Dear Friends,

I want to begin my message for this week by thanking all those who came out for our Homecoming Celebration last Sunday. I was reminded of the joy that surrounds such traditions, and the reason why we do them – to acknowledge, honor, and give thanks for the gifts of being in community.

Interestingly, and perhaps intentionally, our lectionary readings during this season of “regathering” address not only the joys, but the realities and challenges we face when we try to be a community. Over and over, we are reminded that when we are in community, we are bound to collide with one another in some way. We let each other down. We say the wrong thing. We disagree.  And when we do, we can either ignore the issue and hold a grudge, or address the issue and clear the air….which inevitably involves some element of forgiveness, mercy, and grace – the core tenets our Christian Faith.

In this Sunday’s gospel, we find Jesus responding to Peter’s request, “If someone in the community sins against me, how many times should I forgive?” Jesus’ answer? Not seven times (a nice biblical number) but seventy-times, seven. In other words, infinity.

As I’ve been pondering Jesus response, I have found myself wondering how many of us have absorbed any of the following beliefs about forgiveness: 

• Forgiveness means excusing or overlooking the harm that has been done to us and saying that everything is okay.

• Forgiveness means allowing those who have hurt us to persist in their behavior.

• Forgiving requires forgetting what has happened. Forgiveness is something we can do at will, and always all at once.

If you have any of these distorted beliefs, it might come as a relief to learn that nowhere does Jesus promote them. In other words, the heart of forgiveness is not to be found in excusing harm or allowing it to go unchecked, but in acknowledging that, though wounds will change us, we will not allow them to forever define us. Forgiveness does not ask us to forget the wrong done to us, but instead to resist the ways it seeks to get its poisonous hooks in us, so that we will not live forever in its grip.

Sometimes we are given the grace to forgive quickly. Sometimes the grace to forgive takes a long time to receive. It often requires practice, chipping away at it again and again. Seventy-seven times, at least, as Jesus says in this passage.

Forgiveness might well be the hardest blessing we will ever offer - or receive. As with any difficult practice, it’s important to ask not only for the strength we will need for it, but also for the grace: the grace that will, with practice, begin to shimmer through our wounds, drawing us toward the healing and freedom we could hardly have imagined at the outset.

Is there some forgiveness you are being asked to practice? Are there any ideas about forgiveness that you might need to release – or take on - in order to enter this practice? How might it be to ask not only for the strength but also for the grace you need to forgive another - or yourself?

In Christ,

Amelie+