Prop 14B Love Not Duty 12 Aug 12
“Out of the depths have I called to you, O LORD; LORD, hear
my voice;*
Let your ears consider well the voice of my
supplication.
If you, LORD, were to note what is done amiss, *
O Lord, who could stand?
…
With him there is plenteous redemption*
And he shall redeem Israel from all their sins.” (Ps. 130
1-2; 7)
I just can’t help feeling for David in today’s reading from 2nd
Samuel. Who can hear those plaintive
words, “Absalom, Absalom,” and not mourn with him? He is a man whose faith journey teaches us
much, and today we see him miles away from the grasping young ruler that we met
who had his way with Bathsheba. And yet,
as any maturing person of faith, he is still learning about God’s grace and
mercy.
He and his son Absalom have been arguing over a matter of the
honor of his daughter and Absalom’ sister Tamar, and before they could be
reconciled, Absalom is killed. There
have been faults on both parts, and the grief here is profound.
And somehow in the middle of reflecting on the grief, because
in grief there is so much to be forgiven, I thought of today’s Psalm. “If you, LORD were to note what is done
amiss, O LORD, who could stand?” and later, we are reminded that there is
“plenteous redemption” in the LORD. And
this is so true. God’s grace and forgiveness
is more lavish than the biggest feast imaginable. It is downright indulgent. And it is open to us, in all our messy
humanity, with all our need of grace and all the ways we hold grudges.
And it follows that because God forgives us, we are told in
Ephesians today that our work, which is one of love and not duty[1],
is to forgive one another. Now in order
to forgive well, we must first put “away all falsehood,” speaking “the truth to
our neighbors (Eph 4:25).” I think this
is often one of the hardest parts of forgiveness-we must own up to ours’ and
others’ faults and be brave enough to name them. It is not just about saying “it’s OK” but it
is about honesty. As L. William
Countryman, one of my seminary professors, puts it, “It doesn’t help to lie
about the wrong.”[2]
So we are supposed to forgive, but it’s not that simple, is
it? Honesty means trying to live out
God’s forgiveness with others, acting as if we really are one body. It means
not condoning a wrong by saying “it’s OK” but it means forgiving from the
heart, and only as and when we can.
Sometimes this takes a long time, and we see even with the
great example of faith in David, sometimes forgiveness and reconciliation don’t
even happen between two people in our lifetimes. But we can learn from David’s mistakes, and
from our own, and begin the process of forgiveness, remembering God’s grace to
us and praying a lot to see our way through to a sense of grace if there are
situations which it costs us to forgive.[3] Sometimes, even if we can forgive at least
enough to let our part of a situation go, reconciliation may not occur right
away. They are, after all, two different
processes, as the marvelous book on Forgiveness called “Forgiven and Forgiving”
by L. William Countryman points out.[4] Sometimes forgiveness is just one step, one
to be followed by much rebuilding of relationship, whether directly with a
person, institution, or simply with the world.
In all of this, we have hope in that people can change. We can change ourselves. We are a new creation. And according to Ephesians, we’re meant to
act that way. This was a big concept for
early Christians. They lived in a distinctly
un-Christian culture, and they often had to leave aside careers that did not
nurture their faith or cultural practices, such as eating meat sacrificed to
Gods, that compromised their faith.
There was flexibility in the responses to this, as we see in Paul’s
letters, because being too drastic about this meant being totally alienated
from the culture and being too vulnerable, yet early Christians had to make
some life changes—not just the thief we see in this passage, who seems
obviously in need of a new career if he is to be a Christian J but also anyone who could not square
their faith with their life. For example,
some actors and other like professions are not allowed in “The Acts of
Hippolytus,” because the plays at the time were based around pagan gods.[5] Thank goodness we can have Christian actors
now!
But the point is, even though we live in a culture that isn’t
always as outright hostile to Christianity now, we are still encouraged to live
counter-culture. Because we are
encouraged to act out of love, not duty.
Not to hang onto grudges but to find ways to forgive. We are not to put up with abuse, not just
because it is an infringement on rights, but also because any other kind of
relationship that isn’t respectful and loving isn’t “appropriate for those who
are citizens of the age to come,” to quote Bill Countryman once more.[6] Because we are a new creation, it is inherent
in our faith that we believe that people can change, or that we can see a
goodness in them that we hadn’t seen before, one might say a glimpse of Christ
in them.
In today’s gospel, Jesus appears changed or different to the
people who thought they knew him. He
wasn’t who they had in mind, remembering old “Jesus from the carpenter’s
block.” I mean, who really expects a messiah?
He is a blade of golden light in the field of our everyday lives—he
appears the same but he is made of diviner stuff. Sometimes we too are blind to seeing the
amazing possibilities of Christ in each other.
But when we pay attention this Jesus here, we hear he says, “come
to me.” And we are drawn to him, casting
aside all of our pre-conceptions, and we come to this altar and eat this
bread. And it is that simple. And that complex. We come to him and seek God’s
forgiveness. We come and seek life and
peace. Jesus says: “the bread that I
give for the life of the world is my flesh (Jn. 6:51).” And reflecting on an earlier passage from
Ephesians, Bill Countryman points out that “God was willing to endure human
death in Jesus to set going the process of forgiveness among human beings.”[7]
You may not know that one of the original purposes of
exchanging the peace among the congregation before taking communion was to give
us an opportunity to forgive one another first.
It comes from Jesus' admonition that we must first be at peace with each
other before taking communion and living out being one body in Christ. This is radical because it turns “the peace”
from a friendly handshake process into a true affirmation that we are at peace
with each other.
Let us reflect truly on how to be at peace with those in our
lives—be they here, in our family, or be they someone or something entirely
different or distant. And then, in that
strange peace of Christ, let us eat this bread of forgiveness and be in unity
once more, living life fully.
May we forgive and be forgiven, and hope for a future in
which no father need cry, “Absalom!
Absalom!” when we can truly be one body in Christ. Amen.
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