During Lent we’re working through the Lord’s Prayer and how it can be used to inform our Rule of Life. We’ve seen that when you truly hear the words and think about them, they are a call to much deeper action, and a fuller Christian life. We’ve seen that praying Our Father is linked to centering on Jesus and God as Holy Love. Your Kingdom Come makes us aware that we need to let go of “my way” for God’s way. Last week we discerned that the Daily Bread we pray for is a way of being in solidarity with all creation. The slides for this week can be downloaded.
The Lord’s Prayer is, as NT Wright says, a subversive
prayer. We are asked to share our bread, to let go of our way for God’s way. We
are called to honor the Holy in one another. Becoming
a Church says, “We must break free of the church’s identification with
domination systems, empire, establishment, privilege, and social and cultural
traditions that have held us captive—and get back in touch with the
risk-taking, liberating ways of Jesus.” That’s pretty counter-cultural, and
indeed subversive.
This week we think about what we mean when we pray
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. NT Wright calls the disciples
(us), the “new Exodus people, the forgiveness of sins people…were to live, in
each village or town, as a cell of kingdom-people…loyal to Jesus and his
kingdom-vision.” (pg. 54)
Jesus had a lot to say about forgiving. He warns, whenever
you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your
Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. (Mark 11:25)
and in Matthew: But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither
will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:15) St. Paul reminds
us that we are to Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each
other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. (Eph 4:32) Paul
continues, in chapter five. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved
children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a
fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Forgiving like that is easier said than done. Only in the
power of the God of love can we really forgive those who wrong us. And only in
the grace of God can we hope to be forgiven for the multiple times we,
knowingly or not, oppress or hurt others.
The disciples struggled with the concept of forgiveness. The
Pharisees said that you should forgive a person three times. Peter asks Jesus
about this in the Gospel of Matthew “Lord, how often will my brother sin
against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I
do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven. (Matthew 18:21-22) On
March 22,2022 Canon Rose Duncan of Washington National Cathedral offered a homily on forgiveness based on this citation. Duncan defines forgiveness as a
process, but not a ‘get out of jail free’ card that eliminates responsibility
or consequences. (It's about 5 1/2 minutes into the Morning Prayer.)
Last Sunday many of us heard sermons on the extravagant forgiveness of the father of the Prodigal Son. NT Wright talks about this story. He says, “If the father in the story had intended to merely tolerate the son, he would not have been running down the road to meet him. Forgiveness is richer and higher and harder and more shocking than we usually think.” (pg. 51) CS Lewis notes, “We agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it.”
In my book, The Lord’s Prayer: Walk in Love I use
other translations of the Lord’s Prayer to help give insights. “The New Zealand
Prayer Book says, ‘In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.’ Using
the word “hurt” reminds us that we are either physically, or emotionally,
harming another who, like us, is an image of God. Realizing that we owe one
another reconciliation and forgiveness, the Syrian Aramaic translation asks
that we ‘loose the cords of mistakes binding us as we release the strands we
hold of others’ faults.’ This notes that we are bound together even when we sin
against one another. It is only in letting go of the way(s) we have hurt or
wronged others that we can be truly free. It is in offering reconciliation
(restoring relationship) that we free ourselves to move forward. The word
itself is rooted in the Latin reconciliare, meaning to bring back
together.” (Davis, pg 54)
It can be hard to forgive. Even remembering that forgiveness
doesn’t excuse the fault but simply releases us, it is difficult. There are
examples of those who forgive even after great atrocities. Corrie ten Boom, a
Dutch Christian woman who, along with her family, was imprisoned by the Nazis
because they had been hiding Jews from the Nazis. Corrie witnessed the death of
her beloved family members [in concentration camp] and, therefore, had an
understandable hatred for the guards who treated them so terribly. Yet, after
the war, when facing one of those guards, Corrie remembered how Christ had
forgiven her and asked for help to forgive the guard. As she extended her hand
to this man in obedience to God, she felt overwhelming love. Writing about this
experience in her book, The Hiding Place, she says, “And so I discovered
that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the
world’s healing hinges, but on [Christ’s]. When He tells us to love our
enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.” (p. 247).
We can allow unforgiveness to keep us in prison and tied
down. Or we can practice offering God’s love by becoming the “new Exodus
people…loyal to Jesus and his kingdom-vision.” We can reclaim our identity as
those “in touch with the risk-taking, liberating ways of Jesus.” We can
forgive seventy-seven times and be imitators of God, as beloved children, and
live in love…a sacrifice to God.
(Notice that a basic knot starts out as a heart-and remember
that God’s will is love not punishment.)
