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Chofu, Japan - a city not far from Tokyo - recently had to evacuate over 16,000 people when an unexploded World War II bomb was discovered.

Forgiving Yourself - Psalms 32: 1-5; 139: 23-24 - September 21,2008 - Cicero United Methodist Church - Everett J. Bassett

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            Chofu, Japan - a city not far from Tokyo - recently had to evacuate over 16,000 people when an unexploded World War II bomb was discovered. Bomb squads came in and were able to disengage the bomb in just a few minutes; but more than one observer commented on the irony that all those people were living with an unexploded bomb for over 60 years, and then its discovery turned their lives upside down, at least for a while.

            That image struck me as I continue along this preaching series about forgiveness, and especially today, as I preach about forgiving ourselves. Many of us have unexploded bombs of guilt inside us. We can keep them buried through many ordinary times. And then something brushes off the dirt - a song, a reunion, a big event, an unthinking comment - and our feelings are turned upside down, or we get that dreadful heaviness at the pit of our stomach that reminds us that guilt has not gone away. It is still there holding on and waiting for ways to surface. Somebody has called guilt, "The gift that keeps on giving." And many people experience it just that way.

            Two of the great novels of our time deal with this idea of carrying unexploded bombs of guilt. Both have been made into powerful movies. One of them is Saint Maybe, by Anne Tyler, in which a young man, Ian Bedloe, indirectly causes the death of his brother. During the dreadful journey of shame that follows, he happens upon a worship service of the Church of the Second Chance. At one point, Ian says to the pastor of that church, "Don't you think I'm forgiven?" And the pastor responds, "Goodness, no, you can't just say 'I'm sorry, God'. Why, anyone could do that much. You have to offer 

reparation ... concrete, practical reparation." And the rest of the book is about the way Ian tries to offer concrete reparation for the death of his brother.

            Then the second novel is Atonement, by Ian McEwan, about a young girl named Briony Tallis, who carelessly destroys the happiness of two people she loves. And the purpose of her life, too, is to try to atone for this awful sin she committed. It turns out the best she can do is to write a story where everything turns out for the better, but even then she writes, "I was not so self-serving as to let them forgive me." What she means, I think, is that she could not forgive herself. The unexploded bomb of guilt is still there, strong and dangerous.

            I think both of those books touch upon the very heart of our humanity, and one of our biggest personal questions: what do I do with my shame over things I've done in my life? How do I heal the hurts I've caused? There are many times in life when we are called to forgive other people for things they've done to us. Those times are often not easy. But as hard as that can be, many people would testify that the hardest person in the world to forgive is yourself. Shame and guilt are awful crosses to carry.

            Oddly enough, shame has its place. Philosopher Charles Taylor has written, "Civilization is in a sense a matter of feeling shame in the appropriate places." Without shame over some areas of life, we wouldn't be civilized. Dr. Joyce Brothers goes even farther. She says that there is good shame and bad shame. This difference is at the heart of my sermon this morning. Good shame, she says, gives you new insight about yourself; encourages you to make improvements; expands your value system; makes you more sensitive to others; and makes you want to elevate the culture around you.

            But there is also bad shame, and here are the results: bad shame attacks you as a person; eats away at self-esteem; evokes an angry response; gets passed along to your children; and leaves you feeling helpless. What I'd like to remind us of today is that our faith has an answer for that helplessness.

            Shame appears early in the Bible; it is represented by Adam and Eve's nakedness.

When they were sinless, their nakedness represented innocence and freedom. But once they had sinned, their nakedness turned to shame. (Or, as I recently read, Adam and Eve had an insurance problem. When the chips were down, they found that they weren't covered.) And look at what bad shame did to Adam and Eve - they could no longer face God, were ashamed to be naked in front of each other, scapegoated their guilt on one another, lied, were punished by God, and, finally, had to leave paradise. And they started a whole chain-reaction of sin and violence - one of their sons killed another, and so on. That's the human story introduced in Genesis in the Bible, and it's all too familiar to us­ - we see the story of Adam and Eve everywhere - sin, violence, shame.

            But the Bible is more than just the story of human shame; it's also the story of how God's grace always outlasts human shame. We see it again and again: Cain murdered Abel, but then God protected Cain. Evil grew so pervasive in the world that it needed to lie wiped out with a flood; but God protected Noah's family. Jacob was deceitful and selfish, but God allowed him to return home. Over and over again, grace outlasts guilt.

            No wonder the Psalms sing out with words of overflowing joy: "Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to 'whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit." The greatest happiness in life - the greatest peace in life - is to be able to stand before God with no deceit, nothing hidden, no lies needing to be told - and to know that your sin is covered. That's the grace the Bible is all about; and of course it reaches its ultimate form in the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus, who came specifically to seek out sinners and to give his life so that sin could be covered forever.

            As I said last week, this is where forgiveness begins - knowing that God has already forgiven us, has already sent his Son for us, has already received the ultimate sacrifice to cover our sins forever, and that grace has outlasted guilt. God is like the loving father who waits on the doorstep to welcome back with joy his wayward child.

            Accepting that assures us that we are justified in God's eyes. But, of course, that doesn't always mean that the bomb is dismantled. That doesn't mean that inner shame goes away. I believe, as I said last week, that God's forgiveness is instantaneous, because it is already waiting there in God's heart. But even accepting that, it can take a long while for the forgiveness of God to wash over our lives. God can forgive us much more readily than we can forgive each other. And, even light years beyond that, God can forgive us much more readily than we can forgive ourselves.

            But I think that's where the idea of good shame can serve us. In the two books 1 mentioned, neither main character - Ian Bedloe in Saint Maybe, and Briony Tallis in Atonement - ever forgot what they had done. The memory stayed with them, the pain stayed with them, though numbed over time. But the healing they experienced turned bad shame into good shame, each in his or her own way.

            And maybe that's what God's healing does. We are all sinners - that's a given in life. We have all said and done things that have hurt others and ourselves. As an old Communion prayer of confession says, 'The memory of these things is grievous unto

us." And God does not desire that we live in that grief. And while the memory of those shameful things will always be with us, maybe what God wants to do is to turn that shame into a positive force in our lives. So let me reiterate one more time the difference Dr. Brothers points out: bad shame attacks you as a person, eats away at your self-­esteem, evokes an angry response, gets passed along to your children, leaves you feeling helpless. That's the unexploded bomb inside you. But perhaps what God has in mind is changing that into shame that gives you new insight about yourself, encourages you to make improvements, expands your value system, makes you more sensitive to others, and makes you want to elevate the culture around you.

            I have to believe that all of us, at one time or another, have needed to struggle with the issue of forgiving ourselves. All of us have things we're ashamed of: Our faith tells us that God has already forgiven those things. Perhaps there is part of us that wishes we could just close our minds and make those things go away. But maybe that's not the answer. Maybe the answer instead is to ask God to turn those dark things within us into new insight, improvements, expansion, sensitivity, and elevation. I think that ties in closely with what the pastor in Saint Maybe meant when he said that it takes more than just God's forgiveness - it takes concrete steps toward repairing what we've done.

            It takes time to take those concrete steps of reparation - sometimes it takes a whole life. But there is a Church of the Second Chance. And somewhere along that journey of repairing what we've done, we learn to forgive ourselves at last; and even more important, we become people of sensitivity and faith and spiritual power. It seems like a lot to hope for; it seems like a miracle. But we are talking about a God who turned Good Friday shame into Easter power; surely God can do that inside you and me.

I'm going to invite you now to pray for that transforming power. I'm going to invite you in these next few moments to place what shames you into God's hands - God has already forgiven, but it still has power over you. What I suggest is that you ask God to make that into Easter power that brings life out of death and hope out of despair - not crucifixion power that kills us slowly inside - but Easter power that brings a new day of life and hope and shows us, as we work to repair the past however we can, how to forgive ourselves.