“.if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” 

“..if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” 

“…if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

One Bitten, Twice Shy: is part of my DNA.

Each one of todays’ readings is tough. Tough listening in the exodus story, especially for the loosing side when the waters of the sea, drowned them. Tough listening in the Romans reading: That teaching to be painfully aware of our own judgement of one another. Tough listening in the parable to live out forgiveness in the same measure that God has given forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

One Bitten, Twice Shy: is part of my DNA.

But my faith calls me beyond myself.  And often, I’m not sure I like it.  Often I’m not sure I’m even capable of it.  And, quite simply, sometimes the woundings, the sadnesses and griefs, the horror, the misunderstandings in life and relatonships leave me with little capacity to even know where to begin.

In the context of these weeks of ‘Seasons of Creation’: and last week’s encouragement to get outside and pray: get next to your indoor plants and pray: get to a window to see outside to pray: or to take yourself to a park or by the river or water way to pray… How did you go with that?  And if you forgot, how can you get to it this week? And if you forgot and really wanted to pick up on that invitation, what can you do this week to make that  kind of prayer time happen for yourself? Forgive yourself from the heart: and make a new plan to see if that will help.

Often in prayer; whether it be reading a poem or a set prayer;

Often in prayer; whether it be reading the Gospel story for the day, or a story of faith or experience of another person;

Often in prayer, I am confronted, with myself…

Just this week, seemingly out of the blue, in a prayer time, my mind wandered back to some very embarrassing teenage moments: some moments of shame in the kindergarten playground: some moments of the school classroom…  Goodness.  A life times away.  Those things are resolved: mostly forgotten: and highly inconsequential… but here that are again, inviting attention. Why?   Or rather, what might the memory help me with now, in the here and now, even if the memory is uncomfortable.  And why am I dreaming these things on prayer?  (Is it because of this week’s You-Tube fascination with old and rare ABBA clips also working on my subconscious?)

Tough Bible readings also take us to tough stories: or rather, tough stories that are NOT in print.  I’m not saying the Egyptians were innocent or kind: but when I hear the story, my imagination cannot help but think about the implications of that encounter: that one side wins: the other side looses… and on each side there is pain.  In the Bible, we hear the pain of the Israelites: somebody said once, that the Bible is written from a winners perspective: although I’m not totally convinced about that, I can see what they mean.

Closer to home: my own family story from the South of Ireland has a terrible story or murder, fires, and nighttime escape: and my childhood was filled with an ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ religious (mis)understanding.  Some of you will recall me once saying that in my childhood, there were certain church branded OpShops I was NOT permitted to go into… if that helps to gives you a glimpse of the texture.  And I know the repercussions of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the lives of both my maternal grandparents, that effect on my own Mother: and the texture of my childhood home.

Bible readings are tough without grace: and what Jesus brings to scripture.

The Romans reading reminds us of just how judgy we get: or we can become.  I’ve spoken recently, (when we were exploring the parables of the Wheat and the Weeds), about the ‘weeding’ we’ve all experience, I’m sure, in other expressions of Christian Community.  My dear friend Margaret berated me for not being in church weekly: but I didn’t see her coming to my aid to pay my rent… and when working as a performing artist, I needed the retail shifts to keep a roof over my head… She was judgy of me: but can you see how judgy I was of her?  (I am happy to report to you that I did get over myself: and herself… and we were long time church friends: even going on retreat together: and she, still gifted with that sting in her tail, was sometimes very helpful in my life to see what I was doing, and what I could do differently: whether I liked it or not!!!)

And where do we start with the Gospel?  And what are the limits of Story telling and parables?

And, although we’ve heard this parable a thousand times before (which is probably a not true… if you do that stats)… what might its wisdom be for us in relationship with Seasons of Creation?  What does this story say to us when we are reading it, sitting next to the river, or in our favourite parkland or back yard, balcony or in our reading chair near some indoor plants?

Theologian, Andrew Marr, in his book, Moving and Resting in God’s Desire,  writes, “The point of the parable is clear enough: If you don’t forgive, you won’t be forgiven… The unforgiving servant is handed over to be tortured until he has paid his entire debt. [He] had been invited to a new way of living based on forgiveness but he rejected it. Living without forgiveness, which is tantamount to living by vengeance, is torture. It isn’t God who is unforgiving; it is the servant. Clinging to vengeance in the face of God’s forgiveness tortures us with our vengeance for as long as we are imprisoned by it.”

Which may or may not help us… but the encouragement to practice, learn, at least try this pathway of forgiveness in life is helpful.  I don’t want to become vengeful myself: I’ve seen the effects of that in my Grandmother’s shattered life after her life in Ireland: and I’ve lived in the shadow of that inter-denominational hatred in my formative years… And I don’t want that to do further injury to me and those I love.

Brian Zahnd, in his book, Radical Forgiveness, he writes, “This is not a cheap pardon. There is real loss. In Jesus’s parable, the master was willing to lose the unimaginable amount of ten thousand talents in order to pardon and keep the servant a free man. The master in effect said, “I will suffer the loss, I will bear the pain, in order that you can remain a free man in the human community.” But his loss was substantial. And lest this be misunderstood as the offer of cheap grace, we must be reminded that at the centre of God’s offer of pardon stands the cross of Christ.”

The cross of Christ is less the payment of a debt than it is the absorption of injustice. In the parable, the master is not repaid; he simply absorbs the loss. It is only through absorbing the pain of his loss that he is able to offer pardon to the debtor. Indeed, the forgiveness of great wrongs is never cheap but always painful, because someone must bear the loss.

But when the pardoned servant imprisoned his fellow servant because he was unable to pay, he exited the world of grace and re-entered the world of retribution where every penny has to be accounted for and every debtor must pay or be punished. In his lust for payback, he had broken the law of reciprocal grace set forth in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.’ In reverting to the dichotomy of payback or punishment, he had cast himself back into the torturous world of recycled revenge. 

So I end this reflection where I began:

“.if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” 

“..if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” 

“…if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

One Bitten, Twice Shy: is part of my DNA, but the Gospel calls me to more.

To let the grace I have received, grow in me: and grow me.

To forgive from the heart… well, it takes Grace; and time: (although that only works if I keep working out the Grace in my heart.) Forgiveness also invites us to offer Grace to our ourselves.  That’s Heart Work.  Clare Boyd McCrae’s reminder to us from last week is that silent prayer is part of that heart work.  We don’t manufacture forgiveness: we just keep turning up in prayer: and release ourselves into Grace.  To foster that Grace, and invite it to be growing within our hearts and alive in each one of us…

Which, of course, is why we ponder these stories:

Which is why we ask these stories to layer into us 

Which is why we invite the Gospel into us, to do it’s work:

that we may live God’s living Garace for one another: the world: God and ourselves.  Amen.