Second Sunday of Easter
Cycle C
April 3, 2016
Saint Margaret Parish, Bel
Air
Readings: Acts 5.12-16
Revelation
1.9-11a, 12-13, 17-19
John
20.19-31
Forgive or Bind
The
risen Jesus in today’s gospel says: “If you forgive peoples’ sins, they are forgiven
them; if you hold them bound, they are held bound.”
Jesus
is speaking not just to his apostles, but to a wider group of disciples. So, in effect, he is speaking to all of us.
What
I find especially interesting is that Jesus does not speak of forgiving or not
forgiving. Instead, he speaks of
forgiving or binding.
The
idea is that the very Jesus who teaches us to forgive without limits is not
giving the option here to withhold forgiveness.
Instead, he is saying that, in fact, we either forgive others or we bind
them.
So,
when we don’t forgive others, we don’t allow them to move away from a past
action. We kind of freeze them and bind
them right where they are.
I
remember seeing this in a family that was very close to me. Two brothers and a sister disagreed over the
allocation of their mother’s estate.
The
one brother and sister thought that the other brother got more than they
did. This became a wedge between the
three of them for forty years and each of them ended up dying without any forgiveness
or apology.
Why Do We Bind?
I have to ask: why
do we sometimes refuse to forgive and, in that way, bind others?
What keeps us from
forgiving people who have wronged us? I am
thinking of two factors that can lead to this.
First, our refusal
to forgive and our binding others may have to do with our sense of self-esteem
or self-worth. Maybe subsciously, we are
trying to build ourselves up by continuing to put down the other person and
prove them wrong.
And then, there is
the issue that if we forgive others, we have to relate to them and, if we do
that, we might have to accept some share of the blame for what happened. Here our refusal to forgive comes from our
pride and our unwillingness to admit that we might be wrong too.
Notice, that when
we don’t forgive, we end up binding others or freezing them where they are. But we also bind ourselves and kind of lock
ourselves into a hardened, maybe inflexible position.
I want to add one
word of caution here. I often find it
important to add this.
I am not saying
that forgiveness includes placing ourselves in danger of harm, as when there has
been domestic violence or abuse.
Forgiveness does not include placing ourselves in that kind of risk.
How to Forgive?
There is a saying that knowing the enemy is half the
battle.
So, if we can identify what is going on inside us that
keeps us from freeing and forgiving others, that may help us a great deal. If we can see that it is an issue of
self-worth or of pride, we might be able to deal with that and then stop binding
the other person.
Maybe I can realize that I can have even more self-esteem
if I don’t keep putting down someone who has offended me. Or maybe I can realize that I am still a good
person if I let go of my pride and admit that I was wrong too.
So, if I can get in touch with why I am binding others and
then deal with it, I am much more able to follow the mission that the risen
Jesus is giving us today. I am much more
able to free and forgive others.
