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14.02.2010_Forgiveness Sunday
| 14.02.2010, 19:42 | |
Rev. Tatiana Cantarella To Forgive is to Stop Keeping ScorePsalm 37:1-12, 41-42; Genesis 45:3-11, 15; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50; Luke 6:27-38 You know, every year before this one I have been skeptical of the "Forgiveness Sunday” tradition in our country, but not because I don’t believe in forgiveness. In fact, I believe in forgiveness so much that I am reluctant to participate in it on a surface level. Several holidays throughout the year motivate people to remember about love and forgiveness, and two of them have coincided today -- Forgiveness Sunday and Valentine’s Day. I am skeptical about these holidays because the commercialized love and one-day-forgiveness that most people celebrate on these days, for the most part, doesn’t change anything in our world. Holiday cards are filled with important sounding phrases, romantic and emotional words, lost after only a very few short days in the completely different reality that defines many relationships, a reality characterized by hostility, lack of forgiveness, hurt and the "keeping of scores.” However, this week I couldn’t get away from the coincidence of these two holidays, one about love, the other about forgiveness, and how in some miraculous way the Scripture readings that we heard today all came together (I didn’t pick them out for the occasion!). It was as if God was trying to tell me, "This day doesn’t have to be just a formal reminder about forgiveness and love for you. I can make this day a supernatural transformation of the earthly into the heavenly.” And so that is how it came about that today I am giving a sermon with a sense of deep nervousness, something that happens less and less after 10 years of preaching. That feeling of nervousness is what comes when you are 100% sure that God himself is leading you in a certain direction. Pray with me now, that we would hear God today. If you look at our world closer, you’ll see that it’s built on a mentality of "keeping score,” the primary killer of all human relationships. Time and again Rwandan Tutsi and Hutu wait for their turn to repay each other, and, as a result, in the massacre of 1994 800 thousand people died at the hands of their own countrymen. Holy places in Jerusalem are again and again torn by conflicts, because each side believes that not to respond to violence with violence will be taken as a sign of weakness. The whole world operates on the principle of "keeping score”, if someone hurt you, you hurt them in response to put them back into their place. And even in a positive sense we are used to keeping score. Someone gives you a gift and you rush to reciprocate. Someone invites you for diner and you want to invite them as well. Such is the relationship system in this world – "keeping score”. How appropriate it is that it is this week that we, followers of Christ, read the words of Jesus that speak about a radically different standard of love that cannot be contained on the pages of Hallmark cards, love that is not seen in the lips and loins, romantic kisses and dates decorated with cupids and laces. Jesus speaks about love as refusal to keep score and desire to play by different rules, God’s rules that transform the world not for a day but forever. We stumble upon Jesus’ command to "love ones’ enemies” which seems absurd and impossible by the world’s standards because an enemy by definition is the one who deserves to be hated, not loved. But this command is given, however, not to everyone in the world but to Jesus’ disciples, those who are ready to hear from Him things they don’t even yet fully understand. One thing is clear, every word of Jesus shows that true love, love from God, refuses to keep score and is radically different from what the world understands by love. "Love your enemies.” For an enemy who is loved ceases to be enemy; all "score” against him is cancelled. "Do good to those who hate you.” Instead of responding to their hatred with hatred, respond with a kind action. "Bless those who curse you.” Instead of responding to an evil, cutting, critical word with more of the same, respond with a good word, a blessing. "Pray for those who hurt you.” Instead of weighing the offense and responding with an equal one, ask God to show His grace and mercy to the person, the same grace and mercy you would want God to show to you. All these statements emphasize the same thought: Jesus’ disciples no longer live by the "tit for tat” mentality but by "overcoming evil with good”. In the same way Jesus warns his disciples not to be satisfied even with a positive score keeping, "loving those who love you”, "doing good to those who do good to you”, and "giving only when you have assurance of getting it back”. All these things are natural even for this world and are expected from people who have no idea of God or His love. Many believers, however, are proud of possessing such love for their close friends, but wrongly so, because even unbelievers do that, yet that doesn’t change the world a bit, because the world (and many believers together with it) continues to keep score. Martin Luther King understood that Jesus calls us to a completely different, radical love. When a hostile group of opponents burnt his home and his closest allies wanted to respond in a similarly violent way. They no longer wanted to put up with these expressions of societal contempt. They wanted to burn the homes of white people so that whites would feel for themselves how black people suffered. The instinctive feeling when people hurt or offend us is to strike back, to return abuse with abuse, to curse those who curse us. But Martin Luther King gathered together his fellow activists who were ready to respond with violence and told them: "When you live by the law of eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth you soon end up in a society of blind and toothless people.” These words cooled the fervor of his fellow activists and they dispersed with the confidence that only God’s radical love can conquer evil and that they would overcome by using ballots instead of weapons, by negotiating with their enemies instead of shooting at them, by responding with love instead of hate. Responding with violence only begets more violence, responding with hate only produces more hate. We know that from our own experience. The story of Joseph that we read today in Genesis is one of my favorites. Many years ago Joseph had been sold as a slave to an Egyptian caravan by his own brothers. A lot changed in Joseph’s life over the years. Because of his wisdom and honesty he became an important figure in Egypt in the court of Pharaoh, despite his many years as a slave. Then famine strikes the land and Joseph’s brothers turn up in Egypt, right in front of Joseph, and don’t recognize him. That’s quite the coincidence! Imagine that you’re in Joseph’s place. With one wave of his hand he could have repaid them for the evil they did to him. He could have them killed or have enslaved them forever, just so that they would feel everything he had suffered. Few of us have suffered anything that compares to what Joseph lived through -- our grievances aren’t even close to what he experienced at the hands of his brothers! We wouldn’t miss the chance to redress an injustice, but Joseph doesn’t do that, he refuses to keep score. He breaks with the past and invites his brothers to leave behind their sad history. And he doesn’t just forgive them, but decides to do good to them, to take care of them during the days of the famine and to keep them from dying. Some of us might think, "But I could never do that!” But you know why he is able to act as he does? Because he believes deeply that God was with him even in such a terrible situation as being sold into slavery. Yes, his brothers treated him violently and sold him into slavery, but he believes that everything, absolutely everything is in God’s hands, and that it was God who sent him to Egypt, "made him father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt” (Gen. 45:8). Because of his faith he is sure that God sent his brothers to him so he could "save their lives,” not exact revenge. In everything that happens to him Joseph sees the loving, merciful hand of God and providence. By worldly standards Joseph had every right to exact revenge, but he doesn’t do it because that’s not his way, that’s not the way of God. Joseph doesn’t "keep score” because he first and foremost in every circumstance is a person of God and behind all of the events of his life he sees God working to turn even evil into good. Joseph is an example of what God’s mercy can do in a person’s life: it can transform a curse into a blessing. Joseph reflects the image of God, who, having every reason to spurn stubborn humanity, loves them so much that He Himself decides to participate in their suffering. That is what, according to the words of Jesus, should motivate Christians to love others with a radical love. He doesn’t give us promises that our love will change the way our enemies relate to us, or that it will change their behavior or even that it will change how we feel about them. The only reason to fulfill this difficult commandment of Christ is given in verse 35: "But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Jesus tells us that the greatest reward is being children who are like their Heavenly Father, children who no longer desire to participate when people hurt each other, "keeping score,” but rather who give forgiveness and love in the same generous measure with which they have received it from the Father. Scriptures talking about "measure” also speak the difficult words "for the measure you give will be the measure you get back: Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven”. Matthew expresses the same thought in his Gospel even more radically: "if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will Your Father forgive your trespasses” (Мtt. 6:15). "The meaning here is not that God denies forgiveness to us, deliberately withholding his pardon. On the contrary, God is always eager to forgive us; but if we on our side are not willing to extend forgiveness to others, we simply render ourselves incapable of receiving into our hearts the forgiveness that God is offering to us. Unless we ourselves forgive, we are not open to divine forgiveness. God does not shut us out, but it is we who close the door in his face through our hardness towards others and our unrelenting resentment” (Bishop Timothy Ware). Another radical difference between the love Jesus talks about and the popular notion of love is that love isn’t a feeling or an emotion, but an action. The Lord knows that we can’t always change our feelings towards those who wrong us, but we can act by relating to them in a certain way. Even when we can’t change the inner feeling of hostility towards a person, it is in our strength to tell them hello. Jesus doesn’t say, "Feel love for those who have hurt you.” He says, "Do good,” "Bless,” (say good things), and "pray,” asking God to do good things. The love to which the Lord calls us is a merciful attitude towards other people and it is rooted in the very essence of God, for God is merciful. God’s mercy really is the starting point for the healing of violence and hate in this world. Thomas Merton writes, "The beginning of the fight against hatred, the basic Christian answer to hatred, is not the commandment to love, but what must necessarily come before in order to make the commandment bearable and comprehensible. It is a prior commandment, to believe. The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved. The faith that one is loved by God. That faith that one is loved by God although unworthy -- or, rather, irrespective of one’s worth! And until this discovery is made, until this liberation has been brought about by the divine mercy, man is imprisoned in hate. The commandment of Christ to love with a radical love is given to those who once lived in ingratitude and evil, but having accepted the love of God are now able to see in the face of their enemy the image of God.” In response to God’s great mercy towards us "all of our enmity must die, not all our enemies, so that Love might come to enliven us and bring us Life. Our long-held hatreds, weekly feuds and arguments, our daily frustrations and complaints can be buried so that what was sown in corruption might be raised in Christ as incorrupt, that we might bear in ourselves the image of the heavenly, just as we once bore the image of the flesh.” I learned that in the Eastern Church tradition this Gospel is re-enacted in visible form through the ceremony of mutual forgiveness that takes place in many monasteries and parish churches on Forgiveness Sunday. The minister or priest kneels before the congregation, asking pardon and saying, "Forgive me, a sinner” and then the others kneel before him, each saying the same words. The forgiveness is given on a one-to-one basis: each person goes around and kneels before one another individually, requesting and transmitting forgiveness. Timothy Ware writes: "This ceremony of mutual forgiveness, so far from being merely a ritual form, can be and often is a profoundly moving moment, altering the lives of those who participate. Symbolic gestures of this kind have a decisive effect. I can recall occasions when this exchange of forgiveness on the threshold of Lent has served as a forceful catalyst, suddenly breaking down long-standing barriers and making possible a true recreating of relationship.” After I read Ware’s description I felt such a strong sense of the power these actions could have, but also fear at the thought of it. Could we as a community dare to make such a step, a step that demand a serious commitment to overcome our personal pride, embarrassment, and awkwardness? Or what would we do if someone didn’t have the strength to ask for forgiveness from the one they felt had wronged them instead of recognizing their own guilt!? I think we can only respond with the words of Metropolitan Benjamin, who said, "first of all it is necessary to say the words of our Lord: "What is impossible with man is possible with God!” Once you decide to ask forgiveness the Lord will do the rest. Therefore don’t say that the task is too beyond your strength! It’s not true: God will help you!” Today I want each of us to decide to ask for forgiveness from every one else, one-on-one. Don’t even think about whether or not the other person deserves it. Instead, let’s ask for forgiveness saying, "Forgive me for my sins, both intentional and unintentional!” And as we forgive let’s say "God has forgiven and so do I.” Find in yourself the courage to say this to every brother and sister and God will do the rest. | |
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