Shouting something about forgiveness

As I look back on our church's week of outreach early last month, I feel it was well worth doing. Simply viewed from our standpoint, it was a blessing to have something to aim for during those rather empty summer weeks when most of the church's regular midweek activities come to a standstill. It was also encouraging to see how many from the church got actively involved. Not everybody could come along, of course; some could do no more than support us with their prayers. But many used their gifts of hospitality as we opened the church for different events, and a surprising number even willingly engaged in the scary activity of meeting the great unchurched public in the centre of town.

Where possible, in street outreach, you get people to talk. Some might think that all the talking is meant to be done by Christians who have something to tell everybody else. We know all the answers, you might think, and nobody else can tell us anything. But in fact it is a rare privilege to stand and listen to what others outside the church are saying and thinking.

One one occasion, as we stood out on the street in Leigh trying to engage people in conversation, a lady passed by who shouted something about forgiveness. We may never know what prompted her to do that. Within a few seconds she had passed by, and the contact was gone. It led me to think about an incident that happened some years ago which showed how little people understand about forgiveness.

It was a sordid situation where a man at a church I was minister of at the time began an affair with a woman from a neighbouring church. His wife tried desperately to keep the marriage together. She found it unhelpful that some of us, however lovingly, called a spade a spade. What the man was doing was wrong - it was no good saying anything different. But the wife's constant and reproachful demand to us was, "You must forgive - you must forgive".

For many, forgiveness is cheap, a thing to be handed out like sweets from a slot machine. Regardless of the offence against God and against people, they reckon we should excuse it, shrug our shoulders and carry on.

When Jesus Christ on the cross cried "Father, forgive", God was pouring into that act of forgiveness not only His feelings, but His very flesh and blood. For Him, every human sin is not just "one of those things", but a slap in the face, a whip on the back, a nail through the wrist.

The Sunday after the outreach, I tried to show that God's forgiveness calls forth one of the great exclamation marks in the Bible. In Romans 5:7-9 the apostle Paul exclaims, "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!"

May there be many more times in the future when as a church we listen carefully to those outside and treasure their stories. May God then give us openings to explain to them the cost and the benefit of God's forgiving love.