Forgive Thy Neighbor
THE TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
"I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy, for your fellowship in the Gospel from the first day until now; being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ; even as it is meet for me to think this of you all because I have you in my heart: inasmuch as both in my bonds, and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace."
Today's Epistle lesson is taken from St. Paul's letter to the Church at Philippi, commonly known as one of his prison epistles written during the Apostle's final imprisonment in Rome; the Philippian Church is in his heart even as he is in the bonds of captivity. Epaphroditus has returned with a gift from the Philippians and a report of how this young Church is doing. Paul's letter is an acknowledgment of the generosity and response to hearing the report. This is a tender and personal letter full of love and affection towards this nascent church plant.
Philippi was a city in eastern Macedonia, founded in the 4th century by King Philip, the Father of Alexander the Great. Later, it became a Roman colony of strategic importance because it stood at a break in a large range of mountains, through which enormous amounts of traffic from Asia Minor into Europe (and vice a versa) would typically pass. You may recall the story in Acts sixteen, where the Apostle receives the Macedonian call, a vision that compelled him and Barnabas to immediately set out for Philippi. His response to this mysteriously conveyed mission truly is one of the great dramatic moments in the history of Christian and European civilization: St. Paul, being sensitive and open to the communication of the Holy Spirit, crosses over from Asia into Europe, and the seed of the Gospel is first planted in European soil. The rest, as they say, "is history."
Now, here, at the end of all his missionary journeys, a captive in a Roman cell, and soon to obtain the glory of martyrdom, he writes a letter to the Philippians full of thanksgiving and confidence. He is thankful, not only for their gift but, above all, for their "fellowship in the Gospel from the first day until now," and he is absolutely confident that "he who has begun a good work in them will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." In other words, until the second coming of the Lord.
But until that day arrives, The Apostle is urging them to make their daily conduct worthy of the Gospel of Christ. First and foremost: to give up interpersonal rivalries and vanities harming their fellowship. The antidote? Humility. He sets before them the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, who "took the form of a servant and became obedient unto death." Like Jesus, they too must be forgiving and forbearing in their love for one another in imitation of the Lord.
A similar teaching is presented to us in today's Gospel lesson, when Jesus, in his parable of the debtors, speaks of our heavenly Father's compassion and forgiveness as an example for us in our dealings with one another. Should we forgive seven times, as the Law requires? No, until seventy times seven – until we have lost all count. So great is God's mercy towards us.
The Gospel is itself an illustration of what our Lord meant when he taught us to pray to his Father "and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." You see, if the precondition of divine forgiveness is our willingness to forgive those who offend against us (as Jesus teaches towards the end of the parable), then it makes perfectly good sense for us to forgive our brothers "until seventy times seven." And by the way, the number Jesus provides means more than a strict limit of 490 times!
Now, introspection was never St. Peter's strongest gift, but even he must have paused to think, "The Master means keep forgiving and never stop," rather than "Each of us is entitled to 490 sins, and then comes the abyss." The parable "Of the Unjust Servant" says as much, since a debt of 10,000 talents is a reminder that a single sin against God is rather like owing an unpayable debt of a "gazillion dollars." Compared to the debt that God has forgiven for each of us, the sins perpetrated by others upon us (however awful) are chicken feed; it's like owing somebody twenty bucks until payday.
But forgiving others is more than the "price" we Christians pay for us to receive Divine forgiveness. You see, if mercy were just some sort of pragmatic business deal, a kind of cosmic tit-for-tat, then our Lord wouldn't have had to bother teaching us to call his Father in heaven "our Father" as well. There wouldn't be any need to think of those who offend us as "brothers" if they are merely opportunities to rack up brownie points with God. The "something more" about forgiveness—the perspective to understand forgiveness—is what the Collect and Epistle provide for us, in support of the Gospel.
To explore that "something more," however, will require more than a superficial glance at the Collect and St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, since certain words in them carry a great deal more information in the original languages of their composition than they do in modern English. For example, today's Collect (BCP 220) was written in Latin, at least fourteen hundred years ago. In it, we ask God to keep "thy household the Church" in continual godliness. The original writer of this prayer used the word "familia," from which our word "family" is derived.
"Familia," though, is a much more complicated word in Latin than it is in English, as the word "family" typically makes us think of "a husband and a wife, along with their children." The English word also makes us think primarily of "love," perhaps even of indulgent love, as the basis of a family. On the other hand, the Latin word "familia," while it does not deny familial love, puts stress on the idea of "order."
How so? It helps to know that in Latin, "familia" is derived from the root words "famulus" (fam u lus) and "famula," the words employed to describe male and female house-servants or domestic slaves. Originally, then, the "familia" (or "family") meant only the slaves that were owned by a household, who lived under the authority of a household, and for whom the head of the household was responsible. Over time, "familia" (or "family") grew to include everyone who belonged to a household, whether by Law or by blood, based on the head of the household's authority and responsibility to protect and to provide for absolutely everyone who lived under his roof.
In this way, "familia" came to mean a complete household of both duty and love, which is intended by "household" in today's Collect. The head of a household became known as the "paterfamilias," the Father of the family, by combining the Latin words for "father" and "household." Next, the words for "son" and "daughter" ("filus" and "filia") were then combined with "family," resulting in "filiusfamilias" and "filiafamilias," the sons and daughters of the family living in their Father's house under his authority.
So, when in today's Collect, we commonly petition God to keep "thy household the Church," we are addressing our "Paterfamilias" (God our Father) whose authority we must obey to remain as good standing members of His household. You see, Jesus Christ is the only-begotten Son of God, but we, friends, are members of His Father's house both by adoption and blood. By Divine adoption we are made sons and daughters of God's family by virtue of the blood Jesus Christ shed for our redemption, literally in Latin, our being bought back from serving the household of sin.
When we Christians say that we belong to the "household of God," we are really saying that we belong to him by right; that every aspect of life, labor, and service belongs to Him and Him alone and that all we do must be done under his governance, or else we betray the "family" from which we have received eternal life. As the Collect says, we must be "devoutly given" to serve God in "good works," or else we have left his rule and his protection behind. And it is His gracious protection alone that "frees [us] from all adversities."
And just as every other well-ordered family maintains fixed rules for right behavior, so too does the household of God, one being to forgive those who trespass against us just as our paterfamilias, the Divine head of the household, forgives. We must forgive as He forgives, following His example and pattern as loving, obedient children should.
But forgiveness can be so very difficult, can it not? And, where do we find the power to be as forgiving as our Father in heaven? St. Paul provides the answer in his Epistle to the Philippians, writing in verse eight of the first chapter, "For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the tender mercies of Jesus Christ." Here "tender mercies" is one of those prissy modern translations that hides as much as it reveals. The original King James Version had "bowels," a literal translation of the Greek word σπλάγχνον which St. Jerome translated into Latin as viscera. "For God is my record," he says, "how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ."
The kind of "tender mercy" that St. Paul invokes is a mercy which binds us together, like divine grace which enables to desire the good for one another, including forgiveness and a willingness to give our very best to others, including our forgiving them. All of these proceed from the depths of Christ’s body, the Eternal Son made flesh. St. Paul is saying that Christ's mercy literally comes "from his guts," knowing that both the ordinary human body of our Lord and his mystical Body the Church, without its proper "insides," is merely an empty shell, a phantom, and not alive in any real sense of the word.
The greatest of English Bible translators, the martyr William Tyndale, faced this problem of rightly translating these words head-on writing: "For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all from the very heart root in Jesus Christ." This was the translation in the first English Prayer Book of 1549, and Tyndale manages to capture both the physical and the spiritual meaning of St. Paul's words.
The heart of Jesus Christ is the physical root of Divine mercy planted and flowering in the flesh of the world's incarnate Savior. The heart of Jesus Christ is the mystical, spiritual root to which each of us is grafted into when we are saved. The heart of Jesus Christ is the root of our inheritance, the real "root of Jesse" upon which we must grow if we are to share in the Divine life of God. Christ is the Vine, and we are the branches.
If, therefore, we are genuinely grafted into the heart of Jesus Christ, how can our hearts be less forgiving than his who died a cruel death for our forgiveness? If we are grafted into the whole inheritance of God in the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ, which estate is his by right of sonship, and not by adoption, how can we live as less than the sons and daughters of God's household? How can we be less than grateful for our adoption into the family of the God of heaven Himself? And how can we ever justify in our minds leaving the Father's house by returning to the old ways of sin, especially the sin of unforgiveness?
A Christian, knowing that he or she is a member of the Father's household, one rooted in the very heart of Jesus Christ, must absolutely recoil from such sin and error. Being aware, through the surety of faith, that he or she is a member of something much higher than themselves; a family greater than any earthly household, trusting that they have inherited an eternal family and an eternal heart of mercy which shall sustain them wherever they go and in whatever they do, must keep the family rules until they obtain their final homecoming in that far and great country.
This is the good and fruitful path presented today in the Holy Scriptures and in the Church's ancient prayers. It is the path that leads to eternal life: beatitude and joy. And beloved, it is this great prize, to stand in the heavenly court, that I hope for each and every one of us to obtain and enjoy for ages upon ages. Let us heed the wisdom of Ecclesiasticus:
"Forgive thy neighbor the hurt that he hath done unto thee, so shall thy sins also be forgiven when thou prayest. Remember thy end, let enmity cease; remember corruption and death, abide in the commandments, and bear no malice to thy neighbor: remember the covenant of the Highest and wink at ignorance.” Amen+
