Posts Tagged ‘forgiveness’

Forgiving as God forgives – uprooting trees and replanting them

October 4, 2025

Pentecost 17 – 2025

Luke 17:1-10

Marian Free

In the name of God, who seeks out the lost and welcomes the sinner. Amen.

Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch woman, the daughter of a watchmaker, was transported to a concentration camp during WWII for sheltering a Jew in contravention of the Nazi policy. Her father was sent to a different camp, but Corrie and her sister Betsy were not separated. Throughout their ordeal Corrie and Betsy showed enormous courage, holding fast to and sharing their deep faith and finding the positives in the most awful of circumstances.  During their imprisonment they made a pledge that after the war, they would not be bitter or hold grudges against the perpetrators of their suffering but would establish centres of forgiveness and healing. Sadly, Betsy did not survive, but Connie spent her lifetime fulfilling their goal and travelling the world preaching forgiveness. 

Despite her deeply held belief that forgiveness was the only way to move forward from hurt and trauma, Connie tells two stories against herself that demonstrate that forgiveness requires much more than the conviction that it is the right thing to do. She discovered that while she had forgiven the corporate sin of the Nazis, there were still personal hurts that were more difficult to overcome.  

In one instance, after Connie had spoken to a large audience on the importance of forgiveness, she was approached by a man whom she immediately recognised as one of her former guards, someone who had humiliated her beloved sister Betsy. The man said to her: “I know God has forgiven me, but I would like to know that you have forgiven me.” He held out hand, but Connie, despite having spoken so passionately about forgiveness only moments before, found herself unable to move. It was only after pleading with God for help that Connie was able to take the man’s hand.

On another occasion Connie was deeply hurt by the actions of some friends. When asked by another friend if she had forgiven her offenders Connie insisted that yes she had. Then she pointed to a pile of letters. “It’s all there in black and white,” she said. In reality, by holding on to the letters and to the evidence of the offense, Connie was demonstrating that her forgiveness was only skin deep.

I tell these stories as a reminder that forgiveness is not a light superficial action but something that demands complete selflessness, and a willingness, despite all evidence to the contrary) to see others worthy of our love and compassion.  In other words, true forgiveness insists that we see the perpetrator of our hurt as God sees them – as the lost coin, the lost sheep or the lost coin – and that we ourselves are so confident of God’s love that we do not need affirmation from any other source.  Few of us are so self-assured!

It is no wonder then that when Jesus tells the disciples that they have to forgive an offender over and over again (even on the same day) that the disciples respond as one: “Increase our faith!”

“Increase our faith!”

In my bible, and I suspect in most translations verses 5 and 6 of chapter 17 stand alone, as if faith was unrelated to what precedes and what follows.  But, as I have just made clear, the disciples’ request and Jesus’ response follow directly from Jesus’ instruction on forgiveness, suggesting that in this instance at least, faith has a very specific meaning. That is, when Jesus replies: ““If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you,’” he is not necessarily saying: “If only you truly believed, you could do anything you put your mind to,” but rather, “the smallest amount of confidence in God’s love would allow you to love as God loves and to forgive as God forgives.”

Unfortunately, too often having enough faith has been seen as a prerequisite for healing or for other sorts of miracles. Too many good, faithful Christians have been made to feel lacking, been made to feel that in some way their faith was insufficient because they were unable to control the circumstances of their lives, unable to prevent their cancer from spreading, unable to pray hard enough to end their child’s addiction to drugs or gambling and so on. 

To interpret this verse as meaning that faith enables us to do anything, that faith is a power that can be used to our own benefit or that having sufficient faith enables us to do the impossible suggests that God needs us to prove our faith or to demonstrate our conviction or worth before God will intervene in our lives or in the lives of those whom we love. It assumes that the God who created the universe can be manipulated by our pleas or appeased by our obsequiousness. It assumes that “faith” in some way allows us (not God) to control our destiny. 

To suggest that if we have enough faith we can move mountains or uproot trees and replant them at will, is to forget that Jesus himself resisted the temptation to engage in dramatic, attention-getting stunts – turning stones into bread and jumping off cliffs. Nor did Jesus’ faith prevent him from being tortured and crucified.

No, faith is not a simple matter of trusting in God to put things right.

In this context, I suggest that to have faith is to so completely align oneself with God, that we cannot help but behave as God, that our lives cannot help but reveal the presence of God within us. To have faith, even if it is only the size of a mustard seed, would enable us to see with God’s eyes, to love with God’s heart and therefore to forgive as God forgives. To have the faith that Jesus speaks of here is to see, beyond the words and actions of the person who has hurt us, to the neglect that has formed them and to wounds that have been inflicted on them. To have faith is to see all people as God sees them – as children of God, who given love and acceptance, will find healing and wholeness and who will grow into their full potential. To have the faith that will forgive over and over and over again, is to acknowledge the hurts that our own insecurities and carelessness cause on a daily basis and to remember that, despite our own imperfections God loves us still.

“Increase our faith!” Help us to love as God loves – both ourselves and those who cause us harm.

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Our Father

July 26, 2025

Pentecost 7 – 2025

Luke 11:1-13

Marian Free

In the name of God, Source of all Being, Eternal Word, Spirit of Life. Amen.

“Our Father in heaven”. I wonder how many times in a lifetime will we have said that prayer. If a church-going person who lives till eighty has been saying the prayer every Sunday from the time they were five, that would add up to 3,900 times. Of course, most church-going people would say the prayer on other occasions as well – maybe every day – which would bring the number of times it was said to 27375! Those who say the daily office would say the prayer twice a day and so the number of times continues to rise. In other words, most of us are so familiar and so comfortable with The Lord’s Prayer that the prayer rolls off our tongues without our giving them much thought. The prayer can become a bit like a mantra, something we say to connect us to God, but not something we say as a call to action. 

Who knows what the disciples were expecting when they asked Jesus to teach them to pray, but the prayer he gave them is profoundly challenging and confrontational. As THE prayer, the prayer given to us by Jesus, it contains within it all that is necessary to live in accordance with the life and teaching of Jesus and demands that we change our lives in response. 

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name:

  • The prayer acknowledges that God is relational, not remote, yet at the same time the prayer reminds that even the name of God is holy and that in God’s presence we are standing on holy ground. 

Your kingdom come, your will be done:

  • We utter a desire that God’s kingdom become a reality on earth – that peace, justice and equity should reign here – not only in heaven. Implicit in this petition is a recognition that for God’s kingdom to be the overarching rule on earth, those of us who make this prayer need to be willing to submit ourselves, our lives, our all, to the will of God. In other words, God’s kingdom will not be imposed on earth but will become a reality when enough of us are willing to make it so. 

Give us today our daily bread:

  • Jesus teaches us to ask for what we need each day, to trust in God to give us enough, not too much or too little. There is much wisdom behind this prayer and it maybe an echo of Prov 30:8b,9: “give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that I need, or I shall be full, and deny you, and say, “Who is the LORD? or I shall be poor, and steal, and profane the name of my God.” 

Learning to live with only what we need helps us to be satisfied with what we have, means that we stop competing with others for more and ideally leads to a situation in which everyone has enough. Give us today our daily bread teaches us to rely on God, not ourselves, to meet both our spiritual and physical needs. Being content with what we have, trusting that God has our best interests at heart, enables us to be at peace with ourselves and with the world and ensures that there is enough to go around.

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who are indebted to us.

  • In this, the most debated sentence of the prayer, we are apparently asking God to follow our example of forgiveness, but like so much of the New Testament, the forgiveness of debt has to be seen in context. Deuteronomy, especially Deut 15, imposes the forgiveness of debt as both a religious and social obligation. Every seven years, debts owed by Israelites by Israelites were to be forgiven (not paid). This practice ensured that no one among the Israelites was permanently impoverished or enslaved. Forgive us our sins as we forgive debts might read: do not hold our wrongdoings against us forever. Set us free from our sin so that we are no longer burdened by it. The subtext here, is that being set free, we might feel so liberated that our propensity to sin might be diminished!

Save us from the time of trial.

  • Jesus may have added this line as an aspirational statement, not a possibility to be realised.  More than anyone else, Jesus knew that no matter how obedient, how trusting, how holy a person is, God cannot protect them from the cruelty of other human beings, or from the erratic operation of mother nature.

The Lord’s Prayer is not intended to provide reassurance or to lull us into a false sense of security. Certainly, it is a prayer that relieves us of worry and that asks that we  be freed from sin, but it is also a call to action. It is a prayer that must not only be said but lived – not only every day, but every minute of every day. Every time we prayer these words we are recognising the awesomeness of the one in whose presence we stand at the same time as acknowledging that the one who is beyond imagination is one with whom we can be in relationship. We are committing ourselves to daily submission to the rule of God to ensure that God’s kingdom will come. We are recognising that what we have, over and above what we need, we have at the expense of someone else and trusting God to give us what is necessary – not what we want. We are hoping that God will set us free from all that binds us and that God will be with us in our darkest moments.

The Lord’s Prayer is a dangerous prayer. It envisages a time when the earth will mirror heaven. It demands our complete and total trust in God, and a willingness to temper our desires for more than we need. It is not to be said lightly, but only with a willingness to be conformed more and more into the image of Christ and a belief that giving ourselves totally to God will satisfy us more than anything on earth can ever do.

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Forgiven and free

September 16, 2023

Pentecost 16 – 2023
Matthew 18:21-35
Marian Free

In the name of God who has overlooked all our sins and who wants only what is best for us. Amen.

Forgiveness is perhaps the most misunderstood of Christian teaching. This is a consequence of a number of things: we turn it into an instruction – You must forgive (or else), we fail to understand that ultimately forgiveness is something that God does, and finally, we forget that there is no sliding scale when it comes to being perfect which means that as none of us is perfect, all of us need forgiveness.

A lifetime’s experience tells me that turning forgiveness into a commandment is not helpful. This approach fails to capture the nuances of forgiveness – for example, forgiveness does not mean overlooking sin, it doesn’t mean condoning bad behaviour or that there are no consequences for causing hurt, breaking the law or doing the wrong thing. On the other side of this equation, forgiveness may mean stepping into another’s shoes and trying to understand what drives them to act the way they do. It may mean giving the other the resources – education, housing, employment – so that they can address those things that lie beneath the outward expression of confusion or pain . Turning forgiveness into a commandment not only ignores the subtleties of forgiveness, but creates a situation in which a person who has been deeply hurt and traumatised, is further traumatised by feelings of inadequacy and guilt when they cannot find a way to forgive and have to hand the situation over to God.

Forgiveness, like most of the things that God asks of us, is ultimately for our benefit – not God’s. God knows that our lives will be fuller and richer if we are able to let go past wrongs and hurts, rather than harbouring resentments which only serve to make us bitter and unhappy and do nothing to restore a damaged relationship. In fact, more often than not, the one who has caused offense is not affected at all as a consequence of our failure to forgive – we are only hurting ourselves. As Anne Lamont said in her memoir Traveling Mercies: withholding forgiveness is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die .

That said, there are some things that are almost impossible to forgive. Torture and sexual abuse for example, leave scars that are so deep and so painful that it may take years of recovery before the victim is able to move forward, let alone heal. In such cases the wounded may only have the strength to hand forgiveness over to God. Corrie ten Boom, an internee of some of the Nazi’s worst labour camps, spent a lifetime after the war preaching forgiveness. She tells the story of an evening when, after she had delivered her message, she was approached by a man whom she instantly recognised as a guard who had treated her beloved sister particularly badly. The man said to her, I know that God has forgiven me, but I would like to hear that you have too. In that moment Corrie froze. She simply could not reach out her hand to take his. All that she had said, all that she genuinely believed could not at that moment be put into action. In that moment the pain and hurt of her experience was still too raw. Corrie could only pray and as she prayed, she felt her arm move and her hand take that of her sister’s tormenter. In that moment it was God, not she who extended forgiveness .

In order to truly forgive, many of us need to be reminded of our own need for forgiveness, and to feel the sense of awe that we, who are so far from the glory of God have been forgiven and set free. It is this aspect of forgiveness that today’s parable addresses. A slave owes a king ten thousand talents – an amount of money few of us could imagine – well over one billion US dollars! Remember this is a parable – Jesus is not suggesting that the king or the slave would have that much money, but rather that the debt is beyond anyone’s ability to pay and that the forgiveness of such a debt is unbelievable! Certainly, the reaction of the slave indicates that he can’t believe it to be true. Instead of extending the king’s act of generosity of a fellow slave, he demands the repayment of the paltry amount of $430. (Of course, it is equally possible that the first slave felt he had earned/deserved forgiveness of the debt.) Either way, he appears not to have appreciated the enormity of the king’s generosity, it has taught him nothing about the nature of the king and has apparently left him fearful and insecure.

There are many among us who are like the first slave. We either think that we are so good, that we have done nothing that needs God’s forgiveness or that what we have done is so bad that God couldn’t possibly forgive us. The parable says otherwise. We are all in need of forgiveness and God is capable of forgiving the most outrageous of debts. When we truly understand that we (with all our imperfections) have been forgiven, we understand that others – more and less imperfect than ourselves, will also have been forgiven.

Forgiveness is a gift not a demand.
It is something God does – especially when we cannot do it ourselves.
We who are forgiven and free, cannot help but extend forgiveness to others.

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Something for nothing

September 12, 2020

Pentecost 15 -2020

Matthew 18:21-35

Marian Free

In the name of God who longs to gather us under his/her wings as a mother hen gathers her chicks. Amen.

God can’t make it right.

I don’t often, if ever, begin where I left off the previous week, but it seems particularly appropriate this week. Chapter 18 of Matthew is best considered as a whole. In it the author of Matthew has gathered the sayings of Jesus that have advice as to how to live in community. It includes an exhortation to become as a child and warns the community not to do anything that would hurt the vulnerable among them. Jesus continues with a dramatic and gruesome encouragement to look to their own lives and remove from themselves all that causes harm. Jesus’ concern for the outcast is illustrated by the parable of the lost sheep (which is also a not so subtle reminder that he expects the majority to remain in the fold while he is off looking for the one that is lost). In last week’s reading from the gospel, Jesus gave the community some advice regarding dispute resolution suggesting at the same time that what was bound on earth was bound in heaven.  

Finally, Jesus responds to Peter’s question about forgiveness, specifically forgiveness of a fellow member of the community. 

Peter, who obviously knows Jesus’ attitude to forgiveness, asks a question intending, it seems, to demonstrate his own magnanimity – forgiving seven times seven is surely generous!  Jesus plays Peter at his own game – not seven times seven but seventy times seven! Peter’s question indicates that he has in fact learnt nothing. It also exposes his own small-mindedness. In God’s eyes there is no limit to forgiveness. In fact, God does not even keep count! Peter’s question alone reveals that he believes that forgiveness has its boundaries, that it can be used up if a person goes too far. 

By way of illustrating Peter’s niggardliness, meanness and lack of generosity, Jesus tells a parable about an extraordinary debt – something like $2.5m in today’s terms. No one would have a hope of paying back such an amount, let alone a slave and surely no one, not even a king, could afford to lose (forgive or overlook) that sort of fortune. Yet, in response to the man’s pleas, the king forgives the debt – every cent. There is no suggestion of paying it back with interest and no hint of indebtedness. The slate is wiped clean, the slave owes nothing at all. You would think, wouldn’t you, that the slave would leave the king’s presence overwhelmed with gratitude, wonder and a deep sense of humility, but no, the man has learnt nothing from the experience. (One notices in retrospect that he has not even thanked the king!)

Perhaps then we should not be surprised to learn that his first action on leaving the king is to grab hold of a fellow slave and demand the repayment of a paltry amount. Unlike the king, the first slave is completely deaf to the pleas of his fellow slave and has him thrown into prison. He has learnt nothing. The king’s generosity has not touched his heart. It appears that he simply could not understand that his slate could be wiped clean, nor could he believe that repayment would not be exacted at some future date. His failure (or inability) to truly grasp the generosity and magnanimity of the king has denied him the benefits of forgiveness and has shut him off from the generosity that was so freely offered. (One could argue that he was already in a prison of his own making or, as Kavanaugh suggests, the state of his soul had been so hardened that no amount of compassion and kindness could soften it[1].

Peter’s mistake was to believe that there was some sort of mathematics of reconciliation (Kavanaugh again), that forgiveness was a numbers game that could be measured and doled out. Jesus’ response and the accompanying parable give the lie to this point of view. God simply does not operate in this way. God’s forgiveness knows no limits. There may come a time when we turn our backs on God, but God never turns God’s back on us.

In our “tit for tat” economy, we find it hard to believe in something for nothing. If someone hurts us, we expect some form of recompense and sadly we attribute to God our own smallness of mind and meanness of spirit. Yet surely the message of the cross is this – humankind had done nothing at all to warrant, let alone earn such self-sacrificial love, but God extended that love anyway.

It is our foolish pride, our unnecessary self-consciousness and our stubborn independence that cuts us off from the love of God. It is not God, but our failure to believe that we are loved and forgiven that locks us out of the kingdom. If we shut ourselves off from God’s boundless love, if we fail to believe in God’s limitless forgiveness and if we refuse to allow ourselves to be carried back to the fold, there is nothing that God can do.  

If we shut ourselves off from God’s love, if we refuse to be gathered into the fold, there is ultimately nothing that God can do for us. If having been forgiven a debt of the size of that of the slave, we still don’t understand God’s goodness and boundless generosity, there is little more that God can do to prove that love. If we don’t want to be held in God’s loving embrace, or to be carried on God’s shoulders back to the fold, God is not going to force our hand. We have to swallow our pride and relax into God’s all-embracing, forgiving love and, when we do, we will discover in ourselves the same expansive generosity that will allow us to love and to forgive – not seven times seven, but seventy times seven.

[1] https://liturgy.slu.edu/24OrdA091320/theword_kavanaugh.html

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Bound to the past or liberated to embrace the future?

September 16, 2017

Pentecost 15 – 2017

Matthew 18:21-35

Marian Free

 

In the name of God whose power to forgive knows no limits. Amen.

 

There are many powerful stories of forgiveness. A couple of weeks ago I came across this, a true story, told by Richard Rohr remembering his mother’s last hours[1].

He writes:

“She was lingering on the threshold, and for several days she had been talking about “a mesh” she couldn’t get through.

I was sitting by her bed, telling her how much I would miss her. She said she wanted to hear that from my father, whom we always called “Daddy.” Of course, Daddy had been telling her that for weeks.

So Daddy came over and effusively told her, “Oh, I’m going to miss ya.”

She replied, “I don’t believe it.”

I couldn’t believe my ears! I said, “Mother, you’re a few hours from death. You can’t say that!”

She persisted: “I don’t believe it.”

Daddy redoubled his efforts: “I ask your forgiveness for all the times I’ve hurt you in our fifty-four years of marriage, and I forgive you for all the times you’ve hurt me.”

I said, “Mother, isn’t that beautiful? Now say that back to Daddy.” And suddenly she clammed up. She didn’t want to say it.

I said, “Mother, you’re soon going to be before God. You don’t want to come before God without forgiving everybody.”

She said, “I forgive everybody.”

I said, “But do you forgive Daddy?” and she became silent again.

Then Daddy jumped in and said, “Honey, I never fooled around with any other women.”

We all knew that. She even said, “Well I know that, I know that.”

My siblings and I still don’t know how Daddy had hurt Mother. But any married person knows there are many little ways a couple can hurt one another over fifty-four years.

Then I said, “Mother, let’s try this. Put one hand on your heart, and I’m going to pray that your heart gets real soft.” I placed one of my hands on hers, over her heart, and held her other hand and started kissing it.

After about a minute she said, very faintly, “That melts me.”

“What?”

“When you kiss my hand like that, now I’ve got to do it.” After a pause, she continued: “I’m a stubborn woman. All of my life I’ve been a stubborn woman.”

“Well, Mother, we all knew that,” I said. “Now look at Daddy and you tell him.”

So she looked over and she didn’t call him “Daddy,” as she usually did. She spoke to him by name: “Rich, I forgive you.”

I prompted her again: “Mother, the other half—I ask for your forgiveness.”

She started breathing heavily and rapidly. Then she summoned her energy and said, “Rich, I ask your forgiveness.” A few more moments of labored breathing, and she said, “That’s it, that’s it. That’s what I had to do.”

I said to her, “Mother, do you think that was the mesh?”

She replied, “It’s gone! The mesh is gone! And, God, I pray that I mean this forgiveness from my heart.”

Then she said, referring to my two sisters and my sister-in-law, “Tell the girls to do this early and not to wait ‘til now. They’ll understand a woman’s heart and the way a man can hurt a woman.”

Mother was so happy then, and fully ready for death.”

 

That’s a long story, but it is not uncommon. I have heard many stories of people whose last hours (or last years) and have been dominated by unresolved issues, often an inability to forgive or an unwillingness to let go.

The inability to forgive is at the centre of today’s gospel. The servant who has been forgiven the huge debt seems unable to believe his luck. He just can’t understand that the king would wipe his slate clean and not demand any recompense. There must be a catch. It is either that, or the servant has got it into his head that he had somehow done something to deserve the king’s action. His heart has not been touched by the king’s overwhelming generosity. He remains fearful and anxious that he has lost control. He takes out his anxiety on the second slave thus (in his own mind) regaining control of his life.

The parable ends with the servant’s being thrown into prison, but the reality is that he is already imprisoned by his lack of understanding and his unwillingness and inability to accept the love and goodness that has been offered to him.

The story and the parable provide stark reminders of how easy it is to hold on to our own sense self-righteousness in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary; of our need to be in control instead of trusting that God will make everything right in the end. We hang on to hurts (perceived and real) and fail to see that our small-mindedness, our bitterness and our failure to forgive is as great a sin if not worse than any harm done to us or any offense that we experience. We make up our own minds about our own righteousness in comparison with others instead of allowing God to measure the state of our hearts. The result of such is a narrow, resentful and self-absorbed life that is never able to be truly open, truly free and truly generous. We are as Rohr says: “Frozen in the past.”

The main point of the parable is not that we will be punished if we fail to forgive, but that if we cannot forgive, our lives are already impoverished. If we cannot forgive, we reveal that we simply do not appreciate how much God has already forgiven us, how little we deserve that unreserved (and undemanding) forgiveness and how much more God will forgive us.

If God can forgive us, broken, flawed and undeserving as we are, surely we can extend that to others who are equally broken, equally flawed and equally undeserving.

We forgive, not because we are afraid of hell. We forgive because we recognise our own imperfections and are overwhelmed by the fact that God is able to overlook them. We forgive because holding on to grudges only makes us bitter and warped, mean and hard. We forgive so that the past does not hold us in its grip and we forgive so that we are free to embrace the future in this world and the next.

[1] www.cac.org (Meditation for August 27, 2017)

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Exposed for all to see

August 29, 2015

Pentecost 14 – 2015

Mark 7:1-8, 14-23

Marian Free

 

Lord our God, our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, we ask you to cleanse us from all hypocrisy, to unite us to our fellow men and women by the bonds of peace and love, and to confirm us in holiness now and forever. Amen.

Last week we looked – in a rather light-hearted way – at a number of the reasons people give for not inviting others to church. As I reflected on some of those reasons, it occurred to me that not one of us mentioned that the church was perceived as hypocritical. In the latter half of the last century if not before, the accusation of hypocrisy was often leveled at the church and used to justify non-attendance. If the subject of church attendance was raised, we were as likely as not to be told: “I don’t go to church, the church is full of hypocrites”. Those who made the accusation felt that the lives of churchgoers did not match the values and morals that they proclaimed to uphold. To be fair, this statement was made in an age in which the church had set itself up as the moral guardian of society at large and not only did many people feel burdened by the sometimes harsh demands placed on them, but on more than one occasion the church or its members had spectacularly fallen from grace. Issues such as fraud, adultery and underage sex all made front-page headlines and demonstrated that even members of the church were unable to achieve the high standards that they set for others.

The reputation of the church was seriously eroded long before the more recent revelations of the prevalence of child sex abuse in the church and its agencies.

It has been a long time since I have heard the hypocrisy of the church used as a reason for someone not to come to worship or as a justification for abandoning the faith. The reason for this is simple. Over the last decade or so the human frailty of the church has been laid bare for all to see. In the light of catastrophic failures such as child sex abuse it has become impossible for the church to continue to claim the high moral ground and difficult for us to impose on others standards of behaviour that we ourselves cannot consistently achieve. Collectively, we have been forced to concede that we cannot always live out what we preach.

I don’t know about you, but I find this new situation strangely liberating. It means is that we no longer have to pretend. Instead of trying to present a perfect face to the world, we can now be honest about our brokenness and frailty. Instead of standing apart from (dare I say above) society as a whole, we can admit our common humanity. Instead of constantly striving to be what we are not, we can finally relax and let people see us as we really are – imperfect, struggling human beings, set apart only by virtue of our belief in the God revealed by Jesus Christ.

While the exterior of the church may be tarnished and our failures laid bare for all to see, we have been set free from the unnecessary burden of pretence. Now that there is no longer anything left to hide, now that it is impossible to pretend that we are something that we are not, we can concentrate on our true vocation – being in a relationship with the God who accepts us as we are, frees us from guilt and fear and challenges us to strive for wholeness and peace – for ourselves and for others.

Our gospel this morning warns us against giving priority to rules in the belief that somehow we can achieve a degree of godliness simply by our own efforts. It is a reminder that it is what we try to be, not what we pretend to be that really matters. Authentic living, the gospel suggests, means that we should not elevate our public image at the expense of an honest and authentic engagement with and identification with the world at large.

These are lessons that for today’s church have been hard-won but, thanks to the failures of the past, it is much clearer now that the church (the Christian faith) is less about codes of behaviour and more about love, less about being good and more about being with God, less about judgement and more about forgiveness, less about guilt and more about acceptance, less about anxiety and more about confidence, less about exclusion and more about inclusion and most importantly that it is less about putting on a face and more about being real.

We come to church, not because we believe that we are better than everyone else, but because we know that we are not. We come to church as we are – broken and lost – knowing that we are assured of a welcome from the God who forgives the sinner, seeks the lost, embraces the prodigal, lifts the fallen and who longs to heal, forgive and restore a humanity that has lost its way.

This is what we (the church) have to offer the world – not a false image of perfection, but an assurance that God who loved us enough to die for us, is waiting with outstretched arms until each of us finds our way home.

 

As Rowan Williams said in his enthronement sermon: “The one great purpose of the Church’s existence is to share that bread of life, to hold open in its words and actions a place where we can be with Jesus and to be channels for his free, unanxious, utterly demanding, grown-up love. The Church exists to pass on the promise of Jesus – You can live in the presence of God without fear; you can receive from God’s fullness and set others free from fear and guilt.”

 

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Sometimes the hating has to stop

September 13, 2014

Pentecost 14. 2014
Matthew 18:21-35
 Marian Free

In the name of God who desires that we let go of bitterness and hatred so that our own lives might be enlarged and enriched. Amen.

Sometimes the hating just has to stop.

A couple of weeks ago I discovered Dendy Direct – a way to see movies on my iPad. Since the closure of Video stores in most of Brisbane, I have been trying to find a way (a legal way) to watch videos on line. This may just be the answer. The first movie I downloaded was Railway Man, a movie I had wanted to see, but missed when it was at the theatre. If you haven’t seen it, it is the most extraordinary story of a British signals officer who survived the experience of the Burma railway in WWII.

As you might imagine, it is not a movie for the faint-hearted.

In summary, when the British surrender, the signals officers destroy all their equipment so that it cannot be used by the Japanese. Despite the urgency, Eric Lomax manages to distribute enough radio components among his fellow officers to enable them to build a radio wherever they end up. The soldiers are crowded on to trains and taken to a labour camp in Thailand to work on the Burma railway. Because of their technical skills, Eric and others are put to work as engineers – repairing trucks and machinery. The reconstructed radio enables them to listen to news of the outside world and in particular the progress of the war. When the Japanese find the radio, Eric and his friends are accused of transmitting information to the British. As a result, Eric is severely beaten and then cruelly tortured by the Japanese who refuse to believe that the radio was only able to receive information not to transmit any.

Eric’s experience of the camp leaves deep psychological scars. After the war he finds no peace of mid, but becomes obsessed with revenge. Some thirty to forty years after the war he discovers that one of his tormentors is not only still alive but is now leading tours of the very camp in which he presided over so much agony and pain. The man, Takashi Nagase, has somehow managed to avoid being put on trial for war crimes and seems to be getting on with his life in a way that Eric and his friends cannot. His victims are furious.

Egged on by one of his fellow prisoners, Eric finally makes the trip to Thailand. His intention is to confront and to then to kill his tormentor. What follows is extraordinary. At first it appears as if he will carry out his intent. He enters the camp ( ow a museum) after closing time, corners Takashi and takes him into the interrogation room. Now it is Eric, not Takashi who is the interrogator. Eric demands answers. He wants the former soldier take responsibility for his actions, to admit to being complicity in the murder of the thousands of prisoners who lost their lives on the railway. Despite his fury, Eric finds that he cannot kill Takashi. Instead he takes him outside locks him in one of tiny bamboo cages once used to incarcerate Allied soldiers.

Eric leaves Takashi in the cage while he retraces his steps into the torture room. Memories of the horrific torture come flooding back but even so, he cannot kill his former torturer. Returning outside he sits on the beside Takashi’s cage and listens to his story.

That is not the end. Some time later Eric returns to Thailand with his wife Patti. There they meet Takashi once again. This time he does what he could not do before – he admits his culpability. He bows deeply and, without making excuses, he apologizes saying: “I don’t want to live that day anymore.” To which Lomax responds: “Neither do I”. Lomax gives Takashi which reads. “The war has been over for many years. I have suffered much but I know that you have suffered too and you have been most courageous and in working for reconciliation. While I cannot forget what happened in Kamanchinabri, I assure you of my total forgiveness. Sometime” , he writes, “the hating has to stop.”

In that moment, both men are set free from their past. In fact they become great friends.

Sometime the hating has to stop.

Surely that is what forgiveness is all about – breaking the cycle of recrimination and hate, letting go of the past so that it does not contaminate the present and understanding that exacting revenge does not make the problem go away. Hatred and bitterness do not ease the pain – they only serve to perpetuate the trauma. An obsession with vengeance is not a solution, it eats away at the victim, but it does not even touch the perpetrator. In the end, the only way to be released from the suffering of the past is to let it go.

Jesus understood this, which is why he tells Peter to forgive seventy times. To forgive is not to condone or to forget abuse, violence, torture or other atrocities – but rather to deprive them of their power to destroy, to reduce their ability to infect the present and above all to allow the victims and sometimes also the perpetrators to get on with their lives .

Sometime the hating has to stop – the self-hatred and the hatred of others – because only when we stop hating will we be at peace with ourselves and with the world. And only when the hating stops will there be peace in the world.
……………………
The movie Railway Man is based on the real story of Eric Lomax which is recorded in a book of the same title. There is also a documentary about Lomax and Takashi.

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Shepherds and sheep

September 7, 2013

Pentecost 16

Luke 15:1-15

Marian Free

 In the name of God who will not be bound by human convention or constrained by human wisdom, and whose love extends to all. Amen.   

When we were in Tanzania, we observed the local Masai herdsmen (often children) herding their sheep to pasture in what seemed to be a harsh and unforgiving land. Each person had somewhere between ten and twenty sheep and they were kept together with a switch. I don’t know, but I assume the loss of one sheep due to carelessness would have been a serious matter when the total number was so low.

How different from the Australian experience! When I was young I visited a sheep station that was 100 square miles in size. The boundaries were fenced as were the interior paddocks – no opportunity for sheep to wander off. Shepherding was required only when it was time to move the sheep from one pasture to another and then it was done from the back of a motorbike – no switch and no personal relationship between shepherd and sheep. I can no longer remember how many sheep the landowner stocked on the property, but I clearly remember a delivery of sheep. A double, two-layer sheep trailer disgorged its contents in front of us – probably in the vicinity of two hundred sheep. In the crush of the transport one had died. The farmer immediately took out his knife and skinned it in front of us. Before our holiday had ended, that sheep had contributed to at least one evening meal. When such large numbers of livestock are involved, there is no room for sentimentality. Pragmatism rules the day.

But back to our Tanzanian experience which is a much better illustration of today’s parable. Small herds are not only more precious, they are better able to be cared for in a more intimate way. There is no need for them to be herded on to freight trains or abandoned to their own devices far from the homestead. Small herds can be protected from wild animals which Australian fences do not deter and it is easy to recognise when one is missing. Every evening the animals are returned to the village where they are contained behind a fence in the centre of the huts so that they will be safe until morning. Every morning they are taken from the pen to once again find pasture.

From what we can gather, herding in Jesus’ day was similar to that of the East African experience. There were some notable differences. The Palestinian herdsmen didn’t necessarily return to a village in the evening (think of the shepherds to whom the angels relayed the news of Jesus’ birth). Instead, crude walls out of stones were made in the pastures to protect the livestock from predators. These sheepfolds seem to have been ad hoc structures – in any case, they were constructed without a gate. In the evening, the shepherd would herd the animals into the enclosure and then lie in front of the opening so as to be able to prevent wild enemies from entering. The shepherds may have built fires for warmth and added protection, but all that kept the animals safe from harm was their shepherd’s ability to aim a sling or to otherwise deter or frighten off an attacker.

Seen from the perspective of shepherding in Israel, Jesus’ parable about the lost sheep is far from a benign, feel good story. Jesus’ audience would have justifiably been shocked and outraged. What sort of shepherd abandons ninety-nine sheep to the wolves in order to go off and search for one that is missing? Wolves or hyenas could cause far greater loss to the shepherd among ninety-nine unprotected sheep, than to one isolated sheep. In other words, for the sake of the one, the shepherd is risking several, if not all, of the others.

You can almost hear the gasps of Jesus’ listeners – the Pharisees, the tax collectors and the sinners. They are not herdsmen, but they have some idea of animal husbandry – even the biggest cities of Palestine are not far from the countryside. Is this shepherd crazy they must be wondering? What is one sheep when you have ninety-nine safe and sound? It gets even worse.  Not only does the shepherd abandon those sheep which have kept close to him, but when the shepherd recovers the sheep which has strayed, he calls all his neighbours over to rejoice with him. Surely that is an over reaction. A party for a lost sheep?

Jesus has almost certainly caught the attention of his listeners. They are probably beginning to wonder what sort of meaning he can draw from the story. How can he use a story about a lost sheep to defend eating with tax collectors and sinners which, in the eyes of the Pharisees breaks the codes of purity and implies that he overlooks their obvious sinfulness. What they have not realised is that the story is a not so subtle attack on their own arrogance and self-satisfaction and a challenge for them to re-assess their understanding of God. Jesus piques their interest and then he goes in for the kill. This is what heaven is like he says. God (we are to suppose) seeks out not the upright, not the law-abiding, but those who have strayed. The people whom the Pharisees despise, exclude and denigrate are the very people whom heaven will seek out and rejoice to welcome home.

What a slap in the face that must have seemed to the Pharisees.  From what we can tell these righteousness and law-abiding people, believed that behaviour set them apart from those around them and assured them of a place in heaven before all others. Jesus’ story about the lost sheep is an affront to everything they had been led to believe and it was a direct attack on their attitude towards those who didn’t achieve their high standards of behaviour. They think that entrance into heaven is something that has to be earned by keeping the law, by prayer and by fasting, that God has particular standards that people have to reach before God will grant them salvation. At the same time they are so sure of that they are right that they have made themselves both judge and jury of the behaviour of others. Anyone who doesn’t conform to their standards is, they believe, automatically excluded from the heavenly realm.

Jesus puts the lie to that belief. Contrary to God’s abandoning and turning his back on sinners, God does what for the Pharisees is unthinkable – God seeks out those who are lost and takes more pleasure in the return of a sinner than in those whose very goodness leads them to forget how much they need God and who believe that their righteous behaviour sets them apart from and above everyone else.

There are times in our lives when we wander from the path, and when we do, God seeks us out and brings us home rejoicing. At other times we find ourselves safe and secure in the fold. At such times it is important that we remember the love sought us out and that we do not begrudge the fact that God extends that love to those who in the present are lost. Having been found, it is important that we do not allow ourselves to be smug or self-satisfied, that we do not think that we better or more worthy than others. We are all beneficiaries of God’s love and we are all dependent on God’s forgiveness. God’s loving forgiveness seeks us out, overlooks our faults, restores us to the fold and welcomes us with rejoicing into the realms of heaven.

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Forgiven and free to love

June 15, 2013

Pentecost 4 – 2013

Luke 7:36-8:3

Marian Free 

In the name of God whose unconditional love sets us free to love. Amen. 

Long before I saw Les Miserable the musical, I happened upon a non musical version of the story. From memory, I came in at the point at which the priest, having offered hospitality to an ex-convict, was faced with this same man whom the police had dragged back because they had found him with silver that could only have come from the priest’s household. The priest knew that the silver was stolen, but instead of expressing outrage, he corroborates Valjean’s story that the silver was a gift and compounds the lie by adding to stolen goods two candlesticks insisting that Valjean had forgotten to take them.

At the time I didn’t know the beginning of the story. That scene depicted such an unexpected act of generosity, understanding and hope that I will never forget the impression that it made upon me. Jean Valjean had stolen the silverware and yet the priest the not only over-looked the theft and corroborated Valjean’s story, but he added to the treasure. In such circumstances we might perhaps expect the priest to offer forgiveness, but to extend such generosity without any expectation of restitution takes us by surprise and forces us to question whether we would be so forgiving or so generous.

Of course, this is a fictitious tale, so let me share with you a true story. Some of you will recall that in 1998 a young nurse, Anita Cobby, was abducted, gang raped and left by her attackers to drown. After the perpetrators were arrested, Anita’s father Garry Lynch went to the local RSL where he thought he would the father of two of his daughter’s assailants. He knew that the man worked there, that he was believed to be doing a good job and that he was well liked. In his own words, Garry says: “I went up to him and I just held my hand out and I said, ‘Look, I want to say to you that we hold no responsibility on you whatsoever for what your sons did.’  And he just grabbed my hand in his two …. in tears … and there was just a silent interchange.”

I could tell you dozens of such stories of people who find it in their hearts to forgive the most horrendous acts and who are somehow are able to get on with their lives.

I could tell you too of those who allow their indignation and outrage to get the better of them in lesser or similar situations. Those who, like the crowds who recently gathered outside the court on the day the young man accused of rape and murder, were not only angry but who had hung a noose over the branch of a nearby tree. This sort of lynch mob mentality is, thankfully, not common, but it does expose a desire to take justice into our own hands and an unwillingness to see the ugliness in oneself and the humanity in another.

Those who hold on to their indignation and their grief fail to see that it reveals as much about their own hardness of heart and their own self-righteousness as it does about the person who committed the offense against them.

Why is it that a father whose daughter was brutally murdered offers forgiveness to the perpetrators, whereas a crowd who know neither the victim nor the accused are filled with vitriol and hate?

I believe that the difference is faith. Faith not only gives us strength and support in times of trauma, but it gives us a different perspective on things. As Christians we know that we are not perfect but we are forgiven – even though we have done nothing to deserve such forgiveness. Knowing ourselves forgiven and loved, we are better able to extend such love to others. Knowing God’s generosity towards us, we are able to be generous in our attitudes towards others. Knowing that God understands our weakness and frailty, we are more willing to understand the weakness and frailty of others.

Jesus makes it clear that none of us is perfect. We are all in need of forgiveness. Imperfection is imperfection – there is no hierarchy – we are either perfect or we are imperfect. Nearly perfect is not perfect. If no one is perfect, then everyone is imperfect. If everyone is imperfect, then everyone – whether they have sinned greatly or only a little – is in need of God’s forgiveness.

This is the point of today’s gospel. Simon, believing that he in some way is better than the woman, judges her and finds her wanting. He is surprised because he thinks/expects that Jesus should do the same. He has failed to understand that if Jesus were to mix only with perfect people Jesus would not be dining with him. Simon’s sense of his own righteousness leaves little room for him to understand that the woman is worthy of Jesus’ attention. He is mean and narrow in his view of others because he has failed to identify his own shortcomings.

In response to Simon’s judgmental attitude Jesus tells the parable about forgiveness forcing the Pharisee to acknowledge that those who are forgiven more, love more. Those who know themselves forgiven, accepted and loved cannot help but extend that love, acceptance and forgiveness to others.

God did not and does not wait until we are perfect before God extended his all-embracing and unconditional love. When we truly understand that we will be overwhelmed by God’s boundless generosity. When we truly understand our own need for forgiveness, we will be hard pressed not to extend forgiveness to others. When we truly accept that we ourselves are not perfect, we will be more willing to accept imperfection in others.

I’ve said it before and no doubt I will say it again: “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more and nothing that we can do that can make God love us less.” If that doesn’t challenge us to share that love with the world, to extend God’s forgiveness to others, then we just don’t get it and as Paul said: “Christ died for nothing”.

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No easy love

April 27, 2013

Easter 5 2013

John 13:31-35

Marian Free 

In the name of God who loves freely and abundantly and ask that we do the same. Amen.

I’m sure that many of you will remember the first record, cassette tape, CD or iTunes that you ever owned. I was nine years old, not tall enough to see over the counter when my mother bought my first record. It was the year that the Beatles had come to Brisbane and I was determined to be part of the action. All I wanted that Christmas was a record by The Beatles. My mother duly took me to a record store in the city where she naively asked for a Beatles record. Of course the shop assistant asked: “which one?” The nine year old Marian could only respond: “one with ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’” – that being all that came to mind. So it was that for Christmas that year I was given the EP with She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, on one side and something like All you need is love on the reverse. The sixties were all about love and peace.

The beatniks and hippies preached love not war and even the Christians got on the bandwagon with car stickers and other paraphernalia covered in flowers and proclaiming: “God is love”. Love and peace were the counter-cultural response to the establishment and especially to the war in Vietnam. The spirit of the age was one of flower power, communal living, non-violent resistance and John Lennon’s famous love-in.

Love, or the promise of love is very seductive. Studies have shown that infants and children need love to grow up feeling strong and secure. Those who do not receive the affection that they crave often go to all kinds of extremes, even criminal behaviour, to get that attention. Apparently, negative attention is better than no attention at all. Worse still, I’m sure we can all think of awful crimes have been committed by people whose need for affection is so great that they allow themselves to be led by their spouses or their friends to do horrendous things that they know to be wrong.

Because love is so essential to our well-being, it is also a powerful force for change. Sister Helen Prejean recounts her journey with Matthew Poncelet, a man sentenced to death for his part in the rape and murder of a young couple. Despite the heinous nature of Matthew’s crime, the fact that he is a particularly unattractive person and the fact that the wider society and in particular the victim’s families cannot understand her position, Helen persists not only in her relationship with Matthew but also in her public opposition to the death penalty. The movie Dead Man Walking, is a reasonably accurate retelling of Helen’s story. She recounts that it is thirty minutes before midnight, the time of the scheduled execution when she finally witnesses a break through in her relationship with Matthew. All of his defenses come tumbling down when he comes to understand that despite all that he has done and the terrible nature of his crime, God loves him.

Helen’s love and persistence have broken through Matthew’s outer shell of defiance and defensiveness. In the safety of that love, Matthew can finally admit that he did rape the young woman and that he did kill her boyfriend. At that moment he takes full responsibility for his actions and stops blaming of his co-accused for the offense. His acknowledgement of his guilt and his acceptance of God’s love do not save his physical life, but his life is saved none-the-less, for in that moment he becomes fully the person God intended him to be and he opens himself to the fullness of God’s love.

The love that Helen showed Matthew is quite different from that so easily proclaimed pop songs. It is a love that is demanding, difficult and often time-consuming. It draws on all our resources and can earn the disapproval of society and even of our friends. Helen’s love for Matthew was fueled by her love for God, her belief that all people – even those most despised by society – are created in the image of God, and her conviction that when we are commanded to love, we are commanded to love everyone, not just those whom we choose to love or those who are easy to love.

Jesus’ command is to love one another as he has loved us. “I give you and new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” In order to fully understand this commandment we have to fully grasp the nature of Jesus’ love, which is also God’s love for us. Jesus’ love began with his ability to be vulnerable. From the cradle to the grave, Jesus demonstrated that he did not need to be in control. He trusted life itself to those whom he loved. At great cost to himself, he allowed others responsibility to make their own mistakes – even when the mistake was to betray him. Jesus’ love demonstrated complete acceptance of other people. Whether they were his disciples, the tax collectors or a variety of other sinners, Jesus accepted them as they were. No one was outside his love.

At the heart of Jesus’ love was forgiveness – whether it was the woman caught in adultery, Peter who denied him, the thief crucified with him or those who nailed him to the cross, Jesus was able to put their misdeeds behind him and restore their relationship with himself. Jesus’ love was also risk taking. In choosing to love everyone, Jesus dared the disapproval of the establishment. By including everyone in his love, Jesus offended those who wanted to exclude people who didn’t fit their criteria of goodness or acceptability. By associating with outsiders, Jesus caused offense to those who wanted to determine who belonged and who did not. By extending his love to all, Jesus risked rejection, hurt and betrayal and still he loved without reserve.

Jesus’ command to love is much harder than it appears –  keeping the Ten Commandments is easier. The command to love as Jesus loved insists that we keep our own egos in check, that we suspend our tendency to evaluate and judge the behaviour of others, and that we understand that our standards and expectations are not necessarily God’s standards and expectations. It means that we must love with no thought of that love being returned, that we should not withdraw our love no matter what the loved one does or does not do and that we should overlook continually another’s flaws and betrayals. This sort of love is not trite or superficial emotion; it involves the will as well as the heart.

The context of John 13 is very specific. Jesus is speaking to the disciples, to community of faith, to us. In today’s churches we have very few opportunities to demonstrate our love for one another. We do not rub up against each other in the way that we might if we had to spend more time together. This makes it hard to demonstrate our discipleship of Christ by our mutual love, understanding and support for one another. That said, the wider church is far from being a model of Jesus’ love. It is a broken and fragmented body, torn apart by differences of opinion, a desire to be in control and an unwillingness to tolerate difference. If the world is to know Jesus by our love, we need to work harder to trust each other, to encourage each other and build each other up. We need to learn to value diversity, to welcome debate and struggle together to understand the love that Jesus showed, so that we can put that love into practice. It is not necessary that we be the same, or even that we agree, just that we love.

As Leunig says: “Love one another. It is as easy and as difficult as that.”

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