11th Sunday Year C - Homily 1

Homily 1 -2007

It seems that Hamas and Fatah seem intent on killing each other in the Gaza Strip. And when not fighting with each other, they are engaged with Israel in the same sterile cycle of attack and counter-attack, that seems to do little else other than deepen mutual hatred. Chaos reigns in the refugee camps in Lebanon. And the same mindless violence, only Sunnis and Shiites this time, continues in Iraq. It hurts to hear it, to see it on the television screens. Ultimately, they are our brothers and sisters. How will it end?

Perhaps the world has always been like this – if not actually, at least potentially. It’s our world – in need of redemption. It’s our world - that has been redeemed. It’s our world – for us to change, not alone, but hand in hand with the risen Christ.

Where do we start? I think there is only one answer: with ourselves: to take up God’s offer of conversion. Can we do anything more? other than to invite, to attract, to seek to enlighten and to convince others to start similarly with themselves. Armed intervention - the use of force, of power - can rearrange the deck-chairs. But the world needs more than that. It needs changed hearts.

I find today’s Gospel relevant to all this. It’s a real challenge to conventional wisdom, to what we might call common sense.

When I was a child, if I got into an argument and hurt someone, the teacher (or mum or dad) would sometimes intervene and determine who was guilty and who was innocent. If I was guilty, I was told to say sorry. After I had said sorry, the other one was asked to forgive me, and then we would shake hands (usually reluctantly). That approach burned deep into the psyche – but not just into mine. It seems the appropriate way to re-establish communication and to achieve reconciliation. The guilty one first says sorry; and the offended one then forgives. Such is the conventional wisdom.

But Jesus says that that is not his sense of God. That is not how God deals with being offended, with sin. God reverses the order. God – the offended one – makes the first move. God offers forgiveness. It’s God’s offer of forgiveness that allows, that empowers, genuine sorrow on the part of the sinner. Only when faced with the unconditional love and forgiveness of God does the sinner move from a situation of self-interest to genuine love.

The fear of hell, the loss of heaven, can motivate a very deep regret and remorse – but regret or remorse are not sorrow. They are focussed on self, not on God – conditional on the strength of the fear that drives them. Ultimately they encourage an unconscious feeling of resentment. They might motivate a change of behaviour. They do not come from or lead to a change of heart.

In the story today, the woman had moved from a situation of real sin (Jesus did not deny or avoid that; he spoke of her many sins)... she had moved from there to a situation where she loved much. What gave her the motivation, the energy, to move?

She had experienced God’s unconditional forgiveness, God’s unconditional love. As Jesus said: Her sins, her many sins, must have been forgiven her, or she would not have shown such great love.

Jesus calls us to be compassionate as our heavenly Father is compassionate – unconditionally compassionate, the ones to take the initiative. It’s interesting. I can think of nowhere in the Gospels where Jesus tells us to say we are sorry. But again and again he tells us to forgive, and even includes it in the only prayer he taught us: forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Why his emphasis on forgiving, rather than on being sorry? Both are necessary – but what makes true, and effective, sorrow possible is the experience of gratuitous forgiveness. The opposite is not the case.

Obviously so much more could be said about forgiveness. It involves much more than we usually realise. Even understanding what it is is far from obvious. And it doesn’t always work. But it is the way of God – thank God!