Today I led the service and I think the reflection was the
most significant part. So, the blog today is a shortened version of that. I
will list the hymns too, because they added to the theme of “Forgiveness”.
Hymns: TIS 228 “Crown
him with Many Crowns”; 655 “O, Let the son of God enfold you.”;129 “Amazing
Grace”;136 “There's a widening in God’s
Mercy”
Reflection
The subject of today’s Gospel reading is “Forgiveness.”
Peter asked Jesus if forgiving someone 7 times was enough. In
this, he was being very generous because the Jewish law only required a person
to forgive someone 3 times.
Jesus’ reply must have been quite a shock. Depending on which
version of the Bible you have, it was
“seventy times seven” or “seventy seven times”.
In either case, Jesus is saying that we should forgive way
past the number of times we ever thought we should or ever could forgive.
In the same Bible reading we heard of the king whose slave
owed him an unbelievable amount of
money…something about equal to the size of the economy of some small
countries.
But the king was a compassionate man and so when the slave
pleaded with him, he didn't just give more time for repayment, he forgave
the debt.
And so the slave realised what a gift he had been given and
was grateful. He also learned a rich lesson on how to treat other people.
Or he should have but he didn't at all.
In this case where the offending person could not make
restitution how could justice be reached? As in all similar cases, justice is obtained
by a full and frank admission of guilt.
Look at that from the
perspective of one person to another, living today.
But what if we have offended against another in some other
way?
They may forgive us out of their own compassion but that
forgiveness can't be fully effective unless we acknowledge our offence.
There are times when we would rather pretend that we
didn't do anything much.
On the other side of the equation, if we are hurt, even if
the offender fails to properly acknowledge the hurt, as Christians we are
commanded to forgive them anyway.
I have also heard people say: “I can never forgive them!”
Sorry, you, as a follower of Jesus are commanded to do just that, whether you
have received an apology or not.
An experience I have had is that I have struggled to bring
myself to forgive a person because I wanted justice.
Then I woke up and realised that I wasn't doing myself any
good and was able to forgive for my own sake, only to find an
enormous burden lifted from my shoulders.
But then an even more amazing change occurred! Suddenly
I could see the situation from the perspective of the other person
and realized that life is very complicated and that I had been nursing what
seemed like a deliberate hurt from someone else for nothing.
But how can such a thing happen?
How can we, as a human, go from seeing someone else as
offending us in some way to seeing them as guiltless in that same respect? It
seems impossible.
And I think it is….until we hand over the situation to
God.
This change of perspective comes when we, as the offended
against, ask for God’s help and accept the spirit’s work of grace.
It takes the same work of grace for us to see our real guilt
in any matter.
We as the offender can't expect forgiveness until,
through grace, we are able to admit our
guilt frankly.
Anything else does not bring about reconciliation….which is
the true aim of confession on one side and forgiveness on the other.
But don't leave acting on this message for too long. In the
Guardian in 2006, it was announced that
all 306 British World War 1 soldiers who were executed for desertion or
cowardice were to be pardoned. 88 years later. Don't wait even one day.
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