23RD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR A
Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves others has fulfilled the law.
Our gospel reading for this Sunday is intended to give us guidance on how to deal with conflict and broken relationships. We are encouraged to seek forgiveness when we have wronged someone and to forgive when someone has wronged us.
If it doesn’t work the first time we’re encouraged to try again; and if that doesn’t work, to try something else. If it still doesn’t work, try treating them as an outcast – a Gentile or a tax collector. And, how did Jesus treat Gentiles and tax collectors? He still sought them out in order to reconcile them with others and with God.
Jesus isn’t interested in who is right or who is wrong. He only cares about getting broken relationships fixed. Our concerns about who is right and who is wrong often lead us to give up on others.
And it all begins with prayer – both our private prayer and our public prayer. Our gospel is not about power – the power to exclude or excommunicate or ostracize. It’s about being accountable to others for the power we hold – the power to lose people from the weight of sin or to bind them to that weight.
Corrie ten Boom worked to save Jews from the Nazis in Holland during WWII. She was arrested and taken to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. After the war, she often thought back over the horrors of the concentration camp.
How could she ever forgive the former Nazis who had been her jailers? Where were love, acceptance, and forgiveness in a horror camp where more than 95,000 women died? How could she ever forget the horrible cruelty or the guards and the smoke constantly coming from the chimney of the crematorium?
Then in 1947, Corrie was speaking about her experience in a church in Munich. When she had finished, she saw one of the guards from Ravensbruck coming forward. He had his hand outstretched as he humbly said, I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for my cruelty, but I need to be forgiven by you as well. Will you forgive me?
Jesus, help me, Corrie quietly prayed…It was then that she knew what do. As their hands met, it was as if warmth and healing broke forth, and with tears and joy she softly said, I forgive you, my brother, with all my heart. Later, Corrie testified that it was the power of the Holy Spirit who had poured the love of God into her heart that day.
This is the only way true forgiveness can take place. We turn our hurt over to God. We ask God for the ability to forgive.
The Holy Spirit lives in each one of us. Jesus promises to be with us when we gather in his name for worship and service. He is in our midst when we work together to right wrongs. Forgiveness and reconciliation should characterize our faith community.
If it does, others will recognize something unique about the Church and recognize Christ alive and active in our midst.
My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving and hopeful and optimistic, and we will change the world.