Kingsley Amis, the famous British author and avowed atheist wrote, “One of the great benefits of organized religion is that you can be forgiven your sins, which must be a wonderful thing. I mean, I carry my sins around with me, there's nobody there to forgive them.”

I’m not sure if Amis was being serious. He was, after all, a very public, serial adulterer and heavy drinker with two broken marriages and was bereft of family toward the end of his life. Or he may have been employing his trademark sardonic wit.

But he has a point.

Part of the Christian faith is the belief that God forgives sins, that Jesus died for our sins, and that in confessing our sins, we are forgiven. We can start over and begin again. We are not trapped carrying around the heavy burdens of mistakes made for the rest of our lives.

We are forgiven.

We sin. That is part of being human. There are some sins in life we cannot change, cannot undo, cannot fix.

• We cannot uncommit an affair
• We cannot restore a life that we have taken
• We cannot take back words said in hate or violence that battered another human being.

In 12 step programs there is an acknowledgement of these limits in the Ninth Step which reads: “Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”  Sometimes we must leave some things alone to avoid causing further damage.

Our sins, those mistakes, what we have done, or not done, can eat away a hole inside of us leaving us empty, hollow, wanting. We walk around hobbled by regret and shame.

But our faith tells us we can be forgiven. God forgives.

Part of traditional Christian theology also states that we are forgiven through Jesus who died on the cross for our sins. Jesus’ atonement, or ultimate sacrifice, made it possible for our relationship with God to be restored. Jesus takes away our sins.

This is one way to understand Jesus’ ministry of reconciliation. Others choose to see Jesus coming to offer us a saving way, showing us through acts of love and works of justice how to live in a way that makes us whole, that heals the world. That in doing so Jesus saves us from our sins.

Either way, we believe that Jesus offers an avenue of forgiveness. We are not lost, we are not unworthy. We are forgiven. We can be set free.

In today’s gospel reading a woman walks into a fancy dinner party held in Jesus’ honor. Important religious leaders are there. Respectable people are there. And then this woman comes in, pours perfume on Jesus’ feet, and weeps, copiously, so much so that she must dry his feet with her hair.

Simon protests: “you let that sinner in here, and let her touch you?”

What is this woman’s sin? Traditionally theologians have assumed she is a prostitute--though one may wonder how Simon knows this… Has he used her services in the past for a different sort of “dinner party?”

But her sins might not be sexual at all. She might have murdered her child. She might have told her father she hated him and never reconciled before he died. She might have run off with the wrong man who then abandoned her and shamed her family. She might have stolen money and then another was blamed and executed for it. She might have renounced and rejected God and felt she could never go back, could never restore that connection.

We don’t know. It doesn’t mater.

Jesus looked into her heart and everything all laid out.  I imagine he knew what the woman had been suffering: the emptiness, the self hate, what she’d dragged around. Jesus turns to her with love and says, “your sins are forgiven, your faith has made you well. Go in peace.”

The gathered guests get upset saying “who does this man think he is who says he forgives sins!?” But that is not what Jesus says. Let’s listen again: Jesus says, "Your sins are forgiven." He does not say, "I forgive your sins," or "Your sins will be forgiven." The woman is already forgiven.

Julian of Norwich, medieval theologian and mystic, claims that we live in a state of forgiveness. We are forgiven even as we sin.

Jesus sees this woman and she knows that he sees her, truly sees her, beyond the sin whatever it may be. He loves her and she knows he loves her. As a result her tears pour out, poured out for all the self hate, the loss, the guilt the shame, the hole in her soul. The woman weeps in gratitude, in thanksgiving, in celebration of a gift she has received. Through Jesus she knows she is forgiven. And then Jesus tenderly sends her off—“your faith has made you well. Go in peace.”

It takes faith to believe that all that we hold on to, all that we are ashamed of and regret, can be healed, that we can be forgiven.

Karl Menninger, the famed psychiatrist, once said that if he could convince the patients in psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven, 75 percent of them could walk out the next day! (Today in the Word, March 1989, p. 8.)

Paul Tillich, one of the 20th century’s most influential theologians and philosophers, said that "nothing greater can happen to a human being than he [or she] is forgiven." (The New Being (1955), reprinted in www.religion-online.org).

Being forgiven is being given one’s freedom back. Being restored and made whole once again. All of us need to be forgiven.

We all sin. We sin knowingly, willingly—“well let me fudge on my taxes just a little bit, or I know I got wrong change but I don’t really want to go back in to the cashier or I’ll just transport the coke for my dealer this once. One time doesn’t matter. My wife will never find out about this weekend with my lover…”

We sin unknowingly. And we sin as part of a system, the inextricable mess of poverty, racism, global warming.

We are all guilty. We all have sin in our lives. To accept that, to take on the weight of that, can be overwhelming.
I recently read about the Journey of Freedom that is happening this summer across Canada.

“On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper extended an apology and asked for forgiveness of the First Nations, Inuit and Métis people for historic wrongs, and for the abuses many aboriginal people experienced in residential schools in Canada.”

As a result, “A national coalition of First Nations, Inuit and Metis believers in Creator God, under the guiding principles of The Covenant of the First Peoples of Canada, will take their place in a national public response.”

The organizers write: “Forgiveness is spiritual and in preparation, a Journey of Freedom will take place to aboriginal communities, churches, and regional centres throughout Canada to make ready the hearts of the people to release forgiveness. A Charter of Forgiveness will be presented to the Government of Canada, the Churches of Canada, and the people of Canada. It will also be a celebration of freedom that forgiveness imparts.  It concludes, Let God give you a vision and the means to forgive and to be forgiven; to heal and be healed; and to walk and live in FREEDOM! Come and join in the Journey of Freedom!” (www.i4give.ca)

With sins so large and so woven into society like racism and genocide done toward first nations peoples, we can feel helpless, unable to move forward. We petition God to assist in the healing of these wounds, that we might be forgiven. This doesn’t mean this is all we do—there is still antiracism work, poverty eradication, more truthful telling the stories in our history books and schools. But being forgiven keeps us from being so closed up, so defensive, so fearful of the past that we can hardly move into the future.

Confession and forgiveness are part of the Christian discipline. In our tradition we do not  have confession as a sacrament like in Catholic tradition. But confessions is part of our life together. To confess our sins to one another, both the ones against each other and the wider world, and to ask for forgiveness is a sacred task.

You may have noticed that on communion Sundays we do not have a unison prayer at the beginning of our service, but instead a prayer of confession during prayer time before communion. Before we come to Christ’s table, we ask for forgiveness of our sins, all the things that separate us from God, those things we have done or left undone. It enables us able to come to the table with a clean heart.

But sometimes folks say to me, “well, God may be able to forgive me but I can’t forgive myself. I can’t move on from my mistakes. I still feel so guilty.”

We can feel trapped in our mistakes. We can feel lost in our shattered self worth. We may be holding onto an image of ourselves as damned or damaged goods. We may be fearful of what would happen if we asked for forgiveness. Would we really be forgiven?

Yet, I ask you, if God does not hold onto your mistakes, why do you?  What is it about your guilt or your shame that is preventing you from moving forward? Is it, in some mixed up way, more comfortable to be trapped in past regrets than freed to take new risks?

Cat Stevens writes, “All things can be forgiven if we can progress.”  That doesn’t mean that we do not have to face the consequences of our actions, which are real and can be hard: legal, personal etc. But that we can be forgiven, which is separate.

God forgives us. We are forgiven people. That is the fact.

And that’s where we can get stuck when thinking about forgiveness. We mix up the fact with the feeling.

I may feel guilty, feel bad, feel unworthy, feel ashamed.

But the fact is I am forgiven.  Accepting forgiveness is an action of faith. We are called to believe it that we can lay our burdens down and move forward as God’s forgiven people.

The woman weeps not because she’s sinful. Not because she has to buy her forgiveness from Jesus by a big display of tears, but because she is grateful. Jesus has shown her the fact, she is forgiven. Her faith, her belief in that, has made her well.

Do we believe it? What would it take for us to believe it?

This is an old story in preaching circles, perhaps it is a true story, perhaps it isn’t, but the message for us is the same.

There was a family in Mexico which had a son named Pablo. There were problems in the family, there were fights, and some incident involving money and maybe even violence after which Pablo ran away from home and did not return.

Months went by with no contact. Then it was a year. Nothing. The family started to worry. The fight no longer seemed important in the face of losing their child. And so they started trying to find Pablo. They looked and looked and asked anyone they knew. Finally, they tracked him down to a certain city in Mexico. The whole family drove to the city and took to the streets and put up posters saying, “Pablo, please come home. All is forgiven. Meet us at the Palace hotel on Saturday. We love you, your family.”

When Saturday arrived the family gathered, took a deep breath, and went down to the lobby of the hotel. When they got there, they found hundreds of Pablos waiting, expectantly, hopefully. You see, each one of those men hoped that it would be their family. Each one hoped they would be the Pablo that was sought.  Each one wanted to believe they were forgiven.

“Pablo, please come home. All is forgiven. We love you, your family.”

Can you hear God calling to you in the same voice?

“Dear one, please come home. All is forgiven. Love, God.” 

Amen