· Genesis 50:15-21
· Psalm 103:8-13 (8)
· Romans 14:1-12
· Matthew 18:21-35
Today our readings tell us about forgiveness; not so much the forgiveness of God, but the forgiveness of sinful men toward each other. The forgiveness of God is easy to get, because he gives it to us freely. God wants to forgive us. Even in the time before Christ, the psalmist writes of God's forgiveness. "He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. (...) As far as the east is from the west, so far he removes our transgressions from us." In the New Covenant, all God asks from us is our faith in him, and yet we know from the prophets that God forgave Israel even for its lack of faith. Peter doubted; Thomas doubted; but Jesus did not hold it against them. God can forgive even our lack of faith. So it is not the forgiveness of God that is hard to get, but the forgiveness of men.
In fact, men use God's forgiveness as an excuse for sin. Sometimes we say "I'm sinning, but oh well, God will forgive me." Some deliberately wallow in sin under the pretext of showing that they are saved by faith and not by works. We've found excuses to kill each other in the name of the God of forgiveness. Pope Urban II even managed to convince people that we can earn God's forgiveness by killing each other.
Humans do not like to forgive. I think this is why God sent us his Son as a sin offering. Did God need the death of his Son on the cross to be placated? No. He could have announced his forgiveness through a prophet, as he had done before. Instead he sent his Son, so that we could torture him and put him to death; not because God needs torture and sacrifice to be appeased, but because we do.
Now we have killed him, the Lamb of God. We have stripped his garments and flogged him with a metal-studded whip. We have put a crown of thorns on his head, mocked him and spit on him. We have laughed at him and nailed him to a cross by his hands and feet and left him there to suffocate slowly to death. We have given him sour wine when he was thirsty and dying. We, you and I, have done this, because our sinful nature demands vengeance, blood, pain and humiliation. Would God do this to the least among us? Never! Nor would he do it to his beloved Son. We, you and I, have done this, and we continue to do it, every time we do not forgive those who sin against us. For did not the Master say, "what you have done to the least among these, you have done to me?" If we give our brother a cup of water, we have given it to Christ, but if we swear at our enemy, we are putting the crown of thorns on Christ's head and spitting on him. If we visit our brother in prison, we are visiting Christ, but if we strike our enemy, we are flogging Christ himself.
Christ's torture and death is not God's revenge for our sins, but our own revenge against our brother who sins against us. Thus does the Lamb of God take away the sin of the world, because what we would do to our enemy, we have done to Christ already. Why then do we need revenge and hatred against our enemy? We are avenged already by Christ's torture and death. What more do we need? Is it not enough that we have killed the Lamb of God?
Thus God sent us his Son, not to buy his own forgiveness, which he gives to us freely, but to buy our own forgiveness of our brother's sin. And yet the man who best understood this did not call himself a Christian, but a Hindu who followed the teachings of Christ. He taught the people of India how to triumph through forgiveness. The United Press reported on the non-violent assault on the salt depot at Dharasana on May 21, 1930, as follows:
Slowly and in silence the throng commenced the half-mile march to the salt deposits... Suddenly, at a word of command, scores of native police rushed upon the advancing marchers and rained blows on their heads with their steel-shod lathis. Not one of the marchers raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like nine-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls... Then another column formed... They marched steadily with heads up... The police rushed out and methodically and mechanically beat down the second column... the blankets used as stretchers were sodden with blood.
Gandhi himself and most of his followers were Hindus, yet they were more Christ-like than most Christians. They did not retaliate against their enemies. They did not even defend themselves. The police were not charged with police brutality; the names of those who beat the defenseless marchers are not even remembered. Indeed the police were not the enemy, the British Raj, but fellow Indians, truly the marchers' own brothers. Thus through Christ-like meekness and forgiveness, a Hindu who followed Christ led Hindus, Muslims, Parsis and Christians to achieve what violence could not: freedom for India. A Hindu proved to the world the effectiveness of Christ's teaching. Surely we should be ashamed of ourselves, when we call ourselves disciples of Christ, and yet Hindus are better Christians than we are.
Many, perhaps most of us, do not have the strength to love our enemy. And we may think "Christ was Christ, but there is only so much I, a sinner, can do." Yet Gandhi was only a man, a lawyer and a Hindu at that, and he showed us how to forgive and love our enemy. We can say that Christ could love his enemies because he was God; but Gandhi proved that even sinful man can love his enemies.
If we do not have the strength to love our enemies, we must pray for God's help; but in the meantime we can at least stop propagating hatred and vengeance, if we remember that whatever we would do to our enemy, we have already done to Christ. Thus Christ bought not only God's forgiveness of our sins, which was easy, but an end to our hatred and vengeance, which is miraculous.
In memory of Gandhi, who was a better Christian than most of us, our hymn today is Lead Kindly Light, one of his favourite Christian hymns.
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