Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
In the verses
that immediately precede this week’s Gospel lesson, Jesus says:
“Be on your guard! If another disciple sins,
you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven
times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, 'I repent,' you must
forgive."
The
apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"
Increase our
faith?
Why do the
disciples make that plea to Jesus?
Because the
forgiveness that Jesus commands his disciples to offer is one of the most
difficult things a human can really do.
Harboring
resentments, anger, and holding that person in disdain & contempt is a more
typical response to those who have seriously wronged us, and certainly easy.
Forgiving, though,
is harder.
Forgiving time
after time the same offense is almost impossible.
Imagine, for
example, a woman whose husband has been unfaithful. When the affair comes to light, he is filled
with guilt and remorse and says, “I am so sorry, please forgive me, and I
promise, I’ll never do it again!”
She shows him
great mercy and love, and forgives him.
But then, a short
while later he has another affair. Once
again he comes to his wife.
“I am so sorry,
please forgive me and I promise, I’ll never do it again!”
This scene
repeats itself, time after time.
Can we really
imagine that the wife, on the fifth, sixth, even seventh time that her husband
confesses to having an affair can still find it within herself to continually
forgive?
That task would
be monumentally difficult.
Our response would
more likely be something like: “Fool me
once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
Or we might say
that yes, we are to forgive our spouse if he/she is unfaithful, but there comes
a point where we should also protect ourselves from further harm and hurt by
divorcing them for their unfaithfulness.
Forgive them,
yes.
Stay married to
them, no.
But that’s not
really what Jesus says.
Even if the same
person sins against you seven times and repents, seven times, you must forgive.
“Increase our
faith!” the disciples exclaimed, “Increase our faith.”
In response to
them, Jesus has two things to say.
First, that faith
is powerful and does what it does.
And second, that
faith is not some extreme virtue so high that only the spiritual giants among
us can attain it, but rather faith is simply what each of us is expected to do.
When we forgive,
forgiveness happens.
And to do that is
simply our ‘job’.
Bill Belichick,
the legendary coach of the New England Patriots is famous for his coaching ‘mantra’.
“Just do your
job!”
He doesn’t expect
his players to go out and win games on their own.
He doesn’t expect
his players to go out and win championships on their own.
He expects one
thing, and one thing only: “Just do YOUR
job.”
Like the slaves
in Jesus’ example, that were expected to serve their master, we are expected to
do the same, do what is commanded.
And that means
among other things to forgive.
One of the
objections we raise, too often, is that people must truly repent in order to be
forgiven.
Did the person in
Jesus’ example truly repent?
If someone sins
against you time and time again, each time repenting and asking forgiveness,
only to do it all again—is that true repentance?
Most of us would
say “No.”
Yet Jesus says
that we are to forgive such a person.
Another issue is
the question of repentance. “What does
it mean to repent?”
Literally,
repentance means to ‘turn around’.
In our theology,
it has at least three different meanings, depending how we understand the work
of Christ.
We’ve been
studying this in our class, Sunday mornings.
If we understand
Jesus to be the victorious King who is fighting the powers of evil in this
world, then repentance means to turn from our fears, and trust that Jesus will
defeat the forces of evil and set us free.
Repentance. Turning from fear to trust.
If we understand
the Christian faith as being the conflict between a righteous God, and a sinful
humanity, then repentance means something different. Actually, in this regard it means two things:
First, that as
sinners we stop doing what we were doing that was sinful. Just stop it!
And go and sin no more.
And also,
repentance means that we turn from our guilt to receive with gratitude the
forgiveness offered to us for the sake of Jesus Christ.
The problem with
this understanding of repentance is that the Bible makes clear that we cannot
just stop sinning. Paul makes that point
in Romans. And if we could stop sinning,
we wouldn’t need forgiveness in the first place.
The third way we
understand the work of Christ is as the reconciler between God and
humanity. Sin is understood as
separation from God and the family of God, and reconciliation is what
forgiveness means.
In this sense,
repentance means turning back and coming home.
It’s the story of
the prodigal Son.
Do you give up
your fear, and trust that Christ will defeat evil?
Do you turn from
your guilt and accept the forgiveness freely offered to you by Christ, who died
for your?
Do you turn back
from your wayward ways and return home to the God who loves you?
These are the questions
of repentance.
Faith then, in
these three senses, means:
1.
That we trust that God will defeat all the
forces of evil;
2.
That we accept the forgiveness offer by Jesus;
and finally,
3.
That we love God and each other as we have been
loved.
We haven’t always ‘done our job’ in this regard.
In fact, we’ve failed miserably.
The fact that
there are so many difference denominations is a result of our not really being
able to forgive each other for our differences.
We have our
conflicts.
And rather than
forgive, we either start a new church or join another church, or perhaps even
give up church altogether.
Actually this is
something that has always struck me as being really troublesome and futile.
First of all,
there is only one Church. We believe in
ONE holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
One.
That means that
when we have our differences, leaving one Church and joining another doesn’t
resolve those differences, it merely accentuates them.
“Just do your job”,
Jesus says.
Forgive.
Yet, time after
time, we fail to do this one job.
Thankfully, the
God who told us to forgive someone even if they sin against us SEVEN TIMES A
DAY, also forgives US when we sin against him, day after day.
Thanks, be to
God.
Amen
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