Forgiveness as the Chief Strategy of Reconciliation

16 Pentecost, Cycle A proper 19, September 17, 2023
Genesis 50:15-21 Psalm 103:8-13
Romans 14:1-12 Matthew 18:21-35

Lectionary Link

In Second Corinthians, St. Paul wrote, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them."

So one could say that the big task in the world of vast differences is the task of reconciliation.

And this is a big dream, and one might think that it's an impossible dream.  But even those who do not believe in God, have this dream.  Just take a look at the John Lennon song, "Imagine."  Imagine a world, with no heaven, no hell, no killing, no possessions, no religion, but peace and the brotherhood of all.

And religionists would say that such a dream is based upon unreality.  Let's just pretend that people do not sin and that everyone is a perfect angel.

Whether we believe in God or don't, the dream of reconciliation hangs over us a reminder that we need to be better.  The dream remains because the highest standard needs to inform the direction of our aspiration.

The insight behind reconciliation is that everything belongs together with a purpose.  Such an insight might be called the harmony of justice, or giving each being its dignified place in the great mixture of the community of all things.

It is quite one thing to dream impossible dreams of reconciliation for all things; it is another thing to actually do the work in real life situations.

The mission of the church as it came to writing in the New Testament was this great mission of reconciliation.  And to make reconciliation more than a grand theory, such reconciliation needed a strategy.

And the specific strategy of reconciliation is the strategy of forgiveness.  The church was to be a model community where reconciliation was practiced through events of forgiveness.  And often, we might think that churches and their members have been better at fighting among themselves than at reconciling.  Even so, it remains the mission of the church to be the laboratory of forgiveness, proving love in the specific practice of forgiveness and becoming a model for the greater task of reconciliation in the world at large.

The practice of forgiveness is a chief strategy of reconciliation.  Forgiveness is both difficult and necessary for the survival and the effective functioning of family and community.

Today in our world of bad news which scream louder than the good news; we can get the impression that the work of reconciliation is failing on a grand scale.  We can note that human populations reside in places of great natural disasters which take human lives.  And we can bewail that human life patterns do not seem to be reconciled with the great happenings in nature.  And when we look at the war, fighting, gross inequality, and the oppression of tyrants, we wonder about any success toward reconciliation in our world.

We recognize that forgiveness in practice is very difficult since the paths of avenging, revenging, or passive aggression seem to even the sides of harmed people.  This is why we need to focus upon the great reconciliation which is evidenced in each moment of life, namely everlastingness itself.  The continual renewal of everything in time is proof of everything being forgiven and given another chance in a new moment with slightly different conditions than the previous moment.  What we call the sustaining work of God is also God's forgiveness of all that was so that all that is can still become something better.

God's sustaining is the always already forgiveness for all that is, to have another chance at becoming.  And this sustaining is God ever present forgiveness of what has been.

And we need to learn how to reside within this great forgiveness of God to let everyone and everything continually have a chance at being better.

We need not be sentimental or naive about reconciliation or forgiveness.  Both co-exist with the needs for confession, penance, reparations, juridical punishment, as well as the extreme sicknesses of psycho and social pathologies which highly complicate the practice of forgiveness.  The practice of forgiveness is not a naive pacifism in face of some horrendous evils.

While the big evils dominate our world news, it is the myriads of acts of forgiveness which preserve human community and helps us continue to function toward a better justice for all people.

And so let us not grow weary in continuing to pray, "forgives us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."  "God let us survive another day to improve as we allow others to survive another day to improve as well."

And let us stop counting how many times we have to forgive.  God's sustaining forgiveness is endless, and we need to live in the train of the grace of forgiveness.   In this way we will be with Christ in reconciling the world to God, and us to each other.  Amen.