Feeling frumpy?

Dumpy?

Waiting for the real goods of life to find you?

Killing time?

Remember your first science project?

Or more precisely,

what is the first science project you remember?

Often,

one of the first science projects children undertake

is to watch a plain little caterpillar

spin a cocoon about itself

until it is completely shrouded within a chrysalis.

The wonder of transformation

is made real to the children when,

days later,

an entirely different creature --

a beautiful butterfly --

emerges from the apparently lifeless shell.

As children,

we immediately focus on the delicate creature

that emerges so mysteriously from the cocoon.

With the actual process inside the cocoon unseen,

there is a lot of romance about the cocoon.

A creepy, crawly caterpillar

is magically transformed

into a radiant, soaring butterfly.

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?

Forget it.

For the caterpillar,

there was nothing "wonderful" about it.

A caterpillar doesn't just grow into a butterfly.

A caterpillar must undergo molting and metamorphosis --

the dramatic silence of the pupa

in which the insect's morphology is entirely rearranged.

How ironic that in today's vernacular,

that word "cocoon"

has come to mean exactly the opposite

of what it means to a caterpillar.

A cocoon isn't safe.

A cocoon is where a caterpillar risks it all --

where it enters total chaos,

where it undergoes total rebuilding,

where it dies to one way of locomotion and life

and is born to a new way of living.

A cocoon is where a caterpillar allows itself

to disintegrate into a blob of gelatinous liquid

without structure or identity

so that it can emerge with sharpened sensory perceptions

and breathtaking beauty.

Only in taking the risk

of entering that inert pupa

can the caterpillar go from dormancy to potency,

from ugliness to beauty.

This is the reason why

the butterfly is an authentic symbol of resurrection!

Not because it's cute.

But because it risks dying

to be born to new life.

Who gave the church of Jesus Christ

a safety-first, risk-free commission?

Who authorized the church of Jesus Christ

to be a church of wimps?

There is no such thing

as a risk-free life.

is fatal to holiness.

Cocoons are self-contained packets of risk.

If that frumpy, dumpy little caterpillar

didn't take the ultimate risk of re-creation,

something which can be experienced

only in the cocoon,

he would never be able

to break out as a butterfly.

is found in risk.

So where am I going with this?

There is a scene in The Sixth Sense

where Cole (Haley Joel Osment) whispers to Malcolm (Bruce Willis),

"I want to tell you my secret now."

It takes half the movie

for Cole to get to the point

where he feels secure and safe enough with Malcolm

to confide in him.

But once he shares his secret,

his journey toward healing begins.

We all have our secrets.

Thoughts, memories, feelings, or actions

that we keep to ourselves.

Maybe we think if people knew them,

they wouldn't like us or love us anymore.

Maybe we feel too guilty

or embarrassed or ashamed.

we've chosen to carry our secrets alone.

Carrying secrets

can be a lonely, defeating,

and even dangerous lifestyle.

But with confession comes freedom.

Whoever created yourconfessions.com -

a website for people to enter their anonymous confessions -

must have known as much!

about no longer carrying a secret alone.

Henri Nouwen wrote,

"One of the most important things we can do with our secrets

is to share them in a safe place,

with people we trust."

Those are the keys:

a safe place

and trust.

Wherever it is that you have that,

or you can find it -

be it with a therapist, a minister,

a friend, the internet,

or God alone --

to unload heavy secrets you've been carrying around.

Read Psalm 51.

Last week I told you

I was inundated with questions around the fifth commandment...

that is "honor your father and mother"...

mainly the questions were,

How can I honor them if they were not honorable?

This week I've had a few questions come...

around the issue of...

I'm the one who's not been honorable...

how can I find peace?

And so today I want to answer that question...

finding peace is a life-long journey...

it comes and goes,

nobody has it all the time.

But if we can get a grasp

on the tools for finding inner peace,

then we can go back to the beginning,

start over and try again.

Today I want to talk about

God's forgiveness for us

when we are not honorable..

I think we're pretty good

at berating ourselves,

torturing ourselves,

I think we're even ok

at getting over what we've done,

not remembering what we've done...

but these are not forgiveness

and they are not God's forgiveness.

Let me read you two letters...

one is an e-mail,

the other a hand-written letter..

The first one is from a young woman...

an honors student,

life-long church-going, young woman...

"I have no peace because I am guilty.

I don't know what I'm guilty of,

just a feeling of being unworthy,

like I don't measure up,

I have a hole in my soul.
I need to hear God say,

"I love you,

I have always loved you,

I always will love you...

even though there's

not a lot there to love."

How can I hear this voice?

The second letter is from a 78 year old man.

I know him as I did the memorial service

for his brother a few months ago.

I believe he is from Phoenix,

but chose me,

who he only knows by acquaintance,

to share this letter with....

"I'm dying with cancer

and soon to meet my maker.

On the surface I appear brave,
I'm a respected family man,

haven't missed church in years,

not even when I'm sick.

But I have a dark secret

which I've carried for 50 years..

I sexually molested my only daughter

when she was a child.

It only happened once

but I've never spoken of it before.

To make matters worse

she was killed in an accident at the age of 16

and my secret was buried with her.

God help me.
I have felt relieved at times

because my sin was covered up.

But now the fact that no one on earth knows

is not important

because God knows.

I know I'm going to hell.

I deserve it.

But I still hope for mercy.
If I could only reach out

and see my daughter one more time,

maybe on the other side as I am judged,

to tell her how sorry I am."

I read those because

somewhere in between...

we all fit...

maybe we've all been shamed

like this young woman...

shamed from without...

that's false guilt.

Or maybe our guilt is very real

like the man with cancer...

we haven't measured up

to what we were created to be...

and that's true guilt.

How do we feel the forgiveness of God?

That question has been in the shadows of my life

since I was a boy.

Guilt can make us heavy,

weigh us down

and make us do all kinds of weird things.

David, in his prayer,

models for us a process

of how guilt is dealt with

and how we feel God's forgiveness.

I want to use four words out of that prayer...

and today, we'll get through the first two...

Contrition...

people who feel forgiveness

are people who feel badly enough

for what they've done

to ask for mercy.

We won't ask for mercy

unless we accept the pain

that comes with our own self-destruction...

David is filled with remorse in his prayer...

My sin is ever before me...
I must have been

conceived in sin,

born in sin,

raised in sin,

taught to sin...

for wherever I turn

the gravity of what I've done

is pressing on my soul.

In the movie, The Devil's Advocate,

Keanu Reeves plays an attorney

who takes a job in a big-time law firm.

The lead lawyer in the firm

is none other than the Devil himself...

played by Al Pacino.

Toward the end Keanu realizes

that he is working for the devil

and begins to make accusations and blame

for what has happened.

Al Pacino's devil turns the accusations back on him

and points out that

his own choices led to what happened.

In a moment of realization

Keanu begins to feel bad for what he has done,

becomes filled with remorse...

The devil changes his demeanor,

becomes comforter and says to him,

"Don't feel so bad."

Lets him off the hook.
And thus Keanu's character

isn't drawn to ask God for mercy.

We have this picture of the devil

as being evil incarnate,

recognizable because of

the violence and the pain around him.

Our question is,

"Who is bad enough to be the Devil?".

I think a better question would be,

"Who is good enough to be the Devil?"

Who helps us to not take seriously

the effect of what we've done?

Who comforts us

when we begin to feel guilty?

Who strokes our vanity (self-love)

until we believe that we are so valuable to God

that we are inherently forgiven?

Contrition --

to feel badly enough to ask God for mercy.

The second word is candor.

Forgiveness is experienced by people

who are brave enough to define the exact nature

of what's wrong with them.

This is a computer geek word.

You can fix all the software problems you want,

but if there's a problem in the hardware

you're just treating symptoms that will recur.

David didn't say,

"I committed a dumb error."

Didn't say,

"It was bad PR..."

He didn't even say,

"God forgive me for committing adultery."

Didn't say,

"God forgive me for committing murder."

What he did say,

"God I have sinned against you

and you only..."

He went to the cause of his problem,

not the symptom.

He didn't deal with all these results.
He dealt with his own inner spiritual failing

which was

he had decided to separate

from the God who made him.

We're created for relationship with God.

We're created for right relationships with each other.

And we are not ourselves

when we are out of relationship with God.

David knew that.

He knew he couldn't do anything

to undo the adultery and the murder.

The only thing he could do something about

was his broken relationship with God.

So he asked God for that...

Lofton Hudson wrote a book

quite a few years ago entitled,

"Grace Is Not a Blue Eyed Blond."

He has a chapter on sin...

says Jesus never sat down and said,

"This is what sin is..."

Jesus gave us little cameos,

little short movies in which we can see sin in action...

He told about a farmer

who became wealthy on a bumper crop year

and who said,

"Now I'll sit back and do nothing

for the rest of my life

but eat, drink and be merry..."

He talked about a man

who went up to the temple to pray

and said,

"O God, how grateful I am

that I am so righteous...

thank you for giving me this righteousness...

and not making me like these other people...

these dirtbags!"

He told about a boy who said to his father,

"Look, Dad, you're living too long...

and I want my stuff right now...

I want out of here!

don't care who I'm hurting,

what effect my actions have...

me, my, mine,

I want, give me...

go."

And out of those stories

and others that Jesus tells,

there are three monster sins that emerge

that we all have

that serve as kind of a base for what we do...

One is ingratitude...

a denial of our indebtedness to God...

we think what we have is deserved

and we worked hard for it

and it's ours

and we keep it

and clutch it

because God obviously wants us to have it

because we've been so good.

Ingratitude.

The second one is unpotentiality....

the refusal to grow,

to blossom,

to unfold...

Failure to put into practice

the spiritual gifts God has given us

because we're too stuck

succeeding in the physical world.

And he said,

even underlying these two

is the third,

the real problem...

he calls it closedness,

to be closed to God...

it is to not let God into every area of our lives

because we're afraid of losing our lives

instead of gaining our lives.

And so we let God into some places

and we call on God when we need or want her around...

but in other places in our life,

we keep God out...

and Hudson says that, at base,

is what effects us all.

I think this is where I'll end for today...

I know it's kind of on the down side...

to be led to contrition,

feeling bad enough to go to God for mercy...

and to candor...

to begin to be honest and deep enough

to go to the source of what is really wrong...

without being given an out.

How about this...

work on these for the next week...

contrition and candor...

and maybe what I say next week will be even more relevant.