Community Parson: Forgiveness frees you

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Forgiveness frees you

Maundy Thursday; March 28, 2013

Exodus 12:1-14; Ps. 116

1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-7, 31b-35

Every year, this week in the spring is marked by an extraordinary full moon, the first full moon after the vernal equinox. You can feel the earth beginning to stretch after the long winter, sprouts bursting out of their bulbs, roots seeking out warmth and moisture. We, too, are part of nature, and respond to those urgings.

Usually, both the Jewish Passover and the Christian Holy Week coincide, as they do this year. On this night, we remember the Passover meal Jesus ate with his friends, a feast that was for Jesus, as for his friends, as for Jews all over the world, now and then, a feast of the renewal of spring, a feast of new hopes, that all will be fed, and all reconciled – that the world will be flung open at the coming of the Messiah.

At the heart of the Passover seder is the story of the Exodus, and a tiny portion of that story is our first reading. The Jews, oppressed into slavery in Egypt, free themselves, led by God and God’s servant, Moses – the beginning of the epic struggle which made them into the people of God, the people Israel. All seders celebrate this liberation – and many seders include the liberation of their captors, the Egyptians, as among the people whom God liberates. The Passover seder affirms that with God, all things are possible – even the unimaginable reconciliation of mortal enemies and combatants.

Desmond Tutu, who led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, has repeatedly said that the act of forgiveness frees the one who has been wronged. It is not about saying terrible things never happened, but that the one who forgives is now released from a state of victimhood, from the position of being chained to the perpetrator. Forgiveness frees you both, allows you to move on to a new place – not about forgetting but being able to move into a new future, a new life, a new hope.

In a few minutes we will engage in our own process of forgiveness and reconciliation – forgiving ourselves, perhaps, forgiving those we love, forgiving parts of our hearts that we cannot even name, that we cannot bring to the light. If you wish, come forward to the rail after the time of prayer to be assured of God’s love and forgiveness. For it was there at that last supper, at that seder of hope and new birth, that Jesus washed the feet of his friends, a sign of the love we should offer – of the love and forgiveness that frees us from our bondage to those who have done us wrong, that frees them from the darkness and hardness of heart that keeps them from us, and keeps all of us from reconciliation. Even on this dark night, in which the scripture itself reminds us of darkness and betrayal, Jesus sews within us the seeds of hope, which begins with his simple act of service and love.

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Missional church and the arts

What if we thought about church in another way, as "a small community that [moves] into a particular area (often one with a lot of deprivation and poverty) ... seeking to follow Christ but their focus is simply helping transform their community -- in arts, environment, in social needs, with youth and so on."

These are churches, as the English church missioner named Jonny Baker, "are not focused on growing big -- but more like the yeast of the kingdom that Jesus talked about infecting the wider batch of dough. ..." Such churches, Baker says, face "the challenge of weaning members off their addiction to consumer approaches to church where they get their fix of worship and teaching and meeting with friends before they could properly engage in this more local, outward-focused community approach (maybe we need a 12 step detox programme for leaving consumer church!?)"

We may benefit from thinking this way, as we explore how to connect our treasure, which is the Celebration of the Arts, into parts of the community that could use more art.

Thanks to the Patheos blog for sending this thought my way ...

"A prayer book even an atheist would love"

It does seem a teensy bit arrogant for a 21st century author to claim that he "edited" The Book of Common Prayer, but Brian Cummings seems to have added considerable value to familiar red book we find in our pews. In this 2011 volume (Oxford University Press), we can find the full texts of the 1549, 1559 and 1662 Prayer Books, along with introductions, explanations, notes and glossary. The review in the September 2012 issue of The Atlantic, gives the book a glowing recommendation -- both in its edited and "explained" form and in the original, which as the book upon which all prayer in our language is based "shaped the inner life and branded the tongue of the English-speaking peoples. Its phrases and rhythms did not merely enter the language. They largely defined the language. " Read more of the review here, and if you read it, let us know how you liked it!!

What I read - 2012

FINISHED:

At Simon's INSISTENCE I read The Hunger Games. Some parts I had to skim through, because the depictions of these young people fighting each other to the death was at times too gruesome, but it was overall well worth the read. NOW I have to get on with # 2 in the series

Dennis Lehane's A Given Day. Everything comes together in a slightly staged but effective way in 1919 Boston: anarchists, molasses, racism, repression and the Boston police strike. J. Edgar Hoover makes some unflattering cameos. I must say it is kind of Ragtime as it would be dramatized by Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg and Ben Affleck. It was in the days when you could tell what Boston block someone grew up on by the accent. The Irish don't come off all too well. Southie is a place to avoid in this prelude to The Depahted. It's good, though a little too graphically violent and written like a movie script. Let's just say Whitey Bulger came by his proclivities naturally.

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman

quite charming and lovely; a peek into the modest domestic life and extraordinary yearnings of a summer community of Orthodox Jews in the Catskills

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Also saw the Swedish version of the first book.

The reminders of domestic terror in the most intimate sense are deeply unsettling. The author reminds of the percentage of Swedish women who are abused, beaten, left for dead, even. It is an all-too-steady drumbeat beneath human society.

Meanwhile, I found a new collection of stories, that is easier to read before bed. I heard the most astounding story on Selected Shorts: "The Mappist" by Barry Lopez. You MUST read it. Before you know it, you are in another world, that shines the most wonderful light on this place we inhabit and how we live in it.

I had a brief flirtation with a few of Joyce Carol Oates short stories. Bracing. I am always on the look-out for her perceptive comments about upstate New York.

Done with Cheever, and LOVED it. Again. If you read nothing else, read "The Death of Justina." Then again, I also like, "Goodbye, My Brother." Cheever; the chronicler of a world falling apart.

This summer ...
Middlemarch by George Eliot. This wonderful story of the intertwined lives of villagers contains the requisite English characters of pompous rectors, impoverished strivers and beautiful young women. It's like reading Trollope: you'll find someone you know in Middlemarch.
and
The Collected Stories of John Cheever. A perennial favorite. Poignant stories of families in mid-century middle America. Reading it again is a bit like Mad Men, where you are glued, almost in horror, at the train wreck you know is about to happen in these people's lives.

Responding to the Unspeakable

The shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, in the days right before Christmas, with the deaths of small children and the people trying to protect them, wrench our hearts like nothing else. However we respond to this tragedy -- with silence, with weeping, with anger, with resolve to work so that something like this will never happen again -- all of our reactions are understandable. We need ways to regain our footing and imagine how we will live in the world as it is now, in this world in which we experience yet more grief and sadness.

On Sunday, December 16, the Prayers of the People at St. David's Church were in the words of parishioners and preachers, some from the very day of the tragedy. Find the text of those prayers on our Forming Disciples blog.