Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: This is Sundays with Bishop Ken.
Thanks for sharing some quiet time with the Lord today. We welcome guest reader Deacon Eric Bissette.
Deacon Eric is a beloved spiritual leader in his home parishes of the Diocese of Rochester, New York.
Little Book's listeners will recognize Deacon Eric as a regular narrator for our daily reflections.
And now, here is today's Gospel and homily.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to Matthew Peter approached Jesus and asked him, lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive?
As many as seven times, Jesus answered, I say to you, not seven times, but 77 times.
That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants.
When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.
Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold along with his wife, his children, and all his property in payment of the debt.
At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, be patient with me and I will pay you back in full.
Moved with compassion, the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan.
When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount.
He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, pay back what you owe.
Falling to his knees, the fellow servant begged him, be patient with me and I will pay you back.
But he refused.
Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison until he paid back the debt.
Now, when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed and went to their master and reported the whole affair.
His master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant as I had pity on you?
Then, in anger, his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt.
So will my Heavenly Father do to you unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.
The Gospel of the Lord.
It isn't hard to catch the point of today's Gospel and the other scripture readings too.
The point is forgiveness.
Let's take a good look at that word, forgiveness.
It's interesting that when Jesus speaks here of forgiveness and elsewhere in the Gospels too, the Gospel writers use a Greek word that really means let go of or abandon.
It's the same word, for example, that is used when Peter and Andrew abandon their boat and nets to follow Jesus.
This can be a helpful insight.
It takes only one person to forgive one person Me.
I simply let go of the unforgiving thoughts and feelings within me.
Reconciliation is another matter.
It takes two people to bring about reconciliation, and both have to cooperate.
That, of course, is something much to be sought after.
But I can't control the other person, and reconciling can take time.
On the other hand, forgiveness takes only a moment and only one person.
Me.
Some time ago, I read a book about forgiveness written by a fellow named Louis Smedes.
It was a revelation to me, and perhaps it will be a revelation and a help to you.
I learned that forgiveness involves three steps.
First, I take some time to think about the person I need to forgive.
And instead of totally identifying that person with whatever they did to hurt me, I begin to see them as a human being like me, an imperfect child of God.
There's more to the person than whatever they did to me.
What I tend to do is see the person only in terms of the problem between us.
But that is a distortion.
That person has a life, and it involves the same things that are in my life.
I need to put him or her in a larger perspective.
That may seem obvious, but when we're hurt and angry, it's another story.
This simple step can make a huge difference.
Second, I give up my right to get even.
We really don't have a right to get even, but we think we do, because they've got it coming.
This second step gets at the heart of the word used in today's gospel, the word that means to let go.
Giving up the right to get even involves not only letting go of vindictive things I was going to do in return, but also letting go of vengeful thoughts.
Those thoughts don't make the other person suffer.
The other person is totally unaffected by whatever vengeful thoughts I cook up.
Such thoughts hurt only one person, namely me.
They rot in my stomach and have a bad effect on me.
Third, I ask the Lord to be with me, and together with the Lord, I look at the other person.
For sure, the Lord wants good things to happen to that person.
So with the Lord's help and with some struggle, I look at the person the way the Lord does.
I pray for the person, and with the Lord, I decide I want good things to happen to him or her.
When I have taken those three steps, I have achieved forgiveness and I am free.
That takes care of the question of how we forgive.
Let's turn now to the question of why we should forgive.
There are several good reasons.
For example, it brings healing and peace to our own lives.
Nursing a grudge is bad for your health.
But the strongest reason is one I never ever thought of until this past week when I was thinking about this gospel passage.
There's a prayer I like to say at the beginning of each day.
I didn't write it myself. It's an old prayer and it goes like, oh God, you created me and put me on earth for a purpose.
Jesus, you died for me and called me to help complete your work.
Holy Spirit, you inspire me to carry on the work for which I was created and called.
I was put here on earth for a purpose, born into this time and place to help carry out God's plan for the universe and for all people.
I am to help bring about the reign of God, which is what Jesus talked about over and over.
I have received God's love and I am to mediate, channel that love into creation.
Every act of love is like a tiny mustard seed or a little bit of leaven that affects everything.
It brings creation closer to the day when all will be well, when there will be peace and goodness all around.
What I do may seem small and or unnoticed, but it's like a flower in the desert whose fragrance seems to have no effect.
But it does have an effect and the whole world is different because of it.
I have to ask myself each day whether I will bring light or darkness, goodness or evil into the world.
I have to remind myself that God created me and put me on earth for a purpose, like the desert flower.
I have a graphic example of this.
A few years ago, an appliance store owner gave me a small stand up freezer with a door on top that you lift to open.
He thought I could use it to keep a small supply of frozen food which I could microwave for lunch.
So I put it in the back room of my office.
The truth is, I hardly ever used it.
One Christmas someone gave me a frozen turkey and I put it in that freezer and then I forgot about it.
A year later I got another frozen turkey and I put that one in the freezer and that's when I noticed the turkey from the year before.
One night the electricity in our building went out for a few minutes, but then came back on.
I hadn't noticed this because everything was up and running the next morning.
Trouble is, as I was later to discover, the freezer didn't restart. When the electricity came back on about a week later, I came into the office very early in the morning to get a few things done.
And as I was coming up the back stairs I noticed a strange foul smell in the air.
I wondered what it was.
As I came nearer to my office, it grew stronger.
I followed the odor and it took me to the back room of my office.
It was coming from the freezer.
When I lifted open the top, it almost knocked me over.
I won't give you the gross details of what I saw and smelled, but I'm sure you can imagine it. I spent the next two hours emptying and cleaning the freezer, spraying Lysol into the air, lighting candles, and doing everything I could to get that smell out of the air.
And so back to the question, why should I forgive?
When I think about the freezer, I see things differently. It's not a matter of if I don't forgive, God will get me for it.
No, I realize that to harbor vengeful thoughts and feelings in my heart, to have unforgiving baggage rotting within me, is like those two rotting turkeys in my freezer.
Those thoughts and feelings give off fumes and they flow into the world around me.
I really can't keep them inside me any more than the door of the freezer could hold the smell of those rotting turkeys inside.
The question is, what do I want to flow from me into this world?
The fragrance of God's love which I am called to mediate into creation, or the stench of unforgiving thoughts and feelings that I have inside me and which inevitably flow into the world?
When I think of it this way, I see things differently.
I would never want to radiate into the world the putrid fumes of vengeance.
I realize God created me and put me on earth for a purpose to help bring God's love more fully into the world.
God's love for me, God's gracious forgiveness refreshes my soul and I want to bring more of that into the world.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us today.
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