Receiving Forgiveness

Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt
and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance;
Who does not persist in anger forever,
but delights rather in clemency,
And will again have compassion on us,
treading underfoot our guilt?
You will cast into the depths of the sea all our sins
Mi 7:18-20, from today's readings

Today's Gospel reading contains what is in my humble opinion the greatest and perhaps longest of Jesus' many parables. It is the greatest because:

• It so vividly portrays the love of God for us in human terms
• It's characters are vividly drawn with an extreme economy of words
• Like all great literature, it operates on multiple levels
• Its lessons are timeless

I've heard this parable many times as Mass of course, when you hear it all at once as a story, in which context its lesson seems singular and obvious. But it is a rich and detailed story. To get the full impact, it helps to break it down into chapters:

Chapter 1 -- Context

Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus,
but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying,
"This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."

All week long Jesus has been cracking on the Pharisees, his favorite fall guys. This chapter encapsulates both their big beef with Jesus and their fundamental sin. They believe in justification through their works (adherence to the law) while Jesus preaches justification by faith and conversion of the heart. The tax collectors and sinners get it. The Pharisees do not. So Jesus tells them the story.

Chapter 2 -- The Insult

'Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.'

To get the full impact of the story, you have to understand just how deeply the younger son insulted and disrespected his father. He is basically saying, "You have no value to me as a human being, except as a vehicle to provide me with the things that I value. Your fatherhood is worthless. I wish you were dead, because then I would get what's coming to me."

Chapter 3 -- High Times

(He) set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.

Not only did he take his inheritance from his father prematurely, he then wasted it in further sin.

Chapter 4 -- Reversal of Fortune

When he had freely spent everything,
a severe famine struck that country,
and he found himself in dire need.
So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens
who sent him to his farm to tend the swine.

For the Jews of Jesus' audience, to fall so low as to tend swine was an unimaginable disgrace, for pigs are considered unclean. This son was actually desperate to eat what the pigs ate.

Chapter 5 -- Realization and Remorse

Coming to his senses he thought,
'How many of my father's hired workers
have more than enough food to eat,
but here am I, dying from hunger.
I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him,
"Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.
I no longer deserve to be called your son;
treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.'"

Here is the moment of grace when the son realizes what he has done and begins his conversion of heart.

Chapter 6 -- The Eternal Love of the Father

While he was still a long way off,
his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.
He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.

Think about the meaning of "while he was still a long way off." After all the son has done, the second that the father first sees him trying to return, "he ran to his son." So much does the father love his son and miss him that at the first sign of his return he runs to meet him.

This is perhaps the most poignant moment of the story. In my mind I see the son trudging wearily up the dusty road. He is pale, thin, shoeless and dressed in rags, and bone-tired from carrying his immense sin alone along this long and difficult road for so many days. His father, with the classic white hair and flowing beard of all biblical fathers, sees him in the distance and instantly recognizes him. All this time he has never stopped thinking of him, never for one second stopped loving him. The realization of their impending reunion takes his breath away, and without thinking or a moment's hesitation he begins to run as fast as his old legs will carry him to the reunion he has longed for all this time.

Chapter 7 -- Confession

'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you;
I no longer deserve to be called your son.'

The son recites the confession he has no doubt practiced a thousand times on his long journey home. It reminds me of trying to do an examination of conscience as a kid preparing to go to "confession", as the Sacrament of Reconciliation used to be called. As rote as it may sound, though, the father understands how deeply the son regrets his actions.

Chapter 8 -- Restoration of Sonship
"Then let us celebrate with a feast,
because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again;
he was lost, and has been found."

Here is the most accessible and obvious lesson -- reconciliation with God is a resurrection of sorts. Our death in sin becomes resurrection and new life through the love of the Father and the death and resurrection of Christ. We see the same lesson in the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

Chapter 9 -- Resentment of the Obedient Elder Son

'Look, all these years I served you
and not once did I disobey your orders;
yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.
But when your son returns
who swallowed up your property with prostitutes,
for him you slaughter the fattened calf.'

This is all too much for the older brother, who has worked hard for the father all the time his little brother was living it up. In fact, he probably had to work even harder because of the loss of his brother. He resents his father's leniency toward the younger son and refuses to join the celebration.

In a sense, he now commits a sin similar to his brother's. He rejects his father, his father's love and his father's values. It does not occur to him that the same kindness and mercy are available to him, and that in fact his father's love has already been lavished upon him.

Chapter 10 -- Resolution and Explanation of the Father

'My son, you are here with me always;
everything I have is yours.
But now we must celebrate and rejoice,
because your brother was dead and has come to life again;
he was lost and has been found.'"

This final lesson is not only for us, but for the Pharisees as well, and in the final summation Jesus puts an exclamation point on his explanation of why he dines with sinners and tax collectors.

This particular parable has always resonated deeply with me, and for literally decades I did not know why. Then during a particularly dark time in my life, my therapist/mentor/counselor/novelist/friend Marilyn showed me a passage from the book The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen:

One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God's forgiveness. There is something in us humans that keeps us clinging to our sins and prevents us from letting God erase our past and offer us a completely new beginning. Sometimes it seems as though I want to prove to God that my darkness is too great to overcome. While God wants to restore me to the full dignity of sonship, I keep insisting that I will settle for being a hired servant. But do I want to be restored to the full responsibility of the son? Do I truly want to be so totally forgiven that a totally new way of living becomes possible? Do I trust myself with such a radical reclamation? Do I want to break away from my deep-rooted rebellion against God and surrender myself so absolutely to God's love that a new person can emerge? Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing. As long as I want to do even a part of that myself, I end up with partial solutions, such as becoming a hired servant. As a hired servant, I can still keep my distance, still revolt, reject, strike, run away, or complain about my pay. As the beloved son, I have to claim my full dignity and begin preparing myself to become the father.

Fr. Louie has also said to me on multiple occasions that for many people receiving forgiveness is so very much harder than asking for it. One stumbling block is that in order to receive forgiveness from others, including God, we also have to be prepared to forgive ourselves. We have to let go of the past, because God is the God of the present. Another stumbling block is that receiving forgiveness requires a commitment to change -- to walk away from the life and actions and thought patterns that led to the sin in the first place. We don't trust ourselves to change, and rightfully so. We can't do it, we can only allow God to do it for us.

As we roll into the second half of Lent, our challenge is not only ask forgiveness, but to accept it as well, and in doing so to allow God to change us into something completely new.

Happy Birthday Dan

Fond wishes for a happy birthday go out to my son Dan who turns 20 today. It's hard to believe he's already 20, and that his brothers Alex and Jesse are 21 and 24, respectively. One of the greatest joys in my life is to see the three of them together, how much they love each other and enjoy each other's company. This scenario was pretty hard to imagine, say, 15 years ago when they were pummeling the daylights out of each other. But I guess most brothers grow out of that kind of competition -- even mine did. ;-)

Joseph, the subject of today's Old Testament reading, was not so lucky. Because his father had shown special favor for Joseph, his brothers became jealous and plotted to kill him. Lacking the nerve to murder their own flesh and blood, they threw him in a cistern. Then after enjoying a nice lunch together and admiring their handiwork, they decided they could turn a profit by selling him to a passing caravan of Ishmaelites. Good thing there were no Ishmaelite caravans passing by when my boys were younger...but I digress.

As we all know from Sunday School, religion class, or vacation Bible school, through God's favor Joseph went on to become the Pharaoh's right-hand-man. Through his position of power he then showed his brothers incredible mercy and forgiveness when they were most vulnerable.

In one sense, Israel's special love for Joseph was almost Joseph's undoing, as it aroused jealousy in his brothers. Probably at one time or another every child deals with the perceived favoritism of one or both parents. Likewise parents (including me) agonize about even the perception of favoritism among their children.

We raise our children for a long time, and the relationships among all the family members are in a constant state of flux. In my relationships with my sons, my connections to each are different in terms of interests, experiences we've shared, and all the emotions that go with them. The strength, quality, and intensity of each relationship changes over time, as it does between every pair of humans. And in Israel's defense, it could be that at the time today's story unfolds, his relationship with Joseph was at a particularly intense and positive stage. Maybe in time, say if Joseph had gone out with his friends and wrecked the family chariot, the nature of the relationship might have changed, but we'll never know.

My relationship with Dan reached a particularly intense and positive stage this time last year when we traveled to Honduras together on a Habitat build trip. We worked together, ate together, roomed together, and shared our lives with each other at a deeper level than we had before. I've had similar, but not the same, experiences with Alex and Jesse, and I hope to again with each of them. But Honduras last year was special for Dan and I.

And as it turned out, Dan's birthday fell right in the middle of the trip. I know he had accepted the fact that he wouldn't be celebrating a "normal" birthday, but I don't know what, if anything he expected. We arranged to have dinner that night at Weekend's Pizza in Santa Rosa, which is an oddly excellent pizza joint in Santa Rosa de Copan -- you just don't expect great pizza in Honduras, OK? Margaret Rubiera, God bless her, arranged to have a surprise birthday cake -- Tres Leches cake -- brought out after dinner with candles and the whole thing. What a great surprise it was, especially when it turned out the lady who served the cake was a Habitat homeowner we had visited the previous year.

Dan, I don't see any surprise Tres Leches cake in your future, but I hope you have a wonderful 20th birthday just the same!

Love,

Dad

Trust

At the end of June, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales will be leaving St. Paul's and leaving the staffing of the parish with priests to the Diocese of Charlotte. It is an emotional time of transition, and one of fear and anxiety for some, as we have not faced a change like this in a long time. The parish has been staffed by order priests for its first 35 years, first the Paulists, then the Oblates. This is a step into the unknown.

Last night we had a meeting of the Parish Pastoral Council to discuss the transition. We honestly shared our thoughts and feelings, fears and doubts, and tried our best to discern what our role as a Council should be in this transition. Two people who said they had a conflict changed their plans and came anyway. The mood was thoughtful, loving, trusting, brutally honest, forgiving. There was and is such a love among us for this community and what it means to each of us, for the essence of St. Paul's parish that transcends priestly and lay leadership, and for the faith that binds us all together.

The Holy Spirit was with us, and through the Spirit it was our finest hour, not because of anything we did or said, but because in the end we decided to take the Lord by the hand and let Him lead us through this. That is what God is calling us to do through the prophet Jeremiah in today's readings:

Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose hope is the LORD.
He is like a tree planted beside the waters
that stretches out its roots to the stream:
It fears not the heat when it comes,
its leaves stay green;
In the year of drought it shows no distress,
but still bears fruit.
More tortuous than all else is the human heart,
beyond remedy; who can understand it?
I, the LORD, alone probe the mind
and test the heart,
To reward everyone according to his ways,
according to the merit of his deeds.

Our parish has been through a lot over the past ten years, including the removal of a beloved pastor due to accusations of sexual abuse and a severe financial crisis. I don't need to recount all the particulars, as they are all part of a past we can't change. Over that time we watched our numbers wither by a quarter or even a third.

But we have also watched a miracle take hold. Our finances bounced back, and in spite of the strains of the recession are still better than they were. Our numbers have bounced back. There is a renewed sense of who we are as a community, and the role we play in the larger community of Greensboro.

As so often happens when we trust the Lord, our trials have become a beautiful gift. Because I believe we now see that our faith community at St. Paul's is much more than our priestly leadership, more than the homily on Sunday or even the Mass itself. We are here for each other, and we are here for others we don't even know -- the homeless who stay in our church as part of the Greensboro Interfaith Hospitality Network, the Muslim family whose house we helped build through Habitat for Humanity and the people whose houses we'll work on in Honduras, the people of our sister parish in Ecuador, and the people who come through our doors every day to find help to get through these hard times.

God knows I am not saying this to thump my chest with pride, because we still have a lot of work to do and potentially tough times ahead. But adversity has forged us into a stronger community, and for that I am grateful to God.

Humble Pie

My apologies that this post is going up a little after the fact and refers to the readings for Tuesday and Wednesday. I'll have some thoughts out later about today's readings.
*****

Tuesday's Gospel contains one of Jesus' many tirades against the hypocrisy and pride of the scribes and the Pharisees. It's extraordinary how vehement Jesus is in His criticisms of the Pharisees in so many places, and yet how gentle and non-judgmental he is with more "ordinary" sinners like prostitutes, tax collectors, and adulterers. The pride and hypocrisy of the Pharisees seems so much more offensive to Jesus than the greed and sexual sins of the people. Why is that?

In a way the Pharisees have presumed to take on God's role as ultimate judge of human behavior, and in a sense their behavior is a form of blasphemy. To make matters worse, their pride and hypocrisy shows that they have lost the healthy sense of who they really are -- creation rather than Creator, and that they are utterly lacking in authenticity and humility.

Wednesday's reading builds on this theme. In the first part, Jesus describes the ultimate act of service he is about to perform:

"Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem,
and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests
and the scribes,
and they will condemn him to death,
and hand him over to the Gentiles
to be mocked and scourged and crucified,
and he will be raised on the third day."

Soon he will give up everything in humble service to us out of His great love. Contrast this with the plea of the mother of James and John that follows: "Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom." She is asking for them the same kind of place at the head of the table that the Pharisees used to lord their power over the people, only not in this world, but the next. This also is a loving Mom looking out for the sons she loves.

But it's the wrong question. Jesus asks the two brothers "Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?" -- can you serve, suffer, and die for me? "We can," they reply. This is the right question, and the right answer. However it is not for Jesus to place the two at His right and His left -- even Jesus, God's son, did not presume to take on a part of God's job as the Pharisees did.

When the other ten get bent out of shape about this exchange, Jesus explains the meaning of yesterday's reading and today's:

"You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,
and the great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you.
Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;
whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave.
Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many."

In other words, he called each of them to a life of humility and service. Fr. Louie talked about humility in his homily on Ash Wednesday, and offered what I thought was a great way to think about it. We often think of humility as self-deprecation, but that's not really it, and in fact self-deprecation can even lead to false modesty. Fr. Louie said "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but rather thinking of yourself less."

And when you think of yourself less, you will think more about others, which will in turn lead you serve others rather than solely serving yourself.

Judgment Call

Today's reading is one that I can almost recite by heart, both today's version from Luke and the corresponding passage in Matthew. Judging others is possibly the most persistent and unrelenting offense in my personal portfolio of sins, so I have worked those two passages over to reinforce my motivation to change. And while I have definitely made progress, I am nowhere near done with my work.

Our society is not much help. A recent Time magazine had a big article about who was to blame for the current financial crisis, replete with Photoshopped pictures of the judged in a spoofed police lineup. No need for a judge or jury there, these 25 are already convicted in the court of public opinion. This type of thing has become a mainstay of the media, from the op-ed pages of the papers to the screaming pundits on TV. And then there are the lawyers and the court system, the great substitute for personal responsibility and common sense, where the blame game is played at the highest level. When bad things happen, we just need to judge someone responsible and we'll feel better. Except we don't.

I think most people would read today's gospel as "Stop judging (other people) and you will not be judged (by God)." That certainly is a very direct and obvious meaning, and I agree with it wholeheartedly. But read the whole reading:

Jesus said to his disciples:
"Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

"Stop judging and you will not be judged.
Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you."

There's more to it than just avoiding God's judgment, though that would be lesson aplenty. Jesus is also telling us how to live our lives and to literally make "Thy kingdom come...on earth as it is in heaven". In his book of reflections Here and Now, Henri Nouwen says:

Imagine having no need at all to judge anybody. Imagine having no desire to decide whether someone is a good or bad person. Imagine being completely free from the feeling you have to make up your mind about the morality of someone else's behavior. Imagine that you could say: "I am judging no one!"

Imagine -- Wouldn't that be true inner freedom? the desert fathers from the fourth century said: "Judging others is a heavy burden." I have had a few moments in my life during which I felt free from all the judgements about others. It felt as if a heavy burden had been taken away from me. At those moments I experienced an immense love for everyone I met, heard about, or read about. A deep solidarity with all people and a deep desire to love them broke down all me inner walls and made my heart as wide as the universe.

Friends, THAT is what Jesus was also trying to teach us. He has told us all along to love our neighbor. This is a key to how you do it -- by withholding all judgment about your neighbor.

Nouwen goes on to say we all have these moments if we are attuned to the Holy Spirit: "They are like glimpses of heaven, glimpses of beauty and peace." Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

But how do we change, when so much of what we hear and see and experience reinforces that we are constantly judged ourselves, and that we need to judge others just to survive?

Can we free ourselves from the need to judge others? Yes...by claiming for ourselves the truth that we are beloved daughters and sons of God. As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to the need to put other people in their "right" place. To the degree that we embrace the truth that our identity is not rooted in our success, power, or popularity, but in God's infinite love, to that degree we can we let go of our need to judge...

...God's judgment is not the result of some divine calculation of which we have no part, but the direct reflection of our lack of trust in God's love. If we think of ourselves as the sum total of our successes, popularity, and power we become dependent on the ways we judge and are being judged and end up as victims manipulated by the world. And so we bring judgment on ourselves...

Only when we claim the love of God, the love that transcends all judgments, can we overcome all fear of judgment. When we have become completely free from the need to judge others, we will also be completely free from the fear of being judged.

So from this vantage point we can see some of Jesus' other teaching in a slightly different light. If we start at the place where we accept and truly believe that we are God's beloved, nothing in this world has quite the same hold on us. We stop judging others, and when that happens we not only don't fear others' judgment, but others no longer seem to judge us either.

This last observation has been one of the biggest surprises on my journey to being less judgmental. Not only does judging less transform me, it seems to transform others in relation to me, making them kinder and more forgiving of me. There's no way else I can explain it any different or better than Jesus did in today's Gospel. All that time I was trying to figure it out, and it was all right there in that passage from Luke all along.

The Conundrum of Prayer

There seems to be even more than usual to pray for these days. Another friend lost his job. Thanks to our buddies on Wall Street that 401(k) became a 201(k), and after the last 10 days is now more like a 101(k). My Mom told me she's concerned her money is going to run out before her time here does -- and she's 90. Shall I go on? $1.7 trillion deficit. War rages anew in Afghanistan. Our new leadership seems just as lost as the last. And so it goes. There is indeed plenty to pray for.

As I have mentioned before on these pages, I am of two minds about prayer, and sometimes I think Scripture gives us conflicting advice.

On the one hand, there are plenty of examples in the Bible of people praying fervently to God for very specific things. I have been re-reading my favorite Psalms the past few nights, and pretty much every psalm is a prayer, and most every prayer is for something pretty specific (forgiveness, deliverance from enemies, etc.). Today's readings are about prayer, including the oft-quoted:

"Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."

This passage certainly invites us to pray for what we need, and indeed the corresponding passage in Luke 11 invites us to be persistent in our prayers and they will certainly be answered.

"Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,' and he says in reply from within, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.' I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence."

That seems pretty clear. But here's the twist: what if we pray for the wrong things? And where does God's will fit in vs. what we are asking for? Doesn't His will count for something? How do we know that what we pray for is consistent with what God wants for us?

Praying for his life in the Garden of Gethsemane even Jesus' prayer deals with this:

...he prayed, saying, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done."

So what are we to make of this praying-for-something-but-not-praying-for-it? Asking for something and accepting at the same time you may not get it because it's not what He wants?

I don't know, and I've thought about it a fair amount. But there are a couple of things I've learned that I can share.

Prayer has the power to clarify our desires, motives, and intentions. If you pray honestly and openly, then part of the process will be to examine why you want what you want. This can only be a good thing. Persistent prayer also clarifies just how much we want something. I sometimes pray for things that maybe don't matter to me as much as I think. My persistence or lack thereof reflects that. I suspect that sometimes God wants us to work through these things ourselves through prayer.

Prayer also reveals God's will and teaches us to surrender our will to His. I have learned from the 12 Steps (see Step 11) that often the very best prayer is "praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out." That really simplifies things. What else do you really need?

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts of prayer is that it has the power is to change the one doing the praying. Setting aside the time to be with God and open yourself up is transformative. I think it even changed Jesus that night in the garden. Has anyone ever prayed more fervently? Yet when faced with the awful reality of His sacrifice he totally surrendered to God's will, and through that surrender was granted the power to carry it out the next day, completely at peace and without fear. The knowledge of God's will and the power to carry it out.

God does answer our prayers, every time. Sometimes that's obvious, but other times we need to continue praying in order to have the insight to know our prayer has been answered, because the answer isn't always the one we were looking for.

Apology & Update on Posting Comments

First of apologies for not posting for more than a week! I marvel at how busy I can be while business is slow...will try to be a little more disciplined going forward.

One quick update...after several of you have mentioned having trouble posting comments, I changed the settings to allow anyone to post whether you're signed up or not. PLEASE leave me your name (or at least a clue), but most of all know that I welcome and cherish your comments and emails, and will respond ASAP.

Back to writing....