Year B — Proper 24

The Rev. Gerald W. Keucher

Well, the Gospel story this morning is something we’re all familiar with, right? James and John try to get Jesus to say that they can sit at His right and left hand. I don’t mean the story itself, though we’ve probably heard it often enough. I mean the situation the story describes.

We’re part of a group, and we think we’re getting along, and then we hear that two others have tried a power play. They’ve tried to engineer a closer relationship with the leader than the rest of us. They’ve tried to claim some turf. They’ve tried to become special. They think they’re better than we are.

Or else we’re familiar with the story this way. We’ve been faithful, hardworking members of the group. We’ve been part of the group longer than the others. We’ve been willing to do more than the others, and we’ve done things better than the others. We’ve been closer to the leader than the others, because the leader has recognized our gifts and our willingness to work hard. All we wanted was an appropriate recognition of what we were doing. And now people are mad, but they have no right to be.

Oh yes, we’re very familiar with this situation. A good many of us are familiar with it from both sides. We’ve wanted a “proper” recognition of our contribution to the life of the community, and we’ve been indignant when others have sought that same thing.

We’re familiar with the situation, and we’re familiar with how it usually turns out. Somebody leaves. Somebody withdraws from the community because of their hurt feelings. “Well, it’s all political, and the Rector has his favorites. I don’t go there any longer.” Or “I poured myself out for that place. I worked and gave for years, and nobody ever said so much as ‘thank you.’ I don’t go there anymore.”

That’s how it normally works out, but that’s not how it worked out with the apostles. James and John tried a power grab, and the other ten were angry when they heard it. But somehow they worked it out, and they stayed together. The twelve apostles were still together until that night in the Upper Room. Somehow they found a way to work through this messy episode in today’s Gospel.

We don’t learn exactly how they worked it out, but they did. And if they could, so can we. I want to offer two observations that might be helpful as we think about how we can deal with the relationships we have either where we think we ought to be getting more recognition, or where we think somebody else should be getting less.

First, in these situations the only way forward is with a broken heart. Here’s what I mean. When we get offended — whether it’s because of someone else’s action, or because of someone’s reaction to something we did or said — our hearts become this tight little ball of fear, resentment, and hard feelings. We carry that hard, tight little thing around. We nurse it. We visit it frequently so we can get angry all over again. The more angry and hurt we allow ourselves to be, the smaller and tighter and harder our hearts become.

There’s just no way forward with that hard little heart. We just can’t get past the problem when our heart is like that. We just keep circling around, repeating the same stories, recounting to anyone who will listen our little litany of complaints. The stories actually become a kind of liturgy, or anti-liturgy — we tell the same stories using the same words, in the same order, as if our hurts were engraved on the stone tablets that our hearts have become. And the anti-liturgy works on us the opposite way the real liturgy works on us. Every time we rehearse it, we feel that original hurt and anger all over again. There’s just no way forward with that hard little heart.

Our hearts become finally like a little hard seed. The possibilities for transformation and reconciliation are inside the seed, but they can bear fruit only if we allow the hard shell of the seed to break open and die. The only way forward is with a broken heart.

What happens if we let our hearts break? What comes out if we shatter that hard, but comfortable, resentful shell? What is the way forward?

My second observation is, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “There’s no future without forgiveness.” There is simply and literally no future without forgiveness. Without forgiveness there’s no future for our families, no future for our parishes, no future for our communities, and no future for our world.

The way of forgiveness is not for the weak; that’s why only the Son of God was able to walk that way fully. The way of the weak is to continue with anger, resentment and hard feelings. A weak foreign policy — for an individual or a nation — is to threaten violence and to be a bully. The weak will insist on trying to force others to give them the level of respect they think they deserve. The weak will never admit mistakes. The weak will always have to say they must stay the course, because the weak can’t face the possibility that they were wrong. (You might think I’m talking about national politics, but I’m really talking about every parish I’ve ever known.)

It takes strength to ask for forgiveness. It takes even more strength to grant forgiveness to someone who has hurt us. It takes the greatest amount of strength to seek forgiveness when the other party isn’t ready to give it. We don’t come up with this strength on our own. It is the strength that God supplies that allows us to ask for and to grant forgiveness.

I absolutely insist on this point. What we think of as strength in human relationships is really weakness. We’re weak when we crave recognition. We’re weak when we hold onto slights and nurse grudges. It’s weak to inflict violence on others. It’s weak to be a physical or psychological bully. All these things are signs of weakness and immaturity. That’s why children act this way on the playground: they’re weak and immature. It’s just as weak and immature — though far more dangerous — when grownups insist on acting this way.

Our tight little hearts must break open so we can grant and receive forgiveness. This is the way of wisdom and maturity. And this is why we can’t be Christians by ourselves. We need to be in community so we can learn to let our hearts break so forgiveness can flower.

It’s easy to be “spiritual” by yourself. By yourself you can pretend that you are patient and loving. By yourself you can really delude yourself into a very self-congratulatory complacency. In a group of people, however, it’s not possible to maintain that fiction. If you stay, you’ll see how impatient and resentful and competitive you really can be.

That’s why we need the reality check of a community. We need to be like rough stones in a shaking hopper so we bump up against each other and rub against each other until my hard edges start to grind your rough places smooth, and yours do the same for mine.

Our mistakes and our deliberate slights offer the opportunity to practice forgiveness all around. The parish is a laboratory where we learn how to be Christians. Sometimes the experiment goes disastrously wrong, and the lab blows up. But in that laboratory we also learn how to let our hard little hearts be broken so we can move into the future that is made possible only by forgiveness. In this beautiful laboratory right here, we learn the maturity and wisdom that come only from the steady practice of saying we’re sorry and granting and receiving forgiveness.

I do not speak to you from a position of particular strength here. I have made plenty of missteps — most thoughtless, but some deliberate. There are relationships in my life where I’m holding onto that hard little shell. I am not an easy person: you can ask anyone who lives or works all week with me.

But I’ve learned this: the only way forward is with a broken heart, and there’s no future without forgiveness. The community of the Church is more important to me than my need to be right. The community is more important to me than my need to be justified in my own eyes. You know that too. This means more to you than your need for recognition. This means more to you than your impatience with others’ foibles.

So let’s keep coming back. Let’s keep working to make our relationships with one another right. Let’s allow Jesus’ touch to break open the places where our hearts are hard. Let’s make the Church of the Intercession a laboratory where every heart is broken open so it can flame with the light of Christ’s forgiveness. That will give us a future we can’t begin to imagine. God bless you all.