Acceptance
September 15th, 2024 “Acceptance” Rev. Heather Jepsen
Summer Sermon Series: Special Request Summer
Luke 23:33-35 and Psalm 31
Friends, this morning is our final sermon in the Summer Sermon Series: “Special Request Summer”. I am combining two different requests I received with the major story of my life right now, which is my upcoming amputation. This sermon is on “acceptance” and will address the requests I got for sermons on “forgiveness” and on “grief”. When I return from surgery, I will preach lectionary readings again because they are much easier to prepare. But don’t worry if I missed your topic this summer, we will return to this theme next year and I am keeping all those remaining requests in my desk.
As you might have guessed, our first reading, about Jesus on the cross, is our nod to forgiveness. “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” How could Jesus forgive his executers the moment he is hanging on the cross? It baffles the mind.
There is some controversy around this verse. If you are reading in a pew Bible, you might notice that the verse is in brackets. That is because half of our old manuscripts have it and half of them don’t. So, scholars wonder, did a scribe add it? Or is it original to Luke and a scribe left it out?
I am of the opinion that it is original to Luke because it so closely aligns with the rest of this gospel. In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus teaches “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” And later with the disciples Jesus teaches “Even if the same person sins against you seven times a day . . . you must forgive.” And when Stephen is stoned in the book of Acts, also written by this author, he prays, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
So, we know that forgiveness is part of the Christian life, modeled to us by disciples and messiah alike. But it is so dang hard! I have learned to view forgiveness as acceptance. It is about accepting that bad things have happened, that you have been hurt by someone, and that nothing can fix it. You accept, you let your anger go, and you move on.
I think that holding on to anger and resentment over past hurts is like balling our hands up into fists. But then we just punch ourselves. It only hurts us. It does not hurt the person we are angry with. It only makes our life worse to live that way.
This is really Buddhist thinking and one of my favorite Buddhist writers, who I have shared here before in the pulpit, Sharon Salzberg, puts it this way:
“When our minds are full of anger and hatred toward others, in fact we are the ones who are actually suffering, caught in this mind state. But it is not so easy to access that place inside of us which can forgive, which can love. In some ways to be able to forgive, to let go, is a type of dying. It is the ability to say, I am not that person anymore, and you are not that person anymore.” Forgiveness allows us to recapture some part of ourselves that we left behind in bondage to a past event. Some part of our identity may also need to die in that letting go, so that we can reclaim the energy bound up in the past.”
OK, acceptance and forgiveness are necessary for grace and healing. Public service announcement here, this is not about staying in an abusive situation. If you are not safe at home or elsewhere get out and get help. We can talk about forgiveness later.
Now, on to grief. Our text for grief is the Psalm I read, Psalm 31. This is a prayer for help, and it combines lament and trust. Much like our actual prayers, the writer vacillates between the two positions, bemoaning life circumstances and placing trust in God.
The American Psychology Association describes grief in this way:
“Grief is the anguish experienced after significant loss, usually the death of a beloved person. Grief often includes physiological distress, separation anxiety, confusion, yearning, obsessive dwelling on the past, and apprehension about the future. Intense grief can become life-threatening through disruption of the immune system, self-neglect, and suicidal thoughts. Grief may also take the form of regret for something lost, remorse for something done, or sorrow for a mishap to oneself.”
I think we have all experienced times of grief. Grief for the loss of a beloved person or animal, the loss of a job or dream, the loss of health, or the loss of financial comfort and safety. Grief over things we have done in the past, or over things we didn’t do that we should have. There is a lot to grieve in our lives.
While it is important to feel our feelings, we can’t let ourselves become trapped in grief. The psalmist says “my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing, my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away.” If we allow grief to overwhelm us, it threatens our very life.
Again, I council acceptance. Just like forgiveness, grief is wishing life was a different way. It is wishing for things that are past and gone. It is wishing to change things that cannot be changed. To wallow in that feeling, to harbor and grow it, to feed it, to nurture it, is to keep ourselves trapped in the past. We need to let ourselves say yes, I am sad, that was sad, I wish it was different, but it just is, and we move on.
The Psalmist uses their faith to do this. God is my rock, my refuge, my strength. Even though life is hard, still I have God. The goodness of God is abundant, the shelter of God’s love is secure. I don’t have to be Ok with what is happening, pain or sadness, but I can simply rest in God. Be strong, let your heart take courage, wait for the Lord.
Again, I lean on the Buddhist tradition for support here. Sharon writes:
“Sometimes it is hard to embrace the painful, difficult times as being part of that whole, to feel as connected to those harsh events as we do when things are pleasant, easy, and fortunate. But really our lives are composed of continual change without ceasing. What the ancient Taoists called “the ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows” come and go over and over again. As the Buddha said, pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute constantly arise and pass away, beyond our control.”
“This is the very nature of life. No one in this world experiences only pleasure and no pain, and no one experiences only gain and no loss. When we open to this truth, we discover that there is no need to hold on or push away. Rather than trying to control what can never be controlled, we can find a sense of security in being able to meet what is actually happening. This is allowing for the mystery of things: not judging but rather cultivating a balance of mind that can receive what is happening, whatever it is. This acceptance is the source of our safety and confidence.”
I would add that I find this acceptance with the presence of God. This is what I understand to be the meaning of faith. God is with me and I will be OK, even when life is hard.
And so, my friends, I imagine you can see where this is going. On Tuesday a part of my body will leave me forever. It has been a good foot for 46 years and has walked miles and miles in mostly beautiful and some not so beautiful places. It is not my foot’s fault, or my fault, or even your fault that it got sick. It just happened. And so, I will kiss it goodbye and move on to the next part of my life. It will be a hard transition for sure, but like a butterfly, I will cocoon for a while and then emerge as something new and wonderful. This is the cycle of life.
Acceptance. I believe that is the key to moving forward through forgiveness, and grief, through pain and disappointment. When we let go of our need to control things and just accept things the way that they are, we can stop fighting and relax. Like the Psalmist and like Jesus we can pray “Into your hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit” and we can just let God take care of the rest. Amen.
