Proper 22 (October 2-8)
Texts: Luke 17:3-10;
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
GRACE FOR OUR JOURNEY: THE
FAITHFULNESS OF FORGIVENESS
"Increase our faith!" cry out the disciples. What do we think they were
asking for? What do we
think of when we hear the word faith? Do we think they're
asking to believe harder? That faith is
mostly about believing a certain way? In our age of science,
believing is a lesser form of
knowing. We pose faith against scientific knowing in such a way that
faith seems to be losing
out. "Increase our faith!" cry out the disciples. And we say, "Yea, us,
too!"
"Increase our faithfulness!" cry out the disciples. "Faithfulness" is a
better translation than
"faith" of the original biblical word. "Increase our faithfulness!" cry
out the disciples. And now
what are we talking about? We're talking about human relationships,
aren't we? We're talking
about a relationship kind of knowing instead of a scientific knowing. I
know Jesus, and Jesus
knows me. Increase my faithfulness in that kind of knowing,
the kind of knowing that our world
needs a lot more of, for husbands and wives and children to be more
faithful to each other -- for
employees and employers to be more faithful, business people and
clients, neighbors, fellow
citizens, children of God in this global village. We don't need more
faith, which in the terms of
today's scientific knowledge, seems like a lacking of that knowledge.
We need more faithfulness
to each other as human beings that we might live together in peace.
"Increase our faithfulness!"
cry out the disciples. And we say, "Yea, us, too!"
Have you ever realized that faithfulness in a relationship brings its
own kind of knowing?
Scientific knowing has almost garnered a monopoly on knowing, since it
does so well in helping
us to control our environment in the material world. But control won't
do in the relationship kind
of knowing. When I endeavor to know other people, it is not to seek to
control them -- at least
not in the relationship kind of knowing called love. We seek to know
our spouses not to control
them but to support them as we go through life together, that we may
both flourish together.
So we might ask: is scientific knowledge really the superior kind of
knowledge as it seeks to
control the material world? Where has that gotten us in terms of our
relationship to the
environment? Or does scientific knowledge need more of that
relationship kind of knowledge? In
other words, love? How would that change the scientist's the work if he
or she truly loves that
which they are seeking to know?
And we haven't even gotten to the greatest benefit of the relationship
kind of knowing, namely,
that you and I may be known by someone who loves us. At the
end of his great love chapter, 1
Corinthians 13, St. Paul is talking about the loving kind of knowledge
at the end times. "Now I
know only in part," he says; "then I will know fully, even as I
have been fully known." The truest
grace in life is to have someone know you by loving you.
One of my favorite lines in a movie is in one Ellen and I like to watch
together, titled Shall
We
Dance? (Since I usually answer that question, "Shall we
dance?"
with a "no," Ellen at least gets
me to watch the movie.) Susan Sarandon and Richard Gere play a married
couple, and
Sarandon's character says of marriage,
We need a witness to our lives. There's
a billion people on the planet... I mean,
what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising
to care
about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things,
the mundane
things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your
life will not go
unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go
un-witnessed because I
will be your witness.'
To be loved is to be known by someone, to have your life witnessed.
It's not just spouses that do
that for each other, or parents for children. But God loves us in a
complete way so that we are
fully known. That's what God promises little Hudson in baptism this
morning, and as we sing
"Borning Cry": "I was there to hear your borning cry, I'll be there
when you are old."
"Increase our faithfulness!" cry out the disciples. We have talked
about this faith in terms of
relationships instead of believing, a love-kind of knowing instead of a
scientific kind of knowing.
But there is a more specific context that we should attend to. The
disciples cry out for increased
faithfulness right after Jesus has given them a challenging picture of
forgiveness. Let's say a
family member keeps wounding you with hurtful words. But they also keep
apologizing. You
need to keep forgiving them, says Jesus. Now we can see why the
disciples ask Jesus for greater
faithfulness. It takes great faithfulness to keep forgiving someone who
keeps hurting you!
Actually, Jesus doesn't just say that the other person keeps
apologizing. He says the other person
repeatedly repents -- which doesn't really make sense. Repent
typically means that you turn your
behavior around. You stop doing the offending behavior. So
how can a person repent and keep
doing something? It doesn't make complete sense.
But we are familiar with addictive behaviors, where a person truly
wants to repent, to change
their behavior. They seek to do so. But they keep relapsing. I suppose
Jesus could have
something like that in mind. But that makes the forgiveness at issue a
very complicated business.
How often does a spouse forgive a continuously relapsing addict? Or
worse, an abuser? At some
point we counsel a partner to separate, or even divorce, and to remove
one's self from harm's
way. But then what might forgiveness mean in that kind of situation?
That you still love the
person and wish them well, even if you now lead more separate lives?
Yes, forgiveness is a very
complicated business! And these few words from Jesus about forgiveness
evoke the disciples'
response for Jesus to help us with our faithfulness. We need his
power of faithfulness to even
begin to forgive others as he forgives us.
In fact, our ways of trying to sort through the complexities of
forgiveness are meaningless for
Jesus himself. He doesn't just forgive us every time we repent. He
forgives us before we repent.
He forgives us so that we can repent. At the early service
this morning, we began with the Order
for Confession and Forgiveness as we often do, except I reversed it. We
heard the promise of
forgiveness first and then confessed our sin as the first step of
repentance. At the late service we
began by baptizing little Hudson Reidinger, hearing and witnessing
God's cleansing bath of
forgiveness before Hudson is really old enough to sin. Some traditions
of Christians say that you
have to repent before you receive that baptismal promise of
forgiveness. We make clear the fact
that in Jesus God loves us and forgives us before we ever have the
chance to repent and begin
loving God back. It's God's unconditional grace which empowers us to
repent and love. On the
cross, Jesus forgives those who kill him while they continue to do it.
Yes, forgiveness for us can often be a very complicated and difficult
business -- in some most
difficult cases, when we're deeply betrayed and wounded, forgiveness
can be a lifelong journey.
And if we are to continue to seek to be instruments of God's peace
through forgiving others, the
grace for our journey is that our being able to forgive others at all,
always begins with the fact
and the promise that we are forgiven first. "Increase our faithfulness"
means being able to forgive
others and ourselves. That's true grace for our journey. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Delivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran,
Portage, MI, October 3, 2010