6 September 2026, Proper 18 Year A
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Assigned Lectionary Readings: Ezekiel 33:7-11; Psalm 119:33-40; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20
It’s the year 386. A man in his early thirties sits in a garden in Milan, deep in contemplation. He has searched for meaning in life, given himself to various philosophies, as well as hedonism, and despite all he has experienced and learned, feels empty. He feels disillusioned. He feels lost. In his emptiness, he hears from a distance a child singing a song. The words he hears from the child are, in Latin, “tolle lege, tolle lege,” “Pick up and read. Pick up and read.” Realizing this might be a message for him, he finds a Bible, opens it, and reads the first passage he sees. From Paul’s letter to the Romans, he reads chapter 13:13-14: “let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” In a moment, he is changed. By putting on Christ, he is then placed within Christ, and he is made new. Some of you will know that the person in this story is Saint Augustine, who in his spiritual autobiography the Confessions, would come to say “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.” In many ways, Augustine’s story is our own, in the moments that we forget who we belong to. In the moments where, try as we might, we are lost, wandering, and forget what we were made for. The moments that we forget who we really are. We think we are unnoticed and unremarkable—or we find others unnoticeable and unremarkable—and because of that, we lose sight of the truth. CS Lewis writes in his book The Weight of Glory that “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship… There are no ordinary people.” We do not just appear by chance or randomness; we are made, crafted, and formed in delight and care. We are the evidence of a miracle. So why do we not act like that? We forget that we are creatures that bear the image of the One who embodied the very summary of the commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
A nun, Sister Mary Anne Nolan, “As I think about my own sins, I [believe] that I will never do that again. But… the God of wildly inordinate Mercy knows this and still envelops me in mercy and compassion even though God knows I will sin again.” The scriptures say that in Christ, we are a new creation. But we are still learning how to be new. We are the son that runs away. We are the brother who becomes angry and jealous over the mercy given to him, as we must learn to become the father who loves them both, because as Ezekiel prophesied, we have a Lord who does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live.” Until we feel this in our bones, we will revel in our fractured state and broken relationships, which diminishes the promise shared with us by Christ: “Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” So with that, what are the scriptures really trying to tell us today?
I think the thread that ties all of these scriptures together, what they are pointing us to, is the practice of forgiveness, reconciliation, and absolution. Let’s talk about these terms for just a second so we know what they mean: Forgiveness means that you have completely, freely given yourself to another; it is a state of being vulnerable that allows you to share the deepest power we carry – to free someone else; and in the process, we free ourselves too. Reconciliation means that there has been full restoration; I know that for many of us, when Jesus says that if an offender refuses to listen to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and tax collector, we think that gives us a way out. However, who are the people that Jesus actively sought after? The Gentile and the tax collector. Who was Matthew the evangelist? A tax collector who chose the way of life, another person whose heart was restless, but then found rest because Jesus did not give up on him. Last, absolution means to be completely and utterly untangled from what bound you. It is a state of freedom from the sin that beset you. I use the term practice intentionally, because the way of forgiveness does not come easy for many of us. Bishop Mariann Budde writes that “I never used to think of forgiveness as something to practice, like scales on the piano. Practice implies monotonous repetition, until something foreign becomes second nature. Practice assumes that we start off not being very good at whatever we’re practicing. With practice, however, lies the hope of improvement.” With this, I encourage you to think about what we have in our prayer book, the sacramental rite called “Reconciliation of a Penitent,” which is our form for confession. There are two versions, and beginning on page 447. We have this because sometimes we need the help to seek out what we know to be right. And what do we receive from it? The assurance that God loves us. The assurance that God loves you. And the reminder that God even loves the person that you love the least, and maybe they need this assurance too. The author Esther de Waal writes that “Forgiveness is needed at two levels. First, that I am forgiven, which frees me from guilt; and secondly that I forgive, which frees me from anger. Unless we forgive, we cannot be free.” We are being presented with a way of life that leads to… life. Actual life. True life. Abundant life, because we then actually experience true freedom when we practice this way of love that Paul is so desperately trying to get us to see in Romans – to owe no one anything, except to love one another.
We settle for so much less, for what we don’t deserve; and because of that, we share with others what they may not deserve either. NT Wright says that we were “Made for joy, [but] we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun… Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world… That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God’s new world, which he has thrown open before us.” Our disgrace, our shame, has been rolled away; it is now time to believe that a holy miracle that dwells in us. It is now time to accept that we are a new creation. It is now time to live with hearts that are reconciled to God, and to one another. Thanks be to God for the image of mercy we bear, and that as new creations, we can cease our restlessness, and freely wander back to him. Amen.
AMDG