…but it’s kinda close. Read on to find out more!
Luke 7:36-8:3; Galatians 2:15-21; Psalm 32; 2 Samuel 11:26-12:10,13-15
Five year old Gabriel was excited to shoot hoops with his dad. “Ready dad?” “Just one more minute, Gabe. I have to make a phone call, you go on out there and practice and I’ll be right out.” “Okay,” he answered as he trotted to the driveway, basketball in hand. A few minutes passed and he had a great time shooting hoops, though none of them actually reached the basket. He pretended he was a famous basketball player and the outcome of the game depended on him. “He shoots, he…..uh oh……”, the ball slammed through the window with a loud CRASH. Gabriel ran to the scene. He saw his dad inside, still on the phone, unaware of the incident. “I better clean this up” he though. He picked up a piece of glass. It cut his finger. Tears streamed down his face. His finger hurt but he was more afraid that his dad would be mad. He and mommy just had new windows put in. They were so clean, that you could see into the house without streaks.
I wish I could take credit for this story, but it’s one I stumbled across on the internet. (http://www.faithwriters.com/article-details.php?id=67761) It reminds me a little bit of King David. He did some really bad things before Nathan shows up in our Old Testament reading. First he stayed in Jerusalem during the time when “kings go off to war”. Then he saw a woman taking a bath. Then he sent a messenger to go and get her. Then they had an adultery moment. Then she found out she was pregnant.
So things were looking pretty bad for David. Under the law, he had already committed a capital offense, but instead of confessing his sin, he tried to cover it up. First he ordered Uriah home in hopes that circumstances would come together that he would think the child was his, but even after getting Uriah drunk he still wouldn’t go home. So instead, he had Uriah killed in battle and took Bathsheba to be his own wife, in a sense hoping no one would notice. And then the text says, “The thing David had done displeased the Lord”. How’s that for an understatement.
Paul also knew what it was like to displease God, especially after hearing from Jesus on the road to Damascus, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” The woman who anointed Jesus’ feet knew what it was to displease God. They both knew that they were sinners, but then something very different happened.
Gabriel’s dad walked outside. “Gabe, what happened?” “Don’t be mad!” he cried! “I was making the winning basket but it ended up going into the window! Am I in trouble?” “It’s only a window, I’m just glad you’re ok.” Gabe held up his finger. “I tried to clean the glass by myself.” “Uh oh, we better get that fixed, buddy.” He picked up his son, and took him into the house to clean his finger and put a Superman band aid on it.”
When God sees us, even in our sinfulness, he doesn’t yell at us. He sees what we had done, and forgives us. Even with David, when God was noticeably angry, David didn’t have to take the punishment for his sin. That’s not to say the consequences weren’t there, but he didn’t get the death he deserved under the law. Paul had to still deal with the consequences of his actions – when he first became a Christian neither Christians or Jews particularly trusted him – but God still used him to spread the Gospel to many nations and peoples. The sinful woman, even while anointing Jesus’ feet, took criticism because of the life she has lived from the Pharisee at whose house Jesus was eating. But all received forgiveness.
“Dad?” “Yeah buddy?” “I’m glad you forgave me.” “Of course, Gabe”. “You’re my son. And we all make mistakes” “Do I have to be punished?” “Well,” answered his dad. “Fall is coming up, how about you help your dad rake the leaves, and that will help pay for the window.”
The question in this story from the son, “Do I have to be punished,” brings up some interesting thoughts about how forgiveness works. To put it in context of the story, the breaking of the window is forgiven, but the window is still broken. In David’s case, the most serious part of what happened because of his sin was, curiously enough, in the 2 verses we skipped in the Old Testament lesson. Because he took another man’s wife in secret, his son would take his own wives in a very public way. The rest of 2 Samuel describes in detail the chaos that happened in David’s family because of this sin.
The sinful woman in the Gospel, though forgiven of all her sin, still had to work through the consequences of that sin – rebuilding her reputation, dealing with the accusatory glances of others – but she could do that from a place where she knew God had forgiven her. The sin is washed away white as snow, but (in David’s case) Uriah was still dead.
But even those consequences are nowhere near as serious as the punishment our sin deserves under the law. David deserved death by his own admission, both for adultery and murder. But David lived on, and the son he later had with Bathsheba turned out to be his successor to the kingdom, Solomon.
“But”, his dad grinned-“we better put that ball in time out. It knows the rules, no basketball in the house!” Father and son both laughed. “Dad,” said Gabe. “Yeah buddy-” “I’ll race you to the driveway!” “Yeah, I bet with all that practice, you’ll beat me at basketball today.” So Gabe and his dad spent the Saturday afternoon shooting hoops and having fun.
In a humorous way, the basketball knew that once forgiven, it shouldn’t just go and do the same sin over again knowing it’ll be forgiven again. That’s what Paul is talking about in Galatians. We can’t take advantage of forgiveness and keep breaking God’s law, instead we look to the law as our response to the forgiveness God has given us. Because we were forgiven, the common sense thing to do is to not need to be forgiven again. We don’t follow the law to try to earn forgiveness, we follow the law because God forgave us.
Of course, the other response to forgiveness is that of the sinful woman – praise and worship of God. She broke a large jar of perfume over Jesus feet out of gratitude for forgiveness. David wrote Psalm 32 in response his being forgiven. “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.” And the basketball stayed outside with the father and son.