Church can be a remarkable producer of guilt. When we have a rummage sale, or a yard sale, or any other thing that involves the whole place, I usually have a number of people who come to me and apologize for something. Maybe they were late, or missed a day, or any of a number of other things. I always tell them that it is all right, after all the clergy are the chief absolvers in the parish
Perhaps my favorite time in our liturgy is that moment after we have confessed our sins when I stand in front of the congregation and pronounce absolution. You don't really believe me, but your sins are forgiven. The forgiveness is not coming from me waving my hands, but from our gracious God who loves and forgives us all; and uses that moment in our worship to remind us of his Love. That's why the peace follows the absolution. All of us cleansed and greeting one another.
I wonder sometimes where all of this guilt that we have comes from. Religion has frequently been the origin of a lot of it. Nuns rapping knuckles with rulers, beadles walking the aisles of cathedrals enforcing silence, or more often I think it is clergy preaching guilt from the pulpit. Whatever the source, we seem to be sometimes overwhelmed by our guilt.
There is a wonderful story in the Gospel of Matthew about Jesus coming in contact with a Canaanite woman who wouldn't take no for an answer. She had a daughter who was tormented by a demon and she confronted Jesus with her daughter's deep need to be healed. Jesus repeatedly told her "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel", but the woman wouldn't go away. The disciples told Jesus to send her away because she was driving them crazy. Eventually the woman knelt before Jesus and pleaded with him. He said to her: "It is not right to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs", but this didn't faze her. She replied to him: "Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." That changed Jesus' mind. "Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish" And the gospel says that her daughter was healed instantly.
Jesus understood at that moment that his mission was larger than he had originally thought. It included many more people than just the House of Israel. His message was for the whole world, for all of us. A message of healing and forgiveness that came from God to all of the people of this planet.
I have had a lot of experience with healing and forgiveness. Not only as a parish priest, but in other ways also. For twenty-two years, I was a part-time chaplain at Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh. I met with a group of eight men every Thursday afternoon. All of those men had killed someone and had life sentences. In Pennsylvania, a life sentence is exactly that. There is seldom any parole.
A goal of our group was to provide a place of trust in that place where there is no trust; to enable those men to tell their stories to each other. Mostly, it worked. That is why the group was so long term. It always took a lot of conversation before trust emerged.
There was one man in our group who had come to prison at age 75. He had been an old brown bag drunk in a small town. Somehow he fell in love with a bag lady and spent a lot of time with her. One day he found out that she had been spending her time with another woman and didn't care for him anymore. It really blew his mind. He went back to his little room, drank the whiskey that he had there and got the gun that he kept under his bed. He went and killed both of those women. He then somehow got on an airplane to California. The deputies followed him and brought him back. The crime was the talk of the town. People laughed up their sleeves at the scandal of the whole story.
He was tried for the killings, was sentenced to two life terms and he found his way to the prison and to my group. He was almost destroyed by what he had done. I often talked about forgiveness in my group. Every time that I did that, he would come to me after the group, tug my sleeve and tell me that forgiveness didn't apply to him. There were two people in the graveyard because of what he had done, and God was never going to forgive that.
I'll never forget the day that it dawned on him that I was talking about his own forgiveness. All of a sudden, there was a light in his eyes and he changed instantly. He lived into his eighties, and in the last years of his life, he had his home in the prison hospital. A couple of inmates would bring him across the prison yard in a wheelchair each Thursday for our group. When he was in the yard, men would crowd around him because of the aura that certainly surrounded him. It was clear that there was something very attractive about him.
That kind of forgiveness is something that can belong to us all. In our churches, we are a community of people who share our lives with one another. One of the unstated goals of the events that we all have in our churches is to bring new people through our doors, to hopefully attract new people to our congregations. The way that we can do that is by showing them who we are. To let them see the joy that we all have in our lives because of the goodness of God. That in the end is what forgiveness is all about. It cleanses our guilt and gives us a new way of relating to each other.
If the Kingdom of God can be seen in the prison by one man forgiven of his sins and attracting others to him, how about us? Our forgiveness is no less complete. We can show each other our joy and live our lives in the freedom that God's love provides us; and extend that love beyond the walls of our churches to the people in our community. That is the real mission of the church.
Perhaps my favorite time in our liturgy is that moment after we have confessed our sins when I stand in front of the congregation and pronounce absolution. You don't really believe me, but your sins are forgiven. The forgiveness is not coming from me waving my hands, but from our gracious God who loves and forgives us all; and uses that moment in our worship to remind us of his Love. That's why the peace follows the absolution. All of us cleansed and greeting one another.
I wonder sometimes where all of this guilt that we have comes from. Religion has frequently been the origin of a lot of it. Nuns rapping knuckles with rulers, beadles walking the aisles of cathedrals enforcing silence, or more often I think it is clergy preaching guilt from the pulpit. Whatever the source, we seem to be sometimes overwhelmed by our guilt.
There is a wonderful story in the Gospel of Matthew about Jesus coming in contact with a Canaanite woman who wouldn't take no for an answer. She had a daughter who was tormented by a demon and she confronted Jesus with her daughter's deep need to be healed. Jesus repeatedly told her "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel", but the woman wouldn't go away. The disciples told Jesus to send her away because she was driving them crazy. Eventually the woman knelt before Jesus and pleaded with him. He said to her: "It is not right to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs", but this didn't faze her. She replied to him: "Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." That changed Jesus' mind. "Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish" And the gospel says that her daughter was healed instantly.
Jesus understood at that moment that his mission was larger than he had originally thought. It included many more people than just the House of Israel. His message was for the whole world, for all of us. A message of healing and forgiveness that came from God to all of the people of this planet.
I have had a lot of experience with healing and forgiveness. Not only as a parish priest, but in other ways also. For twenty-two years, I was a part-time chaplain at Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh. I met with a group of eight men every Thursday afternoon. All of those men had killed someone and had life sentences. In Pennsylvania, a life sentence is exactly that. There is seldom any parole.
A goal of our group was to provide a place of trust in that place where there is no trust; to enable those men to tell their stories to each other. Mostly, it worked. That is why the group was so long term. It always took a lot of conversation before trust emerged.
There was one man in our group who had come to prison at age 75. He had been an old brown bag drunk in a small town. Somehow he fell in love with a bag lady and spent a lot of time with her. One day he found out that she had been spending her time with another woman and didn't care for him anymore. It really blew his mind. He went back to his little room, drank the whiskey that he had there and got the gun that he kept under his bed. He went and killed both of those women. He then somehow got on an airplane to California. The deputies followed him and brought him back. The crime was the talk of the town. People laughed up their sleeves at the scandal of the whole story.
He was tried for the killings, was sentenced to two life terms and he found his way to the prison and to my group. He was almost destroyed by what he had done. I often talked about forgiveness in my group. Every time that I did that, he would come to me after the group, tug my sleeve and tell me that forgiveness didn't apply to him. There were two people in the graveyard because of what he had done, and God was never going to forgive that.
I'll never forget the day that it dawned on him that I was talking about his own forgiveness. All of a sudden, there was a light in his eyes and he changed instantly. He lived into his eighties, and in the last years of his life, he had his home in the prison hospital. A couple of inmates would bring him across the prison yard in a wheelchair each Thursday for our group. When he was in the yard, men would crowd around him because of the aura that certainly surrounded him. It was clear that there was something very attractive about him.
That kind of forgiveness is something that can belong to us all. In our churches, we are a community of people who share our lives with one another. One of the unstated goals of the events that we all have in our churches is to bring new people through our doors, to hopefully attract new people to our congregations. The way that we can do that is by showing them who we are. To let them see the joy that we all have in our lives because of the goodness of God. That in the end is what forgiveness is all about. It cleanses our guilt and gives us a new way of relating to each other.
If the Kingdom of God can be seen in the prison by one man forgiven of his sins and attracting others to him, how about us? Our forgiveness is no less complete. We can show each other our joy and live our lives in the freedom that God's love provides us; and extend that love beyond the walls of our churches to the people in our community. That is the real mission of the church.
Rodge,
ReplyDeleteI will be sharing this one. I think now, more than ever, people need to hear things like this!
Eric