As a prisoner for the Lord, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

For those of you who were not here last week and for those of you who can’t remember what happened yesterday let alone last week I’ll do a quick review because it sets the stage for this sermon.

Last week we heard of two neighbors who were once the best of friends but something happened which started a feud. Each day got worse and worse. Along came a carpenter. He quickly assessed how to handle things between the two feuding neighbors. Where the one neighbor John expected the carpenter to build an eight foot high spike fence he returned home to find a stout bridge built over the gulch that separated the two of them. In the story the two made up and all was well.

I tweaked the story a little to show us how God is our neighbor and how our sins have offended Him, how our sins have created a chasm between us, but God built a bridge between Himself and us. That bridge was and is the cross. Ellen even went and found a picture from the old Bethel Bible Series that illustrates the point.

This was a great “folkies story” and it made us all feel good, but a few of you left thinking nice story but have you seen my neighbors? Have you seen the hurt, pain, and long suffering they have visited on me? A few of us left knowing that living a life of forgiveness or forgiving isn’t all that easy. That is why we are continuing with part two of the Bridge Sermon.

A big part of forgiving others begins with looking upon the crucified and dying Jesus: He who was without sin suffered the price of our sin. He who was the innocent Babe of Bethlehem was brutally spiked to the cross and left there to die because of our sin. He who was without sin had the injustice of our punishment heaped upon Him. To understand forgiving others we need to get forgiveness into a proper perspective. We also need to see that forgiveness isn’t just something we do, but it is an attitude in keeping with whose we now are.

Who here has had some form of injustice or wrong done to them or someone they love? Who has been blindsided by life? Who here has been hurt, wrongly accused, lied about or lied to, who has been disappointed or run over by the unfairness of life? I believe we need to stand at the far side of the bridge between us and the Father. Being human our hands will most likely be filled with the laundry lists of those things- those transgressions- done to and against us. We need to stand and look at Jesus bleeding out on the cross with ledger lists of our sins and offenses against God, ourselves and others piled high around the foot of the cross. We need to watch His blood splattering down slowly and deliberately covering each sin. Of course what has been done to us will pale in comparison to what our sins have done to Jesus.

Yet in our humanness we will still hurt, some of us will still cling to that which was done to us, some of us will have a devil of a time forgiving ourselves, and some of us will have a hard time seeing how to live with those who continue to hurt us or aren’t sorry or repentant for what they have done.

I want to tell you about several people I’ve met: one was that person that if anything bad could have happened- it happened to him from childhood on, it happened time and time again. Poverty, rejection, disappointment, and humiliation were constant companions. With his perceptions and attitudes shaped by all this hurt and unfairness, he filled his hands with bitterness and unforgiveness. He shared his stories with me and to my pastoral pleas of “forgive them as you have been forgiven” he said with a cold stare, “Forgive them, Forgive Them! I’ll be dammed if I will forgive them!”

There was another person who believed she had hurt some other people. Whether she meant to or not wasn’t the issue any more. Satan kept whispering you deserve to be outside God’s forgiveness. She, too, heard the words of forgiveness of absolution but they just couldn’t seem to filter down into her life. “It would take more than the words of absolution to forgive the likes of me.”

For those who have had great unfairness and hurt visited upon them, for those whose past has a death grip on their present and future. I would share this story from C.S. Lewis’ book, The Great Divorce. It seems there was a bus that ran from hell to heaven and back. When the bus from hell arrived in heaven, the people got off and complained that the grass hurt their feet. I dare say the smells were different and offensive; the cool wind was different from what they knew and one by one they got back on the bus and returned to hell. It takes time to get use to something new. It is very hard to let go of hurt and atrocities done to us. If we empty our hands of this, what will we fill our hands with? To forgive the past isn’t easy. It will like the grass, the smells, and the cool breeze feel foreign at first. It takes some getting use to. Then it is important to take up something else, and that something else is the things of God.

By the working of the Holy Spirit your hands can be filled with the things of God: patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Gal 5.22) Is it hard, Heavens Yes!, but it is possible because it is God who is at work within us renewing and remaking us that we may forgive as we have been forgiven.

This point was driven home for me went I watched the movie, The End of the Spear, in it a boy loses his missionary father to a tribe of primitive natives in Ecuador. The son is crushed and angry. One day, years and years later he comes face to face with the man who killed his father. He has his chance at revenge. He stands holding the other man’s life in his hand- he can hurt as he has been hurt, he can take life and as his Father’s life had been taken from him, he can kill as men before him had killed, or he could forgive as he too had been forgiven.

What about those of us who have sinned grievously, sinned more or worse than the rest of you? What of those of us who have hurt another person or persons? We, too, hear the words of absolution but we some how fail to believe them or take hold of them? We think forgiveness must cost extra for us. It must take more than mere words.

In the film The Mission, Robert Denero plays a 16th century Spaniard explorer who in a fit of rage commits murder. Having confessed his sin and being a Catholic he believes he must do penance. His penance is to drag a sack filled with his armor and weapons of war wherever he goes. Long after his penance is complete he keeps dragging it- seemingly doing more hoping to merit God’s forgiveness.

Forgiveness isn’t found in our works but the work of Jesus on the cross. What he had, and what some of us have is a higher standard for forgiveness than God. How many of us go around beating ourselves up for that which has been forgiven? Jesus did not say from the cross, “It is nearly finished.” He said, “It is finished.” Your sins are forgiven. It is a done deal, “Get over it.”

Getting over it living as one forgiven, not returning to pick up the bag of our sins is tough. It is a habit and the devil is always reminding us of what he thinks we don’t deserve- the peace that comes with forgiveness. We may not feel forgiven but forgiven is what we are. Forgiveness isn’t a feeling but a reality.

Although we are fully forgiven and God is at peace with us, it takes time for most of us get the hang of it. Like those people who got off the bus in heaven, it all seemed so strange- being forgiven- but forgiven we are. Getting use to it is the work of the Holy Spirit. That work takes place when we spend time in the Word listening to Jesus, who is after all God. It takes place when we seek the fellowship of other redeemed sinners.

This side of heaven we will always be a work in progress but let us treasure the words of Psalms. My favorite is the 51stRestore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. We can be restored, remade, renewed, and refashioned by and through the hearing and study of God’s Word and His sacraments. By, through, and because of His forgiveness, we can be refashioned to forgive even the most difficult of things.

There is still much to be said about forgiveness. Some of you are living in on going hurtful situations. In weeks to come we should revisit the bridge, and talk more about that but now go and ponder all you have heard. Amen