Sunday 17th June 2007TRINITY II

Fr David Cherry

II  Samuel  11 : 26  -   12 : 10 & 13 – 15; Galatians  2  :  15 – 21 ; Luke  7 : 36  -  8 : 3

“Look not on our sin, but on the faith of thy Church and grant us the peace and unity of thy kingdom….”  - words from the prayer before the Peace in the Communion Rite. 

First love and thanksgiving which brings confidence and peace, a sense of perspective; and then – only then - what is wrong, asking release : forgiveness.

Sin and forgiveness.  I wonder what you feel when you hear those words.  Most of us wonder what to think.   But, what do you feel?

At College of the Resurrection, Mirfield, where I trained for the priesthood, we would be terrified by one father who preached about sin, its hideous ghastly consequences spelt out in an uncompromising tone.  We all used to imitate Bishop Anselm CR who, one morning, announced in Churchillian tones:  “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

There are two ways of ‘doing’ sin and forgiveness.  One is as a spectator.  We’re rather good on the sin of others: politicians and their short-comings, the government, the heinous crimes of nations.  

But we’re becoming more and more conscious of sin against our environment, God’s Creation.  It’s coming closer to us.  There’s a growing sense of how we all contribute to this sin; and a growing sense of the responsibility, our need to co-operate in being good stewards, seeing ourselves as part of Creation rather than consumers of it.

And this takes us from the place of spectators, the place that David occupies in the first lesson and the Pharisee in the Gospel, the place of ‘loving little’ because one is so oblivious to one’s own need for forgiveness; it takes us from the place of spectators to a relational place of finding oneself IN the dynamic ourselves, caught up in it, being delivered from it.

It is into this relational place – where we see ourselves in relationship with others and with all Creation – that God himself came in Jesus Christ.  Out of his love for us, God came and dwelt among us – as we commemorate in the Angelus at the end of Mass.  In relationship with us, God suffered the sin of the world – its rivalry, competition and ultimate violence.

Rowan Williams says in one of his books that only those who suffer can forgive those who perpetrated crimes against them. A discarnate God has no right to forgive anyone: only a Jew can forgive those who caused or were complicit in his or her suffering in the Sho’ah.    

Our God is not a spectator pronouncing on the deficiencies of his creatures as the Pharisee does and as we might do.  Neither is our God a God who forgives from on high.  He has come to occupy and show his presence in this relational dynamic between humans; and between humans and all other matter. And he is the Victim of sin.  As Victim he is also our High Priest of a new religion.  Not a religion of Law and obedience – as St Paul is explaining to the Galatians in the epistle, but of a New Covenant – a relational covenant of love.

What is sin then? The words sin comes from ‘sunder’ : that which tears us apart, separates, ‘rents asunder’.   Sin is all that separates us from living in this relational space in Communion with others; all that snarls us up and prevents our freedom to love.  And although we are snarled up by jealousy and rivalry, although love is to some extent immobilised in us, God has bound himself by an everlasting Covenant as he did to Noah and his descendants.

We are not told how the woman in the gospel broke the law.  We can only guess; and we can assume all the degradation of her culture against her womanhood piled on top of it.  But the presence of Christ, his love ‘has broken every barrier down’ - as the hymn says; released her from her many sins and the indignities she suffered.  Her tears are not to win forgiveness, but the evidence that God’s love in Christ has set her free to worship him: they are tears of joyful penance.  All that Jesus says is to confirm what has already been experienced by her:  “Her sins have been forgiven … look, you can seen how much she loves”

Someone once wrote: as soon as God sees our sins he hides them behind his back.  It is we that need to see them, and not God.  And God is so gracious he only lets us as much as we can bear.

How to experience forgiveness is first to experience God’s love for you.
A children’s book I’ve bought for my two nieces in South Africa tells us how:  It’s about Heart Bread; and the back cover reads:
“Heart-bread is not made from flour.  It is made from memories of love.  Heart bread is not made in an oven.  It is made in your heart,.  It neer gets used up, and the more you let heart-bread feed you, the more you have.  Children can make heart-bread every night by asking themselves two questions: “What was my favourite time today?”
“What was my least favourite time today?”

Perhaps a more adult way of asking these questions :
Where did I experience receiving and giving of love today?   - And give thanks.
Where did I feel disturbed and troubled today?  And ask God’s grace and mercy.

First love and thanksgiving which brings confidence and peace, a sense of perspective; and then – only then - what is wrong, asking release : forgiveness.

Forgiveness for sin is the royal gateway to coming into relationship with God and one another.   He is with us, this same Lord as we celebrated at Corpus Christi, present in his Word and present in his Body and Blood.  From his presence, peace proceeds towards us as it did to that woman in the Gospel.  “Here I am.” says Jesus.  “You have heard my words, and noticed my loving gestures towards you in the Gospel. Here I am giving you my very self, my Body and Blood.”

So here we come to Holy Communion so that our relationship with God and our relationships with others can be restored in us, so that what is rent asunder is healed.  And kneeling in his presence, in company with that woman at his feet, with David and the Pharisee and with all who will allow their hearts to be broken open to discover the Communion of God’s life, we pray:  
“Look not on our sin, but on the faith of thy Church and grant us (bring about in us) the peace and unity of thy kingdom where thou livest and reignest for ever and ever.  Amen”