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" Matthew 5:23-24So even if you happen to be offering your gift at the altar and recall that your friend has some claim against you, leave your gift there at the altar. First go and be reconciled with your friend, and only then return and offer your gift.
Jesus says a lot in this brief passage. Jesus teachings taken together are a sort of manual on how we are to live in relationship to God and to each of our fellow humans. It was a common ritual for people to bring offerings to the temple to please God. Jesus is saying here --- your offerings are not what is important to God. What matters most is the quality of your relationships with each other. Jesus says here that if your friend has some claim against you, the most important thing you can do is to be reconciled with him. Id like to see a show of hands here of those of you who have never done anything that caused you to need forgiving. Ok, I thought so. We all know what it feels like to have that tug on our hearts that tells us we have something to apologize for. That tug, if ignored, gradually becomes like a stone in our heart. Its something we carry around with us that weighs us down. We may carry around that stone, and others, for years....until we may forget why we are so weighed down. These things we have done, whether they are small or large, whether they are towards someone else or even ourselves......they form a kind of wall that closes off our heart from a free and open relationship with God. Ironically, the love that we need so much, the love that can and will heal us, is kept out of our hearts by this wall we have built of the stones of our transgressions.
Yesterday, the Jewish community observed Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. In prayer and in ritual, this is a day of releasing ones transgressions. Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a Jew is invited to look at all of the things in him or her self that blocks their relationship with God. One prepares to name and release all ones transgressions of the past year --- all the ways one has missed the mark (which is the true meaning of the word Sin from the Hebrew language) --- and not lived as the person one wants to be.....in relation to God and to others. The word Atonement can also be read as At one ment --- or returning to being at one with God. This is Jesus tradition. He knew how we tend to carry around with us these blots on how we mean to be, and how it keeps us from being in close relation with God. In the ancient days, a perfect, unblemished goat was brought to the temple on Yom Kippur, and the priest would ritually put all of the sins of the community onto this goat --- as well as the individual sins of the temple members. The goat was then sent out into the wilderness --- never to return. How powerful a symbol this is! We can release from our hold those sins, and begin our lives fresh and clean .
In the Christian tradition, we are taught that we are forgiven by God for anything we have done. Yet, I think it is hard for us to believe that ---- because we ourselves have such a difficult time letting go of our transgressions and of those ways others have transgressed against us. So it may be useful for us to borrow from the Jewish tradition, and spend a little bit of time naming and then releasing our transgressions. Let me share with you that when we translate the word forgiveness from the Greek (in which the New Testament was written) --- that word may be translated a number of ways. The word forgiveness is not even the most common way to translate it: here are the other words we can use: release, let go, abandon, leave behind, give up. To forgive is to release, to leave behind the burden one has carried in ones heart.
Let me be clear that forgiveness does not mean that we condone the behavior of those who have caused us suffering; nor does it mean we will not openly tell the truth and take strong action to prevent further abuse. In the end, forgiveness simply says that we will not put someone out of our hearts --- just as God does not put anyone out of the Heart of Love that is God. We recognize that we have all been wronged and we have all caused suffering to others. No one is exempt. When we look into our hearts and we see what we cannot forgive, we also see how we believe the person who was wrong is different from us. But is their confusion, fear, pain, REALLY different from our own?
Understanding that we all make mistakes out of our own confusion, pain and fear can actually help us to let go --- to leave that pain behind. Understanding we are not different from the person who harmed us can help us make some space for that person in our heart. It is when we close our heart to each other that we cut ourselves off from Gods love.
Nobody says that forgiving or releasing those who have hurt us is an easy task. But it is possible --- and Jesus says it is one of the most important things we can do. Let me share with you a story of incredible forgiveness --- its a story of the transformation of two troubled hearts:
From: The Art of Forgiveness, Loving Kindness, and Peace, by Jack Kornfield
Once on the train from Washington to Philadelphia, I found myself seated next to an African American man who had worked for the sate Department in India but had quit to run a rehabilitation program for juvenile offenders in the District of Columbia. Most of the youths he worked with were gang members who had committed homicide.
One fourteen year old boy in his program had shot and killed an innocent teenager to prove himself to his gang. At the trial, the victims mother sat impassively silent until the end, when the youth was convicted of the killing. After the verdict was announced, she stood up slowly and stared directly at him and stated, Im going to kill you. Then the youth was taken away to serve several years in the juvenile facility.
After the first half year the mother of the slain child went to visit his killer. He had been living on the streets before the killing, and she was the only visitor hed had. For a time they talked, and when she left she gave him some money for cigarettes. Then she started step by step to visit him more regularly, bringing food and small gifts. Near the end of his three year sentence she asked him what he would be doing when he got out. He was confused and very uncertain, so she offered to set him up with a job at a friends company. Then she inquired about where he would live, and since he had no family to return to, she offered him temporary use of the spare room in her home.
For eight months he lived there, ate her food, and worked at the job. Then one evening she called him into the living room to talk. She sat down opposite him and waited. Then she started,
Do you remember in the courtroom when I said I was going to kill you?
I sure do, he replied.
Well, I did, she went on. I did not want the boy who could kill my son for no reason to remain alive on this earth. I wanted him to die. Thats why I started to visit you and bring you things. Thats why I got you the job and let you live here in my house. Thats how I set about changing you. And that old boy, hes gone. So now I want to ask you, since my son is gone, and that killer is gone, if youll stay here. Ive got room, and Id like to adopt you if you let me. And she became the mother of her sons killer, the other he never had.
The task of forgiveness is not complicated, but it may take some time. One way to approach this is to imagine yourself sitting in Jesus presence, or in the presence of any Holy Being who comforts you Mother Mary, the Buddha, or even just a felt sense of the Sacred. Bring into your heart the names of those from whom you wish to ask forgiveness --- in the presence of the Holy, simply say I ask your forgiveness. As you do this, sense the burden being lifted from your heart. This may not happen in one easy step --- you may need to try this several times....you may not be able to release everything, but whatever you CAN let go of will lighten your heart. Do this same prayer with YOURSELF ---- sometimes it is more difficult to forgive ourselves than it is to forgive others. Yet we can acknowledge that the things weve done that hurt ourselves we did out of some pain or confusion or fear.....and we need to release those also from our heart. Last, you may offer this prayer using those whom you need to forgive --- those who have harmed you in some way, intentionally or unintentionally. Know that it is more important to free your heart than it is to carry the burden of that harm. Your heart is the one that suffers most --- and you can dismantle that wall that keeps out Love by leaving behind that pain. Decide that you deserve to be free --- no one deserves Gods love more than you do.
We have all been betrayed. We have all harmed others. We can only start where we are....and move forward --- opening our hearts to the Love of God which is present already in each of us. Let me close with these words from 1John 4:16 God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them. Remember the blessing of Gods love, and do what you can to open your heart to receive it.
AMEN.
BENEDICTION by Fyodor Dostoyevsky:
Love all creation; the whole of it and every grain of sand; love every leaf; every ray of Gods light; love the animals; love the plants; love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things....and once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly, more and more everyday. And you will at last come to love the whole world with an abiding, universal love.
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