Hey everybody this is Steve and we need to forgive as God forgives.
This last Sunday before the start of Great Lent is called “Cheesefare Sunday” because
it’s the last day we’ll eat cheese and other dairy products until we celebrate the
Lord’s Resurrection.
But there’s also another name for this important milestone on our Journey to Pascha: Forgiveness
Sunday.
And, just in case it’s not obvious from the name, our theme this week is forgiveness.
In the final days leading up to Great Lent, the Church encourages us to do the difficult
work of forgiving others.
To reach deep into our hearts and let go of the sins our friends, family members, strangers,
and even enemies have committed against us and the world.
Of course, forgiveness is something we should practice all the time as Christians, but we
place extra emphasis on it at the start of Great Lent.
To understand why, let’s take a closer look at the day’s assigned Epistle and Gospel
readings.
In St Paul’s letter to the Romans, we see the connection between forgiveness and our
call to cleanse the Church of sin so that we can ready ourselves for the Lord’s Resurrection.
As St. Paul writes, “Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor
of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness,
not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.”
(Rom 13:12-14)
It might look like St. Paul is giving us some pretty straightforward advice that doesn’t
have anything to do with forgiveness: he’s telling us to put on the light of Christ by
casting off the darkness of sin.
But read in the context of Forgiveness Sunday, we realize that casting off darkness is not
just about avoiding sin now and in the future.
It’s also about letting go of sins from the past.
Think about it.
If we want light to shine through a window, we need to keep it clean.
We have to work hard to prevent that window from getting covered in dirt.
But we also need to remove all the dirt that has already built up.
This is what forgiveness is.
It’s letting go of previous sins-- cleaning the window--as we prepare for the coming of
the Light of the Resurrection.
This is why the Church calls the first day of Great Lent “Clean Monday.”
Because if we live the life of the Church, if we forgive all the sins that have built
up over the past year, Clean Monday becomes a fresh start.
We stand before God and one another renewed and cleansed, ready to seize the opportunity
Great Lent gives us to grow as human beings and draw closer to God.
But, just like we saw last time with Judgment Sunday, forgiveness isn’t a private pursuit.
It’s something that involves the entire community of the Church.
It allows us to enter into this journey towards the Resurrection together.
Forgiveness Sunday is a day in the life of the entire community of the Church.
And a Church has many windows.
Cleaning our one window will allow some Light to enter, but the Church will remain dim until
every window is clean and ready to welcome the Light.
Forgiveness Sunday is an opportunity to help clean each other’s windows.
To forgive one another’s sins so that the whole Church can be ready to be filled with
the Light of Christ.
St. Paul explains that it’s not our place to criticize or judge others.
That, when we fail to forgive, when we keep their windows dirty, we actually keep people
from the Light of Christ.
He asks, “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?
It is before his own master that he stands or falls.
And he will be upheld, for God is able to make him stand.”
(Rom 14:3-4)
The word Paul uses here to mean “fall” is another word for sin.
Which makes sense.
Sin is falling short of a goal, a stumble on the way to God.
And let’s be honest: we all have our own struggles.
So how can we possibly hold the sins of someone else against them while also expecting our
own justification?
How can we expect God to lift us up when we hold others down?
We all have situations where we fall before the Lord, where we fail to live up to the
call to be true children of the Father who reflect the mercy and loving kindness of Jesus,
the Only Begotten Son.
Our sins already contribute to the pain of a broken world, a world where, as St Paul
says, “the wages of sin are death.”
(Romans 6:23)
So why add condemnation and judgement to the already tragic consequences of sin?
We are one Church, one Body of Christ, one human race.
Why would we cause someone from our own team, our own family, to stumble on their way to
the Lord?
As St Paul writes, “Why do you judge your brother?
Or why do you show contempt for your brother?
For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.”
(Rom 14:10)
Forgiving one another before Lent allows us to come together on that great journey towards
the Resurrection.
To unite as we prepare to stand before Christ and be filled with His Light.
And that takes us to the Gospel for Forgiveness Sunday.
Another perfect reading to prepare us for Great Lent.
Unlike the last few Sundays, this week’s Gospel reading is not a parable.
Instead, Christ explicitly tells His disciples what He wants them to know: that prayer, fasting,
and almsgiving are the three main ascetic practices of the spiritual life.
Which makes sense, since we’ll be doing a lot of that during Great Lent.
But before that, at the very start of the Gospel reading, Jesus warns His disciples
about what will (or won’t) happen if we forgive (or fail to forgive) others.
He tells them, “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will
forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father
forgive your trespasses.”
(Mt 6:14)
But then, Jesus puts an interesting twist on His lesson by beginning to speak of salvation
in geographic terms:
That we need to lay up our treasures, not in a place of corruption, but in God’s Kingdom.
Not here, but there.
He says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and
where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where
neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.”
(Mt 6:19-20)
That might sound familiar, because in the epistle, St Paul also speaks of salvation,
not as a thing we acquire, but (in a mystical sense) as a *place* we need to approach.
“Brethren, salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.”
(Romans 13:11)
So why are both Jesus and St Paul speaking about forgiveness in geographical terms?
As a place?
Well, the Greek word for forgiveness is “synchoresis;” which literally means “sharing the same
space.”
Salvation is a place that is nearer to us than when we first believed.
It’s a place we are called to live in together, a place for all of God’s children.
And we can only share that space through forgiveness.
The Kingdom of God is our shared and final destination.
It is, in this mystical sense, a place.
And to get to any place, you have to go on a journey.
Each of us is on a spiritual journey, working our way nearer and nearer to God and His Kingdom,
but it’s a place we’re meant to inhabit together.
And this journey is exactly what’s waiting for us during Great Lent: the fasting and
almsgiving Jesus talks about in the Gospel reading, the self-control and peace-making
that Paul is describing in his epistle.
The struggles that will form us, little by little, day after day, into Christians.
The steps, great and small, that will lead us to salvation and God’s Kingdom.
And yet, of all these steps, perhaps none is quite so difficult as the challenge to
forgive sins, to share a place with those we have wounded and those who have wounded
us.
Because we have to realize that we can’t journey to the Kingdom without our fellow
human beings.
In fact, Jesus tells us that, if we don’t forgive others, then we won’t be forgiven.
We can pray and fast and give alms and do all kinds of wonderful things ourselves, but
that won’t matter if we hold onto judgments and old resentments.
But it’s not a threat of punishment.
It’s not that God will be doing something bad to us: we’ll be doing something bad
to ourselves.
We’ll be like the Older Brother in episode 166: who did all the right things yet kept
himself out of the feast because he refused to forgive his prodigal brother.
We’ve seen this theme come up a lot the last few weeks.
We keep seeing that salvation isn’t just about us: it’s about the relationship between
us and our neighbors.
It’s about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, as we explored last week.
And it’s also about going easy on people.
Avoiding the judgment and condemnation that causes other people to stumble.
As St Paul says, “As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes
over opinions.
One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables.
Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment
on him who eats.”
(Rom 14:1-3)
After spending paragraph upon paragraph raising the bar for our own conduct, Paul suddenly
softens when he talks about our neighbor.
Because if we want to make it through the difficult journey to Pascha, we need to do
it together, as a Church, as one Body.
And the only way we can journey together is to remove the obstacles that stand between
us: to share the same space, rejoicing when others turn toward God and loving them when
they don’t.
To see the true potential in every human being.
That they are more than the grime of their sin but are capable of being clean windows
full of divine Light.
We do that, not by bringing people down, or trapping them in shame, or making their journey
to salvation harder than it already is.
But with forgiveness.
Remember, as we already heard St. Paul say, “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant
of another?
It is before his own master that he stands or falls.
And he will be upheld, for God is able to make him stand.”
(Romans 14:4)
God doesn’t want any of us to stumble.
He wants all of us to stand in the same place, united together in love through our shared
forgiveness.
He wants us all to be free to walk the path of righteousness and enter into salvation
and eternal life.
And we know what we need to do to make that happen.
We can’t be like the Pharisee condemning the Publican.
Or the Older Brother refusing to forgive the Prodigal Son.
If we refuse to forgive, then we are placing ourselves outside of this shared space.
We are locking ourselves out of the Feast that God has prepared for us in His Kingdom.
Which makes us very unlike God Himself.
As St. John Chrysostom says, “nothing makes us so like God, as our readiness to forgive
the wicked and wrongdoer.”
(Homily 19).
When we deny another person forgiveness we deny our own calling to be children of God,
called to be like our Father in Heaven.
When we deny another person forgiveness we lock ourselves out of God’s Kingdom where
the angels rejoice over the return of one lost sheep.
So on Sunday evening, stick around for Forgiveness Vespers: a special prayer service that officially
begins Great Lent.
You’ll get the opportunity to ask each and every person to forgive you, to set aside
your debts and trespasses and welcome you back into their hearts.
And perhaps even more importantly, you’ll be asked to forgive each and every person
in the community.
Your parents, your children, your siblings, your friends, your priest, that guy at coffee
hour who’s super annoying.
Because that is the real test for us on Forgiveness Sunday.
That is the real test for us in this life.
After all, it’s one thing to believe in the abstract notion of God’s forgiveness
or how we need to forgive one another.
It’s another thing when we have to stand face-to-face with someone who’s hurt us,
someone who’s deeply wounded us, someone who’s brought incredible darkness into our
lives.
Will we forgive as God forgives, or will we hold on to the sins of our brothers and sisters?
Will we allow the Church to be filled with the Light of Christ, or will we keep our windows
dirty?
So let's Be the Bee, by forgiving one another and sharing the space of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Be the bee and live Orthodoxy.
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I'll see you all, next week.
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