Well here I am at the end of my first full week of ministry at Whaley Bridge, and I can honestly say it’s been a delightful week. We’ve had 41 people round for tea in the garden, and it was great to start getting to know you this way. There have been doorstep chats and phone calls and chats over email and texts with other people. It’s been great to hear your stories about this church community, about Whaley Bridge and area. I am especially grateful to Margot and Dave Graham for giving us the leaflet with the 20 mile walk around the parish boundary, and we hope to do that soon, though possibly in stages!
This week I watched a brief video by the Christian commentator Peter Graystone. He said he was once on a bus in Birmingham sitting behind two ladies of a certain age. One said.” What are you doing this weekend?” and the other said, “Well, I’ll probably go to church.” “Are you a Christian then?” the other responded. “How come you’re a Christian?” “Well, I couldn’t tell you, you’d have to ask the vicar.” Then came a pause, and she continued, “well, I like the hymns, and it makes me feel peaceful going to church.” Here friend replied, “Do you know I go to a Pilates class, and it’s the most peaceful moment of my week! You’d love it.” “Can you let me have the details then? “her friend asked. The conversation ended with the first lady scribbling down the details for the Pilates class. An opportunity for that first lady to hear something about the Christian faith – to receive an invitation to come along to church with a friend – that opportunity was missed. Earwigging on that conversation led Peter Graystone to write Faith Pictures, a course that recognises that many Christian people find it hard to talk about their faith in a natural and unembarrassed way, and helps them find their own words and images to start doing that.
It would be great, over the coming months, to start to do some faith conversations in our church community here in Whaley Bridge parish – to understand a bit more about one another’s faith journeys, what it is about our Christian faith that lights us up, where we struggle, about praying, getting to grips with the bible – what makes sense for us now, what doesn’t add up yet. If can start doing this with one another, maybe that we help us have the confidence to have those conversations with others, when they ask us.
I leave that thought with you, and turn to our gospel passage for this morning. When I talk about the difference being a Christian makes, the word forgiveness tends to come into the conversation pretty early on.
Because forgiveness and reconciliation are the very heart of the Gospel and yet weirdly, Christianity is often practised and understood as a religion that deals primarily in guilt, sin and judgementalism. This is a serious distortion of Christian truth.
If we open the gospels we find that the news of Jesus Christ is good news because it is first and foremost about forgiveness. We read how Jesus announces the coming Kingdom of God by forgiving people’s sins. It causes outrage. “Who’s this Johnny come lately who reckons he can forgive sins? Only God can do that” the religious leaders fume. They don’t see that Jesus can forgive sins because he is the very image of the invisible God.
And forgiveness isn’t just something Jesus does from time to time. Forgiveness is the essence of who he is. Forgiveness is a way of being he practices constantly. And Jesus models this for us by hanging out with the low-lifers and the people whom others despise – women with questionable sexual history, the reviled tax collectors who collaborate with the Roman occupiers. Forgiveness means accepting people as they are warts and all, and inviting them to join him. Father, forgive them are the words of Jesus on the cross.
And forgiveness is at the heart of the prayer Jesus gave his friends, the wonderful prayer that joins us to him so closely. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. When we pray the Lord’s prayer we pray for the coming of God’s kingdom, we pray for our physical need –our daily bread – and we pray for our deepest spiritual need. What’s that? It is to be forgiven, reconciled, at peace with God with one another, with ourself. Forgive us our sins. We pray to know ourselves forgiven at that deep level that changes us into people who live out those relationships of forgiveness and acceptance in our day to day life.
“How many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven? asks Peter. Peter very much wants to put a number on this. He’s looking for a nice tidy guideline. Three strikes and you are out? Seven strikes and you are out? There’s something to be said for clarity and simplicity. We can sympathise with Peter on this.
But what Peter hasn’t yet grasped is that you can’t reduce the grace of God to a tidy numerical framework. The forgiving love of God can’t be measured, or limited by any human scheme. Why is that? Because divine grace is abundant, constant, eternally flowing out from the heart of God. You can’t put a number against it.
Seventy times seven says Jesus. That’s how many times you forgive. Jesus does come back to Peter with a number, but it’s a kind of joke number, it’s a way of saying “ so many times that you can’t get your head around it.” Forgive and forgive and forgive and some more. And some more after that.
And then Jesus goes on to tell a story, as he often does. It’s a sharp little parable to make us sit up and listen. In the story the servant gets released from his debt and then blows it by refusing to release the guy who is in debt to him. He receives mercy, but utterly fails to show mercy himself. It helps if we know that in Jesus time the words “debt” and “sin” were interchangeable.
This parable, I think, works as a commentary to the central part of the Lord’s Prayer: forgive us our sins as we forgive others: it shows us what life can look like we when we don’t follow the way of Jesus.
Forgiving isn’t easy. We have all suffered hurts and betrayals that run very deep. I know I sometimes struggle to forgive. Is the answer to try harder? I don’t think so. The answer is to open ourselves up more to the forgiving love of God in Christ, to sunbathe in the beams of God’s forgiveness of each one of us. It is that experience of grace that, little by little, will change us, will finally find that cold, hard knot of unforgiveness that is buried deep down in our soul, and finally untie it.
I come with joy to meet my Lord
Forgiven, loved and free
In awe and wonder to behold
His life laid down for me.
Frances Eccleston, September 20