First sermon preached at St Mary's, Little Walsingham, and earlier at St Peter's Great Walsingham and Houghton St Giles
Sirach 27:30-28:7 ‘Forgive your neighbour the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray.’
Romans 14:7-9 ‘Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.’
Matthew 18:21-35 ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.’
The Lord is compassionate and
gracious,
slow to anger and rich in mercy.
+
One of the
great blessings, and challenges, of the Christian life is forgiveness – receiving
forgiveness and giving it.
This challenge
is being addressed in today’s gospel in the Lord’s conversation with Peter and
in the parable that comes from it about someone who is forgiven but then who
cannot then forgive.
Aren’t we
all locked into that to some degree?
All too many
people, even in the life of the Church, hardly dare believe that, in the words
of the psalm, ‘The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and rich
in mercy’.
The psalm is
absolutely serious – and do go back and read it – when it describes the heart
and nature of God and the power of His forgiveness:
It is the
Lord who forgives all your sins,
who heals
every one of your ills,
who redeems
your life from the grave,
who crowns you with mercy and compassion.
What a
glorious promise!
And if we do
accept that forgiveness are we ready to be mirrors of forgiveness?
So there’s a
question posed by the Gospel today: is this promise of lavish forgiveness on the
radar of your life as a Christian?
So Jesus shows
that true forgiveness, God’s forgiveness, is lavish and generous and it doesn’t
grudge: and it needs putting into action.
70 times 7 equals
490: that’s a lot of forgiving to be getting on with.
It’s as if
Jesus is saying ‘do the maths!’
This is not
to test your powers of mental arithmetic, but to emphasise that the forgiveness
we give to others is a reflection of the forgiveness we receive from God,
through the saving death of Christ on the cross, out of love for the world (cf
John 3.16).
And in
saying ‘do the maths’ the Lord is drawing on a character from the book of
Genesis, chapter 4.
Lamech is a relentlessly
unforgiving character, who takes disproportionate vengeance on those who slight
him: he says that he won’t just take sevenfold vengeance, but seventy-seven
fold (Genesis 4.23-24).
Recognise
it?
Jesus flips
that round for Peter and you and me.
Forgive, not
just seven times but seventy-seven fold.
Lamech dealt
in disproportionate vengeance, and vengeance, of any sort, is not the way of
Jesus Christ and not worthy of his followers: Jesus deals in disproportionate
forgiveness.
So today’s
gospel is all about how we live our lives as forgiven and forgiving people.
It is first
about life in the Church – that’s why Peter is part of it – it’s about being
reconciled to God and to one another, and then about how that forgiveness
spills out into our daily lives, thus revealing the ways of the Kingdom of God.
Forgiveness
demands honesty, frankness and realism from the forgiver and the one seeking
forgiveness.
If I cannot
be real about my sins, I can never be ready and receptive to receive
forgiveness.
Farmers and
gardeners alike know what happens to hard dry ground when the rains come: the
rain runs off the surface and leaches any remaining goodness.
When the
surface of the ground is broken up and worked then the water can soak deep into
the ground and water the roots of the growing seed and plants.
So too the
watering of our souls with God’s forgiving grace means that the hardened shell
we protect ourselves in must be tilled, so that forgiveness can soak into us
and wash out the toxins of sin.
The Church,
in her wisdom, gives us a powerful sacrament to aid this in our spiritual
lives.
The
Sacrament of Confession is the moment when we place ourselves before God -
honestly, frankly and realistically - to receive his forgiveness.
Kneeling in
penitence, articulating the hard and gnarled realities of our lives that repel
God’s grace, is a healing balm and saving medicine.
That is what
the Sacrament of Confession gives.
Confession
is perhaps the most under used Sacraments of the Church, and yet one that can
give deep and enduring comfort.
Getting back
to regular confession - or getting started as penitents - reacquaints us with
what forgiveness is about, and draws us close to the heart of the guardian of
our souls.
Confession
is good for us, and those with whom we share our lives, because it is the hinge
of the Lord’s Prayer, praying to the Father: ‘forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive those who trespass against us’.
You cannot
truly forgive until you have been forgiven.
And the
parable makes clear; there is little worse than the forgiven person who then
fails to forgive.
It shows how
crushing an inability to forgive really is, especially from someone who has
been relieved of the debt of sin.
The very
word forgiveness has a gift at its heart.
It is a gift
to receive and a gift to give.
The parable
is not a tale with a moral at which we nod our heads, but is a prompt to live
lives as forgiven sinners who themselves put forgiveness and reconciliation
into practice.
Know
yourself to be forgiven, so reacquaint yourself with God’s forgiveness in the
Sacrament of Confession.
It’s hard
but eternally rewarding: the clutch of sin is washed away at baptism, but our
sinfulness abounds, as does God’s disproportionate forgiveness.
Seek out a
priest – and there are plenty around here - knowing that he voices God’s
forgiveness of your sins, the Lord ‘who’, through his saving death on the
Cross, ‘forgives all your sins, who heals every one of your ills, who redeems
your life from the grave, who crowns you with mercy and compassion’.
And, knowing
yourself to be forgiven, forgive.
Today’s
gospel is then a relentless and demanding account of forgiveness and the
spiritual corrosion of the failure to seek forgiveness and forgive.
Forgiveness
is not a path of weakness but a noble, virtuous way that needs the strength of
God’s grace.
Try it out this
week! Amongst those who rile you, offend you, disturb you, be they family,
friends, colleagues, even new parish priests: no doubt there will be plenty of
people and moments who can provide you with the opportunity to give
disproportionate forgiveness – what a gift that is to you!
So, as
redeemed sinners let us now be ready to come to receive the Lamb of God, who
when entering under our roof says the word and heals us.
