Sermons

Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
Sunday 11 September at 6.30pm

Lesley Ashton

Readings: Romans 14: 1-12 Matthew 18:21-35

This week's gospel reading speaks about forgiveness. Forgiveness is in some respects highly complex. Today we are focusing on the particular understanding Jesus has, when he is talking about forgiveness between members of his followers, the church.

It is a sad fact that it is sometimes within the church family that we find the greatest lack of forgiveness, one for the other. Too often forgiveness is withheld over something comparatively petty or it is offered in a spirit that is less than generous. In some churches there is schism that remains entrenched, years after an event that most people cannot even remember. Yet it is within the church that we should receive and give forgiveness with abundant generosity.

There have been rifts and schism within the church throughout its history and I think it is true that we still hold some grudges and stereotypes about our brothers and sisters in different Christian traditions that are in deeper need of forgiveness than any original transgressions. In fact the source of our division is probably only understood by those who have a good knowledge of church history, yet we still often prefer to remain faithful to division rather than reconciliation. Of course we dress it up in acceptable language, make tentative moves that offer a veneer of respectability but fail miserably to engage in the necessary actions that bring true reconciliation, the heart of which lies in forgiveness. Forgiveness of one another, of our ancestors and God's forgiveness of us all.

From small acorns mighty oaks do grow and it is those small acorns that are sometimes our greatest stumbling block. For it is within the acorn of our own church family that we must begin to exercise the sort of forgiveness that Christ talks about in today's gospel.

How many times should I forgive another member of the church asks Peter. 'As many as 7 times?' he suggests magnanimously. Once must be expected, two or three times is generous and seven times is probably the greatest act of mercy we can afford to another. One can almost imagine Peter sticking out his chest in pride that he might forgive a person so many times.

What a shock he has in store, for the answer Jesus gives must knock the wind out of his sails. Not 7 times Peter, but 70 times 7.!! In other words again and again and again.

It is only by forgiving in this way that we come anywhere near to reflecting the forgiveness that God extends towards us. This is Kingdom forgiveness, forgiveness that is extravagant, unrestrained and extra ordinary. It is the sort of forgiveness that anyone outside of the kingdom might see as absurd or even foolish. It is the sort of forgiveness that goes beyond convention or common decency. It is the sort of forgiveness you and I receive day by day as we bring our sins before God. It is the sort of forgiveness that the absolution we receive each week bears witness to..

God grants us pardon and forgiveness for all our sins, not just a few of them, not just those that we are acutely aware of, but those that we commit through ignorance, through neglect, through those things we have left undone, both individually and as a corporate people of God.

God doesn't keep a record of last week's wrong doings, or the week or years before. He is not sitting with some enormous calculator pressing the addition and mutiplication buttons or even the subtraction or percentage keys. If this imagery helps, then the best image is of God pressing the clear button and us seeing a nought come up on the screen. No matter how hard we might try to retrieve the penultimate number we find it is deleted from memory. Gone forever.

And we need to believe this. Because it is only when we can really truly believe it is true for ourselves, that we can begin to believe it is true for those around us. And when we can believe both of these things then we can start to behave in the same way towards those people in our church family who need our forgiveness.

When we are invited to confession we often use the following words.

Jesus said
' Before you offer your gift, go and be reconciled.
As brothers and sisters in God's family, we come together to ask our Father for forgiveness.

Firstly, we need to be reconciled one with another before we ask God for our own forgiveness. This is serious stuff, these are not words to be taken lightly. We come to this service to share in the body and blood of Christ, given for you and for me for the forgiveness of sins. If we withhold forgiveness from one another, I suggest that we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ without due regard for the enormity of what he gave and accomplished on the Cross.

The second part of the sentence is 'we come together to ask our Father for forgiveness'

I believe that our corporate act of confession is one of the most powerful things that we do together. For we come not only for ourselves but with and for each other. We hold one another within the confession and I know that I for one have been glad to be held by my brothers and sisters when my need for forgiveness has been overwhelming. BUT We can only hold one another if we are in deep communion with one another and we are only in communion with one another when we are at peace with each other. In the confession we acknowledge our own sins and the sins of our brothers and sisters. In the absolution we are each restored to that place of grace where we can begin our lives together afresh and come to God's table, reconciled and forgiven together. It is no accident that after the absolution we say or sing together the Gloria, for at such a moment it is hard to do other than offer glory to God.

Now we are not saints, we are merely human and sometimes extending forgiveness is neither straight forward nor simple. Sometimes forgiveness is a journey we have to deliberately embark upon and more often than not we need Christ to work that miracle of grace within us that can lead to reconciliation and healing. We are complex creatures with our own histories, our own experiences of being unloved, blamed or heaped with guilt, all of which can impinge on our ability to forgive others, to forgive ourselves or to believe ourselves forgiven by God.

God knows each one of us, as well if not better than we know ourselves.. Forgiveness can sometimes only begin as an intent of the heart, a commitment to pray for the other, a willingness to begin to see the other with a little of the understanding and compassion that God extends to us all. Forgiveness made as a journey from the heart can have more integrity and lasting effect, for it is made out of love for the other and acknowledgement of them as a child of God.

Within the church we should be well placed to begin to understand the meaning of forgiveness, to witness it taking place in our midst and to begin to understand how we can start to think about forgiveness in its deeper complexity within the world. Jesus knew that his followers would have to experience and bear witness to the extraordinary forgiveness of God to be people who could bring in his Kingdom. We need to be able to live together as God's family, a family that experiences the ongoing flow of forgiveness one for the other, in order to be authentic witnesses in the world.

In a short while we will share the peace, an outward expression of the healing and reconciliation that we share through the grace of God, made known to us in Christ Jesus. As we do so may we commit ourselves afresh to living as his reconciled body so we may at the end of this service truly Go in peace, in order to love and serve the Lord in his world.

Amen

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay - Charity Number 1131904