Read the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22, verse 66, to chapter 23, verse 56
1. CANCEL CULTURE
Some of us may be familiar with the expression “cancel culture” which has been used in the last few years. If you’re not your children or grandchildren will be. This expression (according to the Wikipedia definition) refers to “a cultural phenomenon in which an individual thought to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner is ostracized, boycotted or shunned or fired, often aided by social media.” The person concerned has been “cancelled.” We have also seen this recently in the removal of statues and paintings of people judged supposedly to have thought or acted unacceptably in the past and the re-naming of buildings, streets, and even government electorates here in Hobart. This is not the place to discuss the right or wrong of any of these actions, but I think they raise a question.… So, why doesn’t God cancel us?
When we look around the world what do we see? War in Ukraine, and Israel/Palestine (where Jesus lived!) alongside many other violent conflicts, climate crisis, pollution, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, and so on. And closer to home the picture is not so much better, is it? —domestic violence, youth crime, unemployment, homelessness … And what about us? I think it’s fair to say, if we are really, really honest with ourselves, as the American theologian Bernard Ramm wrote: “no human life can stand ultimate scrutiny” (Offense to Reason, Harper & Row, 1985, page 3). So, I ask again, why doesn’t God cancel us?
2. THIS IS HOW WE KNOW WHAT LOVE IS
The Christian answer is that God loves us, even though (as one of our Anglican prayers of confession says) all of us “have left undone what we ought to have done, and we have done what we ought not to have done.” And not only does God love us, but God sent Jesus not just to live among us—which is amazing enough in itself if you think about it— God sent Jesus to die for us. The New Testament connects the love of God and the death of Jesus again and again. To give just two examples:
1 John 3: 16: This is how we know what love is —
Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. (NIV)
John 3: 16: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (NRSV)
There is an interesting and important fact about the four biographies found in the New Testament books called “Gospels,” which means “Good-News” books. It has been pointed out that they are basically stories of Jesus’s death and resurrection with a long introduction. We are not told anything about most of Jesus’ childhood or adult life. In Mark’s Gospel Jesus’s death and resurrection takes up about three-fifths or 60% of the book, in Matthew it is two-fifths or 40%, in Luke at least a third, and John’s Gospel is divided into two approximately equal halves (Thomas C. Oden, The Word of Life, Harper & Row, 1989, pages 317–318). Why is the biggest part of each of the Gospels focussed on Jesus’s death and resurrection?
One of the main reasons seems to be that it was necessary to provide some explanation of how it could possibly be that if Jesus was who Christians claim he was—the Saviour sent by God—he suffered and died. Why didn’t Jesus use his power to wipe out his enemies and make himself the King of Israel or even the emperor of Rome? Or why didn’t he punish the people who claimed to be his friends but when the soldiers came to arrest him, they ran for their lives? The Christian answer is—putting it in today’s language—that instead of cancelling us, Jesus was prepared to be cancelled for us. Jesus’s death was an act of love which paid the price for our forgiveness.
In 2025, Anglican churches across Australia are focusing on the hope we have in an uncertain world. In an uncertain world, Christians believe one thing is certain—God loves us and will forgive us if we turn our lives back to God, because Jesus died for us. This message is the heart of the New Testament. Again, I’ll give just two examples:
Ephesians 1: 7: In him [Jesus] we have redemption [redemption involves the payment of a debt] through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace … (NRSV)
1 John 1: 9: If we confess our sins, he [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (NRSV)
3. A MESSAGE AND CULTURE OF FORGIVENESS
I am hardly the only person who believes that we live in an increasingly unforgiving culture—a culture that is quick to “cancel” anyone who says or does anything we don’t agree with. What does the Christian faith have to say to a “cancel culture”? I believe we have two things to say that our world desperately needs to hear.
FIRSTLY, we have THE MESSAGE OF FORGIVENESS. Because of what Jesus has done, we can not only be assured of our own forgiveness, we can also assure others that God loves them too and is waiting to forgive anyone and everyone who turns to God. In the world where many people find themselves being ostracized, boycotted or shunned or fired, often aided by social media, we can point them to the God who sent us Jesus. And Jesus, rather than cancelling us, made it possible for our “sins” to be cancelled.
SECONDLY, we have a Christian community which has or should have A CULTURE OF FORGIVENESS. We can forgive, because we know that we have been forgiven. The New Testament speaks again and again of Jesus’s followers as a community with a forgiving culture.
In what we call the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches his followers to pray in Matthew 6: 12: and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. (NLT)
And the missionary Paul, writes in Ephesians 4: 32: Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (ESV)
And again Paul writes in Colossians 3: 13: 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. (NRSV)
Of course, we must acknowledge that the church has a mixed history when it comes to having a forgiving culture. This is made every clear in Australian author John Dickson’s recent book Bullies and Saints (Zondervan Reflective, 2023). But at its best the church’s practice of forgiveness has brought radical transformation of individuals and communities. Despite popular perceptions of Christianity, and the efforts of many people in the media and on social media to cancel Christians and silence Christianity, and despite the very real failures of the church in the past, the Christian message of forgiveness and a forgiving culture is still really good news!
5. THE CROSS IS THE SAFEST OF ALL THINGS
Martin Luther was a priest and a professor in Germany in the early 1500s. Although on the outside things seemed to be going very well for Luther—he was an ordained priest, he had a PhD, and he was teaching at his local university—on the inside he was afraid. He was very conscious of his own faults and afraid that he would never be good enough to be accepted by God. Eventually, however, as he studied the Bible, Martin came to realise that in fact God’s forgiveness can never be earned, it can only be received as a gift from God available because of the price Jesus paid on the cross. Jesus’s death on the cross is the assurance of God’s love and forgiveness. Martin Luther later wrote these words: “The cross is the safest of all things. Blessed is the person who understands this” (from the quote by Alister E. McGrath in Luther’s Theology of the Cross, Blackwell, 1985, page 175). May we all understand this, and, if we have never understood it before, may we know that today and every day from now on. “The cross is the safest of all things. Blessed is the person who understands this.”
Amen