James 5:13-20

This is not the sermon I expected to be preaching today. I had the bulletin all done and the books I expected to read for my sermon research packed in the luggage I was taking with me to Oklahoma City. My plan was to preach on prayer. My sermons from the book of James have been about living a faithful life, and I thought that living the prayerful life would be a good conclusion.
But you will get that sermon next week, because I think it still bears preaching. But today you will hear a different sermon on faithful living – living the forgiving life.
As I was driving to Oklahoma City Monday afternoon I heard about the shootings in the school in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Then when I arrived at the ordination exam reading site one of the group's conveners greeted me and asked me if I knew about the shooting.

She thought I should know because I was scheduled to lead worship the next morning, and because some Presbyteries in our area had failed to send readers, two folks had been imported from Pennsylvania. They were from the western part of the state, but nonetheless were in grief, along with the rest of their home state. So part of our praying time the next morning was given over to that horrible tragedy.
At the reading site we had no TV and no Internet connections to the outside world, and as the week wore on folks were less and less inclined to get up early to get a newspaper. So we didn't get much news. But on Thursday, as we waited for exams to grade my table mate took time to look at his Blackberry – you know – one of those techo-gadgets that keep you informed through cell phone connections.

And he told me that he was reading about the grandfather of one of the slain girls going to visit the father of the killer, Charles Carl Roberts IV. When I got home I read the report for myself.
Dwight Lefever, a spokesman for the family of the killer's family told his story to the press. He was at the home of Roberts' father when the grandfather of one of the victims came to comfort the family. The grandfather stood there for an hour, and he held that man in his arms, and he said, 'We will forgive you,'" Lefever said. "He extended the hope of forgiveness that we all need these days."
And I read more reports. "We have to forgive. We have to forgive him in order for God to forgive us," an Amish woman told a CBS News correspondent. Over and over again people from the news media were told the same thing. For the Amish, the first step in moving forward is forgiveness, something their faith requires them to do.

In just about any other community, probably including ours, a deadly school shooting would have brought demands for tighter gun laws and better security, and the victims' loved ones would have lashed out at the gunman's family or threatened to sue.
But instead, in this community, at the behest of Amish leaders, a fund has been set up for the gunman's wife and his three children.
So often the Amish have been considered oddities, and their communities are tourist attractions, where the residents are gawked at and silently ridiculed for their backward way of living. We have many Mennonites in this area, so we are somewhat familiar with the simpler style of dress and lifestyle, but the Amish are more austere and unwilling to enter modern ways of life.

The Amish have the same roots as the Mennonites. The Mennonites had their beginning in the middle of the 16th century in Holland. Their founder, Menno Simons, had been a priest who converted to the Anabaptist faith, a part of the Protestant Reformation that advocated believers' baptism by immersion. Simons and his followers believed in a strict separation between church and state and in peaceful and simple living.
Toward the end of the 17th century Jakob Amman and his followers broke away from the Mennonites because Amman believed the Mennonites were becoming too worldly. The followers of Amman are the Amish of today. They still stay separate from the modern world, which they believe has a corrupting influence. They are pacifists and reject all forms of violence.
It was this simple, peaceful way of life that was so brutally attacked on Monday. And their response has been to forgive.

And here we are – the modern world – where every insult, no matter how minor, demands a pay back, where violence begets more violence, and forgiveness is for wimps. Not too long ago another pastor confided that he thought forgiveness to be too risky in this day and age. He said, “If you forgive someone he'll see you're weak and take even more advantage of you,”
But in the midst of this horribly violent, totally senseless situation the Amish are showing forgiveness, and no one is saying they are weak. It is being heralded as a gracious strength – yet a strength that mystifies so many.
One Amish woman explained it this way. "We can tell people about Christ and actually show you in our walk that we forgive, not just say it, but in our walk of life. You know you have to live it, you can't just say it."
And the Amish live their faith every single moment, from the way they dress, to how they do their farm and house work, to the way they travel, even the way they speak.

Every aspect of their life is defined by their faith. Everything they do is centered in their religious belief. It is their walk in life.
How many of us can say that? Do any of us live out our faith 24/7? For many Christians, they might live out their faith for an hour on Sunday morning. For others it is even less than that. Do you walk the walk of trying to live faithfully in all you do?
It's no wonder stories about the Amish ability to forgive make the headlines. Most of our lives are not steeped in our faith. We adapt our beliefs and our practice to what is convenient, what is easy, what is safe. Our faith is steeped in our way of life.
When we hear Jesus say not to forgive seven times, but seventy times seven times, we'll keep score until we reach 490 and then anything goes, even though in everything else we are far from literalists and we heard Sunday school teachers and preachers tell us Jesus really meant to forgive over and over and over....We still keep score.

When Jesus cries from the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing,” we might think, “Well, that's Jesus. He surely doesn't expect me to be that good?”
And when we pray “Forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” it is just another line we have memorized because Jesus, or more likely some Sunday school teacher, told us to, but it hasn't quite made the full trip from our head to our heart.
But I don't think Jesus means for forgiveness to be an option of convenience, or that loving our enemies is something that sounds good, but, let's face it, is just too hard, so we can skip that part.
Listen to Jesus' words from Luke 6, the Sermon on the Plain:
"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.

“Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?
For even sinners do the same.
“If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
"Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

Jesus never prefaces these remarks with “Here are some things you might want to try sometime, if it's convenient. And if it doesn't work, no big deal.” To love our enemies, to do good, to not judge others and to forgive are what Jesus expects us to do – not out of guilt, not out of fear, but out of love. Out of love for the one who gave himself in love for us.
As was said this week in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the midst of great horror, sorrow, and grief - "We can tell people about Christ and actually show you in our walk that we forgive, not just say it, but in our walk of life. You know you have to live it, you can't just say it."
You know you have to live it, you can't just say it.
Forgive us our debts, our sins, our trespasses,
as we forgive our debtors, those who sin and trespass against us.
You know you have to live it, you can't just say it.
You can't just say it.