Get Off the Sidelines
In the last several weeks, we have heard a great deal about forgiveness and the necessity to forgive others who harm us. As I read the readings for this weekend, I wasn’t sure I had anything more to say about forgiveness. My well was dry. Yet, just a slight turn of the prism, in my prayer, brought me to a new wellspring of what it is to have a forgiving heart.
Psychologists define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you. The choice is made regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness. That definition places forgiveness wholly and entirely in the head. The Gospel calls for forgiveness from the heart. God wants more. He calls us to forgive from our hearts.
Over the last several weeks, in the Gospels, Jesus spends a great deal of His teaching time on forgiveness. There are stories of forgiveness, parables with morals about forgiveness, and teachings about forgiveness. God came Himself to show us how life is to be lived. He came to show us in our human form how we must treat one another. Forgiveness from the heart is the key. Jesus came to show us how to build the Kingdom.
The Kingdom of God is all about the relationship between God and His people. We are those people, the ones He loves. Jesus is showing us through stories, and His actions how we are to live in the Kingdom. God’s Kingdom is here among us. We have been missioned by Jesus to do our best to make our world the kind of place that He modeled.
Look around. We are surrounded by what is not of God. We are surrounded and sometimes choose to be part of the unrest, negativity, judgment casting, and selfishness of our world. Forgiveness cannot survive in that environment. Forgiveness from the heart will be squelched by angry words and divisions.
The enormity of today’s problems leaves me paralyzed. So, what do I do? I certainly can’t fix the world. Sometimes I can’t even fix my family. The violence and revenge that surrounds us can be overwhelming, and we are individually so small. It is easy to accept that I can do nothing to change our world situation.
But that’s just plain wrong! Jesus in the Gospel is telling us that one person can make a difference. Our individual actions matter more than we can imagine. We are a witness to the Gospel in how we act, who we accept, the words we say, and the forgiveness from the heart that we grant. To create the Kingdom, we need to get our hands dirty. We must be the carpenter and the architect in the building. That is what Jesus asked of us.
But my heart still says, what can one person really do? I am not a saint; I am just me. I hear God calling back to me, “Yes you are.You most certainly are a saint. You are MY saint.” We each must accept that call and start behaving like saints, the holy ones of God.
We are each only one human person, but so was Martin Luther King, Jr., Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Clare, and Dorothy Day. A young boy in Buffalo was only one person when he decided to sweep the streets and pick up the debris after a night of rioting. Every nurse, doctor, paramedic, teacher, cafeteria worker, and emergency responder is just one person. They are each just one person, and yet they each make a difference. Together they are shaping our world differently.
My attempts at forgiveness from the heart may not seem to make a dent in the evil present in our society. But mine added to yours, added to another’s, and another will make the world different.
It’s time for all of us to stop making excuses, get off the sidelines, and know it is me Jesus is talking to when he commands us to build the Kingdom of God. His Kingdom where forgiveness, love, and peace prevail. It is me he is calling to be a saint. It is me he is asking to adopt a forgiving heart. It is me who will make all the difference.
In God’s Unending Love,
Gwen
