Reconciliation by Vasconcellos, Coventry Cathedral
Photo by Martinvl [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
This morning I am going to continue the theme of
discipleship we have been hearing in Epiphany. We will look
at discipleship through two lenses: one much needed, the
other a trap. Forgiveness and Idolatry. Our Gospel is full of
provocations and that’s good. Like the question we
discussed at our tables just three weeks ago at the Annual
Meeting. As a reminder: “…in the context of the political
division in our country, how do we conduct ourselves as
people of faith who are also responsible citizens?”
It is very easy to try to make things better and end up
making things very much worse. Conflict and division are
not new. The “hell of fire” in this passage we just heard, is a
translation of the Greek word Gehenna, which refers to the
burning garbage heap outside of town. In other words, if
you call somebody a fool, you are calling yourself garbage.
There is no we and they, there is only us, and that us is
God’s field, God’s building, God’s servants.
So, my first focus is on forgiveness. In a few minutes, I
promise, we will make our communal confession and ask
for forgiveness. In the Lord’s prayer, we will promise to
forgive others as we have been forgiven. How do we
practice forgiving others? Forgiveness is:
“…a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of
resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who
has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually
deserve your forgiveness.”1
Some synonyms for forgiveness help shine a light on what
this forgiveness is.
pardon · absolution · exoneration · remission · dispensation · indulgence ·
understanding · tolerance · purgation · clemency · mercy · pity · lenience ·
leniency · quarter · reprieve · discharge · amnesty · delivery · acquittal · clearing ·
pardoning · condoning · condonation · vindication · exculpation · let-off · letting
off · shrift · shriving
In our prayer book, there is a service that I don’t think is
used very regularly called Reconciliation of a Penitent. It is
an opportunity for an individual to lay down a burden and
experience forgiveness. There is one line in that service
where the penitent is asked “Do you, then, forgive those
who have sinned against you?” This, after promising to turn
again to Christ. That turn is a good clue for one of the
necessary steps in forgiveness. Not many other steps are
laid out for us. Throughout the Gospels, we often see Jesus
telling people that they are forgiven and not to sin
anymore. I have been curious for months about how I am to
practice forgiving, to develop the “forgiveness” muscle,
have this be something I do well.
I know forgiveness does not mean that everything is okay.
30 years ago this week, Nelson Mandela was released from
prison in South Africa. He had been in prison nearly my
entire life. Five years later, the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission was formed, with Archbishop Desmond Tutu
and other South African leaders. The TRC was set up after
the end of apartheid to address the violence and torture
during the decades of minority white supremacist rule.
Anyone who was a victim of violence was free to make an
accusation and to face their perpetrators. Perpetrators who
admitted their participation could face their accusers, hear
them, and tell their own testimonies. This was a crucial step
for South Africa as they transitioned to a full and free
democracy. The mandate of the commission was to bear 3
witness to, record, and in some cases grant amnesty to the
perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations,
I am grateful to the information I found on
reparation and rehabilitation. The commission was charged
with restoring victims’ dignity and formulating proposals to
assist with rehabilitation. Out of over 7000 cases, almost
900 were granted amnesty.
When a victim is heard and a perpetrator is given an
opportunity to make amends, cycles of violence and
retribution break; the sin matrix dissolves. That is as close
as I can get to an algorithm of forgiveness. It is not perfect
and it does not guarantee that everything will be okay.
However, if there is a release of resentment, what freedom
that is!
On a smaller level, my EFM class in Colorado was once
painfully divided. Most of “us” were on one side of an issue
and one individual was on the other. I was new to
mentoring and I was lost as to how to deal with this divide.
Finally, the individual asked me if he could address the
group. He had prepared on a large poster board his own
“hierarchy of needs” pyramid for how to get along as
companion disciples a Christian group, with disagreements.
Community was the foundation of that pyramid. And he
was lonely. He needed us. He needed to be heard and to
hear us without being judged. Again, resentments got
released, we moved forward, and the us and them were
unified as WE.
That is why I have long been intrigued by the instructions
from Jesus at the start of our Gospel about leaving your gift
at the altar if your brother or sister has something against
you. Really. I have reflected that one sentence over and over
and over many times. The altar in question here is in the
Temple in Jerusalem, where worship is still centralized for
the Judeans. The gift would have been an animal or birds.
Most recently, a strange image has come to mind.
What if everybody listening to Jesus preach followed this
instruction? What if they all traveled to Jerusalem, went to
the temple, bought their animal or pair of birds, went to the
altar, and then … I have been seeing the central Temple full
of sheep and birds and other animals, let loose, set free,
baa-ing and chirping in the Temple while people go and do
the work of reconciliation. Real discipleship means
forgiving and asking for forgiveness, not whether your
sheep is unblemished. What “gift” do we offer when we are
really asked to give ourselves?
At one point in time, I heard that sentence as a barrier to
Communion. I took this instruction literally to mean that if
someone had something against me I could not go to the
altar and take Communion. I fasted from Communion for a
long time because there was someone who had something
against me and I didn’t know how to fix it. So, my last
thought on forgiveness is that sometimes the release is
personal and private. Sometimes the person has died and
the way we heal the breach has changed dramatically.
Sometimes a relationship is so toxic that it is only more
abusive to try to reconcile. In 2006, I heard Sister Helen
Prejean and Miroslav Volf speaking about “the anatomy of
reconciliation,” about turning from violence to healing. Volf,
who grew up in Croatia, spoke about a man who had been
captured and tortured in the conflict in the former
Yugoslavia. Long after his release, this man realized that
the torture was ongoing—in his mind. Volf said that the
man came to see his mind as a house with different rooms
and his torturer was in the living room. The violence could
never be undone, but what this man could do, was move
the man out of the front room to the basement in his mind.
After that, this man was free.
Resentment is using memory to turn the weapon that hurt
us on ourselves. According to Volf, “The proper goal of
memory should be reconciliation—‘embrace’—which
includes justice.” Volf proposes that the memory of Christ’s
passion and resurrection, which we do every week, should
guide Christians’ remembering of wrongs committed and
suffered. We don’t tell a story of a victim. We tell the story
of the Victor. This is freedom and release and
reconciliation.
I am going to give you two suggestions for practicing
release and reconciliation. For the first, I want you to say
the Lord’s prayer at home and to insert the name of
someone for whom you need to pray because of
resentment. For example—I shall pray for my grandmother
who left us this week—it goes like this: “Billie’s Father, who
art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Give Billie this day her
daily bread, forgive Billie her trespasses, lead Billie not into
temptation, deliver Billie from evil.” You get the idea. This
prayer can be hard, I admit. Try it. I’m sure you can think of
someone from the news if not in your daily life.
Secondly, today, before you go to the altar, we will offer
one another the peace. When we do that here at St. Ben’s it
is truly a love feast. Let’s exercise our forgiveness
“muscles.” No, I am not going to put people on the spot,
any more than our confession does not ask us to name
particular sins. I am asking you to offer an exchange of
forgiveness during the peace. Make your Yes a true Yes
because when we forgive each other we are saying Yes to
God.
When you turn to your sister or brother disciple at the
peace this morning, say “I forgive you.” or “You are
forgiven.” or “Peace and Forgiveness to you.” There does
not have to be a particular resentment. This is an
opportunity to remind us of what God does for us. I will be
interested to hear how that works for you.
The reason I’m suggesting this is that my second focus is
idolatry. When we are consumed with resentment about
somebody, that person looms larger than God. On the other
side of the coin, as Paul has been telling us for a few weeks
now in First Corinthians, when we elevate a person, some
teacher, mentor, candidate, leader, Apollos, or Paul, out of
proportion to who they really are, they also loom larger than God.
When we are free from resentment and misplaced
adoration, to quote Dietrich Bonhoefer, we “only have one
master now…but with this ‘yes’ to God belongs just as clear
a ‘no.’ Your ‘yes’ to God requires your ‘no’ to all injustice,
to all evil, to all lies, to all oppression and violation of the
weak and poor, to all ungodliness, and to all mockery of
what is holy. Your ‘yes’ to God requires a ‘no’ to everything
that tries to interfere with your serving God alone, even if
that is your job, your possessions, your home, or your
honor in the world.” I believe this is the real adultery Jesus
was warning against: those things that tear us from love of
God and neighbor.
Our conversations together in this fraught year must be framed by
our Yes to God and our No to injustice. If we hit a wall of
disagreement, if our brother or sister has something against us, I
hope we can all root ourselves in the words of the prayers we are
about to pray this morning. Let us set aside anything in us that is
not God’s, for, as we prayed at the start of our service, “we can do
nothing good without” God. Let us be God’s servants, God’s field,
God’s building of the body of Christ. We are forgiven. Forgive one
another. And bring your unique gift—your very self—to the altar and
be filled with the gift Christ gives to us.
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