Sackcloth and Ashes (Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Matthew 18:21-35,
Luke 17:4,
Romans 14:7-9,
Jonah 3:5-7,
Jonah 3:9,
Jonah 3:10,
1 Samuel 16:7,
Psalm 30:11,
Genesis 4:24.
Reflection
Dear sisters and brothers,
Let us now listen to the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 18: 21-35):
“Then Peter approaching asked him,
“Lord, if my brother sins against me,
how often must I forgive him?
As many as seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.
That is why the kingdom of heaven
may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants.
When he began the accounting,
a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.
Since he had no way of paying it back,
his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children,
and all his property, in payment of the debt.
At that, the servant fell down, did him homage,
and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’
Moved with compassion the master of that servant
let him go and forgave him the loan.
When that servant had left,
he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount.
He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’
Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him,
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
But he refused.
Instead, he had him put in prison until he paid back the debt.
Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened,
they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master
and reported the whole affair.
His master summoned him and said to him,
‘You wicked servant!
I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’
Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers
until he should pay back the whole debt.
So will my heavenly Father do to you,
unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.””
In the text, Peter asked the question how often forgiveness is to be granted.
Jesus answers that it is to be given without limit.
And he illustrates this with the parable of the unmerciful servant.
He warns that his heavenly Father will give those who do not forgive the same treatment as that given to the unmerciful servant.
Matthew 18:21-22 corresponds to Luke 17:4 - “And if he wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry’, you should forgive him.”
The parable of the unmerciful servant and the final warning are peculiar to Matthew.
Secondly, the parable of the merciful servant did not originally belong to this context.
It is suggested by the fact that it really does not deal with repeated forgiveness, which is the point of Peter’s question and Jesus’ reply.
In addition, we understand that Matthew conveys that the grace of God’s forgiveness, needs our response of forgiving our neighbour to be finally approved.
Is not that a chilling thought?
The grace of God’s forgiveness needs our response.
And in turn, God needs our response of forgiving the other to conform our own forgiveness, that which we receive from the grace of God’s forgiveness.
What a wonderful thought that Jesus gives to all of us!
Does it relate to sackcloth and ashes?
I say ‘Yes’.
If it is so...
What is sackcloth and ashes?
Sackcloth and ashes were used in Old Testament times as a symbol of repentance.
People who wanted to show their repentant hearts would often wear sackcloth, sit in ashes, and put ashes on top of their heads.
Sackcloth was a rough material usually made of black goat’s hair, making it quite uncomfortable to wear.
The ashes signified emptiness, barrenness, loneliness, and unhappiness.
The ashes also meant destruction of whole, and disintegration of whole.
Sackcloth and ashes were also used as a public sign of repentance and humility before God.
When Jonah declared to the people of Nineveh that God was going to destroy them for their wickedness, everyone from the king to the last responded with repentance, fasting, sackcloth and ashes (Jonah 3:5-7).
Their reasoning was (Jonah 3:9): “Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish”.
This is interesting because the Scripture never says that Jonah’s message included any mention of God’s mercy.
But, They received God’s mercy.
It is clear that people putting on sackcloth and ashes, was not a meaningless show.
It was a symbolic expression of their repentant hearts.
God saw genuine change.
The sackcloth and ashes stand for a humble change of heart.
This caused God to ‘relent’ and not bring about His plan to destroy them (Jonah 3:10).
In the Scripture, there are other people, who wore sackcloth and ashes.
Sackcloth and ashes were used as an outward sign of one’s inward condition.
Such a symbol made one’s change of heart visible and demonstrated the sincerity of one’s repentance.
It was not the act of putting on sackcloth and ashes itself that moved God to intervene, but the humility that such an action demonstrated (1 Samuel 16:7).
God’s forgiveness in response to genuine repentance is celebrated by David’s words (Psalm 30:11): “You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy”.
Having said this, why do we find it hard to forgive others even though that is the only way to please God’s forgiveness?
I think the reason is because we fail to appreciate and celebrate our own forgiveness.
God asks of us to be grateful and to realise that He has done for us so much more than we could ever be required to do for our neighbour.
God in his infinite mercy sent his own Son to die on the cross and take away our sins (Romans 14:7-9):
“None of us lives for oneself,
and no one dies for oneself.
For if we live, we live for the Lord,
and if we die, we die for the Lord;
so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.
For this is why Christ died and came to life,
that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”
God, in His abundant love, forgives us to make us righteous in and through Christ Jesus by dying on the Cross.
Do we get more than we give in our lives?
The answer is yes.
But, the question is: what is our response for the grace of God’s forgiveness in our lives?
The above question further focusses on the response rather than the process.
We reflected last Sunday on the process of reconciliation.
Today, we reflect on the response to the grace of God’s forgiveness.
Yes.
It is the response to God’s infinite grace.
In this situation, let us now reflect on 3 types of people in the world based on how we respond to the grace of God’s forgiveness in our lives.
They are:
1. People, who forgive easily,
2. People, who cannot forgive easily, and
3. People, who can forgive but cannot forget.
There is some evidence to suggest that forgiving oneself is important to forgive the other.
The starting point of forgiveness is the self.
Unless and until we forgive ourselves, we will surely fail in the response to the grace of God’s forgiveness.
Forgiveness starts from the self and responds to the other.
Forgiveness is not an end product.
Forgiveness is a process.
Forgiveness does not end but continues.
Forgiveness is a journey.
Yes, forgiveness is a life-style for Christians.
Moreover, we need to keep in mind that forgiveness is not one way.
We give forgiveness.
We get forgiveness.
For this reason, forgiveness has two ways.
The first is ‘Giving’.
The second is ‘Getting’.
First way deals with I, me, myself, and mine.
Second way deals with the other.
So, there is the grace and there is the response.
Without the response, the grace is invalidated.
We lose what we received from the grace of God’s forgiveness.
We should never ever forget these two ways in our spiritual journey.
This means that we ‘get’ what we ‘give’.
Generally speaking, there are many people, who struggle with their past mistakes.
They are people, who are not able to forget their bitter past experiences.
There are people, who feel guilty about what they have done in their past lives.
There are people, who are angry with themselves or with the other for various reasons.
There are people, who are hurt with their bad choices in their relationships and in their marriages.
There are people, who have an emotional imbalance due to their own experience with others or the other’s actions affect them emotionally.
There are people, who live with inferiority complex because of their own thinking about themselves or what the other have said about them or how others have treated them in their lives.
Most of the time, the past haunts us.
Likewise, we gather a lot of garbage in our hearts and minds.
This garbage starts to stink in our attitudes and behaviours.
Slowly, we become more negative towards our lives.
We feel lonely.
We avoid any kind of relationships.
As a result, we lose our inner peace.
Nevertheless, we have the grace of God’s forgiveness.
God needs our response to the grace that we receive from Him.
Here, we will reflect one by one on the 3 types of people, on how we receive the grace of God’s forgiveness and why we must respond to that grace by forgiving others in order to validate our own forgiveness.
1. People, Who Forgive Easily:
First of all, let us reflect on the first type of people, who forgive easily.
We heard in the text that God forgave a huge loan of the first servant instantly as he begged for it.
Look at the King in the Gospel of Matthew.
How did he forgive?
The king forgives limitless.
The king forgives a huge loan.
The king forgives in abundance.
Our King is our Heavenly Father.
Our King is a merciful Father.
He is our eternal King, who looks after the lost.
Our King, is the full of compassion.
When we encounter the King, who is merciful and compassionate, we experience the grace of His forgiveness instantly and without measure.
The first type of people, who experience the grace of God’s forgiveness, respond by forgiving the other instantly in order to validate their own experience of forgiveness.
This type of people, are not many in our society.
They are very few in number.
We can easily count them with the help of our fingers.
Why do we not find such persons?
Why are they in small in numbers?
Are they all perfect?
The reason is they are very few and they experience God personally every day in their prayer, silence and solitude.
Due to that the grace of God’s forgiveness is always upon them.
They try to become perfect by responding instantly in forgiving the others.
It is a godly act.
How is it possible for them?
It is possible for them because God dwells in them.
They imitate the ways of God in their words and deeds.
They give what they deserve.
One of them, is Mother Teresa.
To illustrate this, let me narrate a real-life incident of Mother Teresa.
Mother Teresa was once living in a small house in Calcutta along with some orphans.
One day it so happened that there was nothing for the children to eat.
Mother Teresa did not know what to do.
Mother Teresa called all the children and said, “Come children today we have nothing to eat in the house. But, if we pray to God he will surely give.”
After ten minutes of prayer, Mother Teresa said to the children “Come, now let us go and beg.”
So, they all went to beg.
In the neighbourhood of Mother Theresa, there was one shop keeper, who hated Mother Teresa.
Mother went to him and said “Please, give something to eat.”
The person looked at Mother Teresa with anger and spit saliva on Mother Teresa’s hand.
Mother Teresa gently wiped the saliva to her sari and said, “Thank you for what you have given for me. Now will you give something for my children?”
The shop keeper was shocked at the humility of Mother Teresa and asked her pardon. Then on, he regularly began to help the orphan children.
Mother Teresa did not react to the shop keeper, in addition she forgave him instantly.
For the first type of people, forgiving the other, comes instantly.
They give what they get.
Likewise, we have real life stories of many saintly people, who easily forgives the others in their lives.
They all call each one of us to imitate the same.
2. People, Who Cannot Forgive Easily:
The second type of people cannot forgive easily.
The first servant in the Gospel, could not forgive easily as we read the text.
He experienced the limitless forgiveness, when the huge loan was waived off.
He could not forgive in response to the grace of God’s forgiveness.
He struggles in his life.
There are many people, who are uncomfortable with forgiveness.
There are so many people, who have difficulties with forgiveness.
There are people, who are confused between revenge and forgiveness.
There are people, who struggle with their self.
As an example,
Let me narrate the story for those who have not watched the movie ‘Just Let Go’.
The movie is based on the inspirational true story of Chris Williams.
It is a drama about the aftermath of a tragic fatal accident of a man and his family.
In it, Chris Williams is a God-fearing family man with four children and married to his wife, Michelle, who’s several months pregnant.
Celebrating Michelle’s birthday, they all decided to go out for dessert and encountered a drunk driver while on a two-lane road.
The driver changed direction into their lane, striking the passenger’s side of the car where Michelle and their young daughter, Anna, were sitting.
Having spent some time as a hospital, Chris immediately recognises his wife’s injuries as fatal.
Only he and his youngest son survive.
While 9-year old Sam undergoes extensive physical therapy to overcome the brain damage inflicted by the impact, Chris struggles to pick up the slack at home.
His oldest teenage son withdraws in grief and anger over what happened and is disturbed by his father’s apparent lack of emotion.
Chris' parents try to help out wherever they can, but his mother is particularly upset and is also astonished that Chris is not being more aggressive in his court case.
His lawyers all advise him to say or do things that will damage the defendant and cause the 17 year-old to be tried as an adult.
However, for some mysterious reason, Chris is hesitant and expresses his concern for the young man’s well-being.
At work, a woman tells him he should sue and get financial retribution for the loss of his family members.
Being pulled in so many directions finally takes its toll on Chris, and he breaks down in front of his sons.
This release of grief gives him the strength he needs to pack up the belongings of his wife and children, even giving some away to those in need.
He seeks God’s guidance on what to do and feels that God is calling him to forgive the drunk driver and let go off all feelings of remorse.
That is hard enough to do from a distance, but his ultimate test of forgiveness occurs when he must come face to face with the person who destroyed his family and tell him what is truly on his heart.
Forgiveness is not easy for some people in their lives.
They go through a physical, spiritual, psychological, and emotional trauma in their lives.
The first servant in the Gospel, could not forgive easily as we read the text.
3. People, Who Can Forgive But Cannot Forget:
We hear many people saying to us I can forgive but I cannot forget.
Unless we for-GIVE, we cannot for-GET.
Unless we ‘give’ it, we cannot ‘get’ it.
Giving is the way of God.
Getting is the way of human.
Unless there is a change of heart or the transformation of heart, nothing will happen.
For this purpose, we need Christ Jesus, who scarified his life on the Cross for our sins.
We are used to get and get...
We forget to give.
In the Gospel reading, we read: “Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair.”
Fellow servants expected the first servant to do as the King did to him.
But, the first servant for-GOT what he received.
When he forgot what he received how he can give to the other.
He had a huge loan, but it was waived off.
The second servant had a small loan, but the first servant was not ready to ‘GIVE’ up the small loan.
If we are not ready to give something, we do not deserve to get anything.
It is a norm of life.
God the Father gave his only Son Jesus Christ to this world by dying on the Cross in order to get us all in his communion through Salvation.
God knows that one who can forgive, can also forget.
Because, the Grace of God is stronger than the sin of humanity.
Our response of forgiving our neighbours, comes from our merciful Father.
Why do we need to forget?
Seventy-seven times (Matthew18:22), the Greek corresponds exactly to the LXX of Genesis (Genesis 4:24):
“If Cain is avenged seven times,
then Lamech seventy-seven times.”
There is probably an allusion, by contrast, to the limitless vengeance of Lamech in the Genesis text.
In any case, what is demanded of the disciples is limitless forgiveness.
We, as disciples of Christ Jesus, cannot limit saying that I can forgive but I cannot forget.
There are no terms and conditions.
There are no ifs and buts.
Once we experience the grace of God’s forgiveness, everything is wiped away from us.
Automatically, every hurt, every anger, every guilt, every bitterness, is removed or deleted from our hearts, minds, and souls.
Hence, there is nothing to remember.
To experience limitless, we need to GIVE forgiveness in order to GET forgiveness.
In other words, we for-GIVE in order to for-GET.
By forgiving our neighbours the wrong they have done, our sins will be pardoned when we pray.
As I said earlier, sackcloth is symbolism of making it quite uncomfortable to be what we are created to be.
The ashes signified emptiness and destruction of ourselves.
The antonym of forgive is revenge.
Revenge is not a solution.
Revenge ruins us.
A war is not an answer for peace.
We are not quite at peace when there is a war in our hearts and minds.
The first servant could not forgive the second servant, who owned him a small loan.
The first servant was uncomfortable to be what he was created to be.
He was restless even though he received what he did not deserve in his life.
The first servant’s emptiness, destroyed the second servant’s life.
Many of us, do behave in the same way like the first servant.
What did he receive finally?
The text says: “Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt.”
When we do not forgive one another, we gather more garbage’s of evil thoughts.
These evil thoughts will destroy our lives.
Many of us know the value of forgiveness in our lives.
We need not wear sackcloth.
We need not apply ashes.
But,
We need to be empty to be filled by the grace of God’s forgiveness, so that we can be quite comfortable with ourselves and forgive others limitless in our lives too with the help of the Spirit of Christ Jesus, who forgave everyone, who wronged him.
We ‘got’ it what we did not deserve, in and through Christ Jesus.
Are we ready to ‘give’ what the other deserves to receive from us?
If it is so…it will be the true response to the grace of God’s forgiveness.
There is the story of a man named George Wilson who in 1830 killed a government employee who caught him in the act of robbing the mails.
He was tried and condemned to death by hanging.
But the then President of the United States, Andrew Jackson granted him executive pardon.
George Wilson, however, refused to accept the pardon.
The Department of Corrections did not know what to do.
The case was taken to the Supreme Court where Chief Justice Marshall ruled that “a pardon is a slip of paper, the value of which is determined by the acceptance of the person to be pardoned. If it is refused, it is no pardon. George Wilson must be hanged.”
And he was hanged.
Even if we are opposed to the death penalty, we still cannot but agree with the principle that pardon granted has to be accepted to become effective.
This is the point of today’s gospel.
When God forgives us, we must accept the grace of God’s forgiveness with our response of forgiving our neighbours in turn.
This is the only way that we can validate the grace of God’s forgiveness in our lives and we can enjoy our lives as the Psalm sings (Psalm 30:11): “You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.”
May the Heart of Jesus live in the hearts of all. Amen...
