S U N D A Y
Love Forgiveness: Week 16 of Ordinary Time
We’re more than one-third of the way through Ordinary Time! For these seven weeks, following Bobby Gross’ excellent outline for Ordinary Time, we’ll consider a cycle of God’s love that alternates between permission to love ourselves and the imperative to love our neighbor. This week we are contemplating what it means to love forgiveness as we love ourselves.
Sunday’s scripture
Ecclesiasticus 27:30— 28:71; Psalm 103:1-14; Romans 14:5-12; Matthew 18:21-35
I’ve been drawn to stories of radical forgiveness for decades. I collect them like stones of remembrance for the times I need to imagine how to offer and receive forgiveness. Along the way, I’ve heard Jesus ask me to keep company with him in his last words, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” While this week’s scripture readings don’t take us to the Gospel accounts of Christ on the cross speaking forgiveness over his enemies, the spirit of that Christ saturates every word.
“For we do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”
—Romans 14:7-9 (NRSVue)
With Christ’s death and resurrection as the foundation for forgiveness, we hold the parable in Matthew as a mirror to our own unforgiving hearts. We have been forgiven much, and we are given the same spirit of Christ to forgive much.
As I share below (you can listen to me read or read for yourself) part of my own story of wounding by spiritual leaders and forgiveness for them, I was drawn to Andrey Yanev’s icon. I am able to understand this male-oriented image through the lens of all who’ve been forgiven and reconciled, and—through the stories of forgiveness I’ve heard in the embrace of safe, healing communities—I can see myself and so many of you in the center of that hug.
