One of the things Bishop Sarah does is to send by email to all those who have signed up a weekly reflection, it’s generally based on the lectionary and it’s usually a very short message, where she invites her readers to consider something for themselves about the Sunday Scriptures. And I really enjoyed what she says this week about Paul’s Letter to the Romans. She says that we usually like this idea Paul develops that: “The one who loves has fulfilled the law”, because we generally think it would be so much easier to love, rather than to obey many commandments. But then she observes that the love to which we are called is not an easy love. She says: “If we think it’s easy, we missed the work” because the love Jesus calls us to is “sacrificial”, it is a love “that costs us something”. Now I don’t know if it is what love should look like most of the time, hopefully love is supposed to make us happy, love is supposed to be life giving, but it is certain that having to live out love in a broken world means that we also have to deal with a lot of broken relationships, and I think this is why Jesus always comes back to teach about forgiveness. Actually, we wouldn’t be wrong by saying that the Gospel is about love, but maybe a more precise way to describe it would be to say that the Gospel is about forgiveness. We know that Jesus died for our sins, to reconcile us to God, that’s the way God chose to show us love, and so naturally if we are to love as God loves us, we too are called to forgiveness.
Most obviously, our passage of the Gospel today is about forgiveness and reconciliation, and this is really good to read about it now that we still have in mind the story of Joseph we talked about a few weeks ago. One of the themes we observed in Joseph’s story and that Jesus develops in his teaching today is that forgiveness, and the possible restoration of a relationships, is a process. It’s a process and it may take time, energy, courage, certainly good will and patience. But most important, indeed, forgiveness is a process, it does not happen right away after we have been offended. Jesus says that in fact, if someone offends us, especially a member of our church, if another believer offends us, we have to tell them, we have to confront them about what they did to us. And you know, I really like that because so often Christian forgiveness has led to silence the victims, with priests and teachers and then everybody else in the church claiming that: “If you’re a good Christian, you have to forgive”, meaning by that: “Let’s not make a big deal out of it, let’s keep quiet, let’s forget about it”. Sometimes we mean well, and we truly believe we obey Jesus by doing that. Yet the problem with this type of forgiveness is that we take the risk indeed of silencing the victims, we take the risk of letting people suffer through abusive relationships, sometimes for years, sometimes for a life time, and we also take the risk of letting the church become a place where instead of working things out and helping people overcome their disagreements, we end up enabling toxic behaviors. Of course, we know that Jesus famously told us to turn the other cheek, because he does want us to fight violence by being violent, but we see in our passage today that he certainly did not teach to not do anything in the face of offense. In fact, as a Christian community, we should practice what Bishop Sarah would call “a love that is not easy”, a love that requires of us to “do the work”.
So how does it look like? Well, when Jesus says “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault [to them]” starting by a one on one, and then involving witnesses and even the whole congregation, he is really teaching us that we have to hold each other accountable, to take responsibility and again, work things out. Jesus never said that when we are offended we should just drop the ball or forgive right away.
Now of course we live in a world where a lot of people seem to be offended by a lot of things, sometimes little things, and certainly we have to monitor our reactions with a little discernment about people’s real intentions. Sometimes, the hurt we may feel can be as bit disproportionate in regard to the offense committed, so we may need a little wisdom, a little maturity to deal with that and maybe there are hurts of which we can just let go. It’s not always that serious. But on the other way around, and this is what Jesus is talking about today, for more serious matters, even in our everyday disagreements, forgiveness cannot be a letting go. There is of course the famous example of the Amish people willing to forgive right away but in fact I don’t think they they intend to let it go, rather when it’s something serious they know they need to start the process of forgiveness, and that means being willing to talk, to meet the offender, their relatives, to try to understand or just grieve together. This is to me the spirit of Jesus’s invitation.
We know that Jesus invites us to love our enemies and that can also simply mean to be ready to have difficult conversations with those who hurt us, in a context that keeps us safe, with witnesses if needed and even the whole body of the believers. In fact Jesus says that when we’re hurt, or when we see somebody doing something wrong, I guess unless we’re deeply traumatized or ashamed, we actually have a responsibility to say something. And it really matters because when we confront hurtful people, we do two things that are really important:
– First we protect our own heart. If we don’t confront our offenders, it may make us feel like a good, forgiving Christian to start with, but if we lose the ability to defend ourselves, we end up losing our self confidence, losing our joy and our own sense of God given power. We may even end up bitter and resentful, and our relationships will become fake or superficial. But if we denounce what’s wrong, then we grow stronger than the hurt.
– Then, second reason, we also confront the people who hurt us to protect the whole family. In Church, forgiveness shouldn’t be about sweeping things under the rug. I think that if we had done that more consistently, we would have avoided many scandals. It can be scary, when the offender is someone in charge, an elder, a priest and so on, but we need to find a way to deal with it together. Because someone who hurts someone will hurt others, and possibly vulnerable people who cannot defend themselves at all. We cannot tolerate evil or even any sort of unkindness just for the sake of keeping the peace.
And so, forgiveness, again, is a process where we seek to lead the offender to repent and change their behavior. In the context of the church, in the context of offenses between believers, it is absolutely vital that we do that because that is how we are going to grow, we want to grow together in fairness and love, to become more self aware, to become better with one another. Jesus says: If the person listens, you will have regained them! A conflict can be turned into a good opportunity for all to learn something important and even to come closer to one another and closer to God. You know, we may grow spiritually by reading our Bibles at home or saying very heartfelt prayers, but sometimes the best way to grow spiritually is to deal directly with what happens to us on an everyday basis. I think Jesus invites us to a no nonsense kind of spirituality, deeply rooted in real life and real relationships where we practice moral courage, where we actively seek understanding, conversion and justice.
And then there is this thing Jesus says: “If the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a Tax Collector”. It is kind of surprising given the way Jesus treated Gentiles and Tax Collectors. He actually reached out to them, he spent time with them, healing and teaching. Actually you probably know that Matthew who writes this passage was himself a tax collector when he met Jesus! So I think that what Jesus is saying here is that some of his followers rejected people based on their nationality or profession, but in fact the only people we can have a good reason to stop relationships with are those who refuse to repent. Those who never listen, until the end. And of course this is also what God does. God offers forgiveness to all, but God cannot offer forgiveness to those who are unrepentant, unwilling to listen, unwilling to change. And this is why some Christians should certainly stop weaponizing forgiveness by asking people to remain in toxic relationships, tolerating abuse and even violence. This is certainly not what forgiveness is about. Actually, Jesus gives us authorization to leave that kind of relationships.
And so why am I saying all of that? Well last time, we talked about courage in face of evil, big pharaonic evil. We talked about how the women in Exodus were willing to oppose the King of Egypt who wanted to kill all the Hebrew babies. We talked about civil disobedience. But of course in everyday life we are not regularly invited to confront the powers that be, to fight the Emperor. But what we can do is to stand against the wrong in everyday life, to seek justice in our relationships, to offer an opportunity for reconciliation even in our smallest disagreements. Bishop Marian Budde wrote a beautiful book about courage, and what it means for her to be courageous when being in charge of the Diocese of Washington, in the midst of political fever. Reflecting on her own experience she says that courage is really built up in everyday life by concrete little acts that help us grow stronger, We won’t have the courage needed for social justice or political action if we cannot confront our own brothers and sisters who did us wrong. In fact, big picture evil often grows on our silence, indifference, or even our good intentions of letting go of what should be dealt with. Again this ill understood kind of forgiveness has created many evils in the church, and maybe even in the world. Conflicts do not get smaller when we ignore them, rather they take a hold of the depths of our hearts and can lead to more terrible things.
But I would like to conclude with this misunderstood saying of Jesus that closes our Gospel reading for today: “When two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them”. You know how we often use this saying to comfort ourselves when a church service or a prayer meeting is not well attended. We say that it’s enough to be just two or three because Jesus is already in the midst of us. And that’s probably true. But now we have the context of this saying, I think it’s very beautiful to think that Jesus is among brothers and sisters who come together to be reconciled. Yes, forgiveness is a process and it certainly take time, energy, courage, certainly good will and patience. But do we believe that Jesus is already in the midst of us as we do the uneasy work of love, and that forgiveness is in fact, the perfect place to find him?