Day 1602 - God is Good, All The Time

A sermon shared at First Presbyterian Church, Spring City, TN, April 30, 2017

This reflection rests upon  Acts 6:1-15, 7:1,2, 44-60, and Luke 23:33-46.  

In an earlier sermon, I said the one label that accurately describes Christians is “Easter People.” "Easter People" captures the essence of God’s act of reconciliation with Humanity.

I say act because it is a conscious one-sided action of God.  We had no authority or merit for the act. The consequence of that act for the penitent person is an inherited eternal life with God by the forgiveness of sin.

The beauty of Easter is the absolute love of God who blessed us with those two things (1) forgiveness of all sin, and (2) eternal life.  That Divine love transcends, or goes beyond, anything we can imagine because God is good, all the time. (You may be familiar with the origin of this saying. It comes. from the African-American Church as a call and response greeting abounding with grace. One greets another with "God is Good," and the other responds, "All the time." Then the greeter responds, "All the time," and the one greeted replies, "God is good!" We would do well to use it more often.)

It is a goodness that overlooks even the worst imaginable sin of a penitent person (We know all sin is an act against God). God says only, “Forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.”

Jesus made this clear in his words spoken on the cross, “Father forgive them.” It demands humility to hear “Forgive them,” because it is also a directive for Christian living. This forgiveness is an inescapable expectation of our own behavior, not only for elders and deacons, but all of us.

Those words meant something to Stephen one of the persons Peter and the disciples chose to help them with their work.  Stephen embraced those words as a way of life, even to his death. At the moment of his own death by stoning, he repeated a version of Jesus’ last words, “Father, do not hold this sin against them.”

Forgiveness did not just spring into life by the act of God in Jesus. We find forgiveness as a model of behavior even in the Old Testament, a book most of us think is symbolized by the retribution of the Law, an eye for an eye… Forgiveness appeared before the Law was even given to the Hebrews. I am sure you recall Noah. God was so disgusted with the ways of humanity, he wanted a “do-over” for humanity. But after the flood, God repented and promised never to allow his anger to go to such lengths again.

Do you recall the story of Joseph and his brothers? Joseph’s brothers were extremely envious and resentful of the favor of their father Jacob for Joseph. The brothers plotted to kill Joseph but instead threw him in an empty well and sold him to slave traders who took him to Egypt.

Over time Joseph established himself in Egypt as a powerful official of the Pharaoh. When a famine broke out throughout Israel and Egypt, Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt searching for food. They encountered this high Egyptian official (Joseph) who recognized them but they did not recognize Joseph. Joseph could have had his brothers jailed or killed, but he caused the brothers to bring father Jacob and his youngest son Benjamin to Egypt. Joseph wept uncontrollably with joy when he saw the youngest brother. In Gen. 45:5-8, we read that rather than punishing or killing them, Joseph reveals himself, saying, “(D)o not be distressed…because you sold me…for God sent me before you to preserve life, a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors…So it was not you who sent me here, but God!”

In the OT, Joseph foreshadows Easter as a Christ figure.

So how can we not say, “God is good, All the time?”

Then there was Saul who became the Apostle Paul. As a Pharisee he arrested Jewish Christians and brought them to Jerusalem for trial. Saul the stood beside the men who stoned Stephen, minding their coats while they did their dirty deed. But Jesus appeared to Saul, caused him to repent and named him Paul. God forgave and Paul took forgiveness to heart.

How could Paul not think, “God is good, All the time?”

Paul started many congregations and wrote letters to them that we read in the New Testament. Sometimes those congregations descended into quarreling and other misbehavior, even ignoring and insulting the teachings Paul gave them. Does Paul write an angry tirade to them in each letter? No, he begins this way, (Philippians 1:1-4, 9-11) “To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ… I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you…And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more …to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”

In 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 he writes, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus…, God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (In other words, “God is good, all the time.)…

How often do we let anger, resentment, and misunderstanding blind memory of the powerfully gracious act or forgiveness and gift of life on the cross by Jesus, and the bar it sets for us? Perhaps a better way to put the question is, how powerful is the loving forgiveness of a person who has wronged you?

How do we put this reality that God is good, all the time in the context of daily living? We can all look at times when things go badly, when someone does something that makes us go out of our way, makes things go really sour for us, or betrays us. We complain like Job, “Why did this happen to a good person like me? 

We voice the complaint of Gideon to the Angel of the Lord, “If the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us?” Should we give up hope in hard times and get angry?

That is what many of the Jews in Europe who suffered through the horror of the apocalypse of the concentration camps did. It was an unimaginable horror that demands extreme faith to get to forgiveness. Many abandoned hope completely in this God “who delivered them from Egypt” yet abandoned them to the German atrocities. They gave in to hatred against those who did this to them. That anger eats at them today

What about the Africans enslaved and brought throughout the Americas? They were subjected in inhumane treatment, even in the United States.  They did not have personhood in the eyes of the State, but were property, and treated that way. They, too, had every reason to abandon hope and embrace hatred.

But among some of them, a most remarkable grace emerged. Their formal religion was mostly an alien paganism, but they became Christians. Now, I’m simplifying the situation a little because slave owners forced Christianity on their slaves. But many of those who became Christian did hear the scriptures and the promise of God’s love and did not reject God in the face of despair (as easy as it was to do). They looked to him as the source of all good. 

…God is good, All the time…

They were not all docile and obedient. While they suffered under the iron fist of slavery, they adopted and created Christian spirituals as veiled protest of their masters. William Faulkner was so captivated by one of the old spirituals, he named a novel after it, “Go down Moses.”   “Go down Moses, way down into Egypt Land and tell the Pharaoh to let my people go.”

Every one of these people I’ve described had clear grounds to say, “Henry, you must be crazy to ask me to forgive. Shall I forgive the persons who stoned me to death?

Shall I forgive my brothers who sold me into slavery in Egypt separating me from my father for decades?

Shall I forgive all these congregations who turned my message inside out? Shall I forgive the slave traders, the slave masters, the Presidents, Senators, Representatives, the police and citizens who tried so hard to keep my face in the mud, to kill my brothers and sisters, and to take our wives and daughters?  Shall I forgive those citizens today who resent being reminded of that terrible history of sins?

…But they did forgive…  So I ask:

If someone who shares that heritage of evil can forgive such sins because they believe that God is good, how can we not forgive?

If someone who shares that heritage of evil can forgive such sins, why can’t we forgive a lesser sin?