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By Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm. (View the sermon and worship here).
Peter came and said to Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. I’ll bet Peter thought that he had really gotten the message, that Jesus would be proud of him for understanding the importance of forgiveness. I’ll also bet that he felt rather crushed by Jesus’ reply, which amounts to saying that Peter ALWAYS had to forgive, and that he would never have forgiven “enough”. Jesus followed his answer to Peter with a distinctly disturbing parable. It’s about a king who shows mercy to slave who has accumulated massive debt by entirely forgiving the debt. The parable goes on following the slave who has been forgiven, who in turn runs across a fellow slave who owes HIM money. The one who has been shown mercy, when his opportunity comes, has no mercy at all, and arranges for his debtor to be thrown into prison. When the king learns of the first slave’s hard-heartedness, he turns him over to be tortured. Jesus tells the story with a frequent and familiar introduction: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like this”, and it’s not hard to understand the point, especially if we pay attention to the figures involved in the two slaves’ debts:
This parable-of-the-Kingdom reminds Peter – and us - how extravagantly we are forgiven by God: Our failings are numerous, beyond measure, and yet we are loved and accepted by God beyond our deserving or our comprehension. The parable asks us - how, then, can we refuse to extend compassion and generosity to one another? A good sentiment, but I’m sure we all know what a huge ask this can be. Some of the wrongs we are called to overlook – a phone call not returned, a thoughtless remark, are small potatoes, and forgiving them doesn’t cost much and even allows us to feel good about ourselves. Other debts can cause us so much pain that they feel utterly unforgiveable. Some of the wrongs done us cause true, ongoing hurt every time we think about them and seem like they’ll never go away. Wrongs can be hardest to forgive when the other person won’t acknowledge or take responsibility for their wrongdoing, let alone apologize. Holding onto unforgiven hurts can ultimately do more damage to the one who cannot forgive than it does to the wrongdoer, however. Nurturing resentment, hurt, and anger can become its own prison, leading us into bitterness and self-pity that separate us from others. Forgiveness frees us. You may be familiar with a story that was much-publicized back in October of 2006; it’s worth remembering again. A man in Lancaster County PA was unable to get over his grief over his daughter’s death, nine years previously, and was unable to forgive God. He entered a one-room schoolhouse in a nearby Amish community and shot ten young schoolgirls to death. It’s a horrible story, and one can barely imagine what it may have felt like to the peace-loving Amish community. But their response was equally unimaginable. Here’s an excerpt from a report at the time: In the midst of their grief over this shocking loss, the Amish community didn’t cast blame, they didn’t point fingers, they didn’t hold a press conference with attorneys at their sides. Instead, they reached out with grace and compassion toward the killer’s family. The afternoon of the shooting an Amish grandfather of one of the girls who was killed expressed forgiveness toward the killer, Charles Roberts. That same day Amish neighbors visited the Roberts family to comfort them in their sorrow and pain. Later that week the Roberts family was invited to the funeral of one of the Amish girls who had been killed. And Amish mourners outnumbered the non-Amish at Charles Roberts’ funeral. Perhaps Martin Luther King had it right: “Forgiveness is not an occasional act,” he said; “it is a constant attitude.” Jesus calls on us to live out of a spirit of generosity, just as God shows immeasurable generosity to us – not keeping a record of wrongs done us and what we are owed in compensation - but of compassion for the many ways in which we all stumble and fail, a spirit of readiness to extend new chances to others, to let them get it right. *** Having said all of this, I also believe that accountability is important, and that “get out of jail free” cards are not always called for, and not always what is best for us. Considering this passage this year, in a time when we need and are trying to come to terms with the deep and persistent wrongs done by white America to our citizens of color, I also see it as dangerous to hold up limitless human-to-human forgiveness as an ideal. I don’t have easy answers, but I do feel that there are some principles that are consistent with the Gospel that we need to hold in tension with the mandate to forgive. Again, no easy answers, but I think there are some principles we might apply when looking at the question of forgiving wrongdoings:
So, hearing this gospel, let us strive to live into and extend to others the inexhaustible grace that has been extended to us. And let us do it with judiciousness and wisdom. Let us extend compassion to one another in ways that help us all to take responsibility for our acts and to live, more and more, into the Kingdom of God.
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By Rev. Dr. Molly Scherm. (View the sermon and worship here).
As we continue our journeys through the narratives of scripture, this week our readings present us with a fascinating pair of “call stories” – incidents in which God’s children are suffering and in need, and God summons leaders to assist with the work of deliverance. Moses and Peter are, of course, at-least-eventually heroic leaders who play critical roles in the stories of the faith community: their experiences can perhaps speak to us who are called to be leaders in responding to the suffering of God’s children and God’s world today. Moses’ story is more obviously one of call to leadership. The children of Israel are suffering oppression under the rule of a king who sees them as a threat. Conscripted into forced labor, their conditions are more and more harsh, as we heard in last week’s passage from Exodus. Moses is hardly a likely candidate for leadership in Israel’s deliverance. Raised apart from his own people and forced into exile after committing a criminal act, in today’s passage we find him occupied with tending his father-in-law’s flocks as he stumbles into an encounter with the voice of the God of his ancestors, that voice summoning him to return to Egypt to confront Pharaoh with demand for the release of the children of Israel. Many generations later, in the larger context of today’s gospel reading, Israel is still suffering hardship, now under the rule of Rome. Beset by oppressive social and economic conditions, the community again longs for deliverance. Peter’s very uncomfortable exchange with Jesus in today’s gospel isn’t so obviously a call story. It is, though, as the continuation of the conversation begun in last week’s reading, in which Peter recognizes Jesus as “the Messiah, the Son of the living God”, and Jesus names Peter as “the rock” on which “I will build my church.” So here is what Moses and Peter have in common: they are both hearing something that they don’t want to hear, and they both respond with denial. Moses doesn’t care for the summons to leadership at all, and who can blame him, with an assignment like the one he’s given? Rather than objecting outright, Moses responds to the voice from the burning bush with a series of objections, questions, and obstacles. We hear the first two in this passage, and the others follow:
I can identify with Moses’ feelings of inadequacy: I’m sure we all feel them sometimes. I’ll never forget the terror with which I faced – but also avoided whenever I could – my first “field education” placement in seminary, in the chaplaincy at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge. I was 23 years old and didn’t have a single clue what to say to people who were sick, or to their worried families. I simply didn’t see myself as having anything to offer. For Moses, and for many of us facing calls to leadership, the task just feels too hard. Realistic about the difficulties that would be entailed, the opposition and the suffering, Moses didn’t, and we don’t, feel up to the job. How much easier to stick to his ordered (if uninspiring) life as a keeper of sheep, rather than sticking his neck out in what was sure to be a no-win situation. Peter’s difficulty with the call to leadership is basically the opposite – he apparently doesn’t object to taking the assignment, but he doesn’t like the job description. Peter is not interested in hearing that the one he recognizes as the Messiah, the one whose followers Peter has been called to lead, is prepared to undergo suffering at the hands of his detractors and be killed, before being raised. Peter, apparently, has a different script in mind. If Moses’ weakness as a leader is his lack of faith in himself, Peter’s is his excessive confidence in his own vision: he has assumptions about how the long-awaited Messiah will redeem the community, and he is not open to having those assumptions challenged, even by the one he claims as Messiah. This is such an easy hole to fall into when we assume the responsibilities of leadership - losing sight of the bigger picture and rigidifying our own position, rather than valuing ideas that challenge us. I can identify with Peter as I did with Moses. In the middle 1990s I was appointed to a leadership team of “School Deans” responsible for redesigning curriculum of the boarding school where I served. We developed what I still think was a wonderful, visionary, outcome-driven curriculum model, but the process was not inclusive of other faculty voices, and it wasn’t transparent enough. When we finally rolled out our new curriculum model, with great pride, it was met with intense resistance, and almost failed. I don’t need to remind you of the ways in which God’s children are suffering today, and in need of leadership. Beyond the horrifyingly evident frequency of abusive relationships between law enforcement and black communities in the US, so many of us have had our eyes, our ears and hearts opened to the ways in which our siblings of color continue to suffer the impact discriminatory systems from which those of us who are white benefit. We are watching what appears to be the accelerating pace of climate change and environmental destruction, as competition for economic gain and decision-making that serves short-sighted goals of human convenience exploit, poison and squander the riches of the planet on which we live. And lest we miss it, let’s also note the pattern in which both persons and nature have been viewed as expendable, available to be used for the benefit of those who hold power. In the Moses and Peter call stories, both are thinking and reacting based on experiences of the past – knowing the way things have always worked, fearful of failure, rejection, and death, both are frightened of risk. For them, and certainly for us, God is pointing toward a new future that is different from anything they can imagine, and that is scarey. The lessons in these and other “call stories” in biblical tradition offer us the same truths:
Moses and Peter both accomplished more than they could have dreamed in the initial moments we see in today’s texts. They both experienced loss, heartache, conflict along the way, but with God’s help, both served in God’s work of healing the world. May we meet our own challenges with faith. May we be willing to step forward, to conquer our fears and open our vision. May we remember that we are never alone. By Heather Blais (View the sermon and worship here).
In Exodus, we witness how a shifting political landscape leads to the oppression of the Israelites. As we listen to the story:
Yet I can’t help but wonder whether we are wrong to self-identify with the Israelites. What if our forebears have mistakenly woven this biblical narrative into our own American history? You know the stories as well as I do. Many of the settlers that first reached these shores did so as they fled religious or ethnic persecution. Things began to go awry when white settlers started to harvest the bounty of this land solely for themselves, and brutally oppressed the Indigenous people who were here before us. We then furthered our ambitions by supporting the kidnaping, abuse, rape, and enslavement of black and brown bodies on the shores of another continent so we might further our own economic advancements. This land, made for you and me, was built on the backs of black and brown bodies which many of our forebears oppressed, enslaved, and killed. This is why I can’t help but wonder if maybe, white America, has much more in common with the Egyptians than the Israelites. Sure, we’re not the king, implementing cruel and unjust public policies. We’re more like middle management. We may not be out there advocating for the creation and implementation of these policies; we may even recognize the pure insanity of them. Yet we mostly just tolerate the status quo, continuing to benefit from our position, and assume leadership must have their reasons for implementing such a policy. Or maybe we’re too afraid of the cost if we speak up. Or, as is often the case when one group of people oppresses another, we buy into the fearful propaganda that leadership sells us. I get this is not a joyful interpretation of the Exodus narrative. You probably don’t want to hear it, because who wants to reconcile with the idea that we’ve been fed distorted versions of the truth and helped prop up a system of injustice for generations. I get it, and yet the power of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God demands that we hear this text differently this time around. In fact, this particular interpretation is not even new. It’s pretty old, just not widely proclaimed. In the fight to abolish slavery, and then later to end Jim Crow laws, social justice advocates from Harriett Tubman to Martin Luther King, Jr. have compared the black experience in America to that of the Israelites’ in Egypt. At this moment in history it is the Black Lives Matter movement crying out against white supremacy and oppression, like the Israelites before them, “Let my people go”. We can play it safe, like generations of people who have gone before us, or we can follow the example of the midwives in the Exodus narrative. These women were stuck in an impossible situation. The midwives' calling in life and their financial livelihood was all based on delivering babies. It is privileged and messy work. More importantly, it is sacred. The spirit of God can be felt hovering in the room as an infant leaves the safety of their mother’s womb and meets the harsh new surroundings of the outside world.These women were asked to do the unspeakable by the new king of Egypt. Pharaoh felt as though the Israelites, these foreigners, were ever increasing in number and posed a threat to Egyptian rule and power. As a result, he changed public policy, creating new rules which brutalized and enslaved the Israelites. When these new policies did not adequately subdue the foreigners, the king instructed the midwives to kill every male Israelite infant. And yet, these women were wise enough to know there was still one more powerful than even this new king. The Exodus text tells us: “But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.” These brilliant and marvelous women feared God. These midwives could not in good conscience do what was asked of them. Nevertheless, she persisted. These women have been modeling and inspiring resistance for thousands of years. They knew deep in their bones that our God is a God of liberation. The question these midwives offer us is how will we rise up to be the midwives of our time? Resistance will look different for each of us. Though, like the midwives, it will always need to begin with a self-examination that we continue to revisit. Maybe you are re-learning American history through the eyes of the oppressed. Maybe you are watching webinars on how to be anti-racist. Maybe you go to demonstrations and walks. Maybe you have a BLM sign on your lawn. Maybe you are intentional about shopping at black owned businesses. Maybe you call your political representatives so often you have them on speed dial. Maybe you are praying, every day, for racial reconciliation and healing. There is no one way to resist. The midwives did what they could to stand up for those shoved to the margins, just as our loving, liberating, and life giving God asks of us. What I am suggesting may be uncomfortable for some. Yet there is no pearl without the grit rubbing at our rough edges. I invite each of us to sit in a holy discomfort and wrestle with how we will be the midwives of our time. Amen. By Elle Morgan
View the worship and sermon here. In today’s lesson from Genesis we witness Joseph's call to reconcile with his family. Today, Heather & Molly have asked that I share my own story of being called. I’ve prayerfully considered this charge over the last weeks. While this is principally a story about forgiveness, I believe it is also a story about call… where you belong and how you can serve. The story of Joseph and his brothers is one of the most well known in the Old Testament. While many can thank Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber for that knowledge, it is a story that has struck the hearts of many in the Judeo-Christian tradition for centuries. It is the story of a complicated family – something we can all relate to and how God’s call for us that might be wildly different from our own imaginings. It is easy to imagine Joseph as a young man. Confident in the knowledge of the love his parents and his ideas as to how other see him – the favored son of a favored wife. It is easy to imagine Joseph with his father planning for the future as to what that might look like for both of them. Many of us are familiar with the phrase, “People plan and God laughs”. Like many of us, that was the way for Joseph. A bright future working with his father, taking leadership over his elder brothers, might have seemed desirable for Joseph. But that was not the way it was to be. Joseph was needed elsewhere. I think as children we imagine how our lives might unfold. We may have thoughts or dreams about our futures: our families, our ambitions, how we might lead or serve. I know I did. Growing up in Utah, it was easy to envision myself as a wife and a mother. Certainly my ecclesiastical leaders saw that future for me and encouraged me toward that destiny. I had loved and appreciated those treasured roles, but I always felt God’s call for me included more, although what that meant was not immediately evident. Joseph’s father sent him on an errand to check on his brothers and the flock and report their conditions back to him. However, the errand happened to be God’s call to Joseph to undertake a special mission to Egypt: to prepare a sanctuary for the young nation of Israel to survive a severe famine, prosper, and multiply into a great nation. Neither Joseph nor his father recognized the call at the time. God delivered the message by prompting his father to send him on the fateful errand. Also, we learn that God may allow adversity as a channel for effecting a positive change for a person. The person will be in better position to realize the change by remaining steadfast in living in the image of God despite hurting from the adversity. Joseph’s shock at his changed circumstances at the hands of his brothers must have felt profound. What a difference a day makes. Thrown in a pit, sold into slavery, jailed. His circumstances must have seemed surreal. But it is easy to imagine that in the confusion of those extreme circumstances, that Joseph must have known that God had a plan for him, yet unrevealed. Joseph’s faith in God allowed him to persevere under extraordinary circumstances. I think many of us ask the question, “Where do I belong?” “Where and whom shall I serve?” I imagine that if you asked Joseph, his answer would not involve interpreting dreams in jail. Or being chased about by Potiphar’s wife. But how many of us find ourselves in similar circumstances. How did I get here? For much of my life, I felt the same. How did I get here? How did this happen? How did I actively attend the tradition of my foremothers which espouses, racism, homophobia, and misogyny. What does this signal to my children, my friends, those whom I respect? Like Joseph, I asked myself “how did I get here?” And more importantly, what is God’s plan for me. Joseph knew, probably more quickly than I did, to put his trust in the Lord. Faith, perseverance, and patience showed Joseph where he belonged and how he could serve. Joseph was led by the Lord to where he might be most useful to God’s people. I think many of us have asked the same question, but perhaps without the same patience and faith. I believe that the Lord leads us into things as well as out of things. Like Joseph, he was led from his home and family in Canaan into where was most needed in Egypt. The Lord saw the bigger picture for Joseph just as he sees that same picture for us. I was a slower study. I thought I could impact circumstances even change the hearts of others, but that was not to be. God knew better. In prayerfully turning to the Lord as to where I belong, God led me out of my previous tradition and into the Episcopal tradition. As a former children’s Sunday School teacher, I taught many young people to as the question, What Would Jesus Do? I believe that members of the Episcopal faith actively ask the questions, “What would Jesus Do? Where should I serve? And act upon those inspirations. I sometimes reflect on that interim period with both sadness and curiosity. It was hard to be without a faith community and the likelihood that the situation might be permanent was high. Research shows that members of my former tradition don’t often find a new spiritual home for a number of reasons. I have to imagine that when Joseph was thrown into prison he felt the same way. Separated by those he loved due to circumstances, concerned about outcomes. In the play Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Joseph sings a song while in jail describing his bleak circumstances but remaining constant in his faith in the Lord. One stanza states “Children of Israel are never alone”. I will say that during this in-between period, I often felt spiritually lonely for community, but never alone. I think that period was one when I learned to rely ever more closely on the Lord. I am grateful that God called me to be a member of this parish and I believe God continues to call me to greater levels of participation. In this past year, I have attended Loving the Questions and the Community of Discernment to try to determine where I might belong and to better hear God’s call. One of my favorite scriptures is Mary answering God’s call with the plaintive statement -- Behold thy handmaiden, Lord. I have tried to emulate Mary’s approach as I pursued answers with an open mind as to where God might want me With the tutelage of, and in consultation with, diocesan leaders, I have prayerfully sought answers to where I might belong and how I could serve. To my great surprise, I have felt a call to the priesthood, understanding that calls are a combined vision of the individual, the diocese, and the Lord, in concert with them I continue to ask where should I serve? And look to the Lord for answers. Joseph understood that God’s call was what led him into Egypt. Not the perfidy of his brothers. Upon their reunion he explained to them that it was God, not them, that sent him to Egypt for a special mission “Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Come close to me.’ When they had done so, he said, ‘I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.’” Joseph’s willingness to patiently wait for God’s plan to unfold for him is inspirational. It couldn’t have been easy and, at times, probably very frightening. I think this is something to which we can all relate. How does our vision for our life match up to God’s? How do we reconcile the differences? Maybe Joseph felt bitterness about his changed circumstances, but it isn’t evident from the scriptures Joseph – rather than being bitter found ways to serve irrespective of his circumstances. Finding a place to serve where God intends, rather than where we think that place might be, demonstrates humility that is not easy. In Jeremiah 29:13 we learn: You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Today I suggest that we follow the inspirational example of Joseph and his patience through adversity as he waited to better understand his call. Discernment to call can be a life-long process. God’s call to us may be different at the various seasons of our life and they may become evident during times of adversity. In Hebrews we learn that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Waiting can be discouraging, it can test our patience and our faith. I know from personal experience this can be true. It is my prayer that we will be blessed as we answer God’s calls to us. |
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