16 Pentecost, 2026-A: Practitioners of forgiveness

Lectionary: Genesis 50:15-21; Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-13; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35 

En el nombre de Dios, cuya misericordia es tan grande como vasta es la extensión de los cielos. 

In the name of God, whose mercy is as great as the heavens are expansive. Amen.

Today’s lectionary is complicated, which makes sense. Forgiveness is a complex issue.

To restore our spiritual well-being, let’s begin our reflection with  Psalm 103, which presents to us the characteristics and nature of God, God forgives all sins, heals our infirmities, satisfies and renews us, and metes out justice for the oppressed. 

God is full of compassion, mercy, and slow to anger - which implies that God does get angry. God is of great kindness and holds no grudges. And finally, God’s mercy is as great as the heavens are expansive.

A restatement of the last verse in the psalm from a Hebrew-to-English Bible translation provides a consequential teaching: As a father has compassion for his children, so God has compassion for those who have a radical amazement and deep respect for God.

The word we translate as “fear” actually means: a staggering realization of our smallness in the presence of God’s greatness. It means waking up from an illusion and seeing reality as it truly is.

As we consider our gospel reading, it’s important to remember what Jewish theologian Rabbi Abraham Heschel said: “There is always a dimension of God’s pervading affection where compassion prevails over justice, where mercy is a perpetual possibility.”

God’s mercy is something we hope for in regard to our own sin, but do we hope for it as much for the one who has sinned against us? Or do we wait, and wish, and watch for God’s punishment to fall on those who have wronged us?

The question our readings ask us to ponder is this: What is our response to sin, and what should it be?

We have just marked the 25th anniversary of 9/11. It’s hard to believe. 

Cheryl McGuinness, whose husband was a co-pilot on the plane that was hijacked and flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, said she went to Ground Zero and heard/felt/knew God’s guidance to the evil and devastation she was experiencing: she had to forgive – for herself and for her children.

There are a variety of old and new books, documentaries, and video series on the 9/11 tragedy. I invite you to go to some of them and listen to the wisdom of the survivors who speak of how important forgiveness is. Here are some I found: 

1. “The first step in forgiveness is deciding you want to do it. It can take years…” 
2. “What usually happens is that people carry around anger in such a way that they are crippled by their own anger…” 
3. “Forgiveness is really a gift you give to yourself. You free yourself of anger and resentment…” 
4. “[Forgiveness] doesn’t mean you condone what was done, it doesn’t mean you want that person back in your life. It simply means that you no longer carry with you this polluting force that really poisons you.”

It remains a temptation, when we’ve been sinned against, to want revenge, to imagine God smiting our enemy and smiling on us as we watch them being punished for hurting us. But God’s wrath, God’s anger, as presented in Scripture, is always bound together with grace and mercy, making space for repentance and restoration of life – for everyone.

The path to forgiveness, like the path of grieving a loved one, is different for everyone. For some it seems immediate. For most of us, however, it happens over time. It can take months or years. There is no right amount of time. The reason is, we are unique, each with our own set of experiences, wounds, and learned responses. (Photo credit: Valori M. Sherer)

This is also a foundational reality for every church community where people are in various places on their spiritual journey. Paul refers to them as strong and weak in faith – which I find to be a bit judgmental, but Paul is Paul, and although he can be truly wise at times, he’s still a man of privilege and of his time, and it shows.

As the early church struggled to evolve from being exclusively Jewish to being inclusively Christian, Paul cautions the people to refrain from passing judgment on one another and from quarreling, reminding them that God has welcomed them all. But then, as now, people do pass judgment; and they fight, sometimes to the point of breaking their church apart. Emmanuel knows something about this.

We all sin. We all need to be forgiven, and we all need to be forgiving. Jesus makes this very plain in the parable of the unforgiving slave.

The slave-owner (God) forgives the slave who begs for mercy on a debt so large he could never pay it. That same slave goes out and cruelly, violently punishes those who owe him a debt. When the slave-owner (God) learns about this, he responds: You wicked slave! he says. I forgave you all your debt ... Shouldn’t you also have forgiven? The consequence of your lack of forgiveness is eternal pain.

Let’s take a moment here. Who caused the unforgiving slave’s eternal pain?

Blaming God for that is like blaming a battered woman or abused child for handing their abuser over to the police and courts. The abuser did the crime and brought the punishment on themselves. If the abused woman or child also refuses to forgive, however, they too will continue to suffer.

In this story, God had already offered the man extravagant grace. In response, the unforgiving slave could have done likewise to those who owed him, but he didn’t.

That’s the lesson. When we refuse to forgive, we will bring about our own suffering and perpetuate the suffering of others. What we bind on earth is held bound. What we loose is released. 

As he was dying on the cross, Jesus modeled our response to sin: to forgive those who have hurt us, harmed us, betrayed us, angered us, ignored us, demeaned us, made us feel ugly or worthless or embarrassed... to forgive those who shut their eyes and cover their ears to the truth – whether it’s because they can’t hear it or because they won’t hear it.

We forgive those who should have known better, who should have loved us better, but didn’t – or couldn’t. Only God knows why they didn’t or couldn’t, and God is redeeming them too.

To forgive is to trust that God will bring about God’s justice, which is reconciliation, and wholeness from every experience of brokenness on earth. We cannot do this ourselves.

What we can do is wake up - again and again - to the staggering realization of our smallness in the presence of God’s greatness and see reality as it truly is. It is God who forgives and calls us to forgive. It is God who reconciles every relationship and everything on earth that we broke. We can either receive the extravagant grace God continually offers us or be like the unforgiving slave. The choice is ours.

Forgiveness is a spiritual muscle we need to develop, and that’s what we do each Sunday at our celebration of Holy Eucharist. We need one another, and we need to share in the nourishment of Word and Sacrament regularly because that is what strengthens us and unites us. We need to eat together, pray together, and play together. We even need to disagree together.

Church is where we learn and practice forgiveness so that we can take it out into the world, because, as you know, our world remains sorely divided and enslaved by sin.

I want to take a moment to distinguish "sin" from "sins." Sin is a state of disruption of our right relationship with God and one another. It is in that state that we commit sins, doing those things that are wrong, harmful, divisive, or oppressive. The sins we commit are the evidence of our being in a state of sin - of disrupted relationship.

We are all survivors of our own sin and the sins of others. No one escapes that, but we don’t have to become practitioners of sin in response. God calls us to be practitioners of forgiveness.

I close today with a poem from Mpho Tutu, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s daughter. It’s called, “I will forgive”

“I will forgive you. 

The words are so small, but there’s a universe hidden in them.

When I forgive you, all those cords of resentment, pain, and sadness 

that had wrapped themselves around my heart 

will be gone. 

When I forgive you, you will no longer define me. 

You measured me, and assessed me, 

and decided that you could hurt me, 

that I didn’t count. 

But I will forgive you because I do count. 

I do matter.

I am bigger than the image you have of me.

I am stronger. I am more beautiful. 

I am infinitely more precious than you thought me. 

I will forgive you. 

My forgiveness is not a gift that I am giving to you. 

When I forgive you, 

my forgiveness will be a gift that gives itself to me.” Amen.

15 Pentecost, 2026-A: Christians as prophets of love

Lectionary: Ezekiel 33:7-11, Psalm 119:33-40, Romans 13:8-14, Matthew 18:15-20

 

En el nombre de Dios: creador, inspirador, y guía...  In the name of God, Creator, Inspirer, and Guide. Amen. 

So much of what folks call Christian teaching is really an adapted or interpreted concept or translation that may be utile for a particular purpose in a particular historical moment. For example, later in Paul’s letter to the Romans (16:5-7), the name of the apostle, Junia (a female) was translated to Junias (a male) along about the 13th century. We don’t know if this was an intentional or accidental change, but we do know it cemented the institutional preference for men in church leadership while subjugating women apostles back into the “outer courts” as it were.

Discerning between faithful Christian teachings that come from God in Christ and unfaithful teachings that come from humans with an agenda is our responsibility as Christians, especially now because we live in a world where Christian Nationalism dominates our current cultural landscape.

Christian Nationalism is a political ideology that is NOT faithful to Jesus’ teachings or what Jesus demonstrated in his earthly ministry; and they definitely have an agenda that is unjust, unfaithful, oppressive, and harmful.

So how do we distinguish faithful from unfaithful teachings? A good start is to remember what our former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry often said, “If it isn’t about love, it isn’t about God.” Paul also says it well today: love one another, love does no wrong to a neighbor, love is the fulfilling of the law.

It also helps to remember that Jesus was tried and executed for sedition: calling out the sins of unjust systems of governmental and religious powers that were oppressing and harming people, and encouraging all people, the greatest and the least, to reject them. Now it’s our turn as bearers of the spirit and love of Christ in the world today.

I once had a bishop who used to tell us that we are all called to be prophets. I agree.

Prophets are called by God to deliver to God’s people reminders of their faith (Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah) or warnings about the consequences of straying from their faith (Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos). Prophets call out human sin and hypocrisy (Isaiah, Amos, Zephaniah) while reminding people about God and God’s eternal will for humankind, which is... the reconciliation of the whole world to God (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Malachi). A prophet may also be called to share a vision of a way to go that leads to love on earth as it is in heaven (Amos, Micah, Habakkuk).

As theologian and Old Testament scholar, Walter Bruggeman, reminds us, "the prophet does not ask if the vision [of God for the world] can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. For those who realize the need for change in society if justice, peace, and the will of God for the world are ever to be achieved, the new vision that must be molded requires immersion in the mind of Jesus and time, time, time.”

The current glorification of bullying, retaliatory violence, and segregation by race or status, and the vilification of mercy, humility, and inclusion, have left many of us feeling off-balance and vulnerable, but for a person of faith, it’s an opportunity for transformation. When we realize that we cannot rely on our own strength, we are reawakened to the reality that we can rely on God.

Then our vulnerability becomes our stronghold. Everything we do - from how we understand what we see happening around us to how we respond - comes from this foundational reality that we rely on God, not ourselves, to see, understand, and respond.

It’s the only answer to the problems of the world. When we invite God to use our sense of imbalance and vulnerability to awaken us to this new reality, we can also own that the church, and we as members of it, have sinned.

This isn’t news to us. There isn’t much disagreement that the Crusades and Inquisition are blights on our church’s history. We all know that our beloved Episcopal Church was complicit with the institution of slavery.

But did you know this about our history? According to the UBE, the Union of Black Episcopalians, “In 1882, a Mississippi [Episcopal] priest launched a virulent attack on blacks, arguing that sparse black Episcopal growth was due to their intellectual, moral and leadership inferiority.” The southern bishops then proposed the Sewanee plan to segregate blacks into a racial diocese.

In response, the Conference of Church Workers Among Colored People was formed. It “met annually, and every third year at the site of General Convention, appointing lobbyists to press for black goals… through protest and agitation... the Conference served as the conscience of the Church. As a result, segregation was never written into the policy or canon laws in the Episcopal Church.” 

Today the Union of Black Episcopalians continues its tradition as the conscience of the church by its prophetic teaching, proclamation, and visioning the way of love. They are faithful prophets among us and I encourage you to check out their website. (Pic: from The Episcopal Church archives)

In every generation, we as a church and individually as members of it, fail to love one another as Jesus loved us. That’s why we have to be able to talk to one another about our sins. It isn’t about passing judgment; that isn’t ours to do. It’s about committing to walk together on the path of love toward wholeness.

Jesus knew this and showed us a process for this in today’s gospel. Jesus said, “If a member of the church sins…”

I need to point out here that the words “against you” were added later and weren’t in the earliest manuscripts. The sins Jesus was talking about were corporate sins; things like complicity in oppression, racism, the segregation and maltreatment of queers or immigrants, or covering up child abuse.

If a member of the church sins, Jesus says, go and speak to them alone first. Respect their dignity. Humiliation is not part of the way of love. If they refuse to listen, take one or two others with you and try again. If they still won’t listen, tell the church (Gk: ecclesia), the gathered community.

Coming from the deep south, it is a common practice among some Christians who take this passage literally to force a “sinful” member to confess their sin in front of the whole congregation. That is not only coercive and unloving, but it accomplishes little besides shaming. More importantly, it misses the point of this teaching, which is: reconciliation.

The UBE tells the church “through protest and agitation,” serving as an inner guide and leading the Church back to the way of love, to its “all-embracing ideal."

Telling it to the church is why we have required training programs like Safeguarding God’s Church - because child and vulnerable adult abuse in the church was, and sadly, still is real. People resist believing that such things would happen in church, but they do happen, and the church is called upon to wake up from its collective sleep and be transformed by God in how we understand and respond.

The next part of Jesus’ teaching is critical. If the offender still refuses to listen, Jesus says, “let that one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” To understand this, we must look at how Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors. He healed and forgave them, reconciling them back into love and into their communities, even welcoming one of them - the writer of this gospel - to be his disciple.

There is a place for the enforced separation of an unrepentant offender from the church community they are harming. It’s in our Disciplinary rubrics (BCP, 409). We call it pastoral refusal of receiving Communion.

The bottom line is, we, the church, have only one way to go - the way of love. Right now, the revelation of how far we as a church and a culture have strayed from that path of love is bright with the clarity of Christ’s light. Now is the moment for us to wake up from our collective sleep on the issues of racism, sexism, the torture and oppression of immigrants, and the queer community, Christian Nationalism, and the other -isms that plague our church and society.

Our response, our responsibility as Christians, is to refocus on God’s vision for us and for the world. That will mean shaking ourselves loose from our habitual and comfortable ways of understanding, and binding ourselves to God’s inspiration, God’s breathing into us the divine way of love as it is being revealed in this moment.

It will mean listening to the prophetic voices among us and joining with them as faithful prophets who teach about God, who is love, proclaim the will of God as the reconciliation of the whole world to God, and envision a path that leads to love on earth as it is in heaven.

“Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts” and guide us onto your way of love. Amen.