Fr. Andy delivered an incredibly challenging and refreshing homily (links to the mp3 download if you want to listen) on forgiveness. He opened by talking about the school shooting in the Amish school in 2006. I had heard some of the grace that the Amish community displayed but I hadn’t heard that they went that very evening to the family of the shooter (who had shot himself) and offered dinner and forgiveness.
Fr. Andy explained that the Amish believe that the center of Jesus’ teaching was forgiveness. They believe this to such an extreme that they believe that God will not forgive you if you do not forgive others. When I think about it certainly seems consistent with Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness and Paul’s writings on the subject. When you stop to ponder the implications of this belief, it’s a terrifying prospect to think that God might not extend his grace to you because you held a grudge against someone. It certainly doesn’t fit with the “God is your buddy” theology that I seem to be moving away from in my own thinking.
The homily challenged us to think of everyone that we needed to forgive and also everyone that we needed to ask for forgiveness from and take the necessary steps to make things right. I certainly have many people that I would like forgiveness from but the foremost thought in my head was my attitude towards the management at my work over a completely trivial matter. Recently, my boss and other management have been really frustrated over the lack of cleanliness of the kitchen at work. To combat the problem, they installed a camera to monitor who was leaving dirty dishes, etc. I immediately took offense to this and fired off a snide email. I felt that I work a bunch of overtime sacrificing my family and management is only concerned about who is leaving dirty dishes in the sink. I had really worked this up into a more fundamental problem at work. But after today’s eucharist, I realized that I was being prideful and, especially as a manager, I needed to be a servant. I sent an email of apology for my snide email and went into work over the weekend to completely clean the kitchen. I also sent an email to the other managers to organize a schedule where each dept. would be responsible for cleaning the kitchen for a week.
What was interesting is that I found myself trying to think of all kinds of ways that I could serve the people I work with beyond kitchen cleanliness. I realize that each day I have the choice to be selfish and cynical or be a servant and that once I begin to make the choice one way or the other, it tends to feed itself no matter which way I choose. I want to choose to be a servant.
