The Requirement of Love
Lectionary - Year A, 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time • Sermon • Submitted
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· 11 viewsWe are to forgive one another.
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Our Greatest Failure
Our Greatest Failure
Pastors assume that through their teaching they are guiding their congregational members on how-to live out the teaching of Jesus in the daily lives. Pastors would like to assume that people are listening, reflecting and applying their teaching to daily situations. Pastors hope that when a member of their congregation faces a difficult decision, that something that was said from the pulpit will make a difference in what the lay person does.
However, if there is one area in which lay people must wear sound reducing ear muffs, if their is one area that does not register with most lay people it is the area of forgiveness.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness
Families of addicts carry the burden of bitterness and resentment toward the addict for years . Physical scars eventually heal but the emotional scars may be evident an entire life. And the problem is not just with addictions. We just have a difficult time forgive another person when we have been injured.
A boss my have given an unfair performance review that costs us a job promotion and a higher salary.
Someone may have run a stop sign because they were talking on their cell phone and hit our car. We have had painful back and neck injuries ever since.
A teacher who never liked one of our children, did not take the time to help our children master a skill that they needed.
An adult in a leadership role took sexual liberty with our child. We could never prove it but the circumstantial evidence is too great.
These are just a few of the really bad things that can and do happen in our lives or the lives of our children that are difficult to forgive. And I can understand the difficulty of forgiving someone who has greatly harmed you or a family member. But the really struggle for the church is to forgive the ordinary offenses that take place during the ordinary ministry of the church and everyday life.
A person dramatically decreases their participation after their name has been left off a thank you list.
A friend stops calling after they were told by someone that you thought the new color of their house was dull.
Words are exchanged between two moms over which child should be on the relay team at the state meet. The moms no long sit together at weekend meets.
The Parable
The Parable
Jesus understood that their would be days like this. He knew that people would get on each others nerves. People would act in ways that would offend others and hurt them? Do you know how he knew? He knew that we were all selfish sinners. That sounds bad doesn’t it? But it is true.
John 2
But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men.
Jesus never trusted himself to any man until the time had come for him to die. He then let Judas betray him.
He knew that the “loyal” Eleven would be overcome with fear and doubt causing them to desert him.
Then Jesus told them, “This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written:
“ ‘I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’
Then Jesus told them, “This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written:
“ ‘I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’
Mt
Jesus never expects to us to be perfect. He never expected us to never make mistakes. He never expects us not to irate one another. But he did expect us to forgive each other.
Peter must have have a swelled with pride when he approached Jesus and offered to forgive a person 7x.
The New International Version (1984) Judgment on Israel
“For three sins of Israel,
even for four, I will not turn back my wrath.
Based on the book of Amos Jewish tradition only required 3x. Amos has a section in which he denounces the sins of Judah and Israel and their neighbors (Damascus, Gasa, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Judah and Israel.)
Each section is opened the same way. God forgives three sins but punishes for the forth. The Jewish people assumed that if God only forgave three times, they only had to forgive three times.
Jesus must have exploded in his response to Peter.
“God's pardon, which we are called to imitate, far exceeds even our most exaggerated ideas about forgiveness.”
Dan Clendenin, Journey with Jesus, “Never Judge, Always Forgive.”
Peter had obvious missed the point so Jesus told a parable in hopes of illustrating the lesson.
The “unmerciful servant” is a parable about a man who owes a debt a debt to a king. It is not just an ordinary debt but, a debt of such proportion that the man does not have any chance of repaying. He could win the lottery and still not have enough to pay in full. However, the king forgives the man. He wipes the slate clean. The king gives the man a fresh start. Before the man leaves the king’s presence, he promises to repay the debt. The debtor fails to grasp the enormity of his debt and the lack of resources he has to repay the money.
After the debtor leaves the king’s presence he is walking in the market and meets a man who owes him a very small amount of money. The debtor now creditor grabs the man by the throat and demands full payment immediately. The poor man pleads for more time but the debtor/creditor throws the second man into prison until he receives full payment. You may wonder how a man could pay off a debt if he was in prison. He could not work and earn an income. Usually his family was responsible for raising the money. This would prevent a person giving his fortune to his family and then pleading poverty.
When the king discovers what has happen he issues a warrant for first debtor’s arrest. He explains his shock and dismay to the man. He who had an impossible debt did not forgive the meager debt that was owed him.
We may notice that forgiveness on that scale is disproportionate to the sincerity of the penitent. Such forgiveness would allow for “serial sinners” who are never held accountable. Jesus says it does not matter forgive them anyway.
St. Augustine once commented, "Do not despair, one of the thieves was saved."
He then cautioned, "Do not presume, one of the thieves was damned."
Law of Reciprocity
Law of Reciprocity
Jesus creates a sort of Law of Reciprocity. Receiving forgiveness comes from granting forgiveness. It raises the question: we are to expect divine forgiveness only to the extent that we extended human forgiveness.
Mt 18:35
“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
Similarly in the Our Father, prayer we ask God
For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
In this week’s epistle reading Paul uses a Gk word that means “to look down on” another. We are not to despise them, scorn them or treat them as a person with contempt
The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him.
,
You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.
The word occurs 11 times in the Greek NT. It was used by Jesus to warn people who were
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable:
lk
The early monastics emphasized this point. One abbot said,
The monk must never judge his neighbor in any way whatever
Abbot Moses
Another was adamant about protecting others. Just as God protects the world, so Abbot Macarius would cover the faults he saw as though he did not see them and those he heard as though he did not hear them.
The reason for this is an awareness of both human nature and the character of God. St. Maximos the Confessor:
"The person who has come to know the weakness of human nature has gained experience of divine power. Such a person never belittles anyone… He knows that God is like a good and loving physician who heals with individual treatment each of those who are trying to make progress."
And that all may be true but their is one area that just does not click with many lay people. They are also to forgive their pastor when their pastor has committed an offence against them. Now I am not saying this because I have really screwed in the past 30, 60 or even 90 days. Besides I would not even remember if I had. I am saying this because I have encountered a few too many lay people who told me “I will never forgive him.”
I do not understand why but for
Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters.
Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.
Ro
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Some of you may know about the Catholic Worker movement that was begun by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933. Its aim is to “live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ.” One of Dorothy’s granddaughters has written a family memoir about her paradoxical grandmother” and her many “complexities and contradictions” and in particular the complicated mother-daughter relationship between Day and her only child Tamar. The new book supposedly strips away the saintliness and presents the human side of Day.
Robert Ellsberg, who transcribed and edited Day's handwritten diaries, calls Hennessy's biography a "stunning work.
Why? Because it reminds us that "holy people are actual human beings." And because actual human beings are deeply imperfect, we all need to give and receive forgiveness, and never judge one another.
At the end of her biography, Hennessy recalls how her mother Tamar, who suffered so much and for so many reasons, once told her, "You don't grow up until you forgive your parents." And we could add, your spouse, your children, your neighbor, your boss, even and especially your own self.
(This sermon is deeply indebted to Dan Clendenin, Journey with Jesus, “Never Judge, Always Forgive.”
