Rachel Sirach 27:30-28:7, Romans 13:7-9 Matt. 18:21-35 103
September 13, 2020
Charlotte Lehman (Pastor at Reba Place)
Grain of Wheat 39th Anniversary
Greetings, Grain of Wheat friends! Thanks for the invitation to be with you this morning.
Today I’m coming to you from the RPC Meetinghouse, where we’re doing some remodeling of our bathrooms and kitchen – because changing is what living organisms do, right?! Along with a few other tweaks, the kitchen needed a hand-washing sink to bring it up to current commercial kitchen code.
And speaking of hand-washing, we Americans and Canadians have all heard more than we ever wanted to know about handwashing in the last six months. Who knew that something so basic, so simple, ideally learned so early in life, would be an essential pillar of the strategy to fight a deadly novel corona virus pandemic?
Yet even before the current pandemic, in nations where the practice of washing hands with soap is not commonly practiced, whether due to the absence of water and soap or differing cultural expectations, the results are dire.
Worldwide, 6.6 million children per year don’t make it to their 5th birthday, and many are because of preventable big killers like diarrhea and pneumonia. But washing your hands with soap can reduce diarrhea by half, and respiratory infections by one third. Washing your hands with soap has a positive impact against flu, SARS, and trachoma. In cholera and Ebola outbreaks, one of the key public health interventions was hand washing with soap. Doing it helped keep kids in school. According to expert Dr. Miriam Sidibe, it can save over 600,000 children every year.
But don’t worry, this is not a Public Service Announcement smuggled into the service as a homily. I mention these details because I believe that cultivating a heart of compassion and forgiveness, is just as essential for a community’s relational health as regular hand-washing with soap is for a community’s physical health.
In the text we just read, Peter is perhaps thinking he is being the very paragon of generosity when he asks Jesus if he should forgive as many as seven times when a fellow believer harms him. And yet Jesus responds “Not seven times but I tell you, seventy-seven times.” In other words, it’s not really something you should be counting, Peter! it’s more like the habit of washing your hands with soap on a very regular basis.
And note that Peter is talking about another member of the church – a sibling in the family of faith! Not an “outsider” even! If you’re like me, it’s easier to let an obnoxious comment from a total stranger just roll off me than it is one from someone I know and care about!
It would take more time than I’ve been given this morning to talk about all the important dynamics of having healthy conflict in a community – but suffice for me to say now that cultivating a heart of compassion and forgiveness does NOT we don’t address hurtful behavior in our midst… it doesn’t mean we don’t set boundaries or take time to negotiate how to meet one another’s needs in mutually satisfying ways. It doesn’t mean that all anger is sin.
But it does mean starting from a place of gratitude and humility…
…Gratitude that we can confidently rest in God’s love even though we sometimes hurt God and others, and other people sometimes hurt us. Nothing can separate us from God’s love, and it is that secure place with God that gives us the strength to have compassion for others.
And Humility – the recognition that I can never do the complicated emotional, spiritual, psychological, historical calculations to figure out whether if I had lived that other person’s life – that person who has offended me – whether I would have ended up making any better choice than they did in this situation. I know when I’m evaluating someone else’s offense against me, I tend to compare my lifetime highlights reel to their bloopers and worst moments, and of course I come out looking a lot better!
Oh, I may be totally clear and confident that what they did was missing the mark of God’s ways of love. And maybe love and wisdom would indicate that I should talk to them about my hurt and my concern. But cultivating that heart of 70 times 7 compassion and forgiveness that maintains the relational health of a community over time means that I humbly choose to remember that I am not better… I am not worth more… we are both beloved children of God, forgiven and held in grace.
I’m struck that the very name “Grain of Wheat” carries within it the commitment to the dying to self that every choice to forgive entails – “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit!”
The name “Grain of Wheat” also points to growth and change! A seed does not fulfill its destiny by remaining the same. Any organism which never changes is actually dead, not living. Change, remodeling like you see around me here, is a sign of life and health.
And cultivating the practice of 70 x 7 compassion and forgiveness is part of strengthening the community’s emotional and spiritual immune system, just like washing hands with soap helps a community’s physical resistance to disease… so that as the factors around you change as they inevitably do, you will have the strength to adapt with wisdom and joy – and the good news of God’s love will bear much fruit, that God’s kingdom may come, on earth as it is in heaven.