Be Reconciled to God

2 Cor. Ch 5 v 17 – 21 Healing service 10.02.08

Today is the fifth day of Lent – how has it gone for you, do you feel you are keeping your Lenten promise or are you already beginning to feel guilty – guilty that you haven’t done what you hoped.

We have just heard the words ‘be reconciled to God’, but isn’t the problem with those words that we can say them to others - tell others that they shouldn’t feel guilty but we can’t say it to ourselves. During the course on Healing I think we all agreed that it is easier to pray for others than ourselves and I think it is often easier to forgive others than to truly forgive ourselves – to accept God’s forgiveness.

For we all have things we wish we hadn’t done – things we feel guilty about. We are all apt to go astray with our

own agenda. Even in times of trouble we cannot consider ourselves a failure.

But however much we know God loves us, that Christ died for us leaving something we feel badly about behind moving on in faith can be a very hard thing to do.

It seems sometimes that we fear accepting God forgiveness – I suppose it’s that we are not worthy of it.

But isn’t this what Lent is really preparing us for. The strength to accept the chance to erase the past look forward to the future. In Jesus Christ we all can start a new life leaving all our failures behind. This is what Jesus bought for us on the Cross of Salvation. He came to set us all free from the powers of darkness and to translate them into the kingdom of light.

Once we turn to God hand over to him our guilt, our anger, our hurt whatever it is we are forgiven, he has offered us holy healing. God wants us to accept his grace and leave behind all that separates us from him.

Of course sometimes that may mean saying I was wrong I’m sorry. One of the most cheering things I have read this weekend was in the Church Times and that is The Bishop of Liverpool apologising for the stance he took in the Jeffrey John affair. That was a big thing to do for whoever you are saying ‘I was wrong’ is hard.

But God wants us to move forward in life to, as I said, accept his grace, to, as you might say, start again. Instead of using our energies regretting the past – we should be using our energies to proclaim the Gospel, work for the Kingdom.

As we heard in the reading ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus died for us he wants to accept that gift of forgiveness. When we ask for forgiveness and accept absolution God will never remember our sins again. We mustn’t let the past haunt us. We don’t have to live with our past failures and sins lingering over us like a permanent dark shadow. For God makes us new again.

We are that new creation. And God will not leave us, he will journey by our side, he will give us the strength if we only turn to him. But the only thing God asks of us is that we surrender to him and he will do the rest.

So may we all feel the healing love of the Risen Lord and be made whole. Amen