Ascension Sunday
May 24, 2009
Every few years we get a Sunday like this.
By the church calendar today the day we call “Ascension Sunday” and by the national calendar, it’s the Sunday in Memorial Day weekend.
You might think—ah, it’s accidental, just a calendar coincidence. Yet there is something, something important, that ties these two together.
Last Friday afternoon I forgot it was the first day of Memorial Day Weekend and took 93 north from below Concord. Bad idea! You could hardly enter the traffic. Car after car, truck after truck, camper after camper, most loaded to the gills with summer stuff—kids, tubes, tents, bikes, boats, ATVs —you name it.
And what a day it was! Clear, not sweltering but warm enough for a beach barbecue—a day bursting with the promise of summer. Pure fun, yes?
Well, no, not really. Because what gives all those people time to get away for this weekend of summer good times is this nation’s annual honoring of men and women who have died in service to our nation.
So not pure fun: Most of these men and women died young. All left behind people—families, lovers, friends— who lived out the normal spans of their lives pierced by a double-edged set of emotions: grief and pride.
Tomorrow is their day with parades through the center of towns, veterans marching with their hands over their hearts and their minds filled with memories. High school bands marching behind them whose members, unless they have a brother or sister, a mother or father, a boy-or girl-friend in Iraq or Afghanistan—have only the faintest idea of what this is all about.
Memorial Day is a day when poetry comes into its own, because only poetry can begin to weave the mix of feelings together. A day when the simplest gesture is the most meaningful—a family placing a little flag and a bunch of lilacs on a veteran’s grave.
I wonder—maybe one reason the feast of the Ascension gets lost in the great liturgical span between Easter and Pentecost is that like Memorial Day it is emotionally complicated.
Just to remind us what happened, here’s how the Acts of the Apostles tells it:
“When [the disciples] were together for the last time, they asked, ‘Master, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now? Is this the time?’
“He told them, ‘You don’t get to know the time. Timing is the Father’s business. What you’ll get is the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world.’
“These were his last words. As they watched, he was taken up and disappeared in a cloud. They stood there, staring into the empty sky. Suddenly two men appeared—in white robes! They said, ‘You Galileans!—why do you just stand here looking up at an empty sky? This very Jesus who was taken up from among you to heaven will come as certainly—and mysteriously—as he left.’”
This is the moment when Jesus’ followers and friends have dreaded. They confronted with the fact that Jesus is really finally gone.
And yet, in the account of the Ascension in the Gospel of Luke, it says, “they returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” Another emotional paradox: sorrow and joy.
In Latin America, there is a custom.
In commemorations of people who have died in the fight for social justice, someone will shout out the name of one of the deceased and the crowd will shout back, “Presente!” “present!” The person may have died, but their inspiration and the difference they have made will live on. Even in their absence, they are vitally present.
This shout of “presente!” is the lesson of both the Feast of the Ascension and Memorial Day: absence can turn into powerful presence.
In all the Memorial Day celebrations around the country tomorrow, the focus will be on this mysterious presence of those who are absent.
Not only in grief—and of course, over years, decades, centuries, personal grief for these deaths disappears—but most especially in the stories of service and acts of heroism. These stories say to us: Look around. They are gone, but their lives and their deaths still matter; this country still stands, we now are here after them, struggling to live out the ideas on which the country was founded.
Likewise, when Jesus’ followers turned their eyes down from the heaven and looked around them, they saw something quite new and totally unexpected:
What they saw was Jesus’ presence all around them, even though his body was utterly and finally gone from the earth.
Jesus’ presence was there in one another—they could gather together and remember what Jesus had said and done.
Jesus’ presence was with them every time they sat at table and took bread and wine, blessed them, and passed them around, remembering Jesus’ words, “This is my body . . . this is my blood . . . that was given for you.”
And Jesus’ presence was with them in their passion to live a completely new way of life of generosity, service, and forgiveness.
I mentioned earlier that perhaps poetry may be the most effective way to express the tangle of emotions that occur when absence becomes presence.
I’ll close with a brilliant example by the American poet Galway Kinnell, in a poem called “Promissory Note”:
If I die before you . . .
then in the moment
before you will see me
become someone dead
in a transformation
as quick as a shooting star’s
I will cross over into you
and ask you to carry
not only your own memories
but mine too. . . . .
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Easter 4 May 3, 2009
Easter 4
May 3, 2009
The King of Love My Shepherd Is
In the Gospel according to Mark Jesus goes away in a boat to a quiet place with his disciples. This was to be a break, a much-needed “retreat” from the clamor of the crowd, a time for quiet prayer and reflection. But the crowds get word of it and follow him overland.
Jesus could have asserted his right to a few days off. But he looked at them, and the Gospel says, “he had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd . . . .”
I don’t know why, but that line always grips my heart.
“Like sheep without a shepherd.”
Many of you know we raised goats for quite awhile. “Goats without a goatherd” doesn’t have the same force, because goats without a goatherd would be just fine. The “queen” goat would gather the herd and troop them off quite happily and efficiently into the woods or into the neighbors’ gardens.
But sheep left alone are—to switch the barnyard simile—like chickens with their heads cut off. They’ll panic, they’ll bolt every which way, even off cliffs
It’s the same for humans, isn’t it? In movies, when King Kong or Godzilla gets loose, the crowd scenes are always great—people running every which way. Unfortunately in real situations—fires, earthquakes, bombings—crowds in panic lose their minds, and push and trample one another in their race to safety.
3. “Like sheep without a shepherd.” The phrase brings up some deep and conflicted longings: on the one hand a desire to be independent, to “run wild” vs. a craving to be cared for, to be guided and directed, to put down my date book and cell phone and lap top and acknowledge that I am not ultimately in control..
Maybe that tension is why the 23rd Psalm is so powerful even today. As a pastor (and—did you know?—the word ‘pastor’ in Latin means “shepherd”) I use it frequently. Except for the Lord’s Prayer, it is the most powerful prayer I know.
At funerals of strangers, at least of a certain age, I know that many of those people gathered in mute sorrow in the funeral home parlor need to say something that touches their deepest selves. Sometimes the funeral director has taken me aside and let me know about conflicts that divide the families or other unhealed sorrows. The people gathered together in that room need to do something, say something together that will join them together, bring down the barriers, at least for a few minutes. What do we say together? The 23rd Psalm.
At our monthly Offenders’ Program Eucharist, we begin with silence, then a hymn, and then our congregation of damaged, socially ostracized men, the lepers of our time, say in unison: “The Lord is my shepherd, I will not want.”
Susan Andrews, a Presbyterian minister, tells a moving story about the pastoral power of the psalm. She writes: “25 years ago, St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. was a federal facility with more than 4,000 psychiatric patients, most of the poor and black. As a chaplain intern I was assigned to the cancer ward, where certain death added an extra layer to the human despair. One day I entered an isolation unit to find a wretched shell of a human being—legs and arms chewed up by gangrene, sweat pouring out of a shaking, stinking body. ‘Dear God,’ I thought, ‘what can I possibly say to this man.’
“The answer came intuitively. The words of the 23rd Psalm suddenly welled up within me. As the familiar cadence filled that putrid room, the creature before me changed. He stopped shaking. He looked into my eyes and began to speak the words with me. In that moment, he traveled back home, back into the rooms of a long-lost faith. When this child of [God] died an hour later, he had been welcomed by a loving God who had never left him.”
That family numb with grief and regret, those sex offenders who will never return to freedom, that man dying in the cancer ward of the psychiatric hospital had probably lived his life like a sheep without a shepherd, all open themselves to the grace of God’s transforming love when they breathe these words:
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.
And: Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies,
Thou anointest my head with oil,
My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Now we’ve got to be aware that there are shepherds and shepherds.
There are, alas, managerial shepherds whose concern is for the bottom line: x number of good fat wooly sheep brought safely through lambing and kept from wolves. The managerial shepherd’s motivation is basically “success.” This sort of shepherd is strong on authority and organizational skills. He/she runs a tight ship. The sheep keep safe, sure, but unfortunately may be tempted to cull the underachievers, the weak, or the misbehavors out of the flock. If you belong to this shepherd’s flock, you probably are a sheep who’s always a little anxious, trying hard to shape up.
The Psalm and the Gospel paint a completely different picture. This shepherd’s passion is to provide for the sheep not just an adequate life, but abundant life! The sheep in the psalm sit down to a meal of oats on a fine tablecloth and lap up clear water from a silver cup while frustrated wolves look on from afar. This is a shepherd who isn’t embarrassed by the weak, the vulnerable, the hungry, the scared in his flock. Instead, this shepherd loves them best!
There two contrasting shepherds portray two very different experiences of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The first can be simplistically described as God as boss. God as boss is the manager, the scorekeeper. The God who keeps performance records on each one of us. A “shape up or ship out” kind of God.
This isn’t the God we meet this morning. The God we meet this morning in the poetry of the psalm and in the person of Jesus?—this God loves each of us extravagantly! This is an outrageous God who cares for each individual precious one of us. Who knows each of us by name—Susan, Paula, Matt, Dan . . . . . Loves us—weak, strong, rich, poor, profound, silly.
This is the image of God as not the boss, but the lover.
Now this is not necessarily the image of God we were raised with! In my tradition, I was not made to feel loved, to feel special in God’s eyes.
But that’s not the truth about God. God is the lover, God is the caring shepherd. As a favorite paraphrase of Psalm 23 expresses it:
The king of love my shepherd is,
Whose goodness faileth never;
I nothing lack if I am his,
And he is mine for every.
May 3, 2009
The King of Love My Shepherd Is
In the Gospel according to Mark Jesus goes away in a boat to a quiet place with his disciples. This was to be a break, a much-needed “retreat” from the clamor of the crowd, a time for quiet prayer and reflection. But the crowds get word of it and follow him overland.
Jesus could have asserted his right to a few days off. But he looked at them, and the Gospel says, “he had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd . . . .”
I don’t know why, but that line always grips my heart.
“Like sheep without a shepherd.”
Many of you know we raised goats for quite awhile. “Goats without a goatherd” doesn’t have the same force, because goats without a goatherd would be just fine. The “queen” goat would gather the herd and troop them off quite happily and efficiently into the woods or into the neighbors’ gardens.
But sheep left alone are—to switch the barnyard simile—like chickens with their heads cut off. They’ll panic, they’ll bolt every which way, even off cliffs
It’s the same for humans, isn’t it? In movies, when King Kong or Godzilla gets loose, the crowd scenes are always great—people running every which way. Unfortunately in real situations—fires, earthquakes, bombings—crowds in panic lose their minds, and push and trample one another in their race to safety.
3. “Like sheep without a shepherd.” The phrase brings up some deep and conflicted longings: on the one hand a desire to be independent, to “run wild” vs. a craving to be cared for, to be guided and directed, to put down my date book and cell phone and lap top and acknowledge that I am not ultimately in control..
Maybe that tension is why the 23rd Psalm is so powerful even today. As a pastor (and—did you know?—the word ‘pastor’ in Latin means “shepherd”) I use it frequently. Except for the Lord’s Prayer, it is the most powerful prayer I know.
At funerals of strangers, at least of a certain age, I know that many of those people gathered in mute sorrow in the funeral home parlor need to say something that touches their deepest selves. Sometimes the funeral director has taken me aside and let me know about conflicts that divide the families or other unhealed sorrows. The people gathered together in that room need to do something, say something together that will join them together, bring down the barriers, at least for a few minutes. What do we say together? The 23rd Psalm.
At our monthly Offenders’ Program Eucharist, we begin with silence, then a hymn, and then our congregation of damaged, socially ostracized men, the lepers of our time, say in unison: “The Lord is my shepherd, I will not want.”
Susan Andrews, a Presbyterian minister, tells a moving story about the pastoral power of the psalm. She writes: “25 years ago, St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. was a federal facility with more than 4,000 psychiatric patients, most of the poor and black. As a chaplain intern I was assigned to the cancer ward, where certain death added an extra layer to the human despair. One day I entered an isolation unit to find a wretched shell of a human being—legs and arms chewed up by gangrene, sweat pouring out of a shaking, stinking body. ‘Dear God,’ I thought, ‘what can I possibly say to this man.’
“The answer came intuitively. The words of the 23rd Psalm suddenly welled up within me. As the familiar cadence filled that putrid room, the creature before me changed. He stopped shaking. He looked into my eyes and began to speak the words with me. In that moment, he traveled back home, back into the rooms of a long-lost faith. When this child of [God] died an hour later, he had been welcomed by a loving God who had never left him.”
That family numb with grief and regret, those sex offenders who will never return to freedom, that man dying in the cancer ward of the psychiatric hospital had probably lived his life like a sheep without a shepherd, all open themselves to the grace of God’s transforming love when they breathe these words:
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul.
And: Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies,
Thou anointest my head with oil,
My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Now we’ve got to be aware that there are shepherds and shepherds.
There are, alas, managerial shepherds whose concern is for the bottom line: x number of good fat wooly sheep brought safely through lambing and kept from wolves. The managerial shepherd’s motivation is basically “success.” This sort of shepherd is strong on authority and organizational skills. He/she runs a tight ship. The sheep keep safe, sure, but unfortunately may be tempted to cull the underachievers, the weak, or the misbehavors out of the flock. If you belong to this shepherd’s flock, you probably are a sheep who’s always a little anxious, trying hard to shape up.
The Psalm and the Gospel paint a completely different picture. This shepherd’s passion is to provide for the sheep not just an adequate life, but abundant life! The sheep in the psalm sit down to a meal of oats on a fine tablecloth and lap up clear water from a silver cup while frustrated wolves look on from afar. This is a shepherd who isn’t embarrassed by the weak, the vulnerable, the hungry, the scared in his flock. Instead, this shepherd loves them best!
There two contrasting shepherds portray two very different experiences of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The first can be simplistically described as God as boss. God as boss is the manager, the scorekeeper. The God who keeps performance records on each one of us. A “shape up or ship out” kind of God.
This isn’t the God we meet this morning. The God we meet this morning in the poetry of the psalm and in the person of Jesus?—this God loves each of us extravagantly! This is an outrageous God who cares for each individual precious one of us. Who knows each of us by name—Susan, Paula, Matt, Dan . . . . . Loves us—weak, strong, rich, poor, profound, silly.
This is the image of God as not the boss, but the lover.
Now this is not necessarily the image of God we were raised with! In my tradition, I was not made to feel loved, to feel special in God’s eyes.
But that’s not the truth about God. God is the lover, God is the caring shepherd. As a favorite paraphrase of Psalm 23 expresses it:
The king of love my shepherd is,
Whose goodness faileth never;
I nothing lack if I am his,
And he is mine for every.
Easter 3 April 26th, 2009
Easter 3
April 26th, 2009
Last week, doing my chaplaincy stint at Speare Hospital, I met an elderly man.
I asked him if he’d like a visit and he said yes. He told me that he had just made a decision for a “Do Not Resuscitate Order” to be put on his chart.
I asked him, since he seemed to want to talk about it, why he had made that decision. He told me his story: Several years ago he was rushed to the hospital with a heart attack. Shortly after he arrived, he “died.”
He “woke up” finally, and he described to me coming slowly aware of the lights in the room and the pain from the paddles, and seeing his son’s face.
But he remembers just as vividly how, before that, he had gone deep into a dark tunnel, feeling only one thing, he told me, “Peace, peace, peace.”
Now he is no longer afraid of death. He knows that he can embrace it as a friend.
I know a middle-aged woman who was poisoned by a toxic mix of chemicals on the job. She drove herself to the hospital. She doesn’t remember getting there, but what she does remember is a sense of flying through a beautiful light, and again, a great sense of peace.
When her husband lay dying of cancer, she was able to calm his fear of death by telling him her story, helping him visualize the joy she was sure lay ahead of him.
When people are around death, going through someone else’s death or one’s own near-death experience, they often bring back gifts to the living.
Jesus brought just such a gift to his disciples out of his own death and the amazing fact of his resurrection. It was the vision of a new human society, based on forgiveness.
After all, the Easter story is a story of forgiveness. The cruelty and malice of Jesus’ death confronted God the Creator with the worst that we humans can do. But God did not wreak vengeance upon us, or turn away from us in disgust.
Instead, God forgave us.
After his resurrection, Jesus appeared in a room full of people in serious need of forgiveness.
First of all, the disciples needed Jesus’ forgiveness. He was not only their teacher, but their friend, and they had totally messed up. They had run away, and in Peter’s case, denied him.
Maybe that was why they were so worried that Jesus might be a ghost. At that time, ghosts had a horror-movie-bad reputation for doing harm to the living. Perhaps Jesus’ “ghost” had come back to punish them!
Peter and Andrew, James, John and the rest knew they deserved Jesus’ anger and condemnation. So they were unprepared for the gift of forgiveness shining through Jesus’ first words to them, “Peace be with you,” or in Hebrew, “Shalom.”
Second, the disciples stood in need of forgiving one another. Can’t you imagine them saying to one another before Jesus’ appearance, “If you hadn’t persuaded me I wouldn’t have run away!,” or “Why didn’t you stop me?”
What’s the first line of defense when you feel lousy about something you’ve done? Blame somebody else for getting you into the mess in the first place. I’m sure there was more than enough blame to go around.
Jesus said, “Hold it. Here’s how you can live and work together from now on. Here’s how you can be my church: Change—work on being more courageous and more faithful, and when your brother or sister hurts you or seems to abandon you, forgive them. Pray for them, keep trying to see them as a beloved child of God and worth your care.”
Third, I’m pretty sure they were having a hard time forgiving themselves.
Imagine what was going through Peter’s mind when Jesus appeared among them: “He told me I’d say I didn’t know him, and I bragged, ‘Never, I’ll never disown you.’ It took, what?, about five hours? As soon as someone asked me, what came out of my mouth—‘Jesus who? I never met the man.’ He might forgive me, but I’ll never forgive myself.”
Forgiving yourself is perhaps the hardest form of forgiveness. I know that I’ve had times when I could not see any goodness in me. That’s the reason I came back to the church after many years. I needed to kneel once a week say the words of the Confession in the Prayer Book and hear someone tell me God forgave me---because there was no way I could forgive myself. Only over time, slowly, slowly, like drips of water wearing away rock, could that forgiveness come.
Christ’s command to his disciples (which includes us!) to forgive and let themselves be forgiven is absolutely countercultural.
We live in a world in which the lust for vengeance passes like DNA from generation to generation among peoples and nations. We live in a litigious society in which someone always has to bear the blame and the blame always carries a price tag. On every level from marriage to international relations, to acknowledge one’s own contribution to a bad situation is a sign of weakness.
And if we dare to mention that as Christians we’re called to a life of forgiveness, someone will come back at us: “Let’s be honest— this idea of mutual forgiveness—it’s fine if we’re indulging in a fantasy about the kingdom of God. But in the short term—otherwise known as our lives— does God really want me to forgive people who have done harm—a negligent or abusive parent, a rapist or pedophile, maybe, or a tyrant like Hitler or Stalin or Idi Amin? Shouldn’t they be brought to justice?”
But Christian forgiveness is not taking everything that happens to us with a sweet smile and a quiet, “Please walk all over me.” Forgiveness in the real world is a lot more muscular than that. Forgiveness means the heavy lifting of looking at a person who has done harm and seeing someone who is still a child of God. It doesn’t ask us to coddle them or set them free from the legal or moral consequences of their actions, but to try, try, try to do the hard work of holding them up in prayer to the justice and mercy of God.
It’s a lifetime of work and struggle, failing and succeeding. But each time we succeed, the world becomes a little different, a little better, a little closer to the vision Jesus brought us back from his death and for which we pray each time we say the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”
April 26th, 2009
Last week, doing my chaplaincy stint at Speare Hospital, I met an elderly man.
I asked him if he’d like a visit and he said yes. He told me that he had just made a decision for a “Do Not Resuscitate Order” to be put on his chart.
I asked him, since he seemed to want to talk about it, why he had made that decision. He told me his story: Several years ago he was rushed to the hospital with a heart attack. Shortly after he arrived, he “died.”
He “woke up” finally, and he described to me coming slowly aware of the lights in the room and the pain from the paddles, and seeing his son’s face.
But he remembers just as vividly how, before that, he had gone deep into a dark tunnel, feeling only one thing, he told me, “Peace, peace, peace.”
Now he is no longer afraid of death. He knows that he can embrace it as a friend.
I know a middle-aged woman who was poisoned by a toxic mix of chemicals on the job. She drove herself to the hospital. She doesn’t remember getting there, but what she does remember is a sense of flying through a beautiful light, and again, a great sense of peace.
When her husband lay dying of cancer, she was able to calm his fear of death by telling him her story, helping him visualize the joy she was sure lay ahead of him.
When people are around death, going through someone else’s death or one’s own near-death experience, they often bring back gifts to the living.
Jesus brought just such a gift to his disciples out of his own death and the amazing fact of his resurrection. It was the vision of a new human society, based on forgiveness.
After all, the Easter story is a story of forgiveness. The cruelty and malice of Jesus’ death confronted God the Creator with the worst that we humans can do. But God did not wreak vengeance upon us, or turn away from us in disgust.
Instead, God forgave us.
After his resurrection, Jesus appeared in a room full of people in serious need of forgiveness.
First of all, the disciples needed Jesus’ forgiveness. He was not only their teacher, but their friend, and they had totally messed up. They had run away, and in Peter’s case, denied him.
Maybe that was why they were so worried that Jesus might be a ghost. At that time, ghosts had a horror-movie-bad reputation for doing harm to the living. Perhaps Jesus’ “ghost” had come back to punish them!
Peter and Andrew, James, John and the rest knew they deserved Jesus’ anger and condemnation. So they were unprepared for the gift of forgiveness shining through Jesus’ first words to them, “Peace be with you,” or in Hebrew, “Shalom.”
Second, the disciples stood in need of forgiving one another. Can’t you imagine them saying to one another before Jesus’ appearance, “If you hadn’t persuaded me I wouldn’t have run away!,” or “Why didn’t you stop me?”
What’s the first line of defense when you feel lousy about something you’ve done? Blame somebody else for getting you into the mess in the first place. I’m sure there was more than enough blame to go around.
Jesus said, “Hold it. Here’s how you can live and work together from now on. Here’s how you can be my church: Change—work on being more courageous and more faithful, and when your brother or sister hurts you or seems to abandon you, forgive them. Pray for them, keep trying to see them as a beloved child of God and worth your care.”
Third, I’m pretty sure they were having a hard time forgiving themselves.
Imagine what was going through Peter’s mind when Jesus appeared among them: “He told me I’d say I didn’t know him, and I bragged, ‘Never, I’ll never disown you.’ It took, what?, about five hours? As soon as someone asked me, what came out of my mouth—‘Jesus who? I never met the man.’ He might forgive me, but I’ll never forgive myself.”
Forgiving yourself is perhaps the hardest form of forgiveness. I know that I’ve had times when I could not see any goodness in me. That’s the reason I came back to the church after many years. I needed to kneel once a week say the words of the Confession in the Prayer Book and hear someone tell me God forgave me---because there was no way I could forgive myself. Only over time, slowly, slowly, like drips of water wearing away rock, could that forgiveness come.
Christ’s command to his disciples (which includes us!) to forgive and let themselves be forgiven is absolutely countercultural.
We live in a world in which the lust for vengeance passes like DNA from generation to generation among peoples and nations. We live in a litigious society in which someone always has to bear the blame and the blame always carries a price tag. On every level from marriage to international relations, to acknowledge one’s own contribution to a bad situation is a sign of weakness.
And if we dare to mention that as Christians we’re called to a life of forgiveness, someone will come back at us: “Let’s be honest— this idea of mutual forgiveness—it’s fine if we’re indulging in a fantasy about the kingdom of God. But in the short term—otherwise known as our lives— does God really want me to forgive people who have done harm—a negligent or abusive parent, a rapist or pedophile, maybe, or a tyrant like Hitler or Stalin or Idi Amin? Shouldn’t they be brought to justice?”
But Christian forgiveness is not taking everything that happens to us with a sweet smile and a quiet, “Please walk all over me.” Forgiveness in the real world is a lot more muscular than that. Forgiveness means the heavy lifting of looking at a person who has done harm and seeing someone who is still a child of God. It doesn’t ask us to coddle them or set them free from the legal or moral consequences of their actions, but to try, try, try to do the hard work of holding them up in prayer to the justice and mercy of God.
It’s a lifetime of work and struggle, failing and succeeding. But each time we succeed, the world becomes a little different, a little better, a little closer to the vision Jesus brought us back from his death and for which we pray each time we say the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”
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