Friendship and Forgiveness

(7th Sunday in Ordinary Time, B)

The gospel we hear today is a special opportunity for our reflection. It’s special because it doesn’t require a lot of translation, because we find ourselves, right now, in the exact same situation as the people in the passage. Learning that Jesus was at home, they went to his house to hear his teaching and to seek healing and forgiveness. Brothers and sisters, this is exactly what we are doing here; we have assembled in Jesus’ house in order to receive his teaching, healing, and forgiveness.

And so the unnamed people in the gospel can help us to notice what’s going on with ourselves and what we’re called to today. In this regard, let’s notice two things: First of all, what the passage teaches us about Christian friendship, and second, what we learn about the forgiveness of sins.

We’re all familiar with the role of faith in Jesus’ healing miracles. It’s not just that Jesus heals someone; the gospels often say that Jesus “saw” someone’s faith, or he says something like, “Your faith has made you well.” Now notice in the gospel we hear today, Jesus sees not only the faith of the person in need of healing but “their faith,” that is, the faith also of the friends. This man’s friends, through their outrageous action of breaking through the roof in order to get their friend to Jesus, demonstrate the intensity of their faith in Jesus’ healing power. This is an image of Christian friendship! And it challenges us to ask ourselves how far we are willing to go to bring those we love to Jesus. Are we willing to climb up on top of houses and break through roofs so that those we love might also receive the healing and forgiveness Jesus offers? Are we hesitant to do the outrageous to connect others with Jesus? Well, once we really know the gift of forgiveness of sins, I think we won’t be, because we will know how freeing and healing it is to be forgiven.

It’s funny; I think the forgiveness of sins is one of hardest doctrines of Christianity for people to believe. In some ways I think it’s easier to believe in some of the more sublime truths like the Resurrection or the Blessed Trinity than it is to believe in the forgiveness of sins. Sometimes I ask people in confession if they believe they are forgivable. Some people don’t think so. So I tell them to pray the Apostle’s Creed as a penance, which, as you know, contains the line “I believe…in the forgiveness of sins.”

I remember once how my father said that he didn’t believe in forgiveness because it was unjust. In a certain sense of commutative justice, based on equal retribution, forgiveness seems unjust because it lets go of injury and doesn’t seek recompense. But this is an incomplete idea of justice, because justice must always be directed to the common good. And as long we hold on to evil, whether it be in an unwillingness to forgive ourselves or each other, evil will reproduce inside us. It will either turn inside and become depression or turn out and become violence. Forgiveness puts an end to the self-replicating cycles of sin and violence.

This is why God forgives. It’s not because God is a nice and patient person. It’s because God is utterly and perfectly good and has no interest in punishment or retribution. God is only interested in the healing and lifting up of the world. That’s why in the first reading from the prophet Isaiah, God explains that he forgives sins for his own sake! We too, if we want to be good to ourselves, will learn to forgive ourselves and each other, so that we might not hold on to the evil and the injury that brings misery into the world. And having found that forgiveness, like the friends in the gospel, we’ll be willing to do anything to bring others to the forgiveness we have in Jesus.

The Forgiving Body of Christ

(23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, A)

At first glance the gospel passage we hear today might seem like a simple procedure for dealing with trouble in the Christian community. Jesus advises us to take a step-by-step approach in dealing with someone who is trapped in a sin that is hurting the unity or the holiness of the Body of Christ.

Let’s notice, though, Jesus’ astonishing statement at the end of gospel. Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when we heard St. Peter’s great confession of faith, and how Jesus gave him the “keys to the kingdom of heaven,” so that whatever he bound on earth would be bound on earth and whatever he loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven? Well in today’s gospel we hear Jesus giving that same authority to all of his disciples. Consider what this means: the forgiveness of God is in our hands! When we forgive someone, we forgive them not just with our forgiveness but with the forgiveness of God himself. “Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Why should this be, that God has handed over to us the power to dispense his own forgiveness to each other? It is because we are the Body of Christ. As St. Paul writes in the letter to the Philippians, God “emptied himself” into the human life of Jesus Christ, so that in Christ we see the full revelation of God on our human terms. And where is this revelation of God now, for us? It is right here. Jesus Christ, who died on the Cross for us, is risen into the new life of the Living Bread and Precious Blood of the Eucharist we celebrate each Sunday. We who receive this Holy Communion with the humanity of Christ, become what we receive. We become the Body of Christ, risen from the dead.

So if we are the Body of Christ, what does the Body of Christ do? First of all it preaches the Kingdom of God, and so this is our primary vocation as Christians. Second, the Body of Christ allows itself to be broken for the salvation of the world. And so we who are Christians allow the suffering of the world around us to break our hearts, that we might learn compassion for all. Finally, as we hear in the gospel today, as the Body of Christ, the forgiveness of God is on our hands. “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

We are all well acquainted with our sins. As the old saying goes, a clean conscience is a sign of a bad memory. We all know what it’s like to long for the healing forgiveness of God. Indeed the whole world longs for this forgiveness, for the forgiving of one another from the heart is the only thing that will stop this world’s endless cycles of violence. So if we have ever longed for God’s forgiveness, let us fulfill the injunction to love our neighbor as ourselves, and give God’s forgiveness to each other. It is ours to give, as the living Body of Christ, the revelation of God in the world. To forgive is to heal, to stop the cycles of violence and sin that hurt everyone. To forgive is to love perfectly. To stop the reproduction of violence and sin is to take up the Cross and fulfill our vocation as Christ’s risen Body. It is the love that is the fullest expression of the Mystery we call “God.”