"Forgiveness liberates the soul"

"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us," we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. Or debts or sins in some versions. We usually translate Matthew’s original text as “debts,” but they follow up the prayer with a bit about forgiving others their “trespasses.” Those all can mean different things and, at times, we’ve made a point of trying to clarify exactly what’s being forgiven but, frankly, it ought to include all of them. Forgiveness ought to be whole. Let's stick with the action part for now, though, the forgiving.

I think this should remind us that the action of forgiveness flows to, and from, us, that we can forgive because we are already forgiven. If we're asking God to forgive like we do, we're definitely in trouble because we’re not very good at it. So I think Jesus wants us to know that the power of forgiveness is in us, literally to give, because God's grace is for all and is freely given. We pray that we might know that strength and use it just as freely. That’s why it’s a petition and not just a statement.

We should know, then, that forgiveness isn't conditional on repentance, changed behaviour, changed circumstance or retribution. Forgiveness is, most importantly, freely given. It is not about the response, but the giving. The freedom it offers, the wholeness it extends, comes first to the forgiver and from there opens the opportunity for reconciliation and relationship. Nelson Mandela always talked about how, when he was finally released from prison, he needed to leave the bitterness and hatred behind or he’d still be in prison. “Forgiveness liberates the soul, it removes fear,” he said.

That's why we should never "forgive and forget" or, sorry Elsa, “let it go." Forgive and remember. Remember that forgiveness was given and that the experience - all of it - has become part of our life and can inform our living.

Forgiveness is hard, yes it is. It is one thing to talk about, but a different thing entirely when you are faced with doing it.  "Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive," C. S. Lewis wrote.  And yet, Jesus calls us to live into our being "created in the image of God."  Within us is the power to forgive, unconditionally, and free ourselves from the bonds of unforgiving, of blame, anger and hate.

I don’t recall Jesus ever saying it was going to be easy, only that it would be rewarding. Truly, deeply, wholly rewarding.

Daily Bread

Do you like bread? I like bread. Probably too much. I like a good sandwich, especially a simple cheese and lettuce. Or a grilled cheese. You don’t want to add too much because it takes away from the bread and that’s the most important part. I like a good whole wheat especially. You just can't beat a freshly baked loaf of whole wheat, fresh from the oven.  It's practically a comfort food.

How lucky some of us are to be able to think of bread that way, with an appreciation, a sense of thankfulness for something abundant, enjoyed abundantly.

But not everyone gets to see it that way. Many in the world wonder if there will be any food at all on their table today. Their daily experience isn't abundance, it's survival. I bet the first century listeners hearing Jesus pray "give us this day our daily bread" would have felt that way, too. Their's would be less likely a prayer of thankfulness they knew would be fulfilled, but rather a prayer of desperation and an intense longing for the security of "daily" bread.

I think these would also have been people who understood "daily bread" with the unique perspective of the exodus experience. Hungry in the wilderness, God fed those freed from slavery in Egypt with manna, bread from heaven (Exodus 16:1-36). This bread came daily and "morning by morning they gathered it, as much as each needed," and only what they needed for each day. Any they tried to save went rotten, except on the sixth day when they collected enough for the sabbath also.

So God provides what nourishment was needed. There was enough for each according to their need, no more and no less, and those who could not gather were provided for by those who could. So the story reminds us what's important: according to our need, that we are all equal in need and that our participation is required.

Yes, our participation is required. We still have to gather and share. We still have to be good stewards of the creation that feeds us. And all of that can be challenging and worrisome, especially in today’s world.

Remember how Jesus tells the people not to worry about food and clothing, because God will provide it, just as for the birds in the air and the lilies in the field? (Matt. 6:25-34) They are provided for, according to their need, but they still have to participate, they still have to do work. They still do what birds do and flowers do, they do what each part of creation does, by being what it is meant to be. We are a part of that creation.

And what is our “work?” What are we meant to be? Perhaps we can learn that in another way in which we are fed our daily bread. In John’s gospel, Jesus describes himself as the Bread of Life. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry,” he says (John 6:35) This isn’t only spiritual nourishment, but the life of Jesus, himself, which shows us how to live into what we are meant to be. It’s a life that shows us how to live with ourselves, with each other and with creation in a relationship that feeds us all. The wholeness of that relationship is our daily bread, food for body, mind and spirit. 

In this heavenly kingdom

There's more than a few wonderful moments in the classic movie 'Field of Dreams,' based on the equally classic book 'Shoeless Joe' by W.P. Kinsella. If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, you should. There’s a lot more to it, but, essentially, Ray, a corn farmer in Iowa, hears a voice tell him “if you build it he will come” and is inspired to plow under part of his field and put up a baseball diamond. Long dead players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, come to play there and Ray’s father, who he never really knew, is one of the players. One of my favourite moments is when Ray meets him.

His dad asks, "is this heaven?" and Ray answers "it's Iowa." His dad ponders that and says "I could have sworn it was heaven." "Is there a heaven?" Ray asks and his dad says, with certainty, "oh yeah, it's where dreams come true."  Ray looks around at his family, his home and the land that he loves, he looks at the baseball diamond that has brought him healing with this father and, finally, wholeness in his life, and he says "maybe this is heaven."

Yes, Ray, yes it is.

I think this is what Jesus means when he says “heaven is near.” I think it’s also what Jesus means when he prays “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” It’s an affirmation of what is, not something we’re asking for or that we hope will one day be. This kingdom isn't in the next life or the kingdom promised with Jesus' return or the New Jerusalem of Revelation. It's now.

I think God’s “will” isn’t about a divine plan or about power or authority. It’s not what God wants, but what God is: love. It’s grace and compassion, kindness, justice and peace. It’s serving our neighbours and caring for the earth. It’s a whole and true relationship with all creation. Sure, I know that sounds big, general and idealistic, but it’s all there in the stories of Jesus’ life and those who live as Jesus. It’s the kingdom Jesus lived. It’s the kingdom Jesus said was so near because it’s already here, if we can only grasp it, engage it and live into it as Jesus did.

 Perhaps one of the difficulties we have is the very language Jesus seems to use in those stories, speaking of the kingdom, of God's will. It’s language that sounds hierarchical and about the power of God over us, rather than with us and in us. But that’s where God is, among us in Jesus, within us and in all creation around us. What's needed is our participation, our engagement of it. We pray "on earth, as it is in heaven" as if God - and all the love and grace that is God - is something that belongs in that other heaven and is somehow foreign to earth. As if, at best, it needs to come in here from outside somewhere, somewhere on the other side.

I believe the heaven Jesus talks about “on earth” is what Ray sees. It’s not like his life has been easy, it hasn’t. In the story, he had no relationship with his father. He’s struggling with the farm. And farming’s hard work, so is a family and building a home. There’s no suggestion that it’s easy. But when he looks around at where he is, how his life is, I think he sees the heaven that Jesus is telling us is right here: a heaven he’s part of.

The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us

Did you learn how to recite The Lord’s Prayer when you were little? Back in the day (maybe even still today, in some places), The Lord’s Prayer was the first thing you memorized in Sunday School. Or Confirmation class. Or even in school. It was pretty much everywhere.

I remember memorizing it in Sunday School, along with the classics: the Ten Commandments, The 23rd Psalm and The Beatitudes. There were probably others, but those I still remember. Mostly. I'm pretty sure I could recite the Lord’s Prayer from memory when I was five or six. With some interesting pronunciation, probably. Words like "hallowed," "forgive," "trespasses" and "temptation" are a challenge for a little person to get their tongue around. Seems ironic that those are also the words that adults often have trouble with understanding. The meaning, at least.

That’s the thing: the meaning. I remember memorizing the words long before I understood what they meant. It was even longer still before I started to wonder about them and how I might be living them.

Anyway, that was a long time ago. These days, one can’t always assume that people know it. That may not be such a bad thing: new things can be fresh. And there's newer translations that might be better to understand than the old thees, thous and thines.

That's the thing about The Lord's Prayer: the balance between what it means to us as a piece of our ritual heritage and what it has to say to us.

For many, the meaning of the prayer isn't just the words, but the connection to our sense of community. We all say it together. It's the one thing so many know together, that's common to different traditions and denominations. If we know it, that is. Imagine how you might feel if it’s assumed you know it from memory and you don’t. While everyone else is reciting it from memory, wouldn’t you feel left out? So much for belonging.

Note to self: if you’re going to use it, make sure that The Lord’s Prayer is always printed where everyone can see it.

I do love that community aspect of it. And to me, it's like a treasured hymn or song that we all know, but we might know slightly different words or variations of the tune, and that’s okay. We can still share in it all together and have our own distinctiveness.  You, instead of thy, or maybe even mother or parent, instead of father.

I think that's all good. I'm not convinced that The Lords' Prayer was meant to be a set prayer. It might have been an example of how to pray, rather than "The One Prayer." I also don’t think it was meant to be just a community prayer. I think it was meant to be a personal prayer, too. More importantly, I think it bridges both. Jesus, I always remind myself, wasn’t an either/or kind of guy, but an and/with one.

This prayer is personal, this prayer is communal, this prayer is shared.  In 'Speaking Christian,' the late theologian Marcus Borg wrote that "the Lord's Prayer is a summary of what mattered most to Jesus.  When we pray this prayer, we are praying for what he was passionate about … we are praying for what God is passionate about.  We are praying for God's dream for the world.  To pray this prayer is to be invited, enlisted, into participation in God's passion and the passion of Jesus." We are invited, enlisted, together.

Finding Fullness

There’s two big fish stories in the gospels.

Just before Jesus calls the fishermen to be his first disciples, Luke says that they hadn’t caught anything that day. Jesus sends them out to “the deep water” and they catch full nets of fish. Then Jesus tells them to come with him and they’ll fish for people together.

The other one’s in John and it’s right at the very end of the gospel. After the resurrection story and Jesus’ encounter with Thomas, the author of John seems to wrap things up with a closing paragraph that sounds very much like “The End.” Except it isn’t. There’s another chapter. In that chapter, the disciples have gone back to fishing. They’ve worked hard all night and not caught anything, when a figure appears on the shore and tells them to fish “from the other side of the boat.” They do and catch a ridiculous abundance of fish. One of them recognizes Jesus, they end up on the shore having a meal with Jesus, he talks to Peter and sends them on their way. And that’s the end. It’s as if the author of John thought they needed an epilogue, a little something more about what could happen next.

I like both these fish stories because I think that’s what they’re about: what happens next.

For Luke, what happens next is that four fishermen are inspired to leave their boats behind and follow Jesus. I wonder if the fish story here isn’t meant to foreshadow what was happening next: they go “deep” with Jesus and find abundant life. 

In John, the disciples have already experienced life with Jesus. They’ve also experienced the trauma of his arrest, the grief of his death and the wonder of the resurrection. And, after all that, Jesus tells them “as the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” It’s been a whirlwind. And then there’s that first ending.

But I wonder if the author of John then thought, “after all that, what would the disciples do? Would they go and do as Jesus said? Would they even know how? Or would they, after all that has happened, be looking for a little normalcy in their lives? Ordinary, frail human beings, perhaps they would want to find something familiar and comfortable, something they know with certainty. Like fishing. And so they do. And what does it bring? Nothing. They fish all night and catch nothing. Because you can’t go back.

Then, Jesus appears again and tells them to try something different, to turn another way, to some nothing new, something opposite what they know, opposite what’s familiar and comfortable. And then they find what they’re looking for: a way forward.

One tells a story of finding abundant life in following Jesus and learning how to love, to go deep into the self and the spirit, the other of finding abundant life in living that love into the world. Both offer life-giving experience that comes from being open to something different and willing to step fully into it. Into the deep or to the other side, wherever we go, Jesus goes with us and we go forward.

Stepping Out

Author Douglas Adams always had a unique and quirky way of looking at the world. His work is a source of many pop culture references, including this interesting observation about the ability of human beings to fly: "there is an art to flying, or rather a knack.  Its knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss. … Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties."

Sure, that probably sounds silly. At first. But think about it for a moment. If it were at all possible to throw yourself at the ground and miss, you would be airborne. It’s true. There’s a couple of things in the way, of course, like the ground itself. It’s big and hard to avoid. And then there’s gravity. But, if you could do it - miss the ground, I mean - you would indeed be flying. It’d be a miracle.

The story of Jesus walking on water is a similar kind of miracle. It defies the laws of physics and ought not to be possible. Not the way magicians or illusionists might do it, of course, I mean the real thing. It just isn’t scientifically possible. It must be a miracle, one that demonstrates Jesus’ power over nature, the power of God. The disciples knew it: “and those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “truly you are the Son of God” (Matt. 14:33). And that’s how we might see the story, too, as a miracle of Jesus. The only one to be able to walk on water.

Except he isn’t. Not, at least, according to Matthew.

While the story appears in Luke and John as well, Matthew adds a twist. The story’s a simple enough miracle. The disciples have gone ahead on the lake in a boat while Jesus takes some personal time. A storm comes up and Jesus sees they’re in trouble so he walks out on the water to save them. 

But Matthew adds that, as Jesus approached them, they didn’t recognize Jesus at first. Peter, realizing it’s Jesus says “if it’s really you, tell me to walk on the water with you.” Jesus says come and join me and Peter steps out of the boat. And walks on the water. Peter is walking on the water, too. At first. But then Peter sees the wind and the sea and the storm and he’s afraid and then he begins to sink. He calls out to Jesus to save him, Jesus does and then - only then - Jesus says “you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matt. 14: 31).

Yes, it could be a miracle story displaying Jesus’ divine power of nature. But what if Matthew thought it was something more, something about us? What if Matthew told it as a myth story, one that, like all myths, has a fundamental truth at its core, even if the narrative itself might not have really happened?

What if Jesus comment about faith and doubt wasn’t a criticism or a disappointment, but a compliment and an encouragement? What if Jesus meant “look, Peter, see what you could do with even a little faith? It was only when you began to doubt yourself that you began to sink.” What if Jesus called Peter out of the boat because he knew Peter wasn’t in any danger? What if he knew Peter could do it?

What if the core truth of this story isn’t the miracle of Jesus’ uniqueness, but the miracle of Jesus showing us, once again, what we are capable of: that we too are both human and divine, and we are capable of everything Jesus shows us. The divinity and the humanity, the love and the grace, the justice and the compassion, all these are within us, too. What keeps us from being just like Jesus is our fear.

A Moment on a Journey

There’s a familiar story told in three of the four gospels about Jesus and a storm at sea. Mark tells it like this. It’s the end of a long day. Jesus wants to cross to the other side of the lake so says to the disciples, let’s go. The head out onto the lake and Jesus falls asleep in the back of the boat. A fierce storm comes up and the boat and its occupants are overwhelmed. They wake up Jesus, feeling like the end is near, and Jesus gets up, commands the storm to cease and it does. He asks them “why are you afraid? Don’t you have any faith?” They’re amazed and wonder who this could be, that nature obeys him.

I can recall many, many sermons and bible studies that suggest two approaches to this story. 

The first is that it’s simply a miracle story that displays the power of God present in Jesus. The story is a real narrative in which Jesus demonstrates his power, even over nature. The answer to the question “who is this?” is clear: Jesus is divine and the power of God is in him, the same power that was present in stories of Hebrew scripture, even back to the very beginning. The spirit of God moved over the waters in the creation story.

I’d be happier if it was less about Jesus power over nature and more about his relationship with nature, but I can see how meaningful this is as a story of the miracle tradition. It demonstrates Jesus divine power saving us when we are in need. It’s one interpretation. 

Another is that the story’s a parable. Whether it really happened this way or not is less important than the metaphor that in the storms of life, we turn to Jesus who is there for us. In those moments in our lives when we are most in need, Jesus is there. It may seem like we are adrift, but Jesus is there. If only we will reach out to him, we will be saved.

A meaningful interpretation, again emphasizing Jesus’ power to save us from the events in our lives that bring fear and trouble. It again offers rescue, this time from the storms that can come up in our daily lives. It’s one interpretation.

Both those understandings of the story emphasize our calling out to Jesus in the moment, the moment of fear when we should have faith. It would be a good time to remember how often Jesus said “don’t be afraid.” And that he meant, it’s okay to be scared, just remember that you’re not alone. God is with you. But what if we looked at the bigger picture, including asking how we got to this moment in the first place.

Jesus asks the disciples to come with him in the boat. Experienced fishermen agreed to get in a boat at night after a long day. No one wondered if there might be a storm. No one suggested waiting until morning. The same people who left their boats to follow Jesus, now follow him back into a boat when they might well have paused and asked questions. But they didn’t. They trusted and got in and off they went. They took the first step - again - and began a journey with Jesus, trusting in his presence.

Jesus’ eagerness to get to “the other side” might also be about the hope that Jesus offers as we journey. We might not know what’s ahead, but we step out with trust and hope.

And God goes with us, together. The storm is just a moment in a larger journey. What if it wasn’t the storm that was stilled, but our fear so that we may engage the storm and make our way through it? What if the questions about fear and faith were simply a reminder that we are journeying together and that, whatever storms or brief squalls or rain or sun or calm seas, we are not alone, even if it seems someone’s asleep at the wheel? Or rudder? What if the wonder at Jesus was the beginning of getting to know him? What if the question here isn’t about faith in what God will do to save us, but rather what we will do together, with God in our lives?