Forgiveness Sunday

Forgiveness Sunday
September 14, 2008

Here we are again, with good old Charlie Brown. Lucy is holding the football, and Charlie Brown is eager to practice the kickoff. But he knows – he knows! – that as soon as he gets up to the ball, Lucy will snatch it away, and he’ll miss and land on his back. Again. But she says, Oh, Charlie Brown, have you lost all your faith in humanity? And so – he goes for it. And at the last second, as he kicks, she snatches the ball away, and he lands flat on his back. He is lying there, and she leans over him, to say, “Isn’t it better this way, Charlie Brown? Isn’t it better to trust people?”

(PEANUTS by Charles Schulz, 1961, reprinted today)

Almighty God, whose beloved Son willingly endured the agony and shame of the cross for our redemption: Give us courage to take up our cross and follow him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

This is Forgiveness Sunday: the Sunday every year when we remember Jesus’ saying to forgive one’s enemies not just 7 times, but as many as 70 times 7.

It is three days after we remember the events of September 11, 2001, when nearly three thousand people died in a coordinated sequence of terrorist attacks.

If you were to pray for one person each day who died in those attacks, and had started that very day, you would not be finished going through the list for the first time until the middle of next October.

It is, this year, the day before the feast of the Holy Cross – when we remember the death of one, for all, that turned the world around, from death to life.

What would it look like to forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven – or seven hundred times seven? What kind of world would it be? And what would it take to get there?

It would take a miracle.

God would have to go first.

Jesus gives us a clue – in his story of the impossibly wealthy person who demanded of, then forgave, an immense sum from her servant. As if God were to demand from us all that we have from him – all that we owe him – and then were to turn around and tell us that the slate is wiped clean, that our debt is forgiven.

All we have to do, it appears from the parable, is to go and – on our own small scale – do the same for those who are in our debt.

“Pay me that thou owest!” is the slave’s response.

It is the response of a person who acts as if he is still in bondage. He doesn’t know he is free; he still has the mentality of a man in chains.

The free person’s response is different.

Because we are set free, indeed, because we can testify – as Chris Tomlin sings:

My chains are gone
I've been set free
My God, my Savior has ransomed me
And like a flood His mercy reigns
Unending love, Amazing grace

Then we can forgive, then we can on our own humble scale begin to imagine, begin to live into, a world set free by the mercy and the grace of the living God.

What would it look like? Not on a political scale, not even that –

What would it look like if someone was to demand of me my cloak and I gave my coat as well? If, pressed into service by a passing soldier, I carried his gear for him not one mile but two? If someone were to strike me on the cheek and I simply offered the other?

What would it look like to live as if the gospel were a practical guide to life?

What would it look like to set down the weapons of darkness and put on the armor of light – to put on the mercy and grace and forgiveness, and strength in truth, of Christ?

For his way is a way of truth and righteousness and justice and strength.

The peace of God is no false spring, no fake hope. It is real.

Look at how direct Christ is: he brooks no dishonesty or falsehood or false pride – or false modesty.

The woman caught in adultery is brought to him – and he says to her accusers, let the one without sin cast the first stone. That is enough for them to scatter. When they are gone, he turns to her, and says, “Go – and do not sin again.”

It is not forgetting, it is not denying, it is not saying to the one who has trespassed, “Oh, never mind – whatever. What you do is of no significance to me. (You are of no significance to me.)”

No. Christ gives to each the dignity that is their due – he does not lay aside their sin without acknowledgment: forgiveness is not dismissal.

He sees the person – and calls them to account, like the unjust steward in the parable; he calls them to a new way of being – a way of justice and truth, acknowledging their sins, and then – then – moving forward.

Once the chains are removed, then they are free.

Once the chains are removed, we – you and I – are free.

And that is the freedom he calls us to, one made possible only by the Holy Cross of Christ: for in his sacrifice on the behalf of the whole world, once offered, once made, came the forgiveness of the world, the reconciliation to God himself of all his creatures.

Now we are called, to make our own lives part of that discipline of forgiveness, part of that regime of reconciliation, no longer living as dark forms in the clashing night, but in the dawning of the day to become part of the army of light – to bear in his service the armor of day, to bring forth and make manifest the victory, through the holy Cross, of the Reconciler, the Light of the world.

Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Lord God Almighty, you have made all the peoples of the earth for your glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace: Give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world to himself: Mercifully grant that we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.


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Pentecost XVIII
Exodus 14:19-31
Exodus 15:1b-11,20-21
Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35



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