(Other Scripture passages)
2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15
Psalm 32 or 32:1-8
Luke 7:36-50
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)
In our Galatians reading today, someone named Cephas came to Antioch, someone important enough in the early church for Paul to feel it necessary to confront him.
Paul is talking about the Apostle Peter. But why is he referring to him as “Cephas” instead of Peter?
The real question is “Why is he called Peter in the first place?”
In the Gospel of Matthew 16:13-19, Jesus gives that nickname to a disciple named Simon:
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
St. Jerome wrote, “It is not that Peter and Cephas signify different things, but what we would call in Latin and Greek petra (‘stone’) the Hebrews and Syrians both, because of the affinity of their languages, call cephas.” (Epistle to the Galatians I.2.II)
Calling Simon “Peter” is a play on words. To keep the same meaning of “rock” to Paul’s listeners and readers in Galatia, he referred to the apostle by a word that means the same as Simon’s Greek nickname: Cephas. It also refers to “head,” and is where we get the English terms for the head and brain like “encephalitis or encephalogram.”
Peter was a respected leader of the new Jewish sect, the Way, which had chosen to follow Jesus. They did not leave Judaism and become Christians, they saw Jesus as the fulfillment of the promise of Judaism, the Messiah. They were completed or fulfilled Jews. They understood Jesus died for their sins and the sins of others. But God’s forgiveness had a few difficulties from a Jewish perspective.
God had claimed the Israelites as his chosen people. So logically, which is the key element of most Rabbinic study, if God chose to save Gentiles also, he would first require them to become Jews since Jews are his chosen people.
It made good, logical sense. The problem is that God’s actions don’t always make good logical sense to us.
Becoming Jewish was not such a big deal for people who were young children or female. Some changes in diet, and learning about the scriptures we now call the Old Testament was that cumbersome a requirement for conversion.
Adult males faced a much more severe requirement: circumcision. Remember, is the first century, medical knowledge was rather limited, and there was no surgical anesthetic or sterile field to reduce infection.
This painful and unnecessary requirement for Gentile salvation was hampering Paul’s evangelistic efforts. Since households were controlled by adult males, unless the father converted, his household remained pagan in the eyes of the Jewish Christians.
But Peter knew better. He had a vision of various types of unclean food on a white sheet, with Jesus telling him that what God has made clean man can no longer call unclean. Right after that, he sent Peter to visit the Roman centurion Cornelius through direction in another vision. Peter found Cornelius, told him the Gospel, and the entire household was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Peter understood that Jesus planned to saved non-Jews as well as Jews. Peter had entered Gentiles’ homes, forbidden for Rabbis and good Jews, and ate with them — which was especially forbidden.
Meals were a spiritual bonding among the participants, and no good Jew would bond spiritually with a Gentile. Jews referred to Gentiles as “dogs.” But Peter understood that there were no Gentiles of Jews in the Kingdom of Heaven, only followers of Jesus.
That’s why Paul was so upset with Peter, and felt strongly enough to tell the church in Galatia about it. Not to embarrass or diminish Peter — there was no doubt in anyone’s mind about Peter’s authority form Jesus — but rather to show them that the debate over Gentiles needing to first become Jews before being saved had been resolved totally.
For Peter to no longer eat with his Gentile brothers so as not to irritate his Jewish brothers was wrong. After Paul’s confrontation with Peter, and his confrontation with the Jewish Christian leaders like James, the Council of Jerusalem issued the following decree, which is described in detail in the Book of Acts (15:19-21):
“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”
Paul knew that other Jewish Christians might try to impose the harsher requirements on new Gentile converts, so he wanted to ensure that entire church was aware of what God’s true requirements are.
God can and does save whomever he wants; that is, whoever will accept his offer of salvation. Christ’s sacrifice for us on the cross at Calvary shows God’s forgiveness of even Gentile sins. It’s ironic, and even sad, that God forgives us, but we won’t forgive each other.
I’ve heard people say, “I can forgive a lot of things, but not THAT.” But Jesus told his disciples when they asked him how to pray, to ask the Father to forgive our trespasses against him as we forgive those who trespass against us. God set the bar high for forgiveness — our own. We are told to forgive all trespasses against us, not just the ones that don’t bother us very much. Instead, we like to carry grudges, even though the people we’re angry at no longer know or care that we’re angry at them. Have you ever noticed that?
Someone does something to us that really makes us angry, and we let it fester inside us. Each time we see that person, they seem to be oblivious to it. They’re having a great time being happy, and we’re making ourselves more miserable by being even angrier at them for not apologizing to us for what they did. Years, even decades, later we see people who are still angry at a former friend or even a relative who did something to them.
All you need to do is mention the person’s name, and the story comes flooding out as if it happened just yesterday, “Him? Let me tell you what he did to me! When we were playing in the sandbox in kindergarten….”
Abe Lemmons was head basketball coach at the University of Texas for years. One day he was asked if he was bitter at the athletic director (Texas Athletic Director Deloss Dodds) who fired him as the Longhorn’s basketball coach, he replied, “Not at all, but I plan to buy a glass-bottomed car so I can watch the look on his face when I run over him.”
We love carrying our grudges, but if God will forgive us based on how we forgive others, do we really want God to say to us on Judgment Day, “I can forgive a lot of things, but not THAT”?
Pastor Ray Stedman tells the story of some Americans who were stationed in Korea during the Korean War. While there, they rented a home and hired a local Korean boy to cook and clean for them. These Americans were a bunch of jokesters, and soon they began to take advantage of the young boy’s naiveté. They’d smear Vaseline on the stove handles so that when he’d turn the stove on in the morning he’d get grease all over his fingers. They’d put little water buckets over the door so that he’d get drenched when he opened the door. They’d even nail his shoes to the floor during the night. Day after endless day, the little fellow took the brunt of their practical jokes without saying anything. No blame, no self-pity, no temper tantrums.
Finally, the men felt guilty about what they were doing, so they sat down with the young Korean and said, “Look, we know these pranks aren’t funny anymore, and we’re sorry. We’re never gonna take advantage of you again.”
It seemed a bit too good to be true to the houseboy. “No more sticky on the stove?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“No more water on door?”
“Nope.”
“No more nail shoes to the floor?”
“Nope, never again.”
“Okay,” the boy said with a smile, “no more spit in soup.”
Instead of forgiveness, we often focus on getting revenge. Forgiveness requires patience, but revenge has immediate gratification. As a culture we are obsessed with instant gratification.
But when we refuse to let go of our desire for revenge, when we refuse to forgive as God told us to do, we are really telling God that we don’t trust him to resolve the situation correctly, and that we can do his job better than he can.
Twenty centuries after Jesus told us how important it is to forgive others, the American Psychiatric Association has decided he might be right after all. In an article in Psychology today, Forgive to Live, Angela Pirisi writes that we need to let go of grudges for our own well-being.
"Still holding grudges? Check your pulse: research suggests that harboring feelings of betrayal may be linked to high blood pressure which can ultimately lead to stroke, kidney or heart failure, or even death."
In a study exploring the effect of having a forgiving personality on both psychological and physical stress responses, University of Tennessee (UT) students discussed two betrayal experiences—by a parent and by a friend or romantic partner.
As they spoke, researchers measured their blood pressure, heart rate, forehead muscle tension and skin conduction responses. The results, presented at the 2000 American Psychosomatic Society Annual Meeting, showed that “high” forgivers—those who forgive easily—had both a lower resting blood pressure and smaller increases in blood pressure rate than “low” forgivers—bigger grudge-holders.
And in an article by Kevin Culligan for Spiritual Life, he writes, that hundreds of studies and doctoral dissertations on forgiveness have been written in the last decade about the effects of forgiveness on mental health.
Some of the recent books and seminars include:
• Helping Clients Forgive: An Empirical Guide for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope and Forgiveness is a Choice: A Step-by-Step Process for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope (both by Robert Enright)
• “Forgiveness as Positive Science: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications”
• “The Psychology of Forgiveness: Research and Practice.”
Culligan writes, “There has even been a Stanford Forgiveness Project which discovered after years of research “how social cognitive processes create grievance stories” and “how maintaining grievances/hurts/resentments negatively alters psychological and physiological processes.”
They have demonstrated the personal benefits of “letting go” of one’s grievance stories and, most importantly, are developing intervention procedures to help people move from unforgiveness or harboring hurts and grievances to the actual practice of forgiving others.”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3885/is_200207/ai_n9085091/pg_1
Translated from psychobabble into regular English, this means “Jesus Christ was right. Forgiveness is good for us.”
Many of us think of forgiveness as something we do for others, and that if we withhold we have some sort of control over their level of punishment.
But if we trust God to handle the punishment aspect of someone else’s actions, forgiveness becomes something we do for ourselves, to bring our spirit back in line with God’s will and to keep ourselves physically and mentally healthy.
Phillip Yancey writes, in his book What’s So Amazing about Grace?, “At last I understood: in the final analysis, forgiveness is an act of faith. By forgiving another, I am trusting that God is a better justice-maker than I am. By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues of fairness for God to work out. I leave in God’s hands the scales that must balance justice and mercy.” (Page 93)
To realize the power of God’s forgiveness and why our own is so important, two things become critical:
1. Understanding Christ’s death for us
2. Understanding Christ’s life in us
The well-known theologian and Bishop John Henry Newman said, “How can we understand forgiveness if we haven’t recognized the depth of our sin?”
King David was referred to by God as a “man after my own heart.” Yet we read today about compounding of sins that David committed. David was at home while his soldiers were at war, instead of being in battle with them as he had always done previously. While he was lounging on his roof, which was more like what we might call a Penthouse balcony, he was looking into the yards and houses below and noticed a beautiful naked woman getting into her bath.
When he discovered she was the wife of one of his soldiers, David had the woman brought to him anyway. He had sex with her and she became pregnant. So in an attempt to cover up his crime — yes, adultery was once a crime, punishable by death — David had her husband Uriah the Hittite brought back home for a visit. He figured Uriah would be back with his wife, so Bathsheba’s pregnancy would be considered a result of his visit home. But Uriah refused to enjoy any of the comforts of home while his troops were still in battle, so David’s cover-up plan now had a major glitch.
So David moved to Plan B, and had Uriah killed in battle, so he could marry Bathsheba before anyone else realized she was pregnant. David thought he had hid his plan very well; no one else knew about it.
Imagine David’s face when the Prophet Nathan told him that God knew exactly was he had done. David had already passed sentence on himself when he stated “he shall restore the lamb fourfold.” Mosaic Law mandated a fourfold payback of the theft or destruction of someone else’s property.
Later in 2 Samuel, we read about how four of David’s sons turn against him in rebellion even trying to kill him, so he does indeed endure the heartbreak of four times the initial loss.
We see that God forgave David in today’s reading, when Nathan says, “the Lord has ‘put away’ your sin.” But David had to live with the consequences of his sin. And so do we. When we sin, God will forgive us if we seek his forgiveness, but we must face the consequences of our sin as a reminder of the cost of choosing our own will instead of God’s will.
But in his mercy, God limits our consequences. David could have been stoned to death for his sins, both the adultery and the murder, yet God limited the result of his sin.
He does the same with us through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. And he changes us forever by becoming a part of us through his spirit. When God forgives us, the Christ within us is our advocate.
Ambrosiaster, one of the early Christian commentators on Holy Scripture wrote, “There is no doubt that Christ lives in the one who is delivered from death by faith. When Christ forgives the sins of one who is worthy of death, he himself lives in that person, since by his protection the person is snatched from death….The one who is grateful to Christ is therefore the one who endures in faith toward him.”
Those who think Paul was exaggerating when he said, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” would do well to heed the message from an article in the New York Post this week:
’JESUS’ CRACKS COLD CASE
By LAURA ITALIANO
June 9, 2007 — The devil may have made him do it, but it was Jesus who made him confess.
An Arizona man shocked cops in the East Village this week by walking into the local precinct and announcing that he’d strangled a woman on East 13th Street during an argument in 2004 - and that Jesus Christ wanted him to turn himself in.
Authorities said the confession has solved the previously cold-case murder of Myrna Gonzales, a 45-year-old homeless woman whose body was found folded into a large steamer trunk in a vacant lot at East 13th Street and Third Avenue.
“We wish Jesus would solve more of these,” one law enforcement source said.
Michael Mohr, 51, might have gotten away with the slaying. But he’d recently had a religious conversion, and realized Jesus wanted him to do the right thing.
Gonzales’ body was found June 6, 2004, in a vacant lot outside Mohr’s building.
“He was relieved,” said one law enforcement source. “He was a little emotional. He was just glad to get it off his chest.”
Christ’s sacrifice for us results in his living in us. As we go through each day trying to live as Jesus lived and do what Jesus did we strengthen the bond with Christ within ourselves so we can truly be one with him as he is one with the Father. When we choose to not forgive others, we are turning away from him and weakening our relationship with him.
Unity with God through forgiveness is our message from today’s readings. It’s also our key to the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.
God bless you all.
