Proper 21 (A) Your Sins Are Forgiven
Proper 21 (A)
Your Sins Are Forgiven
forgiven. In other words, unless you could come up with an equivalent or compensation for loss, damage, or injury caused, there was no way you could ever even hope for forgiveness.
Restitution is fairly simple – if;
- my baseball goes through your window and I pay to have the window replaced.
- But it is next to impossible if I tell a lie about you that quickly spreads throughout the community.
You can never get a lie completely back to the truth.
Example: Feathers in the Wind—a story: A Jewish man is nearing the end of his life. He tells his Rabbi that he wants to make amends to all those about whom he has spoken ill. The Rabbi instructs him to take a bag of feathers and put one feather at the doorway to the homes of everyone he has slandered.
Thinking this a pretty easy task, the elderly man gets a bag of feathers and places a feather at the entrance to everyone’s home of whom he has spoken ill. Having completed the task, he asks the Rabbi what he should do next.
The Rabbi tells him to return to each home and retrieve every feather that he placed at the entrances. But he can’t. The feathers have floated off to the four winds. In much the same way, he cannot retrieve the ill words he has spoken about others.
Exodus 22:3 – If a thief is captured, he must make full restitution; if he can’t, then he must be sold as a slave for his debt.
From the point of view of the Jewish law, even the change of heart from the dying man would never compensate for the damage caused by his slander. There would be no restitution and therefore, no forgiveness.
I believe that Rabbinic Law did allow forgiveness three times, but that was it! This was why one of our Lord’s disciples thought he was being extremely generous when he asked if they might be expected to forgive….as many as seven times?
According to the Gospel accounts, many of the people that Jesus related to and forgave were people for whom restitution would have been impossible.
Tax collectors, for example, could never repay every single person whose taxes they upped in order to pad their own pockets. Prostitutes could never turn their “for profit” love-making into real love.
Yet, to the dismay of His critics, He repeatedly told those who sought Him out – by crashing a dinner party – by being lowered on a stretcher through a hole in the roof….
YOUR SINS ARE FORGIVEN!
Those who had made mistakes, whose sins they could not erase by making restitution, found in Jesus’ words of forgiveness hope for a new life. Jesus not only made their day, He remade their lives.
It was against the background of this understanding that Jesus told the parable of the two sons in today’s Gospel.
The one son, who said he would not work in the vineyard (always a symbol of God’s Kingdom), then later did what the Father asked, represents those who first chose to go their own way, then have a change of heart and choose obedience.
The second son represents those who tried to give the impression that they were obedient, but who failed to serve the Father’s will with their lives.
That is why Jesus says to His religious audience -- “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you.”
Even though these people could never make restitution, they have believed God’s forgiveness and in His love are working out the transformation of their lives.
All of today’s lessons are Good News because they say, in effect, that each of us has the individual freedom to choose the object of our faith.
In the Ezekiel reading we are told that “If a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, he shall die for it. And again, when a wicked man turns away from his wickedness he has committed and does what is lawful and right, he shall save his life.”
God says, “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone so turn, and live.”
Each of us as individuals can choose what and who to obey. Even if no one in our family has had a bit of faith…. We can have faith. Even if no one in our family has considered obedience to God…. we can choose obedience.
In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, however, he makes it clear that this journey in faith and obedience for our salvation will not manifest itself without fear and trembling. Faith and obedience to God can be a lonely and fearful place.
None of us would have much difficulty in identifying ourselves with either son in today’s Gospel. When we have sinned like the prostitutes and the tax collectors. Even when God calls to us through our conscience in the middle of the night, we are familiar with our spontaneous refusal to do what He wants.
It’s not that we don’t understand the message. We then find ourselves facing the great gap between what we really are, and what we should be. Dealing with that gap is the first step toward gaining entrance into God’s Kingdom.
We all know the danger of the second son’s response. It is the danger of thinking that you have arrived. That there is no need to consider further growth.
Jesus is saying, our complacency will be our undoing. Instead of trying to change ourselves, we use all our energy to try and change others.
How much better off the world would be if everyone in it would simply concentrate on changing themselves toward obeying God’s will.
What must I do to change?
To believe that God is at work in me.
To face the gap of my disobedience and deal with it.
To know that through faith in Christ I am a new person every morning.
Resources for further study:
| Track 1 | or | Track 2 |
| Exodus 17:1-7 Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16 Philippians 2:1-13 Matthew 21:23-32 | Ezekiel 18:1-4,25-32 Psalm 25:1-8 Philippians 2:1-13 Matthew 21:23-32 |
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