+At the end of the announcements each week the priest says an offertory sentence, words taken directly from scripture, to ready us for making and receiving offerings at the altar. We bring forward the collection plates, the bread and the wine and then we receive the gift of grace through the body and blood of Christ at the altar. I usually say “Walk in Love as Christ Loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.” There are several others, including: “If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, then come offer your gift.”
The point of this sentence is that if we’re holding a grudge, if we have unfinished business, if we haven’t forgiven a misunderstanding, a debt, or a disagreement, then we aren’t ready to make an offering to God or to receive the abundant grace of God offered to us through the Eucharist.
God wants us free and clear when we come to this altar. That’s why we do a confession of sin just before we come with the gifts. It prepares us, it wipes the slate clean---it frees us.
Today’s Gospel-- the Parable of the Dishonest Manager-- is a story about the forgiving of debts. Not just monetary debts, but all debts---all the scores we keep—who’s slighted whom, who owes whom an apology…we have a laundry list of things done to us, and things we’ve done to others ---which must be cleared from our hearts and souls before we can fully receive God’s love as offered to us through the sacrament of Holy Communion.
Today’s parable has a lot of conniving and dishonesty in it. And it’s easy to get lost, trying to figure out who’s the villain, and who’s the hero.
To review—there’s an absentee landlord, who has a resident manager to handle the day to day affairs of his business---which includes taking advantage of the farm workers---paying them an unlivable wage, charging them huge rents and then gouging them at the company owned store….
….In summary: the landowner was cheating the peasants, the manager was cheating the landowner and the peasants by taking a little off the top for himself. When the manager’s caught by the landowner the manager turns to the peasants and by cheating the landowner even more, makes the peasants happy.
Luke wraps up this parable talking about faithfulness, dishonest wealth and true riches.
It sounds like Jesus is condemning wealth.
But to just assume that and move on is to miss what Luke has been saying to us all summer----that all the riches of this world will never ever take the place of the riches God bestows upon us….for the grace of God is what makes all things possible –even our wealth. And to be able to fully receive God into our hearts we must be free of resentment, regret, burden.
For Luke, forgiveness is the name of the game. Luke tells us again and again that God’s always ready to forgive. Abundantly, extravagantly outlandishly. That God, regardless of what we’ve done, is completely willing---anxious, actually---to forgive us.
Now, while forgiveness is always available we must ask for it, we must long for it, we must seek it…forgiveness is not some free giveaway, it’s an abundant gift given to those who are ready to receive it, who’ve repented, have amended their lives and want to be washed in the forgiveness of God to start their life anew.
But, and here’s where this week’s parable becomes clearer, forgiveness is not just something we receive …it’s also something we give….Jesus makes it very clear in the Lord’s Prayer---forgive us our trespasses, our sins, our debts as we forgive those who have trespassed—sinned—against us.
Jesus is telling us, with this convoluted story of landowners, managers and peasants, that we must forgive others—their mistakes, their faults, their debts---in order to be forgiven ourselves.
Our forgiveness of others is to have the same character as God’s forgiveness of us---as God’s love for us: it’s to be abundant, extravagant and outlandish. It must be overflowing, it must be constant. With this parable we’re told that we must forgive… that only in forgiving others can we truly accept the forgiveness God has for us. The forgiveness of God is so intense, so absolute, that we have to make room for it.
To do that, we must empty ourselves---of our resentments, our anger, our bitterness, our disdain and our petty scorekeeping. We are to-- simply and completely--- forgive people. Everyone. Not just those who have, in our eyes, earned it ...but everyone.
None of us can earn forgiveness, we can only desire it…and we only desire it, we only want it, when we realize, when we admit that we’ve made a mistake.
The manager had no right to forgive half the debts of those debtors. But neither did the landowner have the right to pay those debtors an unlivable wage.
There’s no villain in this story and there’s no hero …and that’s the point.
In this parable, everyone was making mistakes...everyone needed forgiveness…just like real life. We all make mistakes, we all need forgiveness.
Jesus is saying, don’t wait for someone to ask for forgiveness, just grant it…because it’s not our job to keep score, it’s not our job to decide who gets forgiven what, when and how, our job is to free ourselves enough to receive the fullness of God’s love.
You see, by granting forgiveness, we lighten our own load of bitterness and resentment which frees up space deep within us, space which will be filled at the altar as we present ourselves-- forgiven, healed and ready to be fed by the grace and truth of God, who forgives all our debts.
Always.
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