Sermon preached by Fr. Tom
at St. Thomas Episcopal – Plymouth
February 23, 2014
Seventh Sunday of Epiphany
Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
Psalm 119:33-40
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Matthew 5:38-48
“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be an acceptable offering in your sight, Oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer.”
We have had a couple of readings the past two weeks that are tough to preach on for me. The fact is that they speak to me and challenge me to be a better person. I took the coward’s way out and scheduled guests to speak last week. My own few comments were from the Epistle. The Gospel was about a number of things, but I would have preached on anger. The Gospel this week also deals with a number of things, but I am primarily going to focus on forgiveness.
Appropriately enough forgiveness and grace were the topics at the Tuesday Book group. Forgiveness has been on my mind.
The truth is that I am a man who can hold a grudge, and I know this is wrong. It is tough for me to forgive, but I know I have to do it. I want to start with a story about forgiveness.
When I was in High school, I had a classmate named Chris who had a brother named Jay that I knew as well. These were bright guys who did well in school. Chris was in a couple of my classes, so I knew him reasonably well.
There was a younger sister named Rindy as well, and once when the family was at a local park, the sister disappeared. The family looked for her and finally called the police. He body was found in a bathroom about midnight, and she had been horribly killed.
Adding to the horror of all this was the fact that when they arrested the person who was ultimately convicted of this crime, he was also a high school classmate of ours. It was not anyone I knew, but still the guy was someone who attended pep rallies in the gym with us and ate in the school cafeteria. It is always easier I think when the person who does something horrible is a stranger. It is easier to write them off. This was a guy with a picture in our annual.
Chris and Jay took a while to return to school, and while they were out, a rumor went around the school. The father in this family was a Presbyterian minister, and he had supposedly gone to the prison where the young man was being held for trial and faced him through the bars and forgave him for what he had done. We had no way of verifying this, and no one had the nerve to ask Chris or Jay.
It seemed as if bringing this up with the guys at school would remind them of the murder and would cause them grief. It seemed a superhuman thing to have done if it were true. If it were not true, asking might suggest he should have, when none of us would have been able to do something like this ourselves.
We all finished high school and moved on to college. Incidents like this can stick in your head though, and Susan and I talked about it more than once. The family of the girl moved on geographically as well. Moving is an occupational hazard for ministers of all denominations, but I suspect it may have been a blessing because it let them leave an area that had painful memories associated with it.
Often you don’t get much closure in a story like this, but Susan about 20 years ago looked up the Presbyterian minister. She wrote him and paid him a visit. She asked him if the story were true. Had he really forgiven the man who was convicted of murdering his daughter?
He said “yes.” He said that he had to do it not only because he was a minister. Just as the rumor mill had claimed, he forgave the young man through the prison bars before he went to trial. He did it for the benefit of the young man, and he did it to get some closure himself. It turns out he went to the sentencing hearing and asked the judge to show mercy.
Now the question is, “How did he do that?” Another question is “Would you have been able to do it?” Today’s Gospel is about this very thing, and how we are supposed to forgive. We forgive those who have done us wrong. We have to rely on grace because, when I initially described this act of forgiveness, I said it was superhuman. We can’t do it on our own. God calls us to forgive, and He gives us the strength.
Now this is a dramatic story, and there is a danger in describing something like this because people think “Whoa – I guess if something like this happens to me, I know what I am supposed to do. I hope God will give me the grace.”
G.K. Chesterton said once that “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.” You know how easy it is to harbor resentment toward the neighbor whose dog digs up your flower bed every chance he gets. You can think of your own less dramatic examples involving your own neighbors.
The fact that these people are our neighbors makes it all the more important to settle our differences. I said it would have been easier if the murderer had been a stranger. It adds another layer when we are in relationship with someone and have to cross paths with them in the grocery store or at the post office.
So why do we forgive? We forgive because God tells us to. God forgives us and calls us to do the same for others. We forgive because it heals wounds and keeps them from festering and becoming inflamed and infected.
I am not sure if any of you have seen the movie “End of the Spear.” This is a great movie I watched with some Culver students once at Cordon – a youth group I was the sponsor of for a couple of years. This is a movie based on a true story from the 50’s about two missionaries – Jim Elliot and Nate Saint who go to Ecuador and are killed by the tribe they have gone to evangelize. In all five members of the group are killed. The wife of one of the missionaries and the sister of another go back to continue missionary work. Nate Saint’s son Steve befriends and converts the man who killed his father.
The tribe has been involved in warfare with another tribe and each time someone is killed, they retaliate with another killing. Obviously, the ultimate result will be the destruction of both tribes. The missionaries introduce Christianity and forgiveness into the mix, and by the powerful witness of Steve Saint and God’s grace, the vicious cycle is ended. The end of the spear is the end of the killing.
Gandhi famously said “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Where does it stop and when?
It stops with Jesus. He died for our sins. We are forgiven. We are called to forgive others following His example. It is that easy, and it is that tough. We can only do it through grace, but God gives us that grace.
We have to do it because it is right. It is also the thing which drains those wounds and allows them to heal. We do it for our brothers and sisters. We benefit ourselves. It is win-win in every way.
Verse 48 in today’s reading tells us to “be perfect,” and as much as I would like to, I am going to own up to the fact that I am not perfect and will fall short of this command. I read a little bit about this verse this week, and there are a couple of things to mention. The command is a verb form that suggests we will be perfect in the future by doing these things now. It is not saying I am supposed to be perfect when I am not. This perfection is a maturity or completeness. It is a ripeness, and we are in process. We get where we are going because we are not burdened by hatred or anger.
My takeaways this morning are these:
- We are called to forgive those who wrong us. In many cases, this is not an easy thing to do. We are called to pray for our enemies.
- God provides us the grace to forgive, because sometimes it is too hard for us to do on our own.
- God forgives us.
I have said these words in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.