The Ven. Richard I Cluett
One of the pleasures in ministry I was afforded when I was with you full-time was to celebrate the annual Altar Guild Eucharist. In May 2006 I spoke to the members about a woman who was an altar guild member at Christ Church in Corning, NY, where I served for nearly seven years.
In the narthex of Christ Church, which is a dark shadowy place, there are some small stained glass windows memorializing, remembering certain parishioners. One window, if my memory serves me, contains a vase of flowers and some altar linens. As you might imagine the window was given to honor the work of the Altar Guild. It was given by a woman who had served on an altar guild for 65 of her then 75 years.
It symbolized her own vocation and the ministry of all members of the altar guild, who carry out the tasks of setting the table, doing the dishes, and arranging the flowers, making the sanctuary beautiful for God and for the people of God.
It is interesting to note that she was a woman of enormous wealth, who in her own home, paid others to set the table, do the dishes, and arrange the flowers. But for the ministry of the altar, for the sacramental ministry of the community of Jesus, no task was too menial, no job too humble. For 65 years she polished, prepared and then put away Holy Things.
I spoke to the altar guild in that little homily about the integral work of the altar guild which is to make sure the linens are cleaned and pressed, the vessels are cleansed, polished and in place, the sacramental bread available, the wine ready to be poured, and the vestments laid out – and in that work there is a privileged discipline, a commitment of time and energy, and a gift of love.
I was reminded of that woman and the service of the altar guild, as well as the service and ministries of so many others in this parish and elsewhere, by the parable in today’s gospel lesson of the two brothers and what it means to do the work of a disciple.
What is it that they say? Something like, “The world is run by those who show up?” Well, the work of a disciple is showing up to do the work of Jesus: feeding, clothing, housing, visiting, holding, praying… touching the lives of those who need them touched – just as Jesus did.
We heard the Apostle Paul write in the Letter to the Philippians, Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross.
Most of what you and I are asked by God to do will keep us far, far, far away from death – even death on a cross. But we are asked to show up and serve – serve God’s people, serve the needs of the kingdom, serve for the sake of the Gospel. It may require a little death of self – selfish interests, needs, and wants, but probably it will not require much more than that.
Roger Lovette, a Baptist minister, tells of the time that his son sent him a bulletin from the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia. One Sunday he stood in a long line of visitors to listen to Jimmy Carter teach Sunday school. He stayed for the worship service and sent his dad the service leaflet. There was a notice in the bulletin: Rosalynn Carter will clean the church next Saturday. Jimmy Carter will cut the grass and trim the shrubbery.
It’s not always the one who talks or preaches or teaches or has power who reflects the work of Jesus. Sometimes it is the one who shows up on a hot Saturday afternoon to dust the pews, take out the trash, cut the grass, cook at the meal center, or hammer a nail in a flood home, pray for someone – making the world a little better for Christ’s sake.
And we don’t show up for what we want to get out of showing up and following through on our personal “Yes, Lord.” It would be easy to get that wrongful idea from the Philippians passage, “Therefore God highly exalted him…” There is to be no quid pro quo, no “I’ll do this if you do that.” No, no.
All there will be is the deep down knowledge that we have done no more and no less than what we ought to have done. We have shown up for the Gospel’s sake, shown up for the welfare of God’s people, shown up for building of God’s kingdom, and we have done some of the work of Jesus. We have allowed, for this moment in time, the same mind to be in us that was in Christ Jesus. And that is all we are asked to do, and all that we are able to do will be sufficient for the day.
This is how we will work out our own salvation, because God is at work in us.
But, you know, we are human. We’re not perfect. We have so many demands on us. We have so much for which we are responsible. Sometimes it just feels impossible to show up. Too busy. Too tired. Too worried. Too stressed. Too, too. And we don’t go. Sometimes even if we have said that we would, we don’t. Kind of like that brother. We’re only human, right? There is only so much of me to go around. It’s a matter of prioritizing…
Actually, it is all about prioritizing. Life is about prioritizing. Discipleship, too, is about prioritizing. And we do have the ability to say “No”, don’t we? A God-given ability to make a choice.
Stephen Bayne, a wise bishop and saint of this church wrote: God put freedom into his created universe in order that the universe could respond to his love with an answering love of its own...He put into the created universe a principle of choice; and He paid a two-fold price for that. First, He limited his own freedom to have things his own way. Second, he committed himself to having to win out of freedom what he could easily have commanded as a right. Why did he do this? He did it because God is love and because love needs an answering love of its own.
God’s love of you seeks a freely given answering love. What will you answer? When God calls will you choose to show up?
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Pentecost 18/Proper 19
Matthew 18
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The Rev. William Miller in his book, “The Gospel according to Sam, Animal Stories for the Soul,” tells of an experience he witnessed while on a mission trip with a youth group he was leading in Galveston, Texas. He tells a story of taking his youth group to a miniature golf range after a long day of service projects. There in front of them is a five year old boy with an older man, perhaps his grandfather. The man whose face is weathered perhaps suggested a man of the seas, a fisherman or shrimper. The boy proceeded to play his game, hacking repeatedly on a weathervane-themed hole. The object to get the ball through a passageway in the weathervane, coordinating your strike so that the arms of the vane would not impede the ball! Well, time after time, stroke after stroke, the unforgiving weathervane knocked the ball back to the little boy! The group of teens grew impatient when finally the little boy got the ball onto the other side! Finally! Yet on the other side, the horror continued. The boy slapped and hacked at the ball! Off of a bench, innocent bystanders, and finally off of the plastic Octopus gunslinger mounted on a nearby hole! Finally, the boy picked up the ball, put it in the hole, threw his putter into the air and declared, “A two!” The weathered face of the gentlemen with the young boy tightened and he said, “Now you know you didn’t get a two.” Bill Miller writes, “At that the boy looked right up at him recognizing the mess he’d made of the hole, a bogey to the fourth power, as close to par as a distant galaxy is to earth, and asked, “Won’t you give me a two?”
Miller continues, “I believe it was Jung who said, “the brighter the halo, the smellier the feet,” for even the best among us have gone to the dogs. If the truth be told, we’ve made a mess of most of the course, and we missed the mark more often than not. There’s no use pretending we even belong at the tee. Nonetheless, for some strange reason, God can be trusted to look down and write on the only scorecard that matters – an undeserved, unmerited, unbelievable par. God cheats on our behalf and gives us a two. “My grace is sufficient,” God has said.
In today’s Gospel lesson according to Matthew, we pick up our theme of last week, where Jesus is in the midst of teaching his disciples about the cornerstone on which God’s Kingdom is to be built – that is the cornerstone of forgiveness. You’ll remember that last week Jesus, that while giving his disciples a mechanism to reach out with intention to forgive those of the church who had aggrieved them, he also set as a foundation that to be disciples of the kingdom was to have a heart and world-view that seeks at all costs to forgive! Forgiveness, Jesus seems to be saying, is the power that holds together, that union with God and with one another is far more powerful than alienation. So, how hard do we go about the business of forgiveness? Very, very hard! So hard that even the most difficult and alienated among us are worthy to be treated in Kingdom principle as the mission field (a Gentile or tax collector), for God’s preference is for the lost!
In today’s scripture, Peter, who once again seems a step behind the action, in a follow up question, naively, or maybe even stubbornly begs the question…“now Jesus, tell this again? How many times do we forgive someone who has offended? Seven? (That seems a lot). No Jesus says…….seventy times seven! Now, Peter’s question, through the lens of a human sense of justice, seems reasonable. Perhaps you are aligned with Peter in this thought process about one who repeatedly offends and seems undeniably resistant to a path of forgiveness. First, like us, experience probably has taught Peter that there must be limits to patience with misbehaviors! How many times does this person get away with this after all? Okay perhaps Peter thinks to himself…seven times seem a reasonable limit!
Or – perhaps one has to ask if it is in my best interest to seek forgiveness when it seems clear to me that my brother’s and sister’s repentance is suspicious at best, and a path toward change seems iffy at best!
This, we all would agree, is legitimate questioning on Peter’s behalf! Particularly in a human experience that leads to a worldview and understanding of justice that may even lead to our need to “count,” keep score as it were!
When I asked a friend recently, tongue in cheek, “How many times are we to forgive? Seven?" The response, was, “I think a lot more than that and I am pretty sure my spouse is counting!” When it comes to forgiveness, however, Jesus’ response does not address Peter’s concern with an “economy of counting,” instead Jesus’ response takes the conversation from the sphere of ordinary human relationships to the mysterious realm of the holy.
For the kingdom followers, the cornerstone of forgiveness will not be found in such an economy of counting, but rather on a radical, unprecedented, even seemingly irrational ethic of forgiveness! One which will challenge them and challenges us deeply in the human sphere! For at the heart of the matter lies a reality that in God’s world-view, a world-view of mercy, even the most undeserved will find new life through pardon!
C.S. Lewis wrote, “The essential act of mercy is to pardon; and pardon’s very essence is to recognize guilt and the ill-dessert of the recipient!”
To live in the Kingdom is to come to grips that God’s heart is a merciful heart, there is no economy of score that makes any traditional sense, for the unforgiving courses of life, where we my be hacking above what any scorecard would hold, “God indeed seems to cheat on our behalf!” Par…or even better sometimes “My grace is sufficient.”
This radical merciful forgiveness seems to be what Jesus invites his followers to understand and to form a heart for! Not only will God’s grace be sufficient, but it is beyond understanding, especially when understanding is built upon a system of human expectations and an economy of justice built upon “counting.”
The parable of the unforgiving servant provides the theological framework that grounds forgiveness at the center as we engage the astounding magnanimity of the King!
After all, as a King decides to be faithful about his business and in his accounting of all his transactions, he calls to his court all those who have been entrusted with the workings of his Kingdom business (slaves and servants).
Here we encounter one such worker of the Kingdom who seems to have held back profit for his own benefit! How much! Oh about fifteen years worth of salary! The legal consequences for such an action would of course be immediate death, but the King in a moment of anger, thinks to send him and his family into slavery. But the servant implores, begs for a deal! What comes next, of course, is the unheard of, unbelievable, even irrational action of the King! He pardons the act and sets him free! What he will do with this amazing, irrational, freedom from pardon, of course, is the teaching for kingdom followers. The unforgiving servant will squander it, ignore it, abuse it, and clearly not understand it! When in similar circumstance with roles reversed, one who owes him a day’s salary, he will follow the letter of the legal law and prosecute! The unforgiving servant has missed the opportunity for the heart of the matter! And so for Jesus’ listeners, they are implored not to do the same! For they live in a Kingdom where God’s Mercy of Pardon is at play! They know themselves they are undeserving of such grace and yet they receive it, and so they too must live with such a radical ethic of forgiveness!
Jesus understood the ethic of his day, the economy of counting, a justice system based where “the counting of things” often meant a “settling of scores.” The ethic of forgiveness is polar opposite the ethic of “settling scores,” or of revenge. So, Jesus implores, we’ve had enough of settling scores, you must work toward an ethic of forgiving from the heart!
And so you and I are invited to the magnanimity of God’s Kingdom! Cornerstone built upon forgiveness! The hard road of forgiveness calls us away from a scorecard of transgression! “God’s mercy is sufficient!” As we receive it, so we are open to the possibilities of freedom that comes through forgiving from the heart! Again, C.S. Lewis…“By remembering where we stand (with God’s ethic of forgiveness), by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” we are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint or exception, and God means what he says.
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The Rev. William Miller in his book, “The Gospel according to Sam, Animal Stories for the Soul,” tells of an experience he witnessed while on a mission trip with a youth group he was leading in Galveston, Texas. He tells a story of taking his youth group to a miniature golf range after a long day of service projects. There in front of them is a five year old boy with an older man, perhaps his grandfather. The man whose face is weathered perhaps suggested a man of the seas, a fisherman or shrimper. The boy proceeded to play his game, hacking repeatedly on a weathervane-themed hole. The object to get the ball through a passageway in the weathervane, coordinating your strike so that the arms of the vane would not impede the ball! Well, time after time, stroke after stroke, the unforgiving weathervane knocked the ball back to the little boy! The group of teens grew impatient when finally the little boy got the ball onto the other side! Finally! Yet on the other side, the horror continued. The boy slapped and hacked at the ball! Off of a bench, innocent bystanders, and finally off of the plastic Octopus gunslinger mounted on a nearby hole! Finally, the boy picked up the ball, put it in the hole, threw his putter into the air and declared, “A two!” The weathered face of the gentlemen with the young boy tightened and he said, “Now you know you didn’t get a two.” Bill Miller writes, “At that the boy looked right up at him recognizing the mess he’d made of the hole, a bogey to the fourth power, as close to par as a distant galaxy is to earth, and asked, “Won’t you give me a two?”
Miller continues, “I believe it was Jung who said, “the brighter the halo, the smellier the feet,” for even the best among us have gone to the dogs. If the truth be told, we’ve made a mess of most of the course, and we missed the mark more often than not. There’s no use pretending we even belong at the tee. Nonetheless, for some strange reason, God can be trusted to look down and write on the only scorecard that matters – an undeserved, unmerited, unbelievable par. God cheats on our behalf and gives us a two. “My grace is sufficient,” God has said.
In today’s Gospel lesson according to Matthew, we pick up our theme of last week, where Jesus is in the midst of teaching his disciples about the cornerstone on which God’s Kingdom is to be built – that is the cornerstone of forgiveness. You’ll remember that last week Jesus, that while giving his disciples a mechanism to reach out with intention to forgive those of the church who had aggrieved them, he also set as a foundation that to be disciples of the kingdom was to have a heart and world-view that seeks at all costs to forgive! Forgiveness, Jesus seems to be saying, is the power that holds together, that union with God and with one another is far more powerful than alienation. So, how hard do we go about the business of forgiveness? Very, very hard! So hard that even the most difficult and alienated among us are worthy to be treated in Kingdom principle as the mission field (a Gentile or tax collector), for God’s preference is for the lost!
In today’s scripture, Peter, who once again seems a step behind the action, in a follow up question, naively, or maybe even stubbornly begs the question…“now Jesus, tell this again? How many times do we forgive someone who has offended? Seven? (That seems a lot). No Jesus says…….seventy times seven! Now, Peter’s question, through the lens of a human sense of justice, seems reasonable. Perhaps you are aligned with Peter in this thought process about one who repeatedly offends and seems undeniably resistant to a path of forgiveness. First, like us, experience probably has taught Peter that there must be limits to patience with misbehaviors! How many times does this person get away with this after all? Okay perhaps Peter thinks to himself…seven times seem a reasonable limit!
Or – perhaps one has to ask if it is in my best interest to seek forgiveness when it seems clear to me that my brother’s and sister’s repentance is suspicious at best, and a path toward change seems iffy at best!
This, we all would agree, is legitimate questioning on Peter’s behalf! Particularly in a human experience that leads to a worldview and understanding of justice that may even lead to our need to “count,” keep score as it were!
When I asked a friend recently, tongue in cheek, “How many times are we to forgive? Seven?" The response, was, “I think a lot more than that and I am pretty sure my spouse is counting!” When it comes to forgiveness, however, Jesus’ response does not address Peter’s concern with an “economy of counting,” instead Jesus’ response takes the conversation from the sphere of ordinary human relationships to the mysterious realm of the holy.
For the kingdom followers, the cornerstone of forgiveness will not be found in such an economy of counting, but rather on a radical, unprecedented, even seemingly irrational ethic of forgiveness! One which will challenge them and challenges us deeply in the human sphere! For at the heart of the matter lies a reality that in God’s world-view, a world-view of mercy, even the most undeserved will find new life through pardon!
C.S. Lewis wrote, “The essential act of mercy is to pardon; and pardon’s very essence is to recognize guilt and the ill-dessert of the recipient!”
To live in the Kingdom is to come to grips that God’s heart is a merciful heart, there is no economy of score that makes any traditional sense, for the unforgiving courses of life, where we my be hacking above what any scorecard would hold, “God indeed seems to cheat on our behalf!” Par…or even better sometimes “My grace is sufficient.”
This radical merciful forgiveness seems to be what Jesus invites his followers to understand and to form a heart for! Not only will God’s grace be sufficient, but it is beyond understanding, especially when understanding is built upon a system of human expectations and an economy of justice built upon “counting.”
The parable of the unforgiving servant provides the theological framework that grounds forgiveness at the center as we engage the astounding magnanimity of the King!
After all, as a King decides to be faithful about his business and in his accounting of all his transactions, he calls to his court all those who have been entrusted with the workings of his Kingdom business (slaves and servants).
Here we encounter one such worker of the Kingdom who seems to have held back profit for his own benefit! How much! Oh about fifteen years worth of salary! The legal consequences for such an action would of course be immediate death, but the King in a moment of anger, thinks to send him and his family into slavery. But the servant implores, begs for a deal! What comes next, of course, is the unheard of, unbelievable, even irrational action of the King! He pardons the act and sets him free! What he will do with this amazing, irrational, freedom from pardon, of course, is the teaching for kingdom followers. The unforgiving servant will squander it, ignore it, abuse it, and clearly not understand it! When in similar circumstance with roles reversed, one who owes him a day’s salary, he will follow the letter of the legal law and prosecute! The unforgiving servant has missed the opportunity for the heart of the matter! And so for Jesus’ listeners, they are implored not to do the same! For they live in a Kingdom where God’s Mercy of Pardon is at play! They know themselves they are undeserving of such grace and yet they receive it, and so they too must live with such a radical ethic of forgiveness!
Jesus understood the ethic of his day, the economy of counting, a justice system based where “the counting of things” often meant a “settling of scores.” The ethic of forgiveness is polar opposite the ethic of “settling scores,” or of revenge. So, Jesus implores, we’ve had enough of settling scores, you must work toward an ethic of forgiving from the heart!
And so you and I are invited to the magnanimity of God’s Kingdom! Cornerstone built upon forgiveness! The hard road of forgiveness calls us away from a scorecard of transgression! “God’s mercy is sufficient!” As we receive it, so we are open to the possibilities of freedom that comes through forgiving from the heart! Again, C.S. Lewis…“By remembering where we stand (with God’s ethic of forgiveness), by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” we are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint or exception, and God means what he says.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Pentecost 17/Proper 18
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
A middle aged woman, single mother! Faithful to her Church, active from her birth! Raising her two young boys and doing the best she can! Bright and cheerful, pleasant and lovely. This woman could be seen at any moment of time pouring lemonade or coffee at any given “coffee hour” at church. Or she could be seen leading the Sunday school children from Children’s Chapel into worship. Or she could be seen on Wednesday nights for bible study. Or she could be seen setting or clearing the altar for worship, preparing the altar with fresh cut flowers taken from her yard! Or she could be seen taking her part on the food ministry that provided young men dying of AIDS with a bit of nourishment and care.
A middle-aged woman, bright and cheerful, caring and compassionate servant, humble, everyday member of the Church! An ordinary churchgoer trying to live a life of Christian service some might say, a disciple of the community some of other traditions might say.
Then one day this woman takes a young seminarian into her confidence! Quickly revealed that behind the curtain of this model “church member” is struggle, torment, heartbreak, and longing for some sort of reconciliation with herself, one of her children, and the community of faith to which she belongs!
It seems one night her baby boy, whom she had raised in the Church, brought to Sunday school, served lemonade at church picnics and coffee hours, led from Children’s Chapel singing hymns of praise, brought to vacation bible school, her baby boy who she fed and clothed, loved and nurtured, protected and cared for, one night found himself high as a kite on drugs and in the wrong crowd at the wrong time. Her baby boy, in a drug deal gone badly, became the aggressor in a conflict and in a drug-clouded event committed violent crime that would land him in prison for the rest of his life!
We tried so hard when we knew he was going down this path! I begged and pleaded with him to straighten out his life, I couldn’t reconcile who he was becoming with the boy I thought I had raised him to be! He would not listen to me! I was desperate! I brought with me friends from the Church, his Sunday school teachers and confirmation mentors, we begged him to go to rehab, we shared with him how grieved and broken our hearts were that he was so tortured by his addiction to drugs and how his behaviors were destroying his own life and his relationships with those of us who love him! But he would not listen – he could not listen!
I prayed and prayed with my friends in Church, bringing it to prayer! We prayed and prayed at Church, and some of us still do! But we couldn’t save him!
A middle-aged mother now visits her son in prison, but struggles to find a way within her to find reconciliation with a son now alienated from those who loved, raised, and nurtured him, the alienation being a physical barrier, walls, a cell! Isolation from what he once knew! A middle-aged mother, a prayer group of church members, now pray to make sense, to reconcile who he once was with who he had become, how he became “lost” from the womb of the good Christian community that surrounded him!
And in the mother’s honest wrangle and lament is the ever-present force-filled struggle to continue to find a place of forgiveness and reconciliation! We pray together now! Once in a while I can take a friend from church and we pray together with him! In some ways he is my baby boy again, frightened, vulnerable, he needs me! But still my heart is broken, but my love cannot be broken, he is my son!
The struggle of human brokenness is one many of us know and are familiar with! The struggle of lives of faith, hope, nurture, and care, formation of lives of faith are what we in the Church hang our very being upon! An ethic of community creates for us the expectation of accountability and responsibility for one another! As Christian folk, part of that ethic hangs on our belief that to be witnesses to Jesus we must hold one another accountable to faithful lives and to an ethic of forgiveness. Jesus, when he invited his disciples to “pick up their cross and follow him,” knew that such a life was not an easy one, and to live it would mean a primal ordering of community! The disciples would need one another, just as we today in the Church NEED one another!
The Gospel lesson today speaks squarely to the degree of difficulty of following Jesus as a community of Kingdom Ideal followers! The listeners of Matthew’s Gospel, early followers of the way, were learning how to live together, how they needed one another, and in this section of Jesus’ discourse, they are learning how their need for one another would also demand of one another accountability and responsibility!
So what happens when one member of this community of faith (the church) offends another by not living by the ideal! First they are to be confronted, one on one! How absolutely uncomfortable for the 21st century reader who is a member of a community of faith! Confront one another! This is difficult at best! It is sometimes much easier first to gain another’s perspective by sharing with another the frustration and offense that we have endured. The hope is, of course, that the other will see things our way, show the appropriate display of hurt and maybe anger in a moment of sympathy, and if all things are equal perhaps even share that with someone else. But not for Jesus. His formula for accountability to one who has offended seems to ask us to consider first, the difficult (albeit uncomfortable) task of going straight on to try to reconcile our differences.
Second, Jesus suggests, that for the early community of faith living into an ideal of Kingdom discipleship, if this does not bring about reconciliation, indeed, take two or three folks from the community of faith with you! They, serving as witnesses, not to take sides mind you, but to be listeners, to help discern a dispute, to help make sense of it. And if you think ideally, perhaps having non-participant judgment, perhaps even as mediators. Risky! Somehow I don’t believe Jesus imagined a system like the people’s court, where we hand our differences over to an unemployed judge who makes millions by processing people’s disputes on syndicated cable television, but probably in the ideal, Jesus assumes those participating are participating in an agreed-upon value system of non-judgmental listening!
Third, if still it appears that a breach occurred and cannot be resolved, bring it to the Church, the community as a whole! Now the 21st century experience listens with great discomfort! Imagine airing our “dirty laundry” publicly! If one imagines a court of common pleas set up in Sayre Hall, this, I predict, would not be the case, at least not formally! However, for the early church believers, to have the strong ethic of the community being united in purpose and reconciliation is clearly of primary importance!
What will we do! How hard will we try! To what extent will we go to demonstrate the primary teaching of Jesus to be one in community and in purposes of living out the Kingdom Principles!
Now if that doesn’t work, treat them as tax collectors and Gentiles!
Again! How far will the early community of believers be asked to go to reconcile and be in agreement for purpose of living out Kingdom principles!
For the 21st century mind, we read quickly that Jesus teaches the believers to treat the unreconciled as tax collectors and Gentiles! Remember, this section of scripture is bracketed by the teaching of Jesus of the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the unforgiving debtor! The followers of Jesus have watched and listened to him spend a lifetime and a sacrificial death for the purpose of embracing the lost!
The punch line comes in Jesus’ response to Peter………how many times do we forgive one who has offended? Seventy times seven.
Like that middle-aged woman so devoted to the church and the church so devoted to her and her son, she seems to understand that, though broken-hearted and clearly aggrieved, her love poured out, inviting the community of faith she knows into that shedding of love, she and they fiercely seek reconciliation!
So it seems to be for the early followers of Jesus and so it seems to be for her and her fellow church members, and so it seems to be for us! An ethic of forgiveness and reconciliation is a worldview of forgiveness and reconciliation!
Jesus knew at all costs to hold one another accountable to the ethic is to have our hearts driven by it and by doing so, we fiercely and tirelessly pursue those who have become lost to us!
Jesus knew this as the antidote to alienation and isolation! We can know this too!
Amen.
A middle aged woman, single mother! Faithful to her Church, active from her birth! Raising her two young boys and doing the best she can! Bright and cheerful, pleasant and lovely. This woman could be seen at any moment of time pouring lemonade or coffee at any given “coffee hour” at church. Or she could be seen leading the Sunday school children from Children’s Chapel into worship. Or she could be seen on Wednesday nights for bible study. Or she could be seen setting or clearing the altar for worship, preparing the altar with fresh cut flowers taken from her yard! Or she could be seen taking her part on the food ministry that provided young men dying of AIDS with a bit of nourishment and care.
A middle-aged woman, bright and cheerful, caring and compassionate servant, humble, everyday member of the Church! An ordinary churchgoer trying to live a life of Christian service some might say, a disciple of the community some of other traditions might say.
Then one day this woman takes a young seminarian into her confidence! Quickly revealed that behind the curtain of this model “church member” is struggle, torment, heartbreak, and longing for some sort of reconciliation with herself, one of her children, and the community of faith to which she belongs!
It seems one night her baby boy, whom she had raised in the Church, brought to Sunday school, served lemonade at church picnics and coffee hours, led from Children’s Chapel singing hymns of praise, brought to vacation bible school, her baby boy who she fed and clothed, loved and nurtured, protected and cared for, one night found himself high as a kite on drugs and in the wrong crowd at the wrong time. Her baby boy, in a drug deal gone badly, became the aggressor in a conflict and in a drug-clouded event committed violent crime that would land him in prison for the rest of his life!
We tried so hard when we knew he was going down this path! I begged and pleaded with him to straighten out his life, I couldn’t reconcile who he was becoming with the boy I thought I had raised him to be! He would not listen to me! I was desperate! I brought with me friends from the Church, his Sunday school teachers and confirmation mentors, we begged him to go to rehab, we shared with him how grieved and broken our hearts were that he was so tortured by his addiction to drugs and how his behaviors were destroying his own life and his relationships with those of us who love him! But he would not listen – he could not listen!
I prayed and prayed with my friends in Church, bringing it to prayer! We prayed and prayed at Church, and some of us still do! But we couldn’t save him!
A middle-aged mother now visits her son in prison, but struggles to find a way within her to find reconciliation with a son now alienated from those who loved, raised, and nurtured him, the alienation being a physical barrier, walls, a cell! Isolation from what he once knew! A middle-aged mother, a prayer group of church members, now pray to make sense, to reconcile who he once was with who he had become, how he became “lost” from the womb of the good Christian community that surrounded him!
And in the mother’s honest wrangle and lament is the ever-present force-filled struggle to continue to find a place of forgiveness and reconciliation! We pray together now! Once in a while I can take a friend from church and we pray together with him! In some ways he is my baby boy again, frightened, vulnerable, he needs me! But still my heart is broken, but my love cannot be broken, he is my son!
The struggle of human brokenness is one many of us know and are familiar with! The struggle of lives of faith, hope, nurture, and care, formation of lives of faith are what we in the Church hang our very being upon! An ethic of community creates for us the expectation of accountability and responsibility for one another! As Christian folk, part of that ethic hangs on our belief that to be witnesses to Jesus we must hold one another accountable to faithful lives and to an ethic of forgiveness. Jesus, when he invited his disciples to “pick up their cross and follow him,” knew that such a life was not an easy one, and to live it would mean a primal ordering of community! The disciples would need one another, just as we today in the Church NEED one another!
The Gospel lesson today speaks squarely to the degree of difficulty of following Jesus as a community of Kingdom Ideal followers! The listeners of Matthew’s Gospel, early followers of the way, were learning how to live together, how they needed one another, and in this section of Jesus’ discourse, they are learning how their need for one another would also demand of one another accountability and responsibility!
So what happens when one member of this community of faith (the church) offends another by not living by the ideal! First they are to be confronted, one on one! How absolutely uncomfortable for the 21st century reader who is a member of a community of faith! Confront one another! This is difficult at best! It is sometimes much easier first to gain another’s perspective by sharing with another the frustration and offense that we have endured. The hope is, of course, that the other will see things our way, show the appropriate display of hurt and maybe anger in a moment of sympathy, and if all things are equal perhaps even share that with someone else. But not for Jesus. His formula for accountability to one who has offended seems to ask us to consider first, the difficult (albeit uncomfortable) task of going straight on to try to reconcile our differences.
Second, Jesus suggests, that for the early community of faith living into an ideal of Kingdom discipleship, if this does not bring about reconciliation, indeed, take two or three folks from the community of faith with you! They, serving as witnesses, not to take sides mind you, but to be listeners, to help discern a dispute, to help make sense of it. And if you think ideally, perhaps having non-participant judgment, perhaps even as mediators. Risky! Somehow I don’t believe Jesus imagined a system like the people’s court, where we hand our differences over to an unemployed judge who makes millions by processing people’s disputes on syndicated cable television, but probably in the ideal, Jesus assumes those participating are participating in an agreed-upon value system of non-judgmental listening!
Third, if still it appears that a breach occurred and cannot be resolved, bring it to the Church, the community as a whole! Now the 21st century experience listens with great discomfort! Imagine airing our “dirty laundry” publicly! If one imagines a court of common pleas set up in Sayre Hall, this, I predict, would not be the case, at least not formally! However, for the early church believers, to have the strong ethic of the community being united in purpose and reconciliation is clearly of primary importance!
What will we do! How hard will we try! To what extent will we go to demonstrate the primary teaching of Jesus to be one in community and in purposes of living out the Kingdom Principles!
Now if that doesn’t work, treat them as tax collectors and Gentiles!
Again! How far will the early community of believers be asked to go to reconcile and be in agreement for purpose of living out Kingdom principles!
For the 21st century mind, we read quickly that Jesus teaches the believers to treat the unreconciled as tax collectors and Gentiles! Remember, this section of scripture is bracketed by the teaching of Jesus of the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the unforgiving debtor! The followers of Jesus have watched and listened to him spend a lifetime and a sacrificial death for the purpose of embracing the lost!
The punch line comes in Jesus’ response to Peter………how many times do we forgive one who has offended? Seventy times seven.
Like that middle-aged woman so devoted to the church and the church so devoted to her and her son, she seems to understand that, though broken-hearted and clearly aggrieved, her love poured out, inviting the community of faith she knows into that shedding of love, she and they fiercely seek reconciliation!
So it seems to be for the early followers of Jesus and so it seems to be for her and her fellow church members, and so it seems to be for us! An ethic of forgiveness and reconciliation is a worldview of forgiveness and reconciliation!
Jesus knew at all costs to hold one another accountable to the ethic is to have our hearts driven by it and by doing so, we fiercely and tirelessly pursue those who have become lost to us!
Jesus knew this as the antidote to alienation and isolation! We can know this too!
Amen.
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