August 27, 2006 Sermon

Guilt Bites Back
Genesis 44:1-17

Last February twenty students at East Grand Rapids High School were suspended for drinking alcohol. According to a story in the Grand Rapids Press, administrators learned of the students’ misdeeds from the Internet. These young scholars had posted pictures of themselves drinking on their MySpace and Facebook web pages. Parents of other students saw the pictures and reported them.

In a thoroughly modern twist, three parents of appealed their children’s sentences. They claimed that the parents who turned them in had an impure motive: their kids played on the same sports teams but did not see much action because the suspended students were better athletes. When the school did not reduce the penalty the parents of the suspended students complained to the newspaper. EGRHS principal Patrick Cwayna commented, “This may be the biggest problem we face today. Parents who make excuses for their kids no matter what they have done. They’re never guilty. They’re misunderstood or it’s unfair. Don’t think their children don’t pick up on this.”

The Indiana Hall of Fame basketball coach at the high school Linda and I attended retired two winters ago in his mid-fifties. A reporter for an Indianapolis television station commiserated with him during an on-air interview about the pressure to win. “That’s not why I’m leaving,” the coach answered. “I’m leaving because I’ve done this long enough. And some of the parents have gotten to be more than I can deal with.” This from a man whose team once lost in the state Final Four because he made his best player sit after breaking a team rule. His parents supported the coach, but many do not. In fact, our culture has embarked on a forty-year-old project to deny guilt. We must not judge. We must not accept guilt, nor may we infer guilt for others.

The Bible takes the opposite approach. From cover to cover scripture plainly tells us: We’re guilty. We’re sinners. Thank God, however, that this is only half of the biblical message. Scripture adds: We’re forgiven. We’re guilty; we’re forgiven. Praise God!

We have reached a turning point in the story of Joseph. In Genesis 44 he, the man Pharaoh has placed in charge of all Egypt, sends his Hebrew brothers home with grain to survive the famine. This makes the second time they have come to buy food. The first time Joseph had his men secretly return the money his brothers had paid for the grain. This time, Joseph has his servant plant a silver cup in the youngest brother’s grain sack. When Egyptian soldiers pursue the unsuspecting brothers and conduct a search of their baggage, they discover the “stolen” cup.

Hauled back to Egypt, the brothers face a life-or-death situation. Do they plead unfair treatment? Do they try to blame others? Not on their lives. Judah, one of the oldest brothers, says: “What can we say? All of us are now your slaves and not just the one with whom the cup was found.” Judah wants to protect his youngest brother. He has pledged to their father to protect Benjamin at all costs. But he tries to shield his brother not by denying his guilt—like those athletes’ parents in Grand Rapids—but by leading all eleven brothers in accepting their collective guilt. They do not know how the cup got in Benjamin’s sack. They probably do not believe he is guilty. But they’ve become stand-up guys.

We could certainly use more stand-up behavior today. Remember the first half of the biblical message: We’re guilty. We’re sinners. We may not have stolen silver cups or gotten caught drinking underage, but we’re guilty of something. In fact, we’re guilty of something on a daily, a constant, basis. We are sinners. But do we admit our guilt?

Let us return to Grand Rapids. This past Tuesday a woman, running late for a connecting flight, accidentally entered the gate area through an exit hall. The security guard, distracted by another passenger, did not notice. When the woman realized what she had done, she turned herself in to a uniformed guard. Two flights were delayed, including hers. After conducting a background check on her, the authorities did not press charges—though they could have had her arrested on a felony warrant.

The New Testament book I John tells us, “If we confess our sins, (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from unrighteousness.” Not, “If we are sinners,” but, “If we confess our sins.” The woman at the Grand Rapids airport had the courage to admit her mistake. If only the athletes whose parents made excuses for them had, instead, made them take responsibility for their misbehavior they might have learned a life-changing lesson: the only way to overcome our guilt is to admit to it. We’re sinners; we’re forgiven. Praise God!
Ironically, Joseph’s brothers were not guilty of stealing grain or his silver cup. Joseph manipulated events to make them appear guilty. But the brothers did bear a terrible burden of real guilt. Years before, they had faked Joseph’s death and sold him into slavery. They had ripped his coat from his back, smeared it in an animal’s blood, and taken it home for their father to weep over. Now Joseph makes sure the bill for their sin comes due. It looks like revenge. But Joseph has a method behind his madness. He does not want to destroy his brothers; he wants to bring the family together—in Egypt. It turns out this is what God wants, too.

We’re guilty; we’re forgiven. Joseph was guilty. Joseph’s brothers were guilty. We all sin. But when we admit our guilt we experience the incredible freedom of forgiveness. This freedom has far greater power than the temporary relief that comes from trying to avoid responsibility for our sins. When we try to deny our guilt it stays with us, hanging over us. One family of my cousins used to have a way of saying, whenever somebody did something wrong, “God will get you for that.” This bothered me. It scared me a little, especially in my childhood. We did not say that in my family. Now I understand why. God does not lie in wait to “get us.” God waits to forgive us. When we confess our sin, God erases our guilt.

Genuine confession brings real healing. Unless and until the Roman Catholic Church confesses its guilt in hiding the sins of those priests who sexually abused children, neither the church nor those children and their families can truly heal. Unless and until our own congregation adopts this rule of confession, not denial, we cannot hope to experience the freedom that will empower us to become the church God wills us to be.

Do not get me wrong: I know of no deep, systematic sins in the life of the Northern Lakes Community Church. But I know of hundreds, nay thousands, of sins that you and I have committed—often against each other. We have a choice to make. Shall we try to employ denial and the quiet courtesy that ignores smaller injuries to get by; or shall we aim to become the congregation God calls us to be? Only the freedom that comes from confession and forgiveness will give us that kind of breakthrough to greatness.

I do not call upon us to wallow in guilt. Neither the church nor the lives of the people in it can benefit from that. I call, instead, for us to confess our sins forthrightly. We can see the damage denial does when parents use it to advance their children’s position on a sports team. Can we not see the potential for damage if we act the same way at church?

We’re guilty; we’re forgiven. God makes it possible. Confess your sins to God Almighty and experience the freedom that results. Let the freedom that flows from forgiveness wash over your personal life, and over the corporate life of our church.