A reflection on Matthew 18:21-35 The Rev. Terri C. Pilarski
Two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand, "Today my best friend slapped me in the face."
They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him. After he recovered from nearly drowning, he wrote on a stone, "Today my best friend saved my life."
His friend asked him, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone,
why?" The other friend replied "When someone hurts us we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it."
Stephen Felker, How Often Should I Forgive?
In our gospel reading this morning Peter begins the Christian conversation on the issue of forgiveness by asking Jesus how many times must he forgive? Is 7 times enough?
Now, it’s helpful to understand that the number 7 held a lot of power in the ancient world
because it was a number of completion, wholeness, perfection. For example the Bible describes the world being created in 7 days. There are 7 pillars of Wisdom’s house, and 7 churches in Revelation.
But Jesus responds to Peter, and therefore to us, saying we must forgive seventy times 7 times….or in other words we must forgive, over and over. Forgiveness is one way that we allow God to work in and through us. It’s one way for grace to prevail in the world.
Forgiveness is one way we can be the hands and heart of Christ.
Because of the Incarnation, the life of Christ, we have a clear example of how grace guides, challenges, and inspires human life even when we fail to love as God loves. Jesus shows us the way. Or, to use the example from my sermon last week, sin is when we fail to live into our baptismal covenant promises, and therefore we need God’s help. God’s grace acts like the wind in our lives, erasing the lines of sin drawn in sand.
Over and over, God calls and people respond with random acts of kindness – people doing ordinary things - and yet in those things God shines forth. This is most evident when we work toward reconciliation. Over and over Jesus reminds us that reconciliation and forgiveness are fundamentals of Christianity. Throughout scripture we hear, over and over again, God forgiving human beings, of God letting go of the past, in order for us to experience the new life of the resurrection. God’s grace acts like the wind in our lives, erasing the lines of sin drawn in sand. This same ongoing process of letting go is essential to healthy communities and interpersonal relationships. Just as God is infinite in grace and forgiveness, we too should forgive others as a way of restoring health to the community, reconciling with those who have hurt us, and thereby promoting our own well-being.
The parable in today’s Gospel of “the unforgiving servant” is not intended to be a model for us, it isn’t telling us what WE are to do. Judging others is God’s domain. Instead the parable asks us to recognize the consequences of when we fail to forgive; when we fail to love as God loves. When we fail to forgive, or fail to love as God loves, we limit God’s ability to act. Forgiveness does not mean that we must accept the behavior of one who has hurt us. Some actions are so egregious that we can never accept them. That said, the hurt and the pain can be such that they consume our lives and suffocate us. As a result forgiveness happens when we let go of the hold that hurt has on us. When we let go of the anger, the sorrow, the pain. We let go of it so we can live and breathe.
Another way to look at this to understand that refusing to let go, refusing to forgive can give us a sense of having some of control over the situation. Refusing to forgive allows us to have some degree of power over the situation, or at least the illusion of power. And yet, as we come to the end of today’s Gospel reading and the end of the parable we begin to see how refusing to forgive, living the illusion of having some power, can end up being the vice grip causes us more suffering. There are actually some medical studies that suggest the possibility of a “forgiveness factor.” In other words, it appears that our ability to forgive, or not, affects our spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being.
Remember what I said last week, that quote from the Talmud? We do not see things as they are. We see things as WE are. We are Christians. As Christians, and specifically, as Episcopalians, we know who we are through the Baptismal Covenant.
In a few minutes we will renew our baptismal promises and then baptize Andrew Xavier into the Body of Christ. For the last few weeks we have been holding Andrew Xavier, his family, and this parish in our prayers, calling him by his first and middle name. We have not used his legal surname. That is because in baptism we all have the same last name, Christian. Today he becomes Andrew Xavier Christian. In this way we welcome him into the Body of Christ and commit ourselves to assisting his parents and Godparents in raising him in the Christian faith.
You see, who we are matters. In particular being Christian means we carry our cross, a cross in which we work to love God, love others, love ourselves, and we work toward reconciliation and forgiveness. But note, when we get to our baptismal covenant, what we say after each promise, is - “I will, with God’s help.”
We are not called to carry this cross alone. God goes with us. God gives us the grace, the love, and the ability to do the work of reconciliation. When we open ourselves to the process, God enables us to forgive, to let go of even the deepest hurt. God fills our hearts and pours through our veins. And when all else fails, God carries that hurt for us. And so then with confidence in the love of God we can say “Yes, we will with God’s help.”
May it be like writing in stone.
Portions of this sermon were influenced by Bruce Epperly at the Process Theology Blog: procees and faith.
Religious and Spiritual
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Seeing As We Are
A reflection on the Propers for 18A, Romans 13:8-14 and Matthew 18:15-20 by The Rev. Terri C. Pilarski
A woman, studying the spontaneous remission of cancer, placed an ad in a local newspaper looking to interview people who felt they were in remission. She tells this story from one of the people she interviewed: There was a farmer with an advanced case of the disease and a challenging prognosis. Nonetheless he was doing quite well and seemed to be in remission.
About the disease and possible remission he said, “I didn’t take it on.”
By this he meant that he knew that his illness was advanced, he just didn’t let it determine how he went about living his life. He understood his doctors and this prognosis the same way he regarded the government soil experts who analyzed his fields. The farmer listened to the experts and respected them as they showed him findings in their tests that said that corn would not grow in his field. Like the doctors who gave him the diagnosis and treated him, he valued the opinion of the soil experts.
But, he said, “Nonetheless a lot of the time corn grows anyway.”
In other words the diagnosis was one thing, but what it was going to mean to him and his life, remained to be seen. (Kitchen Table Wisdom: Rachel Naomi Remen)
This story reminds me of a Jewish saying from the Talmud that goes like this: we do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
So, who are we?
Well, for starters, I think we are living, broadly speaking, in a time when the world is deeply broken. All around us we see disease, anger, war, divisiveness, and people polarized by this issue or that. We argue over who is right and who is wrong when human life is at stake. We are so inundated with images on television of violence and poverty that we have become numb and fail to see the brokenness when it is right in front of us. We live in a world where each one of us thinks we are entitled to having things our way, and lose sight of the needs, hopes, or desires of another person let alone, of community. In the 21st century we are, broadly speaking, a people who are: self-centered, quick to judge, opinionated, and demanding. We hurt others and rather than apologize we justify our actions, why we are right and why they got what they deserved.
You may not feel this way in your life, but we see it all around us, in the newspaper, on television shows, and in our politic, locally, nationally, and globally.
It reminds me of a story of the leader of a monastery named Abbot Moses, a desert father who lived in the second century and who spent much of his earlier life as a thief:
One day a brother of the monastic community offended some of the other brothers. So a council meeting was called and Abbot Moses, the brother in charge of the monastery, was asked to come to the meeting and mediate, but he refused to go to it. Eventually the monastery priest sent someone to get him, ‘Come,’ he said, ‘everyone is waiting for you.’ So Abbott Moses got up and headed toward the meeting. On the way he picked up a jug that was cracked and had several small holes. He filled it with water and carried it with him, the water trailing out behind him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Abbott, what are you doing?’ The old man (who had been a thief in his younger years) said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me but I do not see them, and yet today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When the brothers heard that, they said no more to the brother who offended them, but forgave him. (Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers.)
We do not see things as they are. We see things as WE are.
Our reading from Romans reminds us that how we live our lives matters. As Christians we are called by Jesus to be a people of reconciliation. We are not called to judge others. Judgment, when and how it happens, is God’s decision. Rather than judge we are called, by God through Christ, to bring forth God’s love into the world, heal the brokenness, restore relationships, be the face of Christ. As Christians we know that loving our neighbor matters. Loving ourselves matters. Loving God matters. How we do this, how we love, matters. With this kind of love, when our neighbor suffers we suffer. When our neighbor is joyous we are joyfilled. Love like this is not some warm fuzzy, but a challenging call in which God will use us to do God’s work in the world. Who we are matters.
Paul tells the Romans: Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
He continues by saying: "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself."
In her book, “The Hiding Place,” Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian holocaust survivor who helped many Jews escape, tells this story about encountering, many years later, one of the former guards from the concentration camp where she spent 4 months:
It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former SS man who stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And sudden it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, the pain-blanched faces….
He came up to her after her speech, as the church was emptying, and said how grateful he was for her message. “To think,” he said, “that as you say (Jesus) has washed away my sins.” Then he thrust his hand out to shake hers. But Corrie could not respond. She, who had preached so often about the need to forgive, kept her hand at her side. Inside an anger boiled and vengeful thoughts popped up. She knew that these thoughts were sinful, that Jesus had died even for this man, this awful guard and all the horrible things he had done. Corrie would not ask more of Jesus, so she prayed that Jesus would fill her heart and help her forgive the guard.
Corrie tried to smile and struggled to stretch out her hand. Then, as she took the guards hand the most incredible thing happened. From Corrie’s shoulder, down her arm, and through her hand, a current seemed to pass from Corrie to the guard. And into Corrie’s heart sprang a love for this guard that could only be from Christ. The forgiveness she felt that night was the forgiveness of Christ, the grace of God. Corrie says, When God tells us to love our enemies, and we do so, God gives us that love itself.
God calls us to be a people of reconciliation. Who we are matters. It’s not about simply “being nice.” It’s about the ability to love even under the most challenging of circumstances…loving through the most difficult of challenges by loving as God loves.
In order to do this it is helpful to remember that first we have to reconcile our own sin. Over and over Jesus reminds the disciples, and therefore us, to worry about the log in our own eye….
And, it’s helpful to remember that we do not all define sin the same way. Which, of course, complicates the whole matter…So to get at this we can look at our baptismal covenant. Sin can be defined as those occasions when we fail to live into the covenant, fail to respect the dignity of others, fail to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ, fail to seek and serve Christ in all persons, fail to strive for peace and justice. So, begin with yourself, myself. In what ways do you, do I, struggle to live the baptismal covenant?
Next Sunday we will baptize a new little one into our community. We will welcome him into our community of faith and commit ourselves to assist his parents and Godparents in their efforts to raise this child in the Christian faith. In doing so we will renew our baptismal covenant and have an opportunity to reflect on these promises and how we are living into them…or not.
We do not see things as they are. We see things as WE are.
So who are we?
Portions of this reflection were influenced by John Shea "On Earth as it is in Heaven" Matthew Year A and Jan Richardson at The Painted Prayerbook.
A woman, studying the spontaneous remission of cancer, placed an ad in a local newspaper looking to interview people who felt they were in remission. She tells this story from one of the people she interviewed: There was a farmer with an advanced case of the disease and a challenging prognosis. Nonetheless he was doing quite well and seemed to be in remission.
About the disease and possible remission he said, “I didn’t take it on.”
By this he meant that he knew that his illness was advanced, he just didn’t let it determine how he went about living his life. He understood his doctors and this prognosis the same way he regarded the government soil experts who analyzed his fields. The farmer listened to the experts and respected them as they showed him findings in their tests that said that corn would not grow in his field. Like the doctors who gave him the diagnosis and treated him, he valued the opinion of the soil experts.
But, he said, “Nonetheless a lot of the time corn grows anyway.”
In other words the diagnosis was one thing, but what it was going to mean to him and his life, remained to be seen. (Kitchen Table Wisdom: Rachel Naomi Remen)
This story reminds me of a Jewish saying from the Talmud that goes like this: we do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
So, who are we?
Well, for starters, I think we are living, broadly speaking, in a time when the world is deeply broken. All around us we see disease, anger, war, divisiveness, and people polarized by this issue or that. We argue over who is right and who is wrong when human life is at stake. We are so inundated with images on television of violence and poverty that we have become numb and fail to see the brokenness when it is right in front of us. We live in a world where each one of us thinks we are entitled to having things our way, and lose sight of the needs, hopes, or desires of another person let alone, of community. In the 21st century we are, broadly speaking, a people who are: self-centered, quick to judge, opinionated, and demanding. We hurt others and rather than apologize we justify our actions, why we are right and why they got what they deserved.
You may not feel this way in your life, but we see it all around us, in the newspaper, on television shows, and in our politic, locally, nationally, and globally.
It reminds me of a story of the leader of a monastery named Abbot Moses, a desert father who lived in the second century and who spent much of his earlier life as a thief:
One day a brother of the monastic community offended some of the other brothers. So a council meeting was called and Abbot Moses, the brother in charge of the monastery, was asked to come to the meeting and mediate, but he refused to go to it. Eventually the monastery priest sent someone to get him, ‘Come,’ he said, ‘everyone is waiting for you.’ So Abbott Moses got up and headed toward the meeting. On the way he picked up a jug that was cracked and had several small holes. He filled it with water and carried it with him, the water trailing out behind him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Abbott, what are you doing?’ The old man (who had been a thief in his younger years) said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me but I do not see them, and yet today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When the brothers heard that, they said no more to the brother who offended them, but forgave him. (Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers.)
We do not see things as they are. We see things as WE are.
Our reading from Romans reminds us that how we live our lives matters. As Christians we are called by Jesus to be a people of reconciliation. We are not called to judge others. Judgment, when and how it happens, is God’s decision. Rather than judge we are called, by God through Christ, to bring forth God’s love into the world, heal the brokenness, restore relationships, be the face of Christ. As Christians we know that loving our neighbor matters. Loving ourselves matters. Loving God matters. How we do this, how we love, matters. With this kind of love, when our neighbor suffers we suffer. When our neighbor is joyous we are joyfilled. Love like this is not some warm fuzzy, but a challenging call in which God will use us to do God’s work in the world. Who we are matters.
Paul tells the Romans: Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
He continues by saying: "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself."
In her book, “The Hiding Place,” Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian holocaust survivor who helped many Jews escape, tells this story about encountering, many years later, one of the former guards from the concentration camp where she spent 4 months:
It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former SS man who stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And sudden it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, the pain-blanched faces….
He came up to her after her speech, as the church was emptying, and said how grateful he was for her message. “To think,” he said, “that as you say (Jesus) has washed away my sins.” Then he thrust his hand out to shake hers. But Corrie could not respond. She, who had preached so often about the need to forgive, kept her hand at her side. Inside an anger boiled and vengeful thoughts popped up. She knew that these thoughts were sinful, that Jesus had died even for this man, this awful guard and all the horrible things he had done. Corrie would not ask more of Jesus, so she prayed that Jesus would fill her heart and help her forgive the guard.
Corrie tried to smile and struggled to stretch out her hand. Then, as she took the guards hand the most incredible thing happened. From Corrie’s shoulder, down her arm, and through her hand, a current seemed to pass from Corrie to the guard. And into Corrie’s heart sprang a love for this guard that could only be from Christ. The forgiveness she felt that night was the forgiveness of Christ, the grace of God. Corrie says, When God tells us to love our enemies, and we do so, God gives us that love itself.
God calls us to be a people of reconciliation. Who we are matters. It’s not about simply “being nice.” It’s about the ability to love even under the most challenging of circumstances…loving through the most difficult of challenges by loving as God loves.
In order to do this it is helpful to remember that first we have to reconcile our own sin. Over and over Jesus reminds the disciples, and therefore us, to worry about the log in our own eye….
And, it’s helpful to remember that we do not all define sin the same way. Which, of course, complicates the whole matter…So to get at this we can look at our baptismal covenant. Sin can be defined as those occasions when we fail to live into the covenant, fail to respect the dignity of others, fail to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ, fail to seek and serve Christ in all persons, fail to strive for peace and justice. So, begin with yourself, myself. In what ways do you, do I, struggle to live the baptismal covenant?
Next Sunday we will baptize a new little one into our community. We will welcome him into our community of faith and commit ourselves to assist his parents and Godparents in their efforts to raise this child in the Christian faith. In doing so we will renew our baptismal covenant and have an opportunity to reflect on these promises and how we are living into them…or not.
We do not see things as they are. We see things as WE are.
So who are we?
Portions of this reflection were influenced by John Shea "On Earth as it is in Heaven" Matthew Year A and Jan Richardson at The Painted Prayerbook.
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