Telling the Story
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – March 6, 2022
Telling the Story – Luke 4: 1-13
In this traditional scripture text for the first Sunday of Lent, we accompany Jesus into the wilderness for a 40 day fast. The text tells us he was famished and alone in terms of human companions. I imagine he was also downright exhausted. That’s precisely the moment when the devil comes along with three tests.
The devil offers food, power, and wealth. Now, these are not exactly bad things in and of themselves. Food sustains our living. Power is the ability to do what needs to be done. Wealth can be a basis for shared prosperity and health. As biblical commentator Dr. Nicole L. Johnson suggests, “In moderation and in the right forms, these things may be blessings from God; but in excess and in the wrong forms, they are a curse.[1]”
In other words, in each case, the devil offers Jesus plausibly healthy things by definitively harmful means. Jesus, as the foundation and model of our faith, aces these tests. It’s understandable, however, if it's quite often much, much harder for us.
We humans are mortal. We are finite. We make mistakes and cause harm to others and ourselves. We fall short of all that God intends for us.
Thankfully, we are not called to be perfect. Thankfully, we instead can follow the way of forgiveness, a practice of living in which we may develop deep, sturdy, repairable relationships with ourselves, others, and God.
At first read, perhaps this story seems to have little to do with forgiveness. But if forgiveness begins with telling the story of our hurt as Desmond and Mpho Tutu suggest in their Book of Forgiving, then I see the footprints of forgiveness written all over this scripture text. To begin with, Jesus is one who knows his own story. He knows how it began and he knows how it will end. It’s a truth he sometimes stumbles under the weight of or swears disciples to secrecy about but it’s a truth he never denies.
We humans seem to struggle mightily with stories and truths that are too hard to tell. It often seems easier in the short term to forget, to deny, to paper them over with lies or excuses instead.
In the Disney hit movie Encanto the magical family Madrigal lives in a magical casita–a little house with its own mind and its own personality. The only problem is that the foundation of the casita is growing cracks. No one in the family wants to see them. They are all too busy keeping up the perfect facade of the family Madrigal.
Only Mirabel sees the cracks and raises the alarm. She is not thanked for pointing out the problem–far from it, rather. But her noticing the cracks and talking about them are what starts the family on a journey of healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
Those cracks in our foundations, if left to fester, will eventually bring the whole house down. There are things that all of us get wrong. There is wrong that has been done to all of us. It is wise to choose carefully how we tell those stories of wrong and to whom. It can be merciful for us to wait until it's safe to process those stories. But like the cracks in the foundation, if we never tell the stories, if we never attend to them, or if we pretend they didn’t happen, they will bring us down in painful ways.
In The Book of Forgiving, the Tutus write about the experience of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the end of brutal, violent apartheid. They write about how liberating it was for victims to speak of the ways they had been harmed and to be heard by the whole community. Regardless of where their journeys took them next, the act of telling the story was an important step in the healing process.
In their book, the Tutus also share stories from around the world. For Kelly Connor from Perth, Australia, not telling the story of her own wrong nearly took her life.
When Kelly was a young driver, she hit and killed a woman with her car. It was terrible, tragic, and unintentional. She was never prosecuted in a court of law. That night her mother passed an edict that no one would ever speak of what had happened. Not telling the story haunted Kelly. She moved frequently, afraid that someone would find out what she’d done. She never developed close relationships for the same fear. And eventually she attempted to end her pain permanently. It took Kelly decades to tell the story and to begin the road to self-forgiveness.
In the scripture story, the devil tempts Jesus with unfathomable power, if only Jesus will bow down to him. But Jesus responds with his intention to worship and serve only God. We may not come face to face with the devil quite the way Jesus did in the story. But many of us face a temptation to take power and control into our own hands by refusing to tell our stories and by burying them deep, as though somehow that facade will save us.
Those stories can be painful to tell. When we have been wronged, we cannot always trust that we can tell our perpetrators without risk of further harm. When we have done wrong, we cannot always trust that our admission of guilt and our work to make amends will lead to reconciliation. What we can trust in is that God has the power to save and heal us. That power does not lie in our half-truths and carefully clung-to denials. Those things will not save us, heal us, or make us whole.
Only God can do that. And one way to let God do that, is to begin to walk the path of forgiveness by telling the stories we have to tell. Whatever those stories are for us, maybe this season is a good time to find a safe place to tell them. Telling them might be painful. But not every telling them will be more painful still.
It is possible, with the help of God, to find abundant relief from the pain of holding those stories in. In today’s scripture, the devil takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the Temple and tempts him into putting himself in harm’s way, claiming the angels will come and save him since he’s the son of God. Jesus responds, “‘It is said, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Jesus, who will go to the cross at the end of this long Lenten season, does not seem eager to put himself in harm’s way unduly.
We’re not Jesus, but maybe we can stop hurting ourselves, too. Maybe, this season, we can accept God’s help, come down off the pinnacles of our pain, and begin to tell the stories that lead us to holy healing.
Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is not weakness. Forgiveness is not easy. Forgiveness is re-membering. Forgiveness is courageous healing. Forgiveness is nothing less than joining in God’s work of bringing peace to ourselves and to the world. If we are to enjoy nourishment, to get good things done, and to share wealth, well-being, and prosperity, we too must seek these things by good and healthy means.
We will always keep making mistakes. But with God’s help, we too can deny the temptation to trust in anything other than God who holds us in the truth in all of our stories and who calls us to follow the healing path of forgiveness.
May it be so. Amen.
THE MAIN SERIES POINT: Forgiveness as a way of life in which we may develop deep, sturdy, repairable relationships with ourselves, others, and God.
[1] Dale P. Andrews, Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm and Ronald J. Allen, Editors. Preaching God’s Transforming Justice: Year C. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 127.
