05-26-24

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
May 26, 2024
Forgiveness is something that most all of us, on some level, struggle with. It is complicated with passages like the one we find in the Sermon on the Mount—Matthew 6, where we find Jesus saying to the crowd:

If you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your sins.

I have never liked the god of the carrot who says, “I’ll only forgive you if you forgive others.” The word we often use with love is unconditional, which I’m pretty sure means without condition. Since love and forgiveness are so closely tied together, I feel as if the God I meet in Jesus is one who forgives without condition. Yet if I choose not to forgive, don’t want to forgive, or can’t find the capacity to forgive, then I wonder whether or not I understand forgiveness. I sort of feel as if Jesus was not connecting God’s choice to forgive to our willingness to forgive. God is more independent than that. But if I am unable to understand forgiveness and its importance, then I wonder whether or not I can truly accept it and utilize it when it comes my way. Instead of the god of the carrot, I have come to believe it is the God who knows we understand something when we do it, and the more we are able to stretch ourselves into the more difficult acts of forgiveness, the more we come to appreciate the fullness of the gift given to us.

In the faith I have in you, Merciful God, I claim the conviction that I am loved and forgiven. I pray this day for the capacity to know and own those gifts, not only for my own transformation but so that I might offer those same gifts to others. Amen.