One of the things Bishop Sarah does is to send by email a weekly reflection to all those who have signed up, it’s generally based on the lectionary and it’s usually a very short message, like a sermon prompt almost, where she invites us to consider something for ourselves about the Sunday Scriptures. And I really enjoyed what she said this week about Paul’s letter to the Romans. She says that we really like this idea Paul develops that “The one who loves has fulfilled the law”, as if 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 looks 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 sin, 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 now we still have in mind the story of Joseph we talk about a few weeks ago. One of the theme 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 takes 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 been used 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 “Don’t make a big deal out of it, keep quiet, forget about it”, at the risk of letting people suffer through abusive relationships for years, sometimes a life time, at the risk of letting the church being a place where instead of converting sinners, a place where we help people overcoming their toxic behaviors, we end up enabling them. Let’s think about what we say for a minute: If we’re a good Christian, we have to forgive but also: if they are good Christians, maybe they shouldn’t be hurtful in the first place. Of course Jesus told us to turn the other cheek, because he does want us to resist 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, a Christian community, we 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, take responsibility and 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, and certainly we have to measure our reactions with a little discernment about people’s real intentions. We also need to be self aware and monitor our own sensitivity. Sometimes we may feel offended can be disproportionate in regard to the offense, so we need a little wisdom, a little maturity to deal with that and we can just let it go. On the other way around, for serious matter forgiveness cannot be interpreted as a letting go. There is the famous example of Amish people willing to forgive right away the man who killed their children in a school shooting. I really don’t think they meant it was nothing serious, rather because it was something so serious they were willing to have a conversation, to meet the family, to try to understand or just grieve together.
That is, of course, a very extreme example. But to me, it’s a good analogy to say that, in our most common, everyday disagreements and offenses, Jesus invites us to have conversations, to meet with the offender, in a context that keeps the offendee safe, with witnesses and even the whole body of the believers. 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. When we’re hurt, when we see somebody doing something wrong, we have a responsibility to say something, unless of course we’re a child, unless of course we’re deeply traumatized or ashamed by what they did to us and so on, but again here Jesus talks about serious but common offenses.
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 is 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.
– 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 so many scandals. It can be scary, when the abuser is someone in charge, an elder, a priest etc. Because someone who hurt us will hurt others, and possibly vulnerable people who cannot defend themselves at all.
Forgiveness is a process where we seek reconciliation not by ignoring the offense but by leading the offender to repent and change their behavior. In the context of the church, in the context of offenses between believers is absolutely vital that we do that because that is how we are going to grow, we grow together in fairness and love, we become more self aware, we become better with one another. Jesus says: If the person listens, you will have regained them! A conflict can be turned in a good opportunity for all to learn something important and even to come closer to one another and closer to God.
And then there is this last 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 is followers rejected people based on their nationality or status, but in fact the only people we can have a good reasons 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 the church should certainly stop weaponizing forgiveness by asking people to remain in toxic relationships, to tolerate abuse and even violence. This is certainly not what forgiveness is about.
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; the midwives, the sister, the mother, the princess, were willing to oppose the King of Egypt who wanted to kill all the Hebrews babies, we talked about civil disobedience and moral courage. But of course in everyday life we are not regularly invited to confront the power that be, to fight the Emperor or the President. And that’s not the point. It’s not about rebelling for the sake of rebellion. But what we have to do everyday is to stand against the wrong in everyday life, to seek justice in everyday life, to offer an opportunity for reconciliation in our disagreements and even hurt. Bishop Marian Budde wrote a beautiful book about courage, and what it meant for her to be courageous when being in charge of the Diocese of Washington in the midst of political fever. And whether we agree or disagree with her, she is certainly a great example of someone who can show up and stands up for what she believes in even in the midst of situation that could put her in danger, or just bring her a lot of critics and even hate. And so, reflecting on her own experience she says that courage is really built up in everyday life by concrete little acts that helps us grow stronger, We don’t have the courage to confront the Emperor if we cannot confront our own brothers and sisters who did us wrong. Big picture evil often grow on our silence, indifference, cowardice or even sometimes our good intentions of letting go 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.
I would like to conclude with this misunderstood saying of Jesus that close our Gospel reading for today: “When two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among us”. You know how we often use this saying to comfort ourselves when a church service or 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, that Jesus is among brothers and sisters who come together to be reconciled. We aren’t made to find our own Jesus in a personal, disembodied experience, we are to find Jesus with one another. It’s a process and it certainly take time, energy, courage, certainly good will and patience. But do we believe that he is already in the midst of us as we do the uneasy work of love?