Driving Around With A Shattered Windscreen

Matt 18:15-20  Rom 13:8-14 Ezekiel 36:26  2 Cor3:3

I had been out for the evening with my cousins Lesley and Ian and the evening grew late.

Ian said he would drive me to the station so that I could catch the last train home.

On the way a stone hit the windscreen of the car and it began to shatter.

“If I drive carefully” said Ian “ I can still get you there”

And peering through the increasingly cracked windscreen he drove slowly through the streets of outer London, determined to get me to the station on time.

The windscreen was only just holding together as we drew into the station forecourt.

“I’ll just about get home safely” he said “ and I’ll get it repaired tomorrow”

The truth was though, it was in a really fragile state,

I thanked him for the lift, complimented him on his careful driving, told him to be very careful on the way home.

Got out of the car and slammed the door shut.

Causing the windscreen to shatter into a thousand pieces.

At the same time I heard my train  pulling into the station

“You go on please” cried Ian !I’ll be OK, I’ll get home somehow, I’ll sort it out”

I ran for the train, looking back to see him starting to deal with the broken pieces of the windscreen, I in the end, had carelessly smashed.

Here we are then, with one of the Gospel texts that cuts to the heart of how hard it is to be a Christian.

This question of forgiveness and how we go about it.

Let me try a different way in this morning and it begins with the beating of your heart.

Your heart as the place deep within where you feel things most keenly.

Your heart when it is shattered and broken by other people who do not realise the damage they are doing.

And the fact that there is something especially vulnerable about the Christian heart.

Back in the writings of  Ezekiel, God makes a wonderful promise through his prophet.

“A new heart I will give you, and a new Spirit I will put within you

I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh”.

A promise that we shall be softer people.

A promise that doesn’t make things any easier for us.

If you follow me, you are going to feel things more deeply from now on.

If you follow me, you are not going to be able to stand on the sidelines any longer, reducing everything that happens to philosophical argument or academic debate.

You are going to be touched, and wounded, by things blessed and cursed by people in ways you never imagined.

Because your heart will be open and open hearts are always ready to break.

And God sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world with a fragile heart of flesh and as he went about his ministry I believe he had tears in his eyes most of the time.

And his compassion and love spilled out all over the place in wonderful miracles.

And when that grace and that goodness thudded against a heart of stone, as with Pharisees and Saducees, he was hurt and angered and exasperated.

So that when it came to the cross by which time his heart had been broken into a thousand pieces,  he prayed that his father would forgive those who had put him to death, because he himself had no resources left with which to forgive them.

If we are Christ’s body now, we shall be increasingly like him.

People whose hearts are broken more easily than others.

People who make their life’s pilgrimage peering through increasingly shattered windscreens.

People who are open to be hurt by the thoughtlessness of others.

People who do not easily forgive themselves for the things they might have got wrong.

In our Epistle reading, Paul tells us to put on the armour of light and I wonder what that consists of – not chain mail or bullet proof vests I can tell you, but more like the light of Christ, more like a heart of flesh, easily touched, easily wounded.

Listen to Paul writing to the first early church in Cornith but imagine that it’s a word addressed to each of us too:

“You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men, and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink , but with the Spirit of God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts”

There is a truth that the church needs to learn in what ever place it finds itself.

Because of all this it is going to be incredibly easy for us to hurt one another.

And because of this the Spirit of forgiveness needs to be right at the forefront of everything we share.

It’s as if Jesus knew this would happen because for once in his life he gives us the thing we rely upon in this day and age. A code of practice.

What strikes me is that forgiveness emerges not so much out of judging who was right and who was wrong, but of listening to each other.

 If someone sins against you go and tell them his fault and if he listens to you – you have gained your brother.

If he does not listen, take two or three others with you and if he refuses to listen take it to the church and if he does not listen to the church he shall be cast out

Forgiveness happens when we listen to one another and when we recognise the hearts of flesh we both have. It may not mean that the matter is resolved, but one thing’s for sure, if hurt has been caused it is acknowledged and it is regretted – because two hearts of flesh have touched each other.

Forgiveness gets withheld when one party retains a heart of stone which is not after the character of Christ.

The hardest thing is where the cause of the sin lies buried for years and it ends up impossible for the right person to hear or be listened to.

Too much time has passed.

That’s when you need to feel secure in your church.

To see your church as the place where wounded hearts are known to be commonplace .and reconciliation, letting go, healing, whatever is the best word to use, is sensitively and honestly addressed.

It’s where you need to have faith in the life of prayer as the place you can go where God will listen and love and forgive because in Christ he has known what it is like to be in your shoes

That as we cannot break open the word of God each week and then break open his bread if our hearts do not break open too.

I’m sure we can each remember times when we have been either character in the true story with which I began and in matters far more serious than a shattered windscreen.

Cousin Ian, accompanying someone on their journey, determined to do the best he can, putting himself at risk, and having what was already fragile, smashed to a thousand pieces, by the one you were trying to help.

Myself, in that story, thoughtless and self centred, not thinking what I was doing.

Ian roars with laughter at the thought of that incident even though it happened many years ago. I still wince at it because it puts me in touch with the part of me that is still unredeemed. The luggage I’m still dragging along with me and of that which I preach yet fail to practice.

RH 31.8.08