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A Reading from Paul’s Letter to the Colossians 3:12-15

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility,

meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another,

forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe

yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of

Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.

Many of us are preparing for Thanksgiving. Some of us will gather with friends and family to

cook and eat, nap maybe watch football games and parades, catch up with family and friends

who we only see a few times a year.

Many of us will also struggle at these gatherings. Well-meaning people will ask after our loved

ones for whom we are caregivers. Those of us that attend or host a gathering while also care-

giving will find the day is one of complicated logistics, miscommunications, hurt feelings and

one that too often ends in overwhelming exhaustion . We may find ourselves already dreading

the rest of the “holiday” season and wishing that we could just go back to the regular times of the

year with little interaction with these well-meaning friends and family.

We may also feel irritation at the never-ending work of caregiving. We secret away feelings of

guilt for our exhaustion, guilt at our annoyance, guilt over wishing-away the holiday season yet

again.

Paul writes: “Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive

each other;” Friends: you are anyone. We are the “anyone” here. But how we are supposed to
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forgive when we cannot speak the harm that is unintentionally done to us when we are called

“angels” “so patient!” “selfless” all of these words that we long to be true, but the truth is that we

are just people . We are just stumbling along, and so are those folks who name us as something

more, for lack of a better way to show their support. Some days we are patient and willing,

somedays we just want it all to go away. Saying this feels impossible. We are not allowed to

“wish away” our loved one, but truthfully the burdens, and they are burdens, seem too much for

one or two people to manage on their own. Paul reminds us that WE are God’s chosen. We are

holy and beloved. Paul does not state that it’s easy or we are promised “happiness” Instead we

are given tools to use, or reminders of the ones we already have access to. He tells us, we people

of Colossae to clothe ourselves with the tools we need to forgive, to be forgiven.

My grandfather was often slow to complete the tasks my grandmother asked him to do and when

he finally did the chore he did so in some unusual ways. Fence rails were mended with bungee

cords and duct tape rather than new boards and nails. The sink was permanently fixed by using a

wrench instead of a faucet handle. Things were fixed, you see, but not in the ways my

grandmother had intended. But for Pop, good enough was good enough. When my grandmother

grew weary of Pop’s creative “fixes” she would close her eyes and briefly bow her head and

mutter, “Forgive me, Jesus. He knows not what he does.” This was met with chuckles by the

family but it strikes me now that that’s also pretty solid theology. My grandmother asked Jesus to

forgive her for her annoyance with my grandfather. Her unspoken expectations were at the heart

of her frustrations. She knew that asking Jesus for forgiveness, rather than fussing at Pop, was

her only recourse if she wanted to remain sane and in love with her husband. The real beauty of
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this moment was that my grandmother was able to request and receive forgiveness for her lack

of patience, lack of communication .

Paul writes these instructions to the Colossian because they’ve been backsliding a bit.

Remembering their pagan roots, doing some less-than-perfect Christianity. And Colossae is just a

little city. Not many souls to worry about at all! And yet Paul, (or someone) feels called by God

to remind the people who they are, remind this small group of imperfect people, that they are the

body of Christ, and that they have the ability and the tools to forgive each other, just as GOD

Forgives! Maybe we are guilty of leaning on our old habits, our insecure and fearful selves and

younger selves. Like going home as an adult, you are instantly 14... So we need to be reminded,

this small group of people, that we count, and that we can grow up in God’s love, that we can get

better at practicing God’s word.

Paul writes: forgive each other; just as the Lord* has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

When God forgives us God does so because it is the nature of God to forgive. It is the nature of

God to forgive because otherwise how could God love us? We make so many mistakes, and we

are so messy with our relationships, we hurt each other, ourselves, the very creation that God

made! There is no way for us to ask forgiveness every single time we misstep either in the eyes

of God or in the eyes of each other.

But we know this, or we try to know it. We know that when we kneel or sit and confess our

shortcomings that God forgives us. We believe, or hope to, that when we say the Lord’s prayer,

and ask for forgiveness of our trespasses that those are forgiven by God! Why then, why is it so
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hard to forgive ourselves for our very human shortcomings ? Why does it feel that there is no

safe place to share our frustrations, our failures, either real or perceived? Is it because those same

people I mentioned earlier, the ones that call us “angels” and “patient”, the people that always

tell us to “call if you need anything!” but rarely show up when all we need is a break or an errand

run, or even to badly fix our dripping sink.

I’m afraid that it is our job, as caregivers, to say the things we need from other people. Make a

list, keep it in your pocket and the next time someone offers a vague notion of assistance give

them the list! Let them know that you are serious and you seriously need them to be the

community they say that they are. Like my grandmother, we can keep asking Jesus for

forgiveness for our own short-comings, OR we can get really brave and ask for what we need,

and expect God’s forgiveness and Grace, we can expect the imperfect love of our people, and we

can expect to forgive ourselves in our worst moments.

I once spanked my daughter. When she was 3 years old she went through a short stage as a

“runner.” She darted from my grasp in stores, parking lots, and once into the fairly busy street we

lived on. The only time I spanked her followed an incident when I turned my attention from her

to fetch something from the car and turned back to see her halfway across the street, a car

slamming on its breaks yards from her precious little body. I did not take any advice about

waiting till I had calmed down, about “explaining” to her why it was happening, or any of the

good advice I’d read in those nice Dr. Sears books. I ran to her, and while hugging her to my

chest began spanking her little thigh. Copious tears, recriminations and promises from us both,

we mended our feelings and fell asleep together on the couch. The next day I was still contrite

and sad. I had spent a good portion of the early morning questioning my fitness as a mother,
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wondering if I should move to a safer street, and how that might be financed. In short, I had

turned this situation, one in which I had punished my daughter for doing something incredibly

dangerous into one in which I was a bad mother, an unfit caregiver. It was months before I

realized that, though that was not the way I generally responded to a crisis, my daughter had

never once darted into a road or a parking lot again. Could I forgive myself a spanking? Perhaps

not, but I could forgive myself for my fear and I could understand why I reacted that way.

In Micah 7, verse 18 we read: Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the

transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to

show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl

all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.

Friends, God delights to show mercy to us! God forgives us! Can we learn to offer ourselves and

our community a little of that Grace? Oh, it is hard, I know that. There are still times I wince at

the thought that furious walk across the road with my toddler yelling in my arms. But there is

also this: we did not sign up for the life of a caregiver of our loved ones; we did not sign up to

live in the reversal between the parent-child relationship. We did not sign up to spoon feed our

sibling, or change the clothes of our adult child, we did not sign up for any of this, and yet – here

we are. We can forgive them, we always do, but we also need to, in fact God would call us to,

forgive ourselves. We also never signed up to be humans, but we are: beloved, believed, and

holy. Bear with yourselves, if you have a complaint against yourself make sure you are putting

on your cloak of “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” before you take

yourself to task. God has forgiven us all our shortcomings. Can we afford to give ourselves a
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little of that Grace and Love that God has gifted to us. Friends, it is free. It is yours to give and

to receive.

Amen.

[VRMC1]You’re speaking to a perspective that does not often get addressed from the pulpit!

[VRMC2]To be the peaceful angel when anger simmers—an anger that isn’t allowed because it’s

exactly that anger that other peoples’ praise keeps at bay.

[h3]

[VRMC4]Nice illustration.

[VRMC5]It’s interesting: an ability to acknowledge frustration. Also a prayer FOR patience and

better communication? Or can the frustration occur without self-blame for not being an angel?

[VRMC6]Good – is a limits model implied here?

[VRMC7]How to care for caretakers – to other hearers of this sermon, this may be news. Do you

want to say more here?

[VRMC8]The “communication” theme is becoming a focus—addressing the root of the frustration

rather than the lack of (impossible) virtue.

[VRMC9]Nice. Self-forgiveness is important because of the guilt. As you’ve exegeted the

passage, is there anything about this dimension in the commentaries?

[VRMC10]Glad you have mothers in here too.

[VRMC11]Good news!