I messed up! I know you may find that a little hard to believe, 🙂 but I messed up. It wasn’t on purpose… honestly… but I still messed up. Let me give you the scenario and maybe you can tell me how to get out of this one.
SCENARIO #1
I work hard preparing my sermons. Years ago (1976 to be exact), I took a college class (since I had never had one) on sermon preparation called The Art of Preaching. I am indebted to the late Orval Morgan for his sermon prep method, but more, for taking a personal interest in me. To this day, I still wonder what he ever saw in this brash, young kid who dreamed of being a preacher. To make a long story short: his method required working on sermons over a period of four weeks, starting a new one every Monday. There are many advantages to his method and while I have honed it enough that I don’t need all four weeks to prepare, I still follow the basic idea of giving sermons time to “soak” before being preached. I study, use reference books, write and by the time the Sunday comes to preach it, I have spent some good quality time on it and with God. But there are times things get a little skewed.
SCENARIO #2
Sunday morning, February 27, 2011. Yeah, just this past Sunday. My Scripture was Col.3: 5-17 and while going through the list of qualities to “put on,” I came to the verse that says, “if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” Not a hard Scripture to explain really…unless you mess up! In my study I read “this verse literally means ‘to be gracious’ and the text uses a reflexive pronoun, so it literally reads, ‘forgiving yourselves.'” My mind started whirling and that is where I made my mistake. I stopped there instead of reading the rest of the statement about this phrase. Before I give you the rest of the book quote, I suspect you can guess where I went with that statement. I spoke about the need to forgive others, but then I messed up. I applied it, (or is that misapplied it?), to how important it is to forgive ourselves. Now…the statement is true. We do need to forgive ourselves. Without a doubt. Failure to forgive ourselves leads many followers of Christ to a dead end spiritually. But the problem is that I misapplied the text! There is an old saying, “A text without a context is only a pretext.” That really doesn’t fit here though. What does fit is another “sin” of biblical interpretation: making a text say what it was never intended to say. It is called spiritualizing the text. That is where I messed up. If I had finished reading the commentary thought, I would have read, “The church as a whole is to be a gracious, mutually forgiving fellowship.” Neither the commentator, nor the apostle Paul, is suggesting that we forgive ourselves; but that the church be a forgiving community. I see that now! In fact, I picked up on that later Sunday afternoon as I did some reflection.
So, my question I pose to you is this: how do I correct this? I have no trouble admitting that I messed up, but I would like to know what you all think. Please put yourself in my shoes and try to figure out how to make the correction. Have fun! 🙂
Quote was from John MacArthur’s commentary on Colossians & Philemon. (Bet he would love being misquoted). 😛
My favorite method is the “head-on” “I messed up. I am sorry. Will you please forgive me.” The three Esses: Short, and sweet, and especially sincere. Then, let it go.
Good plan Susan. Thanks for weighing in on the subject.
It occurs to me that I have never heard a preacher apologize for messin’ up. I can remember covering up, and self-justification, and even, “Oh, I was just joking” when it was quite clear that he was not. Once I asked for clarification, and was told I was wasting his time.
If a preacher had just once apologized for messing up, I would have much more respect for that preacher.
Wait – my current pastor has apologized for messing up. So, not never. But not in my past churches.
That is a sad commentary on the state of their egos, I think. Only one man was ever perfect and it wasn’t them. i am glad to hear about your current pastor. Thanks again Susan. You have much to say in so few words.
Oh, the after-sermon reflection hiccup. Happens to the rest of us too. I think I would apologize to the congregation and ask them to be that gracious, forgiving community that you read. In fact, you are actually becoming the perfect illustration of this verse.
you can say, “Hey, I messed up, but what that really meant is what is happening now. Forgive me? Yeah? OK, where’s the coffee? 🙂
Yep, doggone those hiccups! Suspect that by next week most, if not all, will have forgotten I even said anything. 🙂 But do I have to ask for coffee? can I ask for a Diet Dr. Pepper instead? I don’t drink that other stuff. Thanks Moe.
As a layman, I would deeply respect my pastor if he explained to the congregation exactly what you explained in Scenario #2 of your above post.
I would think taking a few minutes at the beginning of your sermon next Sunday to explain your reasoning and correction would be a great place to fit this in.
It also might help cement some of the points you made yesterday.
Even though the passage doesn’t tell you to, I think you definitely should forgive yourself on this issue! I don’t believe it is too huge of a deal.
DJ: I am so glad a “layman” gave me his perspective. I will move on but I reckon the whole matter is one of integrity with me. Like I said to Moe: most will probably forget anyway. Don’t know what that says about the impact of my preaching. 😛 Thanks Jim.
Pastor’s are not perfect, and neither is their congregation’s. Thankfully, we have a perfect Savior to rely on!
Absolutely Ike! Thanks.
Well – I would and have 🙂 deal with it in a mixture of the above comments. I have the follow Sunday got up when getting ready to preach – I mostly go verse by verse – and explained that I believe I made a mistake. I quickly explained it and all the while understanding that most people will think I was silly for going back over it because they already forgot what I had to say the previous week.
We are not perfect and make mistakes as pastors so I would say do whatever frees your conscious with Christ.
Thanks Jim. I have planned on doing just that and also realizing they probably forgot the moment they left the building. 😛
Sounds like a teachable moment to me regarding forgiveness of the body. You just tought me a good lesson! The way you explained it to us sounds perfect.
Thanks Tom. Appreciate it.
Hi Bill,
What about something like ‘I believe that there is an application of Col 3:5 to 17 that is even more applicable than ‘forgiving ourselves’ and that is for the ‘church as a body to forgive and be gracius to one another’. ‘My emphasis last sunday was on forgiving ourselves. More than forgiving ourselves Col 3: 5 to 17 is an instruction for the church.
God willing I will talk about this more fully in an upcoming sermon but I wanted to make it clear to you today that my message last Sunday should have included instruction for the church about how we are to forgive as a body.
Are there any questions?
Now with your permission we’ll go on to the message for this Sunday.
Not a bad idea to consider Linda. Will have to give it some thought. Thanks.
first of all, you gotta forgive yourself 😀 hehehe.
um… to be honest, i don’t really see the mess-up. what i mean is – Bible is such a unique book that you can dig more treasures out of one verse than out of the entire archaeology excavations in Egypt ever undertaken.
i would simply take the point further. it’s like “love your neighbor as yourself” – you cannot love your neighbor while hating yourself. so it’s impossible to forgive someone else while not forgiving oneself. it would be hypocrisy and pride (i.e. we’d be tempted to think that others are okay, but we have some higher standards and that what WE have done is unforgivable).
so in explaining to your people that verse, i would say that the Church must be a forgiving community, but it all starts with oneself – we forgive others as we have been forgiven and forgave ourselves.
(i hope what i’ve written makes sense since it’s 12AM over here 😀 )