13 Pentecost Yr A

In a small apartment building in North Minneapolis - a 59-year-old teacher's aid sings praise to God for no seemingly apparent reason. Indeed, if anyone was to have issues with the Lord, it would be Mary Johnson. In February 1993, Mary's son, Laramiun Byrd, was shot to death during an argument at a party. He was 20, and Mary's only child. "My son was gone," she says. The killer was a 16-year-old kid named Oshea Israel. Mary wanted justice. "He was an animal. He deserved to be caged." And he was. Tried as an adult and sentenced to 25 and a half years -- Oshea served 17 before being recently released. He now lives back in the old neighborhood - next door to Mary. How a convicted murderer ended-up living a door jamb away from his victim's mother is a story, not of horrible misfortune, as you might expect - but of remarkable mercy. A few years ago Mary asked if she could meet Oshea at Minnesota's Stillwater state prison. She felt compelled to see if there was some way, if somehow, she could forgive her son's killer. "I believe the first thing she said to me was, 'Look, you don't know me. I don't know you. Let's just start with right now,'" Oshea says. "And I was befuddled myself." Oshea says they met regularly after that. When he got out, she introduced him to her landlord - who with Mary's blessing, invited Oshea to move into the building. Today they don't just live close - they are close. Mary was able to forgive. She credits God, of course - but also concedes a more selfish motive. "Unforgiveness is like a disease," Mary says. "It will eat you from the inside out. It's not about that other person, me forgiving him does not diminish what he's done. Yes, he murdered my son - but the forgiveness is for me. It's for me." For Oshea, it hasn't been that easy. "I haven't totally forgiven myself yet, I'm learning to forgive myself. And I'm still growing toward trying to forgive myself." To that end, Oshea is now busy proving himself to himself. He works at a recycling plant by day and goes to college by night. He says he's determined to pay back Mary's clemency by contributing to society. In fact, he's already working on it - singing the praises of God and forgiveness at prisons, churches - to large audiences everywhere. "A conversation can take you a long way," Oshea says to one group. Which explains why Mary is able to sing her praise of thanks. "How many times should I forgive?" Peter asks. "As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times." The number seventy-seven represents unlimited, infinite. What Jesus says to Peter is that you forgive, and forgive, and forgive again, there is no end to forgiving. Unforgiveness is like a disease says Mary, it will eat you from the inside out. Jesus knows this. We are not asked to forgive, we are not asked to love our neighbor, we are not asked to love our enemy for the others sake, but for our own. Jesus knows this. If you don't forgive, you will be eaten up, from the inside out. This passage isn't about asking for forgiveness, it is about forgiving. There is a huge difference. Forgiving is about freedom, it is about liberation, it is about the journey from death to life, and it is not about forgetting. Forgiving doesn't mean that we arise unscathed or unscared. Indeed, we carry the scars of being wounded with us always. But we carry scars, not open, festering wounds that eat us from the inside out. Forgiving is what causes us to heal. There is nothing in scripture about forgiving and forgetting, there is everything in scripture about forgiving, forgiving, and forgiving. It is in that forgiveness that mercy and compassion grow. I was at Trinity church in Pierre for clergy conference on Friday, and I noticed that out of the cracks in the sidewalk were growing some wonderful flowers, any way I think they were flowers, but they could very well have been weeds, I've been known to mistake one for the other. Forgiveness is like that, out of the cracks, out of our wounds, healing gives rise to the beauty of mercy and compassion from which reconciliation and peace arise. On this day we observe the anniversary of what we have come to know as 9/11, although it continues to be our son Willie's birthday. And today I wonder how we grow a post 9/11 anniversary community committed to the mercy and compassion from which reconciliation and peace may arise. In our community, in our church, in our families, how does forgiving create reconciliation and peace? How does forgiving create sacred conversation? How does forgiving create the possibility of new life and new creation? We are capable of sacred conversation. We are called to mercy and compassion, to reconciliation and peace, because we take seriously the work that God has done and continues to do through Jesus on the cross and in the resurrection. Those are the wounds from which we minister, those are the cracks from which the flowers, or the weeds, arise. Forgiveness brings healing, nothing else does, nothing else. Forgiveness creates a compassionate reality. This post 9/11 anniversary community committed to mercy and compassion from which reconciliation can grow, a community that forgives and therefore will be healed, is what we are called to, indeed, it is what is demanded of us by our baptism. The forgiveness that is made possible by the work that Jesus did on the cross and in the resurrection, and that we enter into at our baptism can and will transform our families and our communities. We must live our lives differently, differently than the revenge seeking, self-centered, model that is splayed all over our social media today. We must offer forgiveness, seven times, seventy-seven times, every time, all the time. Mercy and compassion will change the world and love will win.