I’m not a good forgiver. There’s something inside me that likes to cling to old wounds and injuries. There’s a part of me that just has a hard time of letting go, but I really want to become one. And I discovered that for most of us that’s really hard to do.
Sunday’s gospel reading is a tough one we like to avoid for it challenges us to be a good forgiver. Challenge number one, it somebody bullies you, humiliates you, or worse abuses you, you go to them and tell them to stop. It may be the hardest thing you have ever done and sometimes it becomes a holy moment and sometimes anything but.
The second step is if that failed, take the leaders with you so you have witnesses and third if that still does not work tell it to the whole church. You want to make this thing right if at all possible.
Sadly, if it’s still not resolved let the person who has harmed you be treated like a tax collector or gentile, in other words “shun them.” However to shun, does not mean punishment rather it’s intended to be a hopeful discipline. We take this step in the hope that the person who has hurt us will miss being a part of the community, our family, so much that they will repent, that they will return and apologize, make amends and restore themselves with the community.
We want you here not out there, we want this correction to actually be a holy moment because as Christians we are more about restoring than we are about punishing. We are more about healing than we are about revenging. We are more about loving than we are about hanging on to the grudges and nursing old wounds.
Remember when it comes to forgiveness remember how Jesus teaches us to pray in the Our Father: “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
Help me to be right with you O Lord and with the people around me it’s important because if I can’t love other people how can I possibly love you Lord.
Jesus teaches us to forgive seventy times seven that 490 times hoping to restore, to heal, to reconcile in other words love knows no limits. On the cross as people ridiculed, mock and gambled away his clothes, the soldier who won his garment playing craps overheard Jesus last words: “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends, have mercy on us sinners. Forgiveness is hard. Help us to forgive the people who harm us just as we hope to be forgiven by them and by you. Help us truly to be a person of peace, to seek healing, to pursue love. Lord Jesus have mercy on me, a sinner.
