St. John's Episcopal Church

Sermon for Sunday, September 28, 2008 (Proper 21)

Jesus said, “What do you think?  A man had two sons…” (Matt. 21:28)

Any family with teenagers will probably find the Parable of the Two Sons familiar.  A landowner asks his sons to work in his vineyard.  The first grumpily refuses, but then changes his mind and goes off to work.  The second son eagerly agrees with his father’s request, but then somehow never makes it to the vineyard.

I can’t count how often, in my teenage years, I put my own parents through this very same wringer.  Sometimes I was the bad-good son, first digging in my heels, but later relenting and doing as they asked.  Sometimes I was the good-bad son, first saying yes, but then going off to amuse myself and leaving my bed unmade, the lawn uncut, or the trash still sitting in the kitchen.  How often my parents must have wondered what they did to deserve so challenging a child.  Where was Dr. Phil when my parents needed him?  Happily, I managed to redeem myself in their eyes… before I turned 50.  

However, this reading from Matthew is not Jesus playing Dr. Phil.  Rather, in Chapter 21 we encounter our Lord in the midst of the most important week of his life — the week of Passover in Jerusalem, the period you and I know as Holy Week.  Matthew begins his narrative of the passion by recounting our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem.  The people proclaim him as the king who comes in the name of the Lord. (v. 9)  In a city teetering of the edge of riot, this acclaim heaped on the carpenter-turned-rabbi throws the capital into deeper turmoil (v. 10) and attracts the attention of the Jewish religious authorities who hold power only because the Romans find it convenient.  

Jesus is now a marked man.  Nevertheless, Matthew tells us that our Lord goes straight to the temple and overturns the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sell doves. (v. 12)  Because you and I know how the story goes, we can see that Jesus is performing a prophetic action, a public sign of God’s readiness to save his people.  To the authorities, however, Jesus’ cleansing of the temple is an assault on the status quo which the chief priest and scribes are determined to defend.  It is at this point, I think, that the authorities resolve to get Jesus out of the way by whatever means they can find.  This, then, is the immediate context for today’s reading.

Working out this “Jesus problem” will take the authorities a few hours, and the willingness of one of the disciples to turn against his Master.  Meanwhile, Matthew tells us, Jesus returns to the temple and is teaching a crowd of people when he is confronted by angry priests and scribes.  They demand to know by what authority he presumes to violate temple customs.  Jesus refuses to get into a “my authority is better than your authority” argument.  Instead, he tells this parable of the Two Sons.  It is, in reality, an indictment of the very chief priests and scribes who are interrogating him, along with all the others they represent.

Jesus cuts to the heart of the issue.  It is God’s will, he says, that God’s sons (especially those who serve as leaders) tend God’s vineyard, or more precisely, care for God’s family.  Which son, our Lord asks, did the Father’s will?  Was it the one who said, “No, I won’t go,” but then did as the Lord required?  Some reluctant sons may have felt they lacked the social status or talent or training for such an important task.  Or perhaps these reluctant ones were told they should not even aspire to do the Father’s will.  All that notwithstanding, these reluctant sons decided to plunge in and do something, because, after all, God required it.  

Or was the Father’s will done by the son who said, “Yes, I will go,” but then didn’t.  In the context of Matthew, these negligent sons are the very authorities with whom Jesus is speaking.  They had all the social and political status one could wish for.  They were clearly talented people.  They had been trained for leadership.  But in the end, they refused to care for the vineyard — God’s family — and instead exploited the weak for their own advantage.  Even as the chief priests and scribes admit that it was the former son, rather than the latter, who did the Father’s will, they call down judgment upon their own heads.  Their sins cry out against them.

You know, I find it interesting how often the events of the day evoke the images we find in Holy Scripture.  That’s happening even now, in the midst of the financial turmoil which has engulfed the nation over the past few months, and especially this week.

If the present problem originated in the housing market, then we’ve been aware for many years that something was amiss here.  When I began my work as an interim in 1996, most churches had already sold off their church-owned rectories and were offering priests a housing allowance to partially offset expenses for homes the clergy themselves purchased.  The reason was simple: clergy living in church-owned housing were giving up the substantial increase in real estate values they would enjoy if they owned their own homes.  As we know, that increase in housing values, already impressive nearly a decade and a half ago, grew more pronounced as the years passed, especially as lending practices were relaxed, as people with a yen to gamble began flipping houses for profit, as unscrupulous lenders played footsie with knowing and well-off buyers, and (lest we forget) as predatory lenders manipulated the unknowing poor who just wanted their inner city piece of the American dream.

I think it is beyond question that people in the know knew what was happening.  This past Thursday Ron Suskind published a column in the New York Times detailing a meeting at the Treasury Department on February 22, 2002 — with details supplied by Paul O’Neill, President Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, and other sources.  Participants included the Administration’s economic team, SEC chairman Harvey Pitt, and Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan.  This meeting followed the collapse of Enron which, as Suskind notes, resulted from “conflicts of interest and criminally creative bookkeeping…financial complexity and insanely expensive compensation packages.” 

“To the surprise of many younger men in the room,” Suskind reports, O’Neill and Greenspan “opened by reminiscing about a bygone era when the value of a company’s stock was assessed by how strong a dividend it paid.  It was a standard that demanded tough, tangible choices.  Everything, of course, came out of the same pot of cash, from executive compensation and capital improvements to the dividend…

But times change and in recent years earnings had become the measure of corporate success.  “In contrast to dividends, Mr. Greenspan intoned, ‘Earnings are a very dubious measure’ of corporate health.  ‘Asset values are, after all, just based on a forecast,’ he said, and a chief executive can ‘craft’ an earnings statement in misleading ways.

Suskind then says, “Speaking with a hard-edged frankness rarely heard in public — and seeing that those assembled were not sharing his outrage — Mr. Greenspan slapped the table.  ‘There’s been too much gaming of the system,’ he thundered.  ‘Capitalism is not working…’”

I can’t tell you for certain if this meeting proceeded as Suskind indicates.  In all seasons, especially one as political as this, we do well not to believe everything we read in the papers, or hear on radio and TV, or encounter on the internet.  Fortune cookies may be a more reliable source of information, and they are lots more entertaining.  Nevertheless, I have to assume that people in high places — in government and industry alike — had all the information they needed to put the puzzle together.  The pieces were all there, laid out on the table.  A housing market with values rising so fast we were calling it a “bubble” more than a decade ago.  Mortgages being sold from one institution to another, with the result that a homeowner couldn’t tell who owned the paper.  Dodgy mortgages packaged into instruments too complex for anyone to understand but so trendy that they sold like hotdogs at the ball park.  Homeowners starting to lose their homes to foreclosure.  Executives of high-flying companies who were handsomely, even luridly compensated for making the company fly a few feet higher.  And, of course, a host of politicians anxious for the money needed to wage the next battle in the endless political war.

All these pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were on the table, readily visible to those who assembled to do the nation’s business in Treasury Department conference rooms and Wall Street board rooms and mortgage company offices and hearing rooms on Capitol Hill.  Lest we forget, all these people had a duty to protect the system from abuse — certainly a moral duty, and most likely a legal duty as well.  But they did not protect the public interest.  Either they didn’t see the problem, which I find hard to believe, or they saw it and did nothing, because doing something would have ended the party.  

In any case, these people failed in their duty.  The net result is that we now face a financial problem so severe it threatens to derail the whole economy.  Half a century from now, young economists will get their Ph.Ds explaining what happened to us over the past few days.

In our present context, then, we can — and I think we should — ask ourselves the same question Jesus posed to the chief priests and scribes: Which son did the will of the Father?  If the will of the Father, in this situation, is to protect the common good — the widow and orphan as well as the rich, the smart as well as the dumb, the hourly worker and entrepreneur alike — then we had every right to expect responsible people to behave responsibly.  If they did not, then we have work to do.  Once this initial credit problem has been dealt with, we should act promptly to put the necessary safeguards in place.  It is in the nature of vineyards to require constant attention.  Amen.

— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Readings for Year A, Proper 21:  Lesson: — Exodus 17:1-7  |  Gradual — Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16  |  Epistle — Philippians 2:1-13  |  Gospel — Matthew 21:23-32

Collect for Proper 21:

O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity:  Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Gallup Poll

Updated daily

Paste into your browser:   http://www.gallup.com/poll/tag/Americas.aspx

Or, on the main page, click the link “Galup Political Polling” under Election ’08 on the right.

(Note: When the Talking Heads talk about polling numbers, they are often referring to the opinion surveys conducted by Gallup.  Curious about how upper income consumers or young voters are feeling about the election?  You can find it here, along with more information about “the pulse of the nation” than you ever wanted!  Like ice cream, too many polls consumed too quickly brings on brain freeze.)

Source: Gallup Poll

“For more than 70 years, Gallup has built its reputation on delivering relevant, timely, and visionary research on what humans around the world think and feel. Using impeccable data, our advisers assist leaders in identifying and monitoring critical economic and behavioral indicators that are vital to their strategic plans.  No other organization captures the human need to share opinions and the breadth of the human spirit like The Gallup Poll. Since 1935, The Gallup Poll has chronicled reactions to the events that have changed our world — and in turn, those reactions have shaped who and what we are today. Today, The Gallup Poll continues to be a reliable source of intelligence for a changing world. Our data often answer the questions that are “top of mind” with leaders around the globe. Through its offices worldwide, Gallup measures public opinion and attitudes on virtually every political, social, and economic issue. Its data reach the highest levels of government, the judiciary, business, and academia.”  (From “Gallup Poll” on the Gallup web site.)

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RealClearPolitics

Paste into your browser:   http://www.realclearpolitics.com/

Or, on the main page, click the link “Real Clear Politics” under Election ’08 on the right.

(Note: The link is to the Real Clear Politics home page.  It carries lots of current articles on the campaign.  Click on the “Polls” link to see polling results from a variety of sources.)

Source: RealClearPolitics

RealClearPolitics is a Chicago-based aggregator of political news and polling data.  It was founded in 2000 by John McIntyre, a former options trader, and Tom Bevan, a former advertising account executive.  (From the Wikipedia article on RealClearPolitics)

Financial Markets

September 23, 2008

Paste into your browser:  http://blog.kiplinger.com/wheretheystand/2008/09/wall-st-crisis.html

Or on the main page click on the Kiplinger Stand link under Election ’08, on the right.

(Note: This compares the candidates on the issue of regulation of financial markets.  It is part of the “Where They Stand” blog on the Kiplinger web site.  See below, too.)  

Where They Stand: Detailed Positions of Obama & McCain 

July 9, 2008 to Present

Paste into your browser:  http://blog.kiplinger.com/wheretheystand/

Or on the main page click on the Kiplinger Stand link under Election ’08, on the right.

(Note: This blog, part of the Kiplinger web site, provides comparisons on Financial Markets, Taxes, Energy Policy, Iraq, Trade, Mortgage Crisis, Immigration, Gay Rights, Abortion, and Judicial Appointments.  These articles date from early July to the present.)  

Source: Kiplinger.com “For eight decades, the Kiplinger organization has led the way in personal finance and business forecasting. Founded in 1920 by W.M. Kiplinger, the company developed one of the nation’s first successful newsletters in modern times. The Kiplinger Letter, launched in 1923, remains the longest continually published newsletter in the United States. In 1947, Kiplinger’s created the nation’s first personal finance magazine. Located in the heart of our nation’s capital, the Kiplinger editors remain dedicated to delivering sound, unbiased advice for your family and your business in clear, concise language.” (From “About Kiplinger” at Kiplinger.com)

Renewing American Leadership, by Barack Obama

Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070701faessay86401/barack-obama/renewing-american-leadership.html

An Enduring Peace Built on Freedom, by John McCain

Foreign Affairs, November/December 2007

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20071101faessay86602/john-mccain/an-enduring-peace-built-on-freedom.html

(Note: These two articles were part of a 2007-08 Foreign Affairs magazine series highlighting the foreign policy agendas of the several candidates.  Other articles were by Michael Huckabee, Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani, John Edwards, and Mitt Romney.)

Source: Foreign Affairs

“Founded in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations is a non-profit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs through the free exchange of ideas. Its 3,400 members include nearly all past and present Presidents, Secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury, other senior U.S. government officials, renowned scholars, and major leaders of business, media, human rights, and other non-governmental groups. Each year the Council sponsors several hundred meetings including televised debates and other media events, and publishes Foreign Affairs, the preeminent journal in the field, as well as dozens of other reports and books by noted experts.

“Since 1922, the Council has published Foreign Affairs, America’s most influential publication on international affairs and foreign policy. It is more than a magazine — it is the international forum of choice for the most important new ideas, analysis, and debate on the most significant issues in the world. Inevitably, articles published in Foreign Affairs shape the political dialogue for months and years to come.”  (from “About,” on the Foreign Affairs home page)

2008 AARP Voters’ Guild

September 2008

http://www.aarp.org/makeadifference/politics/voters-guide/voters_guide_channel.response.362.512/

(Note: The Voters’ Guide which compares the candidates’ positions on priorities, Social Security, enhancing retirement security, making health care more affordable, and long term care.  For some reason the URL isn’t creating a link, so just copy and paste the URL into your browser screen.  Or you can Google on “2008 AARP Voters’ Guide” and get there by a “cushion shot.”)

AARP Issues & Advocacy Site

Updated frequently

http://www.aarp.org/makeadifference/advocacy/elections_2008/

(Note: This part of the AARP site is a grab bag of news items about election issues.)  

Source:  AARP

The American Association of Retired Persons is a non-profit, non-governmental interest group which advocates on behalf of people aged 50 years and older.  AARP clearly has an agenda.  Caveat emptor.

Summary of the Presidential Candidates’ Tax Plans

September 10, 2008

http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/23165.html

(Note: The text displays very small on my computer.  Click on each panel to make it larger.  I wonder why people labor over this stuff, and then make it unreadable!)

Source: Tax Foundation

“The mission of the Tax Foundation is to educate taxpayers about sound tax policy and the size of the tax burden borne by Americans at all levels of government. From its founding in 1937, the Tax Foundation has been grounded in the belief that the dissemination of basic information about government finance is the foundation of sound policy in a free society.”  (http://www.taxfoundation.org/about/)

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Promises, Promises: A Fiscal Voter Guide to the 2008 Election

August 29, 2008

http://www.usbudgetwatch.org/files/crfb/usbw082908promises.pdf

(Note: This is a long paper, but with lots of detail.)

Source:  US Budget Watch

“US Budget Watch is a project created to increase awareness of the important fiscal issues facing the country through and beyond the election. The project seeks to bring attention to the presidential candidates’ tax and spending policies, to help the public become informed about these issues, and to track the new president’s fiscal policies after the election.  This guide is not intended to recommend voting for or against any particular candidate, nor does it reflect an assessment of the overall merits of any specific policy proposal.   

“US Budget Watch is a project of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is a non-profit organization committed to educating the public about issues that have a significant fiscal policy impact. The Committee is a bipartisan group of leading budget experts including many of the past chairmen of the House and Senate Budget Committees, directors of the Congressional Budget Office and Office of Management and Budget, and members of the Federal Reserve Board.”  (From Promises, Promises)

This part of the St. John’s Blog is intended to help you compare and contrast the positions of the two presidential candidates on various issues.  Sound bites on news programs and political attack ads do not lend themselves to dispassionate analysis.  (Sometimes the news programs and ads even make the Cartoon Network look very grown up!)  So how does a voter inform him- or herself about the issues?

In an effort to fill this information void, we’re going to snoop around the Internet looking for issue comparisons, and we will post the URLs (Web addresses) under various subcategories of this main category, called ElectionStuff ’08.  You can click on the address, look over the data, and then draw your own conclusions.  

Please note: We have no way of knowing if the information posted on these sites is accurate or if the comparisons are fair.  We will identify the source, and if possible something about the source (in their own words).  You have to do the rest.  In the wonderful grocery store of presidential politics, let the buyer beware.   As someone has said, “You can find all sorts of information on the Net.  Some of it might actually be true.” 

— Fr. John +

Sermon for Sunday, September 21, 2008 (Proper 20)

When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.  Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage.  And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner….  (Matt. 20:9-11)

There are several ways of analyzing the parables of Jesus, but most scholars think that Jesus intended his little stories to make one point — the point toward which the whole story drives.  It’s easy to lose sight of this when you deal with the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard which we find in Matthew chapter 20.

As we’ve just heard, a landowner goes out at the crack of dawn and hires several workers for his vineyard.  In return for their labor he promises to pay them “the usual daily wage,” which in Jesus’ time was one denarius.  Then at 9:00 in the morning the landowner finds other workers standing idle and hires them.  He hires additional laborers at Noon, 3:00 and 5:00.  Everyone quits work at 6:00.  The landowner then pays the workers for their labor, starting with those hired at 5:00 and working backwards to those hired at dawn.  Each worker receives one denarius, regardless of when he started.  

Those hired at dawn “grumbled against the landowner” (Matt. 20:11) — which I take it is just a polite way of saying these guys are outraged.  They feel that the landowner has acted unfairly by treating them no better than those called in late afternoon.  Why should someone who worked just one hour be paid the same wage as those who toiled all day in scorching heat?

Those who first heard Jesus tell this parable must have been just as offended as the men in the story.  They knew the value of a day’s labor, and they knew how it felt to be treated unfairly in comparison to other workers.  While much has changed in two thousand years, this hasn’t.  We, too, are offended by unfair labor practices, as for example when men and women do equal work, but women are paid only 77 cents for each dollar a man earns in that same position.  How can Jesus commend such unfairness?

The point is: Jesus isn’t talking about the labor market, nor is he talking about fairness.  Remember how the parable begins?  “Jesus said, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.’” (Matt. 20:1)  This is a parable about the kingdom, not about fair labor practices!  This is a parable about God’s mercy, not about compensation in the marketplace.

There’s something in us that wants God to run his kingdom the way you or I would run a gas station or insurance agency.  In a kingdom you or I might design, those who were “saved” first would enjoy seniority over those “saved” later, because that would be fair.  I suppose such seniority would translate into better heavenly “pay and benefits” including, perhaps, an earlier tee time at the kingdom’s golf course, because that would be fair.  In other words, when God needlessly (according to our lights) shows favor to those less deserving, we feel offended.  What we seek is fairness, or what ethicists call distributive justice.  All we want is our share of the pie, fairly cut, and of course a guarantee that our slice won’t shrink.  That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Well, actually, it is.  I have to point out that the past week of financial chaos demonstrates that the marketplace is not necessarily the place to go looking for distributive justice — your fair share of the pie.  Ideally, the market rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior, ensuring that all receive their just deserts and the common good is enhanced.  In reality, the market is a human-made structure which gathers up all that we are — good, bad, and indifferent — throws it in the oven for awhile, and then serves it back to us.  We’ve had a huge helping of markets this week, overcooked, dry (not liquid), and not very tasty.

I take it, then, that we are blessed that God’s kingdom doesn’t operate like a marketplace.  Our error is in assuming that God’s kingdom, like the markets we deal with, is in the business of allocating scarce resources.  It’s not.  God’s mercy is not scarce; it’s abundant.  Supply far exceeds demand.

In fact, that’s just the problem, and the point I think Jesus is trying to make.  Remember how the parable ends?  After being roundly chastised by the workers hired first, the landowner says to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong… I choose to give to this last the same as I gave to you.  Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?  Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Matt. 20:13-15)  Our Lord is pointing out that we have received from the Father far more than we deserve, and therefore have no standing to criticize God for dealing mercifully with others.  Because we have received grace upon grace, we should not yield to envy, assuming our slice of lemon meringue is being unfairly diminished.  Rather, we should try to see the world and its people as God sees them — and us! — and treat others as mercifully as we ourselves have been treated.

As we begin our annual commitment process, I hope that each of us will approach our stewardship decision with gratitude in knowing that God’s economy is more merciful than ours, and with genuine willingness to let God’s mercy be evident in the ministry of this parish.  Amen.

Scripture Lessons for Year A, Proper 20:  Reading: Exodus 16:2-15  |  Gradual: Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45  |  Epistle: Philippians 1:21-30  |  Gospel: Matthew 20:1-16

Collect for Proper 20:

Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Sermon for Sunday, Sept. 14 (Year A, Proper 19)

Peter asked Jesus: “How often should I forgive?  As many as seven times?”  (Matt. 18:21) 

In my experience, forgiveness is one of the most difficult things a Christian is asked to do.  Along with responding compassionately to the needs of the poor and marginalized, forgiveness is a fundamental responsibility of all who claim to be disciples of Jesus Christ.  And yet, it is a task we often ignore, postpone, or simply evade, because it is so very, very difficult.

I’m not speaking of the minor mishaps that are part and parcel of daily life.  If someone accidentally bumps into your shopping cart at the supermarket, their first reaction is often to say, “I’m sorry,” and your first reaction is to smile and say, “Oh, no problem… have a nice day.”  In such situations, forgiveness is easy, if not automatic.

No, in this case I’m speaking of the more serious hurts inflicted upon us either by strangers or by people who are close to us.  These injuries are deep, painful, and lasting because, at some level, the perpetrator has taken advantage of our vulnerability and inflicted genuine harm.  

Harm done by strangers is very difficult.  For example, how does one explain, let alone forgive, those who engineered the Enron accounting fraud which, when the business collapsed in 2001, cost thousands of employees their jobs, thousands of investors their money, and many of these their retirement nest eggs?  Or how does one respond to a mortgage broker who falsified a mortgage application, secured financing for a home which the buyer really could not afford, and thereby made foreclosure a certainty?  Or how does one deal with the loss of a family member in an auto accident when the other driver was intoxicated?  In such cases, forgiveness is far from automatic. 

Harm done by those close to us — by a parent, sibling, child, relative or friend — can be even more difficult, precisely because these are the people who owe us (and we them) the greatest loyalty, honesty, and loving-kindness.  For precisely that reason, those we love and trust are often the ones who hurt us most deeply, and ones we find most difficult to forgive.  In fact, being so deeply hurt, we may only want to hurt them in return.

I believe Peter has in mind those close to him when he approaches Jesus and asks, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?  As many as seven times?”  Now, we would like to believe that those whom Jesus called to be his disciples formed a strongly unified and like-minded group.  However, the evidence in the scriptures does not support such a rosy picture.  We know that relationships between the disciples were sometimes strained as these men jockeyed for status and influence.  And we can assume that some of the disciples just didn’t get along.  In this the disciples were probably like any other group of people, including the congregations I’ve served as an interim — this one excepted, of course.

In any case, Peter approaches Jesus hoping that the Master will say that forgiving one of his colleagues seven times is at least adequate, if not generous to a fault.  After all, in Hebrew culture and religion, seven was a sacred number.  Think of St. John the Divine writing his Book of Revelation in the form of a letter “to the seven churches that are in Asia.”  (Rev. 1:4)  Peter probably assumes that seven attempts at forgiveness is a holy effort which will satisfy all righteousness.  Imagine his consternation when Jesus declares that Peter must forgive “Not seven times, but… seventy-seven times.”  (Matt. 18:22)  “Seventy-seven times” is how the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates this verse.  Other translations read “seventy times seven times,” or 490 times.  Whether it’s 77 or 490 times, most students believe that Jesus is not indicating an absolute number of attempts at forgiveness, after which one is free not to forgive.  Rather, he is saying that one must forgive without limit, no matter how long it takes or how difficult the work is.

Why?  Jesus then tells the story of the wicked slave who owed his master ten thousand talents (a huge sum), but could not repay his debt.  Promising to make good his obligation, the slave begs his master to be patient.  The master has pity on the man and forgives his debt.  Then the slave encounters a second slave who owes him a few denarii (a trifling sum).  When this second slave is unable to pay immediately, the first does not have pity, but rather has the poor fellow thrown into prison.  Jesus’ point is hard to miss.  God forgives us, again and again, even when we do not deserve it.  We, then, must forgive our brothers and sisters, again and again.  It is essentially the same message as the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”

Like so many of the tasks Jesus give us as his disciples, this one is easier to describe than to do.  Thus a few observations about forgiveness may be helpful:

First, somewhere along the line I’m sure someone has told you to “forgive and forget.”  This old saying assumes that when forgiveness is genuine, it is as if the injury had never happened.  Problem is: only God can truly “forgive and forget.”  We make this divine forgetting explicit in the liturgical office we call Reconciliation of a Penitent, or private confession.  When the person has confessed his or her sins and received absolution, the priest ends the office by saying, “Go in peace.  The Lord has put away all your sins.” (BCP p. 451)  That term “put away” means that when God forgives us, the Lord forgets our sins utterly and forever.  That is the peculiar and wonderful gift we receive when, as the Psalmist says, we offer to God the sacrifice of “a broken and contrite heart.”  (Ps. 51:18)  It is in God’s nature to forgive and forget the evil we have done, if we truly desire to have that burden removed.  

But our ways are not God’s ways, and our forgiveness can never be as complete as God’s.  What you and I have to do, in fact, is to forgive and remember — to forgive even while the memory of the injury persists.  For that reason, I believe, Jesus speaks of forgiveness as an ongoing, even lifelong process.  It can take a lot of forgiving over a long period of time to finally put an injury to rest.

Second, forgiveness is only occasionally — and sometimes just incidentally — a thing we do for the other person.  Many times, the person we are to forgive is completely unaware that he or she has injured us, either because the person is clueless by nature, or because we have been so adept at concealing the wound.  A friend once told me that he was profoundly insulted one morning by his business partner, and spent half the day nursing a grudge against the guy.  Unable to get his work done, John finally walked into his partner’s office, said, “I want you to know that I forgive you for being such an idiot,” and walked out.  (Actually, his language was a bit more robust, but you get the picture.)  A few minutes later the partner appeared in John’s doorway, asking what that was all about.  The man was genuinely perplexed.  He had no idea that he had said anything hurtful.  That’s often the way it is.  People injure us without knowing they have done so.  It may be helpful to the other person to know that you forgive them, simply because it can make them more aware of the impact of their actions.

On the other hand, there are people who could care less if we forgive them.  Or the wrongdoer may treat our forgiveness as permission to repeat their hurtful behavior, because our forgiveness is seen as a reward.  In this kind of situation, even if we forgive the person, it is probably best not to tell them that we forgive them.  Rather, we can let our forgiveness be between us and God, and we can pray that in due course the Lord will help that person see the light.

Finally, I am convinced that forgiveness is essentially, and most importantly, something we do for ourselves.  To be unjustly injured by another person is a great misfortune.  To find one’s life, relationships, and happiness severely compromised by the injury another person has done is a form of tyranny from which, if possible, we would do well to escape.  We escape by forgiving.

A story is told of Leonardo da Vinci as he was creating the mural of The Last Supper in the convent of the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie at Milan.  It is said that as the great painter was walking to work one day he met and argued with another artist.  So angry was Leonardo that, when he arrived at the convent to begin work, he decided to paint the face of Judas Iscariot, our Lord’s betrayer, using the face of this other artist as his model.  Then, a few days later Leonardo started to paint Jesus’ face, but try as he would, he could not make his brush express what was in his mind.  Frustrated, Leonardo noticed the already-completed face of Judas.  Suddenly he understood what the problem was.  Only after he had painted out Judas’ face — that is, the face of the artist with whom he had argued — could Leonardo successfully render our Lord’s face.  To see the face of Jesus, Leonardo had to forgive.

Perhaps that story is apocryphal; I can’t be sure.  But it does express a fundamental truth: it is often only by forgiving the person who has wronged us that we can be truly free from their control.  And the greater the injury, the more essential — and difficult — forgiveness can be.  

That was a lesson taught me in my first interim parish.  I led a discussion group about forgiveness, and in one of our sessions we talked about forgiving the unforgivable — forgiving someone for an injury that seems beyond the capacity of any rational human being to forgive.  In the course of this discussion one couple told me that, several years earlier, their daughter had been abducted and murdered in the most violent fashion one could imagine.  The murderer was caught, tried, and sentenced to life in prison.  This story was well known to the others in the class, but it was new to me and I was horrified by their account.  And then I was utterly stunned when the mother told me that, with great effort and over many years, she had finally forgiven her daughter’s murderer.  (Her husband, by the way, had not.)  Caught completely off guard, I asked her how and why.  She said, “That was the only way I could finally be free of that man.  Even though he was in prison, he held me hostage.  But when I forgave him, I set myself free.”

As I said at the beginning, there is no more difficult work that Jesus gives us as his disciples than this business of forgiving — and, I should note, accepting the forgiveness of others.  This is a skill which we can learn over time, by following the example of those who are adept in the work of forgiveness, and especially by practicing this demanding but essential craft in our own lives.  May God give us grace to follow where our Lord has led the way, and in doing so find the freedom we seek.  Amen.

— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor

Readings for Proper 19 — Old Testament: Exodus 14:19-31  |  Gradual: Psalm 114  |  Epistle: Romans 14:1-12  |  Matthew 18:21-35

Collect for Proper 19:

O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

We’ve seen the political ads and heard the Babbling Heads on TV.  We’ve read the newspaper OpEd pages.  Perhaps we’ve even listened as political talk radio stars hyperventilate in public.  During a presidential campaign, information comes rolling down on us like the storm surge from a Cat 5 hurricane.

We have lots of information.  But are we really informed?  Apart from stump speech slogans, do we really know what Senator McCain and Senator Obama propose to do if elected.  (What they will actually do, of course, is an entirely different matter!)  And do we have any way to compare and contrast — that wonderful phrase from college tests! — the positions of the two candidates?

I think voting is both a civic and moral duty.  And church people ought to inform themselves about the candidates and issues, because so often the issues in play impact our responsibilities as disciples of Jesus Christ.  But becoming informed is really difficult!

Yesterday John Gork and I met to talk over this problem, and John came up with an idea.  Could we not snoop around the Web, looking in particular for information that compares and contrasts the candidates on the various issues?  Could we not then post the URLs (links) for these sites on the Blog so that you, if you are interested, could read the information yourself?  I think it’s a brilliant idea, a good use for the Blog, and a way to help St. John’s folk and others explore the issues.

We’ll call this part of the Blog ElectionStuff ’08.  Stay tuned.  In a few days we’ll begin posting some sites.  If you come across a good comparison, e-mail John or myself and let us know.

– Fr. John +