I’D RATHER SEE A SERMON…
I’ve been reading a book of late entitled Amish Grace that was loaned to me by Cathy O’Shea. It’s really the story of how the Amish community at Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania forgave Charles Carl Roberts for shooting ten little girls in an Amish schoolhouse. I think it also personifies verse 22 of the passage I read from the book of James. James writes, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” The book reveals the power of living what we believe. Listen to this.
In late October of 1991, Aaron and Sarah Stolzfus were joined together in holy matrimony. Following traditional Amish honeymoon custom, they went to visit extended family for a little while. One Sunday afternoon they were returning home – as you might suspect – by way of horse and buggy.
That very same day, seventeen-year-old Joel Kime came home from church, grabbed a bite to eat, then headed off to a soccer game with his brother and two friends. Driving his family’s old AMC Concord – and eager to show off its power – he had already hit 70 miles an hour as he crested a hill on a narrow country road. Up ahead was Aaron and Sarah’s horse and buggy, but Joel Kime decided to blow right past them. At the last instant, Aaron and Sarah’s horse turned left…and Joel Kime couldn’t avoid them. Sarah died in the hospital that night.
On Monday evening – the day after the accident – Joel Kime’s parents took him to Aaron and Sarah’s house. He had never been to an Amish home before, and he was afraid of what they might do. Much to his surprise, Aaron’s grandmother hugged him and expressed her forgiveness. So did Aaron’s father. It happened again when Sarah’s parents put their arms around him and said, “We forgive you.” Joel Kime himself said, “It was unbelievable. It was totally, absolutely amazing. I cannot express the relief that floated over me.”
In a back room of the farmhouse Kime met Aaron, the shattered husband, staring at his deceased bride in a wooden coffin. Kime said, “How can I ever repay you?” Kime describes what happened next this way. “He simply forgave me. We hugged as the freedom of forgiveness swept through me.”
Even at his trial, the Amish people wrote letters to the judge, begging for his pardon. Legally it was impossible for the judge to acquit Kime, but because he was a minor, he did manage to avoid prison.
The relationship between Kime and the Stolzfus family continued. They got together about once a year in each other’s houses. Five years after the accident, Kime invited them to his own wedding. They came for the ceremony and the reception, bearing gifts. Later, Kime and his wife became missionaries overseas, and the Stolzfus family helped support them financially.
That, my friends, is the power of forgiveness. That’s what it means to be doers of the word and not hearers only. We see how it literally transformed the transgressor. He ultimately became a missionary overseas.
So we’ve seen how forgiveness – living one’s faith – can transform the transgressor. But what about the transgressed? What does forgiveness – or living one’s faith – do for the one who was hurt?
To answer that question, let’s take a look at the Nickel Mines shooting itself. Charles Carl Roberts, a local man who drove a milk truck, burst into the school on Monday, October 2, 2006. I’m not going to go into all the gory details. Suffice it to say that Roberts shot ten little girls, and five of them did not survive. Roberts then, of course, turned the gun on himself.
Shortly thereafter, the Amish community got to thinking about how devastated Charles Roberts’ family must be. They went to them and they forgave them. The Amish gave money to help the family out. Many of them even attended Charles Roberts’ funeral. As one of the Amish ministers put it, “If I hold a grudge for one day, it is bad. If I hold it for two days, it’s worse. If I hold a grudge for a year, then that man is controlling my life. Why not just let go of the grudge now?”
Like I said, forgiveness can transform the transgressor. I think we can also clearly see that forgiveness transforms the transgressed. It keeps us from becoming bitter. It keeps us from dwelling on thoughts of hatred or vengeance or anger. No one’s spirit can be at peace when such thoughts fill one’s mind. Forgiveness transforms the transgressed as well.
That does not happen overnight, of course. According to Everett Worthington, author of the book Forgiveness and Reconciliation, there are actually two types of forgiveness. There is decisional forgiveness, and there is emotional forgiveness. Decisional forgiveness is essentially the decision not to act out of bitterness or revenge. In other words, it is a conscious choice. But that doesn’t always leave us feeling that we’re over the injustice.
That’s where emotional forgiveness comes into play. Emotional forgiveness happens when negative emotions – things like resentment, or hostility, or even hatred – are replaced by positive feelings. Thus, perhaps we could say that forgiveness is both a short-term act and a long-term process. In fact, the initial decision to forgive may actually spark the emotional change. A decision to forgive does not mean a victim has erased bitter emotions, but I think it does mean that emotional transformation IS more likely to follow.
Of course, the Amish look at this a little bit differently than do most Protestants. The Amish come out of the Anabaptist tradition. Anabaptist literally means “rebaptizer.” At the time of the Reformation, many Anabaptists were persecuted; some were even burned at the stake. Thank God we don’t settle our differences that way any more!
Most Protestants believe that we forgive because we have been forgiven. We call it the doctrine of justification. By the grace of God in Jesus Christ, we have been forgiven. Anabaptists believe that they must forgive in order to be forgiven. To us, that’s salvation by works, but the Anabaptists have good reason for believing what they do.
What do we say every Sunday morning when we recite the Lord’s Prayer? We say, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” To the Anabaptist, the failure to forgive means that they will not be forgiven themselves. We are asking God to forgive us in the same manner that we forgive other people. It’s a pretty sound line of reasoning, don’t you think? It is clearly a call for us to live the faith we profess. It is clearly a call to be doers of the word, and not hearers only.
This business of being doers of the word and not hearers only has been on my mind a lot lately. Specifically, I’ve been wrestling with the issue of where we went wrong. We had a fabulous vision a number of years ago when we called an Associate Pastor for Congregational Life and an Associate Pastor for Congregational Care. As someone said in one of our cottage meetings, “We’ve done all these things before, just not at the same time.” It seemed like a vision come from God. If we made one mistake, I thought, it was that we tried to be all things to all people. In any case, it did not work. And I’ve been trying to understand why. Why did God allow us to fail?
I came across a pertinent article from The Alban Institute entitled, “The Bi-vocational Congregation.” I want to read a little bit of that article to you now. It says:
Any garden-variety atheist, agnostic, or even religiously indifferent materialist knows that if – and we do mean if – the church is to survive well into the future…it won’t be through a linear extension of today’s church. Every index of the church as it has been indicates a decline, and many indicate a precipitous decline. So what might tomorrow’s different church look like?
We believe the bi-vocational congregation offers a viable model for tomorrow’s church. A bi-vocational congregation is a local church that operates upon two callings: the calling of function and the calling of mission. We believe the bi-vocational congregation is more likely to survive into tomorrow to do God’s will and be God’s people because it is essentially organized around spiritual realities in tune with God’s redemptive work.
So what is the problem? Perhaps we’ve become too reliant upon paid staff to do the mission for us. Maybe we need to become doers of the word and not hearers only. Maybe every single member of this church needs to find a mission of his or her own.
Lyle Schaller, the guru on church growth and leadership in the 1980s,
once said, “People used to join the church and say, ‘How can I help this church meet its needs?’ Today people join the church and say, ‘How can this church help meet my needs?’” Do you see how we’ve turned it around? Do you see how the culture of consumerism has gotten it backwards?
You’re going to hear more about this in the days and weeks that lie ahead. We need to become doers of the word and not hearers only. We need to live the life of faith we profess, rather than try to get by by doing the least we can. So I’m just going to end this sermon with a poem by a man named Edgar Guest. I modified it a bit, but listen closely to the words just the same.
I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day.
I’d rather one would walk with me than merely tell the way.
The eye’s a better pupil, and more willing than the ear.
Fine counsel is confusing, but example’s always clear.
The best of all the Christians are those who live the creed,
For to see good put in action, is what all the world needs.
I can soon learn how to do it if you let me see it done.
I can catch your hands in action, but your tongue too fast may run.
And the lecture you deliver may be very wise and true,
But I’d rather get my lesson by observing what you do.
And all the world can witness that the best of guides today,
Are not the ones that tell them, but the ones who show the way.
Amen.
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