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"Loved, Forgiven, Blessed, Healed"
The Rev. Jan Kwiatkowski
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I want to begin with a story this morning about Sally, Johnny, and the duck. Sally and Johnny were probably about our acolytes’ age. Sally and Johnny were invited to their grandparents’ farm for the summer, and they loved to go to their grandparents’ farm for the summer. And Johnny, for the first time, was given a slingshot; Grandpa gave him a slingshot. Johnny practiced everywhere. He set little cans on the fences and shot stones – missed every time. He went out into fields and tried to hit boulders, and missed every time. No matter what he did, Johnny could not hit a thing with the slingshot. So one evening, Grandma calls that it’s time for supper and Johnny comes back into the yard; the yard is where Grandma kept the ducks. Johnny, on impulse, said, well, I’m just going to take a shot, knowing I’m going to miss, I’m going to take a shot at the ducks. Lo and behold, Johnny took a shot at the ducks, and he hit a duck. He not only hit the duck, he killed the duck. He not only killed the duck, but he killed Grandma’s favorite pet duck. Johnny knew he was in trouble, and Johnny panicked. He had never done anything like this before, he had never hurt a fly. So, Johnny thought and thought, and decided, well, I’ll hide the duck in the woodpile, and maybe nobody will know. So Johnny went and he took out the logs and he tucked the duck into the woodpile and put the logs on top, and when he got up and gave a sigh of relief, he looked up and saw his sister Sally, just smiling. Sally didn’t say a word, she just stood there and smiled, and then they went in to dinner.
Well, the next day, Grandma needed help with lunch, cleaning up the lunch dishes. So Grandma asked Sally to do that, and Sally said, “But I know Johnny wants to do this so badly!” Johnny kind of looked at Sally, and Sally said, “Remember the duck.” So Johnny did the dishes grudgingly and thought he was off the hook. Suppertime came around, and Grandpa wanted to take the kids fishing, like for an hour before supper so Grandma could get supper ready. And Grandma decided she wanted some help with cutting the vegetables for supper. Grandma asked Sally to do that. Sally again said, “I know Johnny really hates fishing. He just doesn’t want to do this. He’d be happy to help you, Grandma.” And Johnny again went like, Oh, no, she’s really got me here. And Sally just said, “Remember the duck.”
Well this went on for like three days. Every task that Grandma wanted Sally to do, she volunteered Johnny. And it got really subtle now. She didn’t even have to say, “Remember the duck.” All she had to do was flap her arms a little bit, or go like this with a beak. Johnny knew she had him. But finally after three days, Johnny couldn’t stand it any more, and he went and he confessed to Grandma what he had done, that he didn’t mean it, but he had killed her pet duck and he was so sorry, he buried it in the woodpile. And what Grandma did, she took him in her arms and said, “Johnny, I love you. You have been forgiven since the moment this happened. I saw it happen. I saw you hit the duck. I saw you panic. I saw you hide it in the woodpile, and I saw your sister Sally standing there. What I was waiting for, and what I was wondering about, was how long you were going to let your sister’s voice hold you hostage before you came and asked for forgiveness.” How long you were going to let your sister’s voice hold you hostage.
This probably sounds like a familiar story in many ways, and we may have lived that story somehow in our childhood if we were older siblings. I certainly was not always the most charitable older sibling, and held some things on my brothers and sister. But we all at times have been a person who’s either needed forgiveness, didn’t know how to ask for forgiveness, or a person who’s given forgiveness. All of us have been that. And sometimes the hardest forgiveness to accept is the forgiveness of ourselves. There’s that little voice in our head, like that little Sally’s voice reminding Johnny of the duck. There’s that little voice in our head that says, “Nope, can’t be forgiven. I’m going to hold you hostage. You can’t accept forgiveness from me or from God.”
Grandma’s heart, what Johnny found was that Grandma’s heart was much bigger than any fear he had about not being forgiven. And the thing that he wanted most, all he had to do was ask for it. Grandma was more ready to give Johnny than he was to receive. And so God is more ready to give us than we are to receive. God is more ready to love and to bless and to heal and to reconcile than we are ready to ask. In the next couple weeks, during Holy Week and Easter, the whole Easter season, we are going to celebrate that amazing love, that love that is already there. We didn’t have to earn it, we didn’t have to do anything for it. That love, that forgiveness, that blessing; it is already there. And whether we’re ready or not to ask for it or to receive it, it will always remain there, until we are ready, and God will wait patiently for us to come, to be reconciled, to be blessed, to be healed.
Now the ministry of the Church is what that ministry is about. Jesus came to show us that we were loved, but Jesus also came to show us how to love, how to forgive, how to bless, and how to reconcile. That’s the other part of what Jesus did, and that’s what we who are Christians must be about: loving, forgiving, reconciling, and blessing. That is the primary ministry of the whole people of God, the whole Church, the whole people at St. Christopher’s, and each of us individually is about loving, forgiving, reconciling, and blessing. Every ministry that we do at St. Christopher’s must flow from that. Our liturgy must flow from love, forgiveness, blessing, and reconciling. Our ROOTS program, our Christian formation for adults, our outreach, our Vestry, our budget, our building, our Supper Clubs, any parties we have; everything must flow from that desire to show how much we have been loved, and forgiven, and blessed by God, and to share that with everyone. Not just the people here, but with everyone. That is what the Christian message is about. This people here at St. Christopher’s in this particular place and time is about figuring out how it is going to invite people, to show people who are not yet in this place, how to love, how to forgive, how to bless, and how they have been loved, and blessed and forgiven. And then how they all and we may all go out and bring more people in. That’s what this is all about, is letting us all know this critical message.
There is a way that I want to teach you this morning to remember that message. A lot of, when you leave here on Sunday morning, a lot of people talk about how palpable the energy is here; you can feel it, you can see it in the people, and when we have parties or gatherings, everyone talks about the great energy here. Well, that energy is about love, forgiveness, blessing and reconciling. But when we leave those doors, it’s hard to remember that, because the first values, the core values of the world are not loving, forgiveness, blessing and reconciling. So it’s hard to go out there and remember that that’s what we are about, and also that that’s what we need. So I want to teach you a palpable way to remember the energy that’s here. Find your pulse, and if someone doesn’t have one let me know, because someone’s in trouble! Got it? What is your pulse connected to, what does it remind you of? Heart, it’s connected to your heart. What is your heart the symbol of? Love, and love is of….God. Yeah, love is of God. Does everyone here have a pulse? Does everyone here have a heart? Is everyone of God? God holds this life, this heart, this pulse, of each of us individually and all of us collectively, in God’s hands. Does every person outside this building have a heart (I mean a pulse, hopefully) a heart? Every person outside this building is of God. Every person outside this building may not know that. Our job is to take this energy and take this pulse of life, our life and the life of God that lives with in us, out into the world, so that the world may be loved, blessed, forgiven, and healed.
Amen.
