Gospel: Matthew 16:21-28
Now that we have heard today's scripture readings let's take a quiet moment to open our hearts. Let's allow this scripture to change us. Let's pay attention to how we can respond to God, as we bring the full range of our faith and doubts to our encounter today. Let us pray:
God, may this Gospel win our hearts and shape the way we live each day. Amen.
Today is a magnificent day here at Creator. As a congregation we will gather this afternoon with an extended community, Creator friends and neighbors as Emillie is formally recognized as our pastor. She will commit herself to this new trust and Creator will commit to receiving Emillie as a messenger of Jesus Christ sent to serve all people with the gospel of hope and salvation.
This happens formally at 2 this afternoon while this really just confirms what Creator has already experienced with Pastor Emillie since July.
Of course the reason I am up here this morning is to play a part in the theme she chose for September. She thought We are Witnesses would offer a more public and congregation-wide forum to share what the congregation was already sharing with her about why Creator is meaningful to them.
When I volunteered to speak I did not know what today's Gospel reading would be. When I discovered the text is Jesus teaching the disciples to forgive seven times seventy my first thought was "Wow, this is not only a hard text but I really wanted to center my reflection more on Creator's call process and the installation. How can I do that?"
Jesus' Gospel of forgiveness is daunting. I'm sure I have heard this particular teaching of Jesus at least seven times seventy but I confess I have been lax in following this verse in particular.
Three weeks ago, however, Pastor Emillie preached about the Caananite woman. Her sermon compelled me to reconsider the importance of forgiveness as a foundational Christian principle. She shared a personal memory about an incident that happened a few months after she came to this country.
For those who did not hear her sermon I will summarize. After a hectic day she was walking home from work in Tacoma when a car slowed down. Someone leaned out of the window and threw something and shouted at her.
For a second, she was too dazed to realize what happened. Next fear kicked in. Had she been shot? She looked down at her green jacket for signs of blood. She didn’t see any. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Then the what the stranger had shouted finally settled in. “Here’s a quarter..." and followed that with a racial slur.
She shared that she had been called names before. Since she grew up as an immigrant slurs weren’t exactly new but something about this word, at this time, cut deep. It reminded her of her blackness, her unwantedness and the scary realization that this could be a new, unwelcome reality in her life now.
Pastor Emillie admired the Gospel's Canaanite woman because this woman did not freeze or stutter after being insulted. She took the verbal abuse hurled at her and used it to bring to light the heart of the Christian gospel. The woman made this heart speak to Jesus and transformed how he related to her.
Well, I share Pastor Emillie's admiration. I believe this encounter taught the human side of Jesus about his larger mission. Matthew’s omniscient narrator reveals the woman’s daughter was instantly cured because of this woman's great faith. A happy ending, right? Or so I always thought before Emillie's sermon.
Pastor Emillie's wisdom, pain, and personal recollection highlighted a side of this gospel encounter I had never imagined. What would this woman deal with as she remembered a man that she saw as messiah who had called her a dog. Surely some sort of forgiveness was necessary.
When my family first came to Creator I need to confess here I did not have the same understanding of forgiveness or what church could mean in my life. And what I understand and practice even now is still evolving. For years I did not even have the words for what I began to sense in my spirit as Creator changed me. Eventually the words came.
Ten years ago next month Creator started a then new DVD series called Animate:Faith. Some contemporary theological voices in Christianity imaginatively explored central topics of the day, sparking discussions through presentations that mixed live action and animation. Many of us as participants wrote, drew and colored in what was provided in our illustrated Faith journals.
And my faith was engaged in new ways. For instance I never would compared church to a Japanese dojo where you learn practices from a master teacher and are given opportunities to perfect the new techniques you have learned. Creator was my dojo, which in Japanse means Place of the Way where I could practically work out with others the teachings of Jesus.
That said I resisted truly practicing forgiveness for years, even at Creator. It was counter-intuitive to me. Forgiveness did not appear to honor any of the inflicted pain involved. Why would a wounded person trust the wound's instigator and offer this person another chance cause pain? At the very least the instigator should ask for forgiveness, otherwise no lesson would have been learned. For some reason I was never asked for, nor did I ask for, forgiveness on this level by or from another.
An Animate:Faith presenter did introduce something that intrigued me years later. When someone harms us we are connected to that person like a chain. Forgiveness is not about being nice or letting someone off the hook but rather an act of fidelity to a campaign that fights evil. Forgiveness, at its core, can become a tool, used with intention, for freedom. Like a bolt cutter releasing a chain that binds the wounded and the wounder.
With that perspective I read the Gospel story of the king settling accounts with his slaves. At the end of the story the king says ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart. “ So Jesus, at least at this point taught the king’s forgiveness was conditional on mercy the slave showed.
Compare this to what Jesus said in the first of his final statements on the cross. On this tool of Roman torture and execution God, through Jesus, essentially declared he would rather die than be in the whole sin accounting business. Instead he asks from his father a different judgement “Forgive them Father, for they do not know what they do.” Quite a bolt cutter.
Yes, this is a day to remember. When I think of the installation, the future of the church and Creator’s past, present and potential identities my heart simultaneously celebrates and aches. Patience and prayer were the primary tools the Call Committee were aware of using during the Call Process.
Yet Creator has taught me so much more about church and humanity. How to be present in community. That salvation is corporate, rather than personal. I have gratitude to all who have played a role in that.
I also know we do not know what we do. I recognize as we move forward with our visions for Creator we will need to rely more on forgiveness for and to one another in coming together as a congregation.
To close I will borrow from what Pastor Emillie had us do last Sunday. Please cross your arms over your chest as we pray.
God, you transform all the crosses we build because we do not know. Help us through with your tools of patience, prayer and forgiveness to transform our individual lives to become the body of Christ you want for us.
In Jesus name we pray.
Amen
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