HEALING AND FORGIVENESS
COLLECT:
O Sovereign God; Jesus Christ established your reign on earth: let its coming be like the mustard seed that grows into greatness, and like the leaven that mixes with the grain until the whole becomes greater: to the praise of the one, holy and blessed Trinity, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.
READER: The first reading is from Sirach, chapter 17 verse 25 to chapter 18 verse 7, and I’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition.
25 Turn back to the Lord and forsake your sins; pray in the Lord’s presence and lessen your offence. 26 Return to the Most High and turn away from iniquity, and hate intensely what God abhors.
27 Who will sing praises to the Most High in Hades in place of the living who give thanks? 28 From the dead, as from one who does not exist, thanksgiving has ceased; those who are alive and well sing the Lord’s praises. 29 How great is the mercy of the Lord, and God’s forgiveness for those who return to the Lord!
30 For not everything is within human capability, since human beings are not immortal.
30 For not everything is within human capability, since human beings are not immortal.
31 What is brighter than the sun? Yet it can be eclipsed.
So flesh and blood devise evil. 32 God marshals the host of the height of heaven; but all human beings are dust and ashes.
18 God who lives for ever created the whole universe; 2 the Lord alone is just. To none has the Most High given power to proclaim God’s works; and who can search out God’s mighty deeds?
5 Who can measure God’s majestic power? And who can fully recount the Most High’s mercies? 6
It is not possible to diminish or increase them, nor is it possible to fathom the wonders of the Lord.
7 When human beings have finished, they are just beginning, and when they stop, they are still perplexed.
Psalm 105:1 – 11
READER: The second reading is from Romans chapter 8, verses 26 to 39, and I’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition
26 …the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.
29 For those whom God foreknew, God also predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.
30 And those whom God predestined, God also called.
And those whom God called, God also justified.
And those whom God justified, God also glorified.
31 What, then, are we to say about these things?
If God is for us, who is against us?
32 He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not, with him, also give us everything else?
33 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect?
It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn?
It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes; who was raised; who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.
35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 As it is written: ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death; nor life; nor angels, nor rulers; nor things present; nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth; nor anything else (in all creation), will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Gospel: Matthew 7:7–9
7 ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?
In our gospel reading, Jesus describes how a human parent would not give a child a stone if they ask for bread…
If we ask for bread, the one thing that will persuade us that the response is satisfactory, is the knowledge that our declaration of what we need has been heard, a knowledge that comes as we know ourselves to be nourished.
Part of the nourishment we need is knowing that our sisters and brothers in faith see and hear our needs as they are, not as others imagine them to be.
And the bread that is shared among Christians is not only material resources, but also HEALING through the MUTUAL recognition of dignity.
To recognise human dignity in one another is indeed to share the healing truth of what humanity is in the eyes of God.
The nourishment that the healing truth gives is demonstrates that we effectively feed each other (and are ourselves fed) by honouring the healing and truth of the real presence of the divine in each other, and ourselves.
What is so sad about the racial disharmony incidents at St John’s is that they demonstrate a general truth of this statement by showing the truth of the opposite: we starve and harm each other, and thus ourselves, whenever we perceive the other (or ourselves) as ‘less than divine’, based on race, creed, sex, sexual orientation, church, denomination, religion, species or whatever…
Recognising the human dignity in one another is sharing the healing truth of what humanity, of what creation, is in the eyes of God…
Recognising the divine in one another and in creation and in ourselves is the truth that sustains us, restores us, heals us… We feed each other (and are ourselves fed) by honouring the truth of the real presence of the divine in each other, and ourselves.
So what do we do when everything seems to be going awry?
One response, a positive response, ++ Rowan Williams invites us to try, is: when praying “give us this day our daily bread” in the ‘Our Father’; allow the prayer to become a prayer asking God to grace us with a sense of our own humanity in its fullness and its richness and of our own spark of divinity…
…and to gift us with the grace to sense the humanity and the divinity of other human beings, all human beings, all creatures, in a way that keep us aware we are all equally fully human, fully divine… even in our all being different…
A beautiful implication of praying the Lord’s prayer in this way is how it reminds us that we all must be fed, and that no-one can generate for themselves all they need to live and flourish…
At the same time, it becomes a prayer that we are not ashamed of our own or any other creature’s mortality, or despising of our own or any other creature’s being different or in need of healing, emotional, physical or spiritual…
We all need the self-awareness, honesty and humility to recognise that we ALL… EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US… have to be fed, have to be healed…
No-one is self-sufficient, and being aware of how all creatures need ‘our daily bread’, being aware of how all creatures need continuous physical and spiritual nurturing is in no way a failure, but, on the contrary, is a place of healing and dignity in mutual dependency…
The Lord’s prayer thus becomes a prayer for the grace to receive our own humanity and healing as a gift; a prayer for the openness and gratefulness to whoever and whatever awakens us to our dignity and for us, to share this healing gift with others….
However, if it is to remain intact, this gift is a gift that has to be freely received, and freely given…
This implies we, and others, have the right to choose a different response, a negative response – we may choose to refuse God’s healing gift, either from the originator of the gift, God, or from God’s gift offered through each other…
When offense is given and hurt is done, the customary human response is either ‘retaliation in kind’ (or worse), or withdrawal, reinforcing the illusionary walls of the ‘private self’, the ‘egoic self’, with all that this implies…
This negative response is about asserting one’s own humanity as a possession, a hurtful weapon, rather than receiving it as a gift, a healing gift from God, a gift of the very ‘essence’ of God Himself…
The unforgiving continue being wounded, and wounding others, if we cannot see the other as people who are part of God’s work of bestowing healing humanity on us. To forgive and to be forgiven is to allow yourself to be humanized and deified by those whom you may least want to receive as God’s gift, and as such being humanized is deeply connected with our prayer for daily bread…
The most challenging situation is when our forgiveness and healing love is rejected, and it is no accident that God SHOWS us how to respond in this situation through the life of Jesus…
Jesus shows us the way of healing is persevering in forgiveness, especially when wronged, if we too choose to pray “forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” when we feel we are being nailed to a cross…
From this perspective, isn’t it possible that any racist de-humanization of a school child as well as any counter-racist hatred and de-humanization of a teacher are all missed opportunities to embody this Christ-like healing response?
And isn’t reacting in ‘righteous’ (or worse, in ‘unrighteous’) anger when we re ‘wronged, be it at home, in the traffic, at work or wherever, as much a missed opportunity to embody this Christ-like healing response?
My prayer for all of us is that we choose the way of life, the way of Christ, as we follow Him, in the power of the Spirit, as we step out, embodying Christ’s healing, restoring love, wherever we go.
AMEN!
Rev Gavin Smit
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