Seventeenth Pentecost, Proper 19, 2005:

Another academic year has started and we begin our fall schedule in Christian Formation activities.  I am profoundly grateful for the commitment so many have to St. John’s and to the first-rate program we offer.  May God be glorified in those who teach and in those who learn?

I have always admired teachers; even before I married one.  They never get the appreciation they deserve and are the first ones blamed when Johnny graduates and can’t read.  I’ll bet if someone had read to Johnny from the day of his birth until he started kindergarten he would be able to read before graduation day.

I particularly admire those who teach our youngest ones.  Pre-K and kindergarten teachers mold lives and shape personalities as few others can.  They must be patient and forgiving.  Like the kindergarten teacher who was helping one of her little ones put on his boots for the trip home.  She pulled and pushed, but the boots just didn’t want to go on.  She had worked up a sweat and almost whimpered when the boy said, “Teacher, they’re on the wrong feet.”

She looked and sure enough, they were.  It wasn’t much easier pulling the boots off.  She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on the right feet.  Then he announced, “These aren’t my boots.”

The teacher bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream, “Why didn’t you say so?”

One again she struggled to help him pull off his boots.  Then he said, “These are my brother’s boots.  My Mom made me wear them.”

She didn’t know if she should laugh or cry.  She mustered up the grace and courage she had left and wrestled the boots on his feet one more time.  She said, “Now, where are your mittens?”

He said, “I stuffed them in the toes of my boots…”

Patience and forgiveness.  Life would indeed be “brutish and short” without them.  Then Gospel for today talks about patience and forgiveness.  Peter is the disciple who once again speaks for the group; for us also.  “Lord, if another person sins against me, how often should I forgive?  As many as seven times?”

Jesus said to Peter, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-times seven.”  He then goes on to tell the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant.  It talks about patience and forgiveness.  It also talks about how short and selective our memories are. 

Sometimes we search for the person who does not need forgiveness.  If we look for that person in the church and can’t find them, then where shall we look?  If we look in places of business and industry, we find greed, corruption, arrogance, employee theft, not giving a full day’s work for a full day’s pay.  If we look in schools, colleges, universities, or seminaries we find cheating by students and teachers and a great need for forgiveness.  If we look in the home or hospital, if we look in the bank or at the clients coming to the Bedford Christian Ministries or Bedford Christian Free Clinic, there too, we find the need for forgiveness.  If we look in the daycare center, retirement home, or any home we find the need for forgiveness.  And if we look in the mirror, which I do every morning to remove this daily growth of gray beard, there we find a person in need of forgiveness.

 So, where is the man, woman, or child who does not need forgiveness from loved ones, friends, associates, or God?  Of course, there was one who did not need forgiveness in the way you and I need it.  And he said some things about forgiving. 

Imagine the thrill of being able to ask Jesus a question.  Peter so very often had that opportunity.  But, Jesus was rarely content to give a simple answer to Peter’s questions and probably would not give a simple answer to one we might ask.  There questions were for him teaching moments.  He very often aimed a powerful beam of God’s truth into the minds of his hearers, into our minds, so that we would not forget so easily.

The young lawyer asked him, “Who is my neighbor?”  And he got the story of the Good Samaritan.  If we dared ask that we would be told, no doubt, to include people along the Gulf Coast.  Someone asked him, “How do I do the will of God?”  They got the answer about offering a cup of cold water in the Lord’s name.  No doubt, providing food, water, shelter, medicines, a new place to live are included in the doing of God’s will.  Peter asked him, “What will be our reward for following you?”  And he got the story of the vineyard that turns our understanding of economics and justice on it head.  Sometimes extending a handout and a hand-up are necessary to get someone back on their feet.  Today Peter asks, “How many times must I forgive?”  And he got the story of the Unmerciful Servant.  Those who have lost everything have every right to expect our forgiveness for wrong choices, poor decisions, and poor habits.  We’ve done them, too.

So, why forgive anyway?  Why practice patience?  The shorthand answer is that we are following the example and the command of the Lord of this life and the life that is to come.  Even on the cross, going through the agony and feeling totally estranged from the Father, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

The vast majority of us are not asked to forgive such immense atrocities and we have not been so grievously wronged.  I am convinced that the only way we will keep racial, ethnic, and economic injustices from causing a war of all against all is to practice the ministry of reconciliation in a deliberate way.  That will require patience and forgiveness.  Patience and forgiveness must become a way of life or the continuing efforts at assigning blame, seeking revenge, and exacting retribution will become a way of death.

Patience and forgiveness also means we are doing the spiritually, emotionally, and physically healthy thing and releasing our burden by releasing others.  Our willingness to forgive and practice patience means we are capable of feeling forgiveness ourselves.  That’s not the result of our own willpower, but the work of the Holy Spirit in hearts, minds, and lives that invite that reality to live within.

Patience and forgiveness breaks the cycle, the chain reaction of bitterness and evil, the need for retribution, and the grasping of resentments that destroy from the inside out.  That means that the less of Jesus the Christ we see in the other person or the situation, the more of Jesus the Christ they need to see in us.  That alone sets in motion the dynamics necessary for redemption to become possible.  Something good can happen when good is our goal. 

One way to look at the world is to see it as callous, cold, and unforgiving.  That means the Christian person must step forward and be the risk taker.  Risk being salt.  Risk being the light on a hill.  Risk being the one who forgives and watch the ripple effect radiate outward.  We have seen and will see that happening as we help people rebuild their lives, their homes, and their livelihoods.  After all, who is going to have that spirit of patience and forgiveness is we Christian don’t?

God’s patience and forgiveness are infinite.  We begin to practice patience and forgiven at seventy-times seven.  After all, most of us have stuck our mittens into the toes of our brother’s or sister’s boots and a patient and forgiving teacher has loved us anyway.  Amen.