy in happiness and merriment, joy is more than that. Joy is also being set free from that which binds us.  Joy is being released from prison, and joy is the work that accompanies that freedom and release.  Joy is gratitude for that freedom, and joy is walking through the challenging times and the happy times with that freedom, freedom from whatever bind us, freedom from whatever prisons we find ourselves in. 

So Lent is a season joy because Lent is a season of repentance, a season of work, and here’s the work:  to accept the freedom Jesus proclaims and to let Jesus release us from prison.  In that freedom and release is the joy of Lent.

Peter said that “[Jesus] was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison…”  What did Jesus say?  What proclamation did he give?  I suppose we don’t exactly know what Jesus said to those spirits in prison, but my assumption is this, that Jesus’ proclamation to those spirits in prison was was the same as his proclamation to the people on Earth:  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”  To those who had died, Jesus proclamation was, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Be released from your prison, even you who have died.  That, my friends, is joy.

So Lent is a season of joy.  Lent is a time to repent and believe in the good news.  Lent is a time to listen for Jesus’ proclamation coming to us in whatever prison we are in, and to let Jesus release us from that prison.  

Perhaps some of us have given something up for Lent, a 40 day fast from something in our lives which we enjoy.  What we’re doing there is creating a tiny sorrow, a tiny longing, a tiny prison from which we want release.  We then seek Jesus’ help in this to overcome that longing.  We seek Jesus help to release us in this tiny way so we keep developing our trust and reliance on Jesus.  Giving something up for Lent is one way to practice the joy of accepting Jesus’ freedom, of accepting Jesus’ release.  

Lent is spring training for the upcoming regular season which happens…every day of our lives, ok, so bad analogy.

Another way to live Jesus’ freedom every day is to serve others.  Doing so takes us out of ourselves and our own needs, our own longings and prisons.  In serving others, we often find our problems diminished, that we are doing far better that a we thought we were.  Serving others as we turn to Jesus for guidance and strength helps to release us and give us new freedom.  

So as we have this season of joy to seek further release from our various prisons, in
what prison do you find yourself?  Fear?  Anger?  Scarcity?  Jealousy?  Feelings of discontent and raging against aspect of society that you just can’t abide?  All of these and more are the prisons we find ourselves in, and with Jesus’ help, we can be freed from all of them.  Turning to Jesus every morning in prayer, specifically asking Jesus to free us from our particular prisons.  Spending time each day in meditation to calm our minds and bodies and to give those things which imprison us over to God.  Spending time talking with others, trusted friends or small groups within our church about our prisons and the release we need and the release we have experienced.  Spending time each day with scripture, trusting and getting to know Jesus ever more fully as the one who frees us from our prisons, the one who proclaimed that the kingdom of God has come near.

Remember then also that Jesus’ message of freedom and release from prison is not only an individual message.

In what prisons do we find ourselves in our society?  Prisons of injustice, the wealthy and seemingly important given passes for crimes while many of the poor and marginalized are given heavy sentences.  Prisons of poverty which trap people who work full time for low wages in order to live in poverty.  Prisons of political discourse so  heated and polemical that people are losing their minds.  People are becoming so enraged with political discourse that they will fight, with words, with fists, with guns, even to the death in order to stop those on the other side of the political discourse.  

We have prisons of isolation, prisons in which whole communities don’t know one another, don’t care for one another, and don’t particularly want to…not out of malice, just out of fatigue and fear.  We have prisons of greed, people with so much more than they could ever need finding that it still isn’t enough to sate their desire for more, or that it still isn’t enough to calm their fears of not having enough.

We have prisons of racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and discrimination.  All of these prisons and more, we have in our society, and these are all prisons which we can work with Jesus to dismantle and set ourselves and our society free.  

We can advocate with our lawmakers for greater justice in sentencing.  We can advocate for better wages for essential workers and spend our money at organizations where we know they are paying their workers well.  We can disengage from angry political discourse and seek more civil discourse.  We can get to know our neighbors and check on them during times of winter storms and freezing pipes…many of us were doing just that last week.  We can work with organizations which strive against racism, discrimination, poverty, and injustice.  

Doing any of that work will bring us into a holy Lent and help to free us from our own prisons, as well as to help free society from it’s prisons.  Such is the joy of Lent.  Such is the joy of Jesus who came to free people from their prisons, to free societies from their prisons, to free the world from it’s prison.  Such is the joy of Jesus who came proclaiming, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”