forgiveness – Wicomico Presbyterian Church

The Heart of the Matter

There is a story by Graham Greene called The Heart of the Matter. It takes place during the Second World War in an unnamed British colony in Africa. Greene does a very effective job of showing what a difficult cultural experience it was for everyone involved. Those who felt the oppression of British rule, of course, but also the peculiar discomforts of the British working in this foreign land. There was much talk about the weather – far too hot and humid and sunny for the English, except during the rainy season, six months when they all fear they may drown. There was the malaria, which seemed to be an inevitability for anyone who was there long enough, and apparently no treatment for it except quinine. So, lots of gin and tonics. And there was the overwhelming level of distrust – which went in every direction, and this is where we see the real problem. The distrust, the constant tendency to be suspicious of others’ […]

The Blessing Way

Micah 6:1-8 Matthew 5:1-12 There is a movie called Hashtag Blessed. It’s about a young woman who is miserable in her life for a variety of reasons, but one key cause is that she is trying to live her life through the lens of Instagram. And that is a lens that is almost guaranteed to make you feel like your life doesn’t measure up. She scrolls through and sees a picture from a friend who just got a new car! #blessedlife! Other friends looking fine in their fancy clothes, hanging out in elegant places, surrounded by dazzling, glittery things – #blessedlife! Real life just doesn’t measure up to that for most of us. Sometimes we are a little confused about what it means when we talk about blessing, being blessed. In the popular vernacular, to be blessed is about the same as being lucky. Or maybe being good – good […]

Sacred People

Romans 15:4-13 Matthew 3:1-12 Years ago, Kim and I went out to the store to buy a door mat. We looked around at all the options. I argued that it was essential for us to have a mat that says “Welcome.” You know, just in case someone might think we are not welcoming people, our mat would assure them of our good intentions. But that’s not enough, is it? Having a mat at my door that says “welcome” is like having a sign in my kitchen that says “clean.” It’s a nice thought, but will words actually get it done? Are words enough? Every Sunday I stand in the pulpit and say the word “Welcome” to everyone in the room and everyone watching our livestream. Every Sunday we have someone posted at the parking lot door to welcome each person that comes in. Friendly individuals in our congregation will always make the effort to find the folks who may be here for the first time, or who haven’t been here for a while and offer them a warm welcome. All these things are essential. But […]

Grace in Abundance

May 5, 2022
by Maggie Gillespie

John 21:1-19 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the greeting Paul liked to use in his letters he sent to churches. In these weeks since Easter Sunday I have been thinking about the kinds of feelings the disciples of Jesus might have experienced after his resurrection. And, as I said last week, it is possible that fear was one of those feelings. They may have been afraid for a number of reasons. Among other things, they had their own personal guilt to deal with, because they had failed Jesus spectacularly. They let him die. Not that they could have prevented it, of course. Even though they had tried a few times to stop him from going down the path. He would not be stopped. There wasn’t anything much they could do, other than die with him, and how would that […]

Worthy of Love and Grace

Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32 This is a parable we love, love, love. Unless, that is, Jesus is telling it to us. Then it is another matter. You know what I mean? It’s a really nice story in the abstract way. Like saying, “I love people. Only, not that particular one, or that one, or that one either.” It turns out that we mean a very specific and relatively small set of people. The first time I realized how hard this parable is was when I was reading it to an adult Bible study group. I looked up at the faces around me and they said, “I don’t like that one.” They didn’t like it because they had taken it personally (which is good.) They had asked themselves, am I as forgiving as this father? Do I want to be that forgiving? And their answer was no. Parables that talk about […]

Giving and Receiving

Luke 2:22-40 This Sunday we are in the Christmas season, which means that, for the world we live in, Christmas is over. All around we see the debris of Christmas, while here in the church we’re saying, “At last – we have arrived and we are just getting started!” Because there is much more to Christmas than the shopping and the gift exchanging. It’s after the rush is over that we have the chance to really see that. This first Sunday of Christmas is a day to get some perspective on it. This is a good day to get some perspective on giving and receiving. I read an article once that said, from an economist’s point of view, Christmas gift giving is irrational. It said, “ill-chosen gifts caused between $4 billion and $13 billion a year in economic waste.” I didn’t want to know that. But I know it’s true, for I have personally been in the […]

Stories that Teach, Week 1: Forgiveness

Matthew 18:21-35 Did you ever hear the story of Alvin Straight? Alvin lived in Laurens, Iowa. When he was 73 years old he set out on a 240-mile journey to see his estranged brother, Henry, in Wisconsin. Henry had recently had a stroke, Alvin heard. They had not spoken to each other in 10 years. But now Alvin felt the need to reconcile with Henry. The only problem was Alvin didn’t have a driver’s license anymore. But he did not let that stop him. He hopped on his John Deere lawn tractor and hit the road. People thought he had gone off his rocker, but Alvin was determined to make his way to his brother somehow. It took him six weeks. There was a movie made about Alvin, called The Straight Story. There’s a scene in the film where, as he gets near Henry’s home, he has an […]

Meaning and Purpose

Genesis 45:1-15 Some years ago when I was a campus minister, I knew a student named Megan – a very dear young woman. She had this ability to find the silver lining in everything. Megan could find something hopeful in every disappointment, and she would always say: “In a way, I’m glad this happened,” and then she would tell me how she had found some new opportunity in the setback. Megan had a talent for reframing her disappointments. Of course, these were all relatively minor disappointments. I don’t know how she would have handled a real crisis, the kind of thing Joseph was thrown into again and again and again. So much has happened to Joseph since last week, when he was trotted off to Egypt with the Ishmaelite caravan. There he was sold to Potiphar, an official in Pharaoh’s court, and Joseph rose quickly in Potiphar’s household, soon put […]

Entitlement

Genesis 25:19-34 When we were little, my older sister and I told our youngest sister that our parents found her in a garbage can and brought her home. We only told her that because she was young enough and innocent enough to believe it and it amused us that she believed it. We convinced her also that her duty as the youngest child was to wait on us; run down to the kitchen and get us a snack if we were hungry, even run down to the 7-Eleven if we had a sudden craving for Doritos or Laffy-Taffy. We were bad. It’s the natural order of things that older siblings dominate the younger ones because they can. They’re bigger, smarter, stronger … for a while. Later, when things even out; when the younger siblings are as big and strong and smart as the older siblings, they’re still dominated by the […]

The Power of Forgiveness

Reading: John 20:19-31 If you have ever seen the film, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” maybe you remember the baptism scene. A group of people all dressed in white, singing, as they slowly walk in single file into the river. One by one they get dunked in the water and come out cleansed, forgiven, renewed. Delmar, an escaped convict, gets swept up in the beauty of it and runs in to the water to get baptized too. He comes back to his two buddies all dripping wet, smiling, and says “Well that’s it, boys, I’ve been redeemed! The preacher’s done washed away all my sins and transgressions. Including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo.” One of the others says, “Delmar, I thought you said you was innocent of those charges.” “Well, I was lying,” Delmar says, “and the preacher says that sin’s been washed away too. Neither God […]

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