forgiveness

Truth and Reconciliation

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Truth and Reconciliation” Matthew 18:15-20

Marty hasn’t spoken to his brothers in decades. It all started Thanksgiving of 1980.  The whole family gathered at Marty’s home for dinner. Marty’s wife Lois cooked the most beautiful meal. She made cranberry relish, giblet gravy, and the turkey, roasted to perfection. It’s too bad no one stayed for dinner. 

The trouble started not long after everyone had a few cocktails and the conversation turned to the recent presidential election. Marty the Reagan Republican was delighted that his candidate won. Reagan was sure to get the nation back on the right track, cut off those welfare queens, and teach those Democrats a lesson. 

Marty’s brother Tim cast his ballot for Jimmy Carter. Tim saw Carter as a man of rare principle and goodness. Carter needed another term in office to end partisan politics and turn the economy around.

Marty’s other brother Frank was always a free spirit, so no one was surprised that he voted for the Independent John Anderson. Frank admired Anderson’s suggestion of a fifty cents-a-gallon gas tax to curb consumption and save energy. In fact, Frank was thinking of trading his old Datsun for a bicycle and simply peddling everywhere.

Round and round the conversation went, each brother extolling the virtues of his candidate and deriding the flaws of the opponents. The last straw came when the free-spirited Frank referred to the Great Communicator as Ronnie Raygun and mimed the President-elect shooting everyone who disagreed with his politics.

“Get out!”  Marty yelled, his face red, a vein on his forehead pulsing. Marty marched into the hall, grabbed all the coats from the closet, opened the front door, and threw them out on the lawn. “All of you! Get out now!” 

They did. Speechless, the brothers with their wives and kids piled into their cars and left.  They stopped at a truck stop on the throughway for a disappointing Thanksgiving dinner, while Marty and Lois had leftovers that lasted weeks. Turkey soup, turkey hash, turkey fritters, turkey omelets, turkey casserole. The aging brothers are still alienated.

Jesus knew that relationships could be fraught with this pattern of sin, distance, and disconnection. The lessons of Matthew 18 are devoted to how we are to respond to brokenness and separation. In fact, right before the words of today’s gospel reading, Jesus told his friends the Parable of the Lost Sheep to emphasize the importance of reconciliation. In the parable, the good shepherd placed himself and the ninety-nine other members of his flock at risk to go off in search of the one sheep who was lost in the wilderness. For Jesus, our good shepherd, families and communities cannot be whole until broken relationships are healed and the lost are restored.

That prepares us to hear today’s lesson. Do you remember what Jesus said?  Where there is alienation, we should first address the issue one on one, speaking the truth in love. If we fail, we invite one or two others to join us in our efforts to bridge the divide. If that fails, we seek the aid of the community of faith. If that proves to be unfruitful, we are to treat the lost lamb as a Gentile or a tax collector, which sounds about as low as you can go until we remember that Jesus ate with tax collectors and welcomed Gentiles. Jesus spent much of his ministry focused on these outsiders, so the Lord is telling us to always seek reconciliation. 

Jesus might caution us to be careful about how we put his reconciling process into practice. Jesus, who taught us that our ultimate responsibility is always to love God and love one another, would remind us that our efforts to reconcile must be prompted by love and not by the desire to bring shame, inflict guilt, or prove someone wrong. Only love can help us take responsibility for our feelings and actions and invite others to do the same. Only love can allow us to be vulnerable and direct.  We all know the pain of separation and alienation; yet, Jesus believes that we can make different choices that will bring healing to all that brokenness.

The story I told of Marty’s fateful Thanksgiving of 1980 may sound extreme, but we have all experienced separation and alienation. Perhaps your Marty is the daughter who moved out of state and phones home infrequently since you told her what you really think about her boyfriend. Perhaps your Marty is that valued colleague who stopped speaking to you after you got a promotion and he didn’t. Perhaps your Marty is the parent who refuses to see you since you expressed concern about their drinking. We all know the pain and puzzle of brokenness. We all know how it feels to stand on the far side of an unbridgeable rift, separated from folks whom we have loved and respected. Jesus’ remedy for our broken relationships sounds so simple. Why is it that we have such a hard time putting it into practice?

Dr. Murray Bowen of Georgetown University, one of the leading family therapists of the twentieth century, developed Family Systems Theory to describe the pattern of distance and disconnection that he noticed in the families he counseled.  Bowen believed that families manage tension and anxiety through triangles and distance. I’ll give examples. 

Marty’s brothers Frank and Tim never took that first step that Jesus taught us to take—never returned and confronted Marty about his outrageous behavior, never spoke the truth in love. Instead, they dealt with their anxiety by forming a triangle. They talked with one another instead of talking to Marty. It started at the truck stop, where they ate that disappointing Thanksgiving dinner after Marty tossed them out. Frank turned to Tim and said, “Reagan, Ray gun, r-a-y-g-u-n. It’s funny. Isn’t it?” Tim nodded, “Geeze, you’d think Marty would lighten up. Can you believe that guy?” Frank and Tim felt a lot better, but the triangle they created did nothing to heal the rift with Marty because they didn’t confront him. 

Now an example for distance: If Frank and Tim were masters of the triangle, Marty was the master of distance. Rather than work through his anger with his brothers, Marty opted out of being in relationship altogether. Every year when the Christmas cards come from Tim and Frank, Marty tosses them in the trash. Cut-off. That’s the ultimate expression of distance. That’s the painful reality that Jesus hoped we could avoid.

Professor Bowen, like Jesus, believed that for broken families to find healing, they needed to stop forming triangles or choosing to disconnect. Instead, they needed to learn ways to stay in relationship and communicate directly with one another in times of conflict. Families that failed to develop practices for direct, healthy communication tended to repeat the same patterns of brokenness from generation to generation.

One last example. It shouldn’t surprise us to learn that the father of Marty, Tim, and Frank had been alienated from his siblings, too, over an inheritance dispute. In fact, Marty, Frank, and Tim never met their aunts and uncle. Never knew their cousins. Within families, all that brokenness passes from one generation to another until someone has the awareness and the courage to make some different choices about how they will be in relationship. Lord, have mercy!

Now, here is the good news that Jesus was trying to communicate to his followers. One faithful person who chooses to follow the advice of Jesus, who bravely faces alienation head-on and reaches out in love, can change an entire family. One person with the courage to be honest about sin, pain, grief, and hurt can be the architect of a changed future. One person can restore wholeness to the flock.

We all know how it feels to stand on the far side of the unbridgeable rift, separated from folks whom we have loved and respected. Jesus taught that it doesn’t have to be like that. I’d like to invite us all to think of a personal relationship that is fraught and in need of reconciliation. Who is your Marty?

This week, we could commit to making one loving effort to restore what has long been broken, to find the lost and heal the hurt. We could mail a card or send an e-mail. We could pick up the phone or show up in person with words of truth, vulnerability, and love. If the hurt is very raw and deeply painful, we may only be able to pray about the healing that is needed, or we could seek a coach to help us. Although we may feel powerless to reconcile, we can remember that Jesus is not, and we can assure ourselves that wherever two or more are gathered in his name, he is there. He is with us. We can remember that Jesus would stop at nothing—not even his suffering and death on the cross—to reconcile us to his Father in heaven and to one another. Let’s take just a moment to quietly commit ourselves to finding the lost and healing the hurt. May God grant us the courage and the awareness to make different choices in our relationships…

Perhaps there could even be hope for Marty’s family. After all these years, Tim could call Marty to say that Reagan hadn’t proven to be such a bad President after all. Or, Frank could peddle his bike over to Marty’s door and say, “Brother, I may not appreciate your politics, but I love you and I miss you.” Perhaps Marty could begin to pray for the Lord to help him move past the anger, shame, and embarrassment that have kept him from his brothers for all these years. Who knows? Maybe this Thanksgiving Marty, Frank and Tim will sit down at the table together. Jesus would like that.

Resources:

Roberta M. Gilbert. The Eight Concepts of Bowen Theory. Falls Church: Leading Systems Press, 2004.

Ronald W. Richardson. Creating a Healthier Church. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1996.

Richard W. Ward. “Commentary on Matthew 18:15-20” in Preaching This Week, Sept. 10, 2023. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23/commentary-on-matthew-1815-20-6

Audrey West. “Commentary on Matthew 18:15-20” in Preaching This Week, Sept. 6, 2020. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23/commentary-on-matthew-1815-20

Matthew 18:15-20

15 “If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained that one. 16 But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19 Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

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Scandalous Company

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Scandalous Company” Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

He was scandalous, that miserable Matthew. All day long, he sat in his roadside tent outside Capernaum along the busy highway, the Way of the Sea, the great Roman road that stretched from Egypt to Damascus. For good reason, Matthew was little loved by his neighbors. He paid a pretty price to the Romans for the right to collect taxes, to charge a toll for the use of the highway. Matthew prospered, not just by collecting the taxes due to the Romans, but also from adding a tidy surcharge for his personal benefit. To his neighbors, Matthew was everything that had gone wrong with Israel: a filthy Roman collaborator, grown rich from fleecing his own people, rendered unclean and undesirable as a result of his unethical business practice and his constant contact with Gentiles. 

They were scandalous, not at all the sort of company that any respectable rabbi would keep. You know the sort I’m talking about, sinners and outcasts, folks known far and wide for their moral and ethical failure. It wasn’t just the tax collector. Oh no. It was the merchant who liked to keep his thumb on the scale, the farmer who maximized his profits by oppressing his workers, the older husband who kept a sweet young thing on the side, the son who neglected his aging parents, the drinker who never made it to sabbath services. They weren’t the “right” kind of people. Indeed, sharing a meal with that crowd was a surefire way for any rabbi to be labeled a glutton, a drunkard, and fellow sinner.

She was scandalous. There are no real secrets in a village, and when she first began to suffer from her problem down there, folks shook their heads and clucked their tongues. After all, a malady like that, going on and on and on, month after month, could only be an affliction sent by the Lord. They didn’t know what she had done to bring it on herself, but it must have been pretty salacious. For 12 years she was afflicted, suffering from the pain and debilitation of her illness. Everyone knew that Leviticus 15 told women like her to stay home, avoiding contact with neighbors and even family, but there she was elbowing her way through the crowd, rendering everyone she touched unclean.

We are scandalous. Like Matthew, we have valued a buck more than our neighbors. We have pursued the politics of expedience. We held our noses and forged alliances that feathered our nests or suited our ends, even when we knew it was wrong. We love the almighty dollar. Don’t mess with our 401-k. We want to know what is in it for us.

We are scandalous. Like those sinners and outcasts, we pick and choose the commandments that we wish to keep. We think that our drinking or drugging or infidelity isn’t a problem if we can keep it on the down low. We’ll fulfil those obligations to family next week—or maybe the week after. If our minimum wage workers really wanted to make more money, they’d do something about it—get more school, pull up the old bootstraps, get up the gumption to leave. We justify the ethical corners that we cut.

We are scandalous. Like the hemorrhaging woman, we have allowed ourselves to be blamed for things far beyond our control. We bear the sins of our fathers and mothers like a coat of shame. We allow people to tell us that our cancer can be cured if only we will eat a cleaner diet, or we wouldn’t have diabetes if we hadn’t gotten so darned fat. We have allowed others to define us with mean-spirited gossip and outdated perceptions, to ostracize us and turn us into outsiders. We have refused to stand up for ourselves.

If Jesus were a prudent rabbi, he would have sent one of his disciples into Matthew’s tent and avoided the man entirely. But Jesus didn’t do that. Instead, as Jesus waited his turn to pay his tax and watched Matthew assess fees and count coins, he didn’t see a tax collector, he saw a disciple. So, Jesus extended an invitation, “Matthew, won’t you leave your tax table and follow me?” And for Matthew, it was perhaps as if a shaft of light pierced the veil that shrouded his heart. Matthew knew that God loved him. God longed to be reconciled with him and put him to work. Matthew left the coins on the table, turned his back to the tollbooth, and walked away to a life of discipleship.

If Jesus were a prudent rabbi, he never would have accepted those dinner invitations, but he did. There he was, reclining next to sinners, dipping his hand into the same bowl with them, and you know what they say, “Birds of a feather.” But when Jesus looked at sinners and outsiders, he saw neighbors, who for years had hovered at the margins of Israel, somewhere above Gentile dogs and below observant Jews. He saw sheep in need of a shepherd, in need of second and third chances. And so, he broke the bread, lifted the cup, welcomed the lost, and there was great rejoicing.

If Jesus were a prudent rabbi, he would have ignored the hemorrhaging woman and kept on walking. But as her fingers reached out to touch the fringe of his robe, he stopped. He turned. He knew her affliction. He knew the desperation it had taken to wrap herself in a shawl, leave her home, and walk among her neighbors with the hope of stealing a little healing. Her neighbors said she was unclean, but when Jesus looked at this frightened and suffering woman, he saw a daughter, a sister, a woman of bold faith and brave courage. She returned home with a light and joyous step, healed, whole, and free from suffering.

We are scandalous. We’ve gotten things so wrong, we wonder if they can ever be made right. We long for a God who can look beyond our sin and suffering to see us for who we truly are. We need a savior who believes that that we can be good and honorable and pleasing to God. Jesus knew that God’s love is always surprising and challenging, always greater than we can ever possibly imagine.

Jesus sees us this morning. He calls us disciple, neighbor, daughter, son. We are a scandalous company, my friends, but that is just the sort of company that Jesus chose to keep. Thanks be to God.

Resources:

Cleophus LaRue. “Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26” in Preaching This Week, June 11, 2023. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-10/commentary-on-matthew-99-13-18-26-2

Danny Zacharias. “Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26” in Preaching This Week, June 7, 2026. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-10/commentary-on-matthew-99-13-18-26-3

Greg Carey. “Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26” in Preaching This Week, June 8, 2008. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-10/commentary-on-matthew-99-13-18-26

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

9 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

10 And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

18 While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” 19 And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. 20 Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, 21 for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” 22 Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that moment. 23 When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, 24 he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. 25 But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. 26 And the report of this spread through all of that district.

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The Kingdom of Mercy and Grace

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “The Kingdom of Mercy and Grace” Luke 23:39-43

Jubilee is a Christian community and working farm set in the beautiful, rolling countryside of Comer, Georgia. For many years, until recent changes in our national immigration policy, the Jubilee partners welcomed refugees to their farm, offering a safe place to land for weary newcomers to our country, many of whom had survived exile and trauma, languishing for years in refugee camps around the world. When I visited Jubilee in 2008, I was drawn to a grove of oaks near the center of the 260-acre property. There, in a quiet clearing, stands a cemetery, a peaceful final resting place for both the residents of Jubilee and the people whom they have ministered to over the years. Robbie Buller, one of the original Jubilee Partners, pointed to a plain grave with a simple marker. “That grave is William “Pop” Campbell,” Robbie said, “He was the very first to be buried here in 1983.”

William “Pop” Campbell had a complicated moral picture. In 1975, Pop killed a smalltown barber near Athens, Georgia in a robbery gone wrong. At the time, Pop insisted that he was innocent. He was just getting his haircut when another man Henry Drake entered the shop and began to beat the barber and demand his money. Pop claimed that he tried his best to intercede, but Drake overpowered him. The jury didn’t buy it. Pop was convicted of murder and landed on death row. Henry Drake, the man Pop accused of the killing, was also convicted. Both men awaited execution by the state of Georgia.

The second thief on Golgotha also had a complicated moral picture. Luke doesn’t tell us much about him, but the teachings of the early church do. According to John Chrysostum, the 4th century Archbishop of Constantinople, the thief’s name was Dismas, a desert bandit, who robbed and killed pilgrims as they traveled to Jerusalem for the Passover. A century later, Pope Gregory the Great taught that Dismas was also a fratricide, guilty of murdering his own brother. On Golgotha, Dismas faced the Roman consequences of his life of thievery and murder: death on a cross.

Dismas and his fellow bandit weren’t the only ones dying on Golgotha that day. Throughout Lent, we have been following Jesus through his final week in Jerusalem. At the start of Lent, when I preached on the Palm Sunday story, I pointed to two radically different kingdoms that would clash in that holy week as the Roman Empire would collide with the Kingdom of God.

Last Sunday, we considered Jesus’ final supper with his friends and the foot-washing lesson he taught them about the prime importance of love and humble service. This Sunday, we encounter Jesus less than twenty-four hours after his object lesson and new commandment that we love one another as he loved us. In those bleak and bitter hours, Jesus was betrayed by Judas, abandoned by his closest disciples, and denied by Peter. The Temple court found him guilty of blasphemy. Pilate condemned him to death on trumped up charges of sedition. Now, Jesus was dying on a cross. Crucifixion was a state-sponsored weapon of terror, a public execution that inflicted excruciating pain in a slow, humiliating death. Above his head hung Jesus’ death sentence in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, “King of the Jews.”

William “Pop” Campbell learned a lesson in Jesus’ Kingdom from Rev. Murphy Davis. She befriended Pop in her ministry to inmates on death row. She visited him weekly, listening to him and praying with him. In 1981, Pop confessed to Murphy that he lied when he implicated Henry Drake in the crime for which he had been sentenced to death. Pop had invented the story, hoping to muddy the waters, pass the blame, and avoid the death penalty. “What I said were lies,” Pop confessed, “I was the one to kill Mr. Eberhart. Henry wasn’t even there.” When Pop’s lawyer learned of his confession, he was irate. He insisted that Pop renounce his admission of guilt, arguing that it scuttled their chances of a commutation and was a virtual guarantee of death. “I want to do the right thing,” Pops argued back. “What I did was wrong.”

Dismas knew the innocence of Jesus. Dismas also knew his own guilt, as with the hindsight of fast-approaching death he looked back at his long history of thievery and brutality. Jesus didn’t deserve to die, but Dismas did. In the eyes of Rome and in his own eyes, his life of selfish ambition and casual cruelty had landed him on a cross. When the other thief dying on Golgotha began to deride Jesus, Dismas knew it was wrong, just as surely as Pop Campbell knew it was wrong to blame Henry Drake. “We have been condemned justly,” Dismas called out to his criminal colleague, “We are getting what we deserve for our deeds.”

We aren’t Pop Campbell or Dismas, but we know how it feels to have a complicated moral picture. We know the wrong that we have done: the beloved ones that we have failed, the friends we have betrayed, the ethical corners that we have cut, the selfish ambition that we have pursued at another’s expense. We know the good that we have left undone: the times we have refused to help, the occasions when we have turned a blind eye to another’s malfeasance, the good we will not do because the personal cost is just to high, the dirty little secrets that we keep rather than admit our failure. We long to be reconciled with God and with those whom we have hurt. Like Pop and Dismas, we need to believe that there is hope for us—that somehow, despite our wrongs, we can be loved, accepted, forgiven, offered a second chance (or a third or a fourth).

On that lonely hilltop outside Jerusalem, hanging between two criminals, Jesus taught us one last lesson about his Kingdom, even as he was dying at the hands of the empire. Half prayer, half gallows plea, Dismas turned to the Lord and asked “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.” In response, Jesus assured him, “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Dismas didn’t have to recite the long laundry list of his sins. He didn’t need to undertake the journey of a hundred miles on his knees as an act of penance. He didn’t have to recite the Apostles’ Creed. In Jesus’ Kingdom, Dismas was known in all his frailty and loved in his entirety. In Jesus’ Kingdom there is room for Dismas and Pop Cambell. In Jesus’ Kingdom there is room for us. We are known and we are loved. In Jesus’ Kingdom, there is mercy and grace for all who ask.

Pop Campbell died of natural causes in 1983 while awaiting execution. In Georgia, prisoners whose families are too poor to afford funerals and prisoners who do not have kin or friends to receive their bodies are buried on prison grounds with only their state-assigned inmate number to mark their graves. When Robbie Buller of the Jubilee Community heard of what would be done with Pop’s body, he had a better idea. Jubilee had 260 acres of land. Why not welcome Pop to the community? Plans were quickly drawn up, local zoning authorities approved, and Pop came home to a place and a people whom he had not known during his lifetime.

In speaking about the cemetery, Robbie Buller says, “It’s a final hospitality for people who have had trouble finding acceptance anyplace else.” Since Pop’s burial, the graveyard at Jubilee has welcomed five more death row inmates, as well as seven homeless people, fourteen refugees, and the Rev. Murphy Davis, who so kindly visited Pop Campbell on death row all those years ago. Immediately after someone is buried in the Jubilee cemetery, a new grave is hand dug by volunteers. That’s hard work in the red and rocky Georgia clay. A piece of sheet metal roofing and a blue tarp are placed over the hole. A mound of red dirt waits next to the grave, ready to be filled back in. There is always room for more in the Jubilee burying ground. There is always room for more in the Kingdom of mercy and grace.

Resources

Matt Skinner. “Walking the Palm Sunday Path: A Lenten Sermon Series for 2026” in Preaching Series, January 21, 2026. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching-series/walking-the-palm-sunday-path-in-lent-a-sermon-series-for-2026

Melva Sampson. “Commentary on Luke 23:39-43” in Preaching Series, Jan. 22, 2026. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching-series/sermon-series-jesus-promises-paradise-to-a-victim-of-crucifixion

Craig T. Kocher. “Theological Commentary on Luke 23:32-43” in Feasting on the Gospels, Luke, vol. 2. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Lincoln Galloway. “Homiletical Commentary on Luke 23:32-43” in Feasting on the Gospels, Luke, vol. 2. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Josina Guess. “Folks Ought to Have a Resting Place” in Sojourners, Nov. 2025.

Barry Siegel. “Parole Board Frees Man Courts Wouldn’t” in The LA Times, Dec. 23, 1988. Accessed online at https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-12-23-mn-530-story.html

Luke 23:39-43

39 One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” 43 He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

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Extraordinary Love

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Extraordinary Love” Luke 6:27-38

On June 17, 2015, twenty-one-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof entered the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and made his way to a basement classroom where Reverend Clementa Pinckney was leading the Wednesday night Bible Study. Dylann was warmly welcomed. He took a seat next to Rev. Pinckney and listened silently for forty-five minutes. As Bible Study participants rose to hold hands for a closing prayer, Dylann Roof pulled out a hand gun and opened fire, killing nine church members and wounding three others.

Dylann had been radicalized in a classroom of his own making, doom scrolling daily through white nationalist websites. He penned a manifesto that stated his belief that the white race was in danger and “no one [was] doing anything but talking on the internet.” In Dylann Roof’s mind, someone needed to take action, and he was the man to do it. When asked about his motive for the attack, Dylann Roof said that he had hoped to ignite a race war. He has never apologized or repented for his actions.

“Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful… Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Plain are among his most challenging and uncomfortable teachings. In the first century world, members of a community looked to their leaders to set the moral standard for their conduct—a synagogue leader, a wise rabbi, the family patriarch or matriarch, perhaps even Herod or the emperor set the moral tone for those who followed. But Jesus told his followers that they must look to God as their ethical guide and seek to release people from the retribution that they may deserve.

In November of 1957, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reflected on Jesus’ words in his sermon, “Love Your Enemies,” he emphasized that love is the ethical choice that Christians must make in a world where we may not like our experience. King reminded his congregation that Christian love is agape, the selfless love of God working in the lives of men. Instead of retaliating when we are mistreated, we can choose to extend to others the love that God has for us. That divine love can live in us and enable us to reach out to others. Indeed, King wrote, you can love the enemy, even when you do not like what he is doing to you. You can love your enemy who denies your right to vote. You can love your enemy who refuses to pay you a living wage. You can love your enemy who threatens you with lynching. King believed that when we dare to put the selfless love of God to work in dealing with our opponents, we can wear out the hater, break down barriers, and redeem the enemy.

Long before June 17, 2015, the Mother Emanuel Church contended with hate. The church was founded in 1816 by free and enslaved Black people of Charleston who wished to worship together as a community of color. Six years later, church member Denmark Vesey, a freed slave who worked as a carpenter, planned and organized an uprising of city and plantation Blacks. Inspired by the successful revolt of Haitian slaves in 1790, Vesey called for rebels to attack guardhouses and arsenals, seize arms, and free the enslaved people. Authorities were tipped off on the eve of the insurrection, and Vesey with thirty-five of his conspirators, many of them members of Mother Emanuel Church, were hanged. The church was burned to the ground and Black houses of worship were banned. The congregation of Mother Emanuel met in secret from 1822 until 1865, after the Civil War. Later, in the 20th century, Mother Emanuel faced threats of violence for hosting prominent Black leaders, like Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King Jr., and organizing significant civil rights events, like Coretta Scott King’s march for local hospital workers in 1966. Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed by Dylann Roof, taught that despite a history of suffering, Mother Emanuel was a place that sought to continue to “work on the hearts, minds, and spirits of all people.”

“Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful… Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Our world today works in transactional and reciprocal ways. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. We don’t get mad; we just get even. Payback time is gonna’ come. What we experience dictates how we will respond. It’s an escalating pattern of retribution that seems to never end. We find it hard to make different choices. And if we were to look to national leaders to set the moral tone for our conduct, then we would hate our opponents, and we wouldn’t want the best for them.

Truly, the only way to step out of the spiral of vengeance and hate is to consider the mercy of God to us. Though we are sinners, deserving of judgment, God chose to become flesh and enter the world’s darkness. In Jesus, God chose to live for us and show to us the way of agape. In the ultimate act of self-giving love, on a merciless cross, flanked by common criminals, Jesus revealed that God loves us enough to die for us. In the enormity of God’s costly love for us, we begin to see another way. We begin to see that only love can heal hearts, transform an enemy into a friend, and make a changed future possible.

48 hours after having lost mothers, sisters, sons, husbands, and wives, members of the Mother Emanuel Church appeared in court for Dylann Roof’s bond hearing. It was the first time any of them would come face to face with the perpetrator of the hate crime that had robbed them of their beloved ones. The judge presiding over the hearing invited them to make a statement, should they wish. First to speak was Nadine Collier, who lost her mother Ethel Lance. Fighting back tears, Nadine said, “I forgive you … You took something really precious from me. I will never talk to her ever again, I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you and have mercy on your soul.” Other church members followed suit and said that they, too, forgave the gunman.

Chris Singleton, an eighteen-year-old who lost his Mom in the mass shooting, wasn’t in the courtroom on that day. He was playing minor league baseball for the Chicago Cubs. He wasn’t following the news and had no idea that the families had decided to issue statements of forgiveness at the hearing, but half a country away, Chris came to the same conclusion. He needed to forgive. Chris says he hopes that the choice for mercy has made a difference. Chris says, “After seeing what happened [at the church] and the reason why it happened, and after seeing how people could forgive, I truly hope that people will see that it wasn’t just us saying words. I know, for a fact, that it was something greater than us, using us to bring our city together.”

Ronald J. Allen, who taught preaching and New Testament at the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis for many years, taught that putting Jesus’ ethical teaching into action can have powerful consequences for our oppressor, ourselves, and our world. In extending love and mercy to those who have wronged us, we open the door to their repentance. As Rev. Pinckney said, our mercy “works on the heart, mind, and spirit” of the other and awakens the possibility for change. In extending God’s love and mercy to others, our personal experience of God’s mercy deepens. We understand that no matter how misdirected or lost we may become, there is always a way back for us, a second chance, a new beginning. Thank you, Lord. Beyond working out reconciliation between two people, when we put Jesus’ ethics into action, we embody the promise of the Kingdom of God. The world begins to imagine God’s realm where we “wear out the hater, break down barriers, and redeem the enemy.” What a wonderful world it will be.

This June marked the tenth anniversary of Dylann Roof’s assault on Mother Emanuel Church. Rev. Pinckney’s widow Jennifer says this was a tough year. Her oldest daughter graduated from college and her 16-year-old went to her first prom without her dad to see her off. The church is in the process of building a memorial to her husband and the other eight victims. They have also purchased a nearby house to serve as a museum for the outpouring of love that Mother Emanuel received from people all around the world in the wake of the shooting: quilts, prayer shawls, artwork, a hand embroidered chair, crosses, banners, music, and more. Asked what the world should take away from this tenth anniversary of Dylann Roof’s hateful act, Jennifer Pinckney said, “The world needs to remember, to come together. We got to love one another. We got to move forward and work together.” She sounded a lot like Jesus.

“Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful… Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

Resources

US Justice Department. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. DYLANN STORM ROOF in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, Charleston Division. July 20, 2015

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Denmark Vesey”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Jun. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Denmark-Vesey. Accessed 4 October 2025

Cory Collins. “The Miseducation of Dylann Roof” in Learning for Justice, Issue 57, Fall 2017. Southern Poverty Law Center. Accessed online at The Miseducation of Dylann Roof | Learning for Justice

Rasha Ali. “Five years after Charleston church massacre: How ‘Emanuel’ reveals the power of forgiveness” in USA Today, June 17, 2019. Charleston church attack and the power of forgiveness in ‘Emanuel’

Claude Atcho. “Mother Emanuel and the Witness of Black Christian Faith” in Christianity Today, June 5, 2025. Accessed online at Mother Emanuel and the Witness of Black Christian Faith – Christianity Today

Billie Jean Shaw. “‘Stronger than hate’: How the son of a Mother Emanuel victim chose to embrace forgiveness” on WIS10 TV, June 16, 2025. Accessed online at ‘Stronger than hate’: How the son of a Mother Emanuel victim chose to embrace forgiveness

Ronald Allen. “Commentary on Luke 6:27-38” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 24, 2019.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Sarah Henrick. “Commentary on Luke 6:27-38” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 20, 2022.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Mary Hinkle Shore. “Commentary on Luke 6:27-38” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 23, 2025.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Luke 6:27-38

27 “But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; 28 bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive payment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. 37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Image source: https://religionnews.com/2019/06/06/mother-emanuels-forgiveness-narrative-is-complicated-says-reporter-turned-author/

Repent

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Repent” Luke 15:11-32

Near the end of his life, the Dutch Master Rembrandt completed “The Return of the Prodigal,” a painting considered by some to be his master work. The artist captured the moment of the Prodigal Son’s homecoming. The repentant young man kneels at his father’s feet. His clothing hangs in filthy rags. His shoes are so tattered that they fall from his feet. He buries his face in his father’s middle. Like a small child, his arms reach around to cling to the father, who leans forward to pull his lost son to his chest and kiss the top of his head. The father’s hands, strong but gentle, rest on the Prodigal’s back. The father’s face is soft and open. His mouth is slack, as if caught between the impossible joy of welcoming his lost child and the heartrending shock of seeing his son’s degradation. To the side of the painting, half in darkness, the elder son looks on, clothed in a fine scarlet cloak and elaborate turban. His hands are clenched before him. His brow is furrowed with anger, disbelief, and judgment. The distance between the elder son and his compassionate father and profligate brother leaps off the canvas.

Jesus told his Parable of the Prodigal Son to a mixed audience of wayward sons and righteous older brothers. The Lord was welcoming sinners and tax collectors. He even broke bread with them, and that was a source of scandal for the scribes and Pharisees, the most righteous people of their day, who faithfully observed all 613 requirements of the Torah.

The young son of Jesus’ story demonstrated the most profound disrespect. He treated his father as if he were as good as dead, demanding his portion of the inheritance, which he promptly liquidated. Forsaking his father’s house, he traveled to Gentile lands and blew his small fortune in wild living. Times were so desperate that he became a swineherd, even though the Torah taught, “The pig . . . is unclean for you.  You shall not eat their meat, and you shall not touch their carcasses” (Deut. 14:8). Only when the young son had hit rock bottom, did he resolve to go home and throw himself upon the mercy of his father. He gathered his rags and returned, rehearsing along the way just what he would say. But as the lost son drew close to home, he learned that the Father had been looking and longing for his return. The patriarch ran down the road, welcomed him with open arms, and threw a party to restore the prodigal to both family and community. Who could blame the older son, who had spent years faithfully serving, working and obeying, who could blame him for his moral outrage and hurt?

When Jesus told his extended metaphor about the shocking mercy of God and the sinfulness of humanity, he probably offended all his listeners. Those tax collectors and sinners would have bristled at their depiction as degenerate scofflaws who wander far from God in profligate living. Those scribes and Pharisees would have been challenged to envision themselves as harsh, self-righteous, older brothers, who, in their own way, were just as disrespectful to the Father as the young son they condemned. These two lost sons were held together by a merciful Father, who would do anything to be reconciled to them and reconcile them to one another, whether running down the road to embrace them or leaving a party to seek them as they sulked outside in the dark. Both sons were sinners. Both were in need of repentance and love.

Repentance is one of the most essential teachings of Judaism. According to the tradition of the elders, God created repentance before God created the universe. God anticipated that, even though God would love us and provide for us all that was needed for abundant life, we would turn our back on God and work to the detriment of our neighbor. Repentance would be needed. The word repentance in Hebrew is teshuvah, which means to turn. In the ongoing journey of God and our ancestors in the faith, we would often choose to walk apart from God, yet repentance would allow us to return. According to the prophets, repentance was an act of the heart, an inner turning to God that resulted in outward actions of justice, mercy, and faithfulness. This inner transformation was displayed in rending garments, tossing ashes, wearing sackcloth, and offering sacrifices to God.

Repentance is one of the most essential teachings of Christianity. Indeed, the first words that Jesus uttered in his public ministry were, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is near” (Matthew 4:17), and among the last words of his public ministry, spoken from the cross, are the assurance of paradise for the repentant thief who was dying at his side. Jesus himself was the revelation of God’s profound longing to be reconciled to us. In Jesus, God chose to become man, to enter fully into our experience, and to stop at nothing—not even death on a cross—to reveal God’s love and mercy for us. As we repent and return to God, we find that God has already run down the road to greet us. Prodigal sons and judgmental older brothers, we all find a place in the Father’s mercy through Christ our Lord.

Few doctrines have been as hotly contested in the Christian tradition as repentance. The explosive growth of the early church was driven by welcome for those who had been deemed outside the community of faith, from sinners to pagans. Yet by the fourth century, it wasn’t enough to return to God and confess your sins. You needed the church, which church stood in the middle to mediate God’s grace. Repentance had to be made to a priest and accompanied by works of penance, like special prayers, fasting, almsgiving, or mortification of the flesh. Our absolution (forgiveness) was granted by the church once our works were done. This practice of treating forgiveness like a commodity to be doled out to penitents from the church’s limitless treasury of grace hit a high—or is that low—by the 16th century, when Pope Sixtus IV determined that souls of the dead in purgatory could benefit from a papal indulgence, a certificate of absolution that could be conveniently acquired for the right price. When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs. How far we had wandered from the beautiful story of the loving father and his two lost sons!

On a December evening in 1516, Martin Luther paced the floor of his study. The Augustinian priest and Bible scholar was troubled by the church’s sacrament of penance and the selling of indulgences. Was grace for sale? Could sinners earn their salvation through works? In his studies of the New Testament, Luther had come to the conclusion that Jesus never commodified his grace. It was abundantly and freely given. That night, Luther read the Letter to the Ephesians, “By grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves—it is the gift of God, not works, lest any man should boast.” It hit Luther like a thunderclap. He picked up his pen and wrote, “Ergo sola gratia justificat,” justified by faith alone. Luther remembered the moment, saying, “Thereupon, I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.” The following year, Luther posted his 95 Theses, launching a religious revolution by calling into question the church’s practice of commodifying grace.

What does repentance look like for us? Two decades after Luther’s realization about the freely given gift of God’s grace, John Calvin in his church in Geneva developed a rite of repentance that we continue to practice each week in worship, 500 years later. We stand together as a community of faith and return to God, confessing the ways that we have turned from God and brought injury to our neighbors. As we turn toward God, we find that God has already turned to us, like the Prodigal’s father, awaiting his lost sons with open arms. For the sake of Jesus Christ, we are assured of our pardon, a fact so amazing that we have to celebrate with an “Alleluia! Amen.”

Calvin further encouraged his parishioners to make a practice of regular self-examination, reflecting upon our lives and noting the ways that we have turned away from the right and righteous path. With humility and honesty, we can return to God, trusting that we are welcomed home and deeply loved. Calvin did not believe that we would ever get it truly right, but by making a daily discipline of returning to God, we could grow in God’s purpose over the course of a lifetime through the work of the Holy Spirit within us. Our practice of repentance could be as simple as an evening time of reflection upon our day to celebrate the ways that we felt blessed by God and the moments we felt far from God, and then concluding our reflection with the Lord’s Prayer.

In 1986, author and clergyman Henri Nouwen traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, where Rembrandt’s painting “The Prodigal Son Returns” hangs in the Hermitage. Nouwen was allowed to observe the painting alone for hours. As he sat before Rembrandt’s masterwork, Henri began to see the painting as a metaphor for humanity. In his 1992 book, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming, Nouwen noted that Rembrandt himself had been both sons. Rembrandt had been the dutiful older brother, an earnest churchgoer, married to a devout wife, and a loving father of three children. But the untimely death of his wife and children sent Rembrandt down the road of profligacy. He drank his fill in taverns, frequented prostitutes, and nearly bankrupted himself. Nouwen wrote, “Rembrandt had lived a life in which neither the lostness of the younger son nor the lostness of the elder son was alien to him. Both needed healing and forgiveness. Both needed to come home. Both needed the embrace of a forgiving father.”

The same, of course, can be said for us all. Let us return to God.

Resources

J. William Harkins. “Theological Perspective on Luke 15:11-32” in Feasting on the Gospels: Luke, vol. 2. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Rodney J. Hunter. “Pastoral Perspective on Luke 15:11-32” in Feasting on the Gospels: Luke, vol. 2. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Raj Nadella. “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 15:11-32” in Feasting on the Gospels: Luke, vol. 2. Westminster John Knox Press, 2014.

Jos. P. Healey. “Repentance: Old Testament” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 5, O-Sh. Doubleday, 1992.

Charles Hech. “Martin Luther: His Confessions and Battle against Sin” in Worldly Saints, blog, Jan. 4, 2017.

John Calvin. Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter III. The Westminster Press, 1977.

Hans Vorschezung. “A Lightning Strike, Which Changed History” in Faith in Focus, 2006. Accessed online at christianstudylibrary.org.

Henri Nouwen. The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming. Image Press, 1994.

Luke 15:11-32

11 Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that region, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that region, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

25 “Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

Accessed online at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Rembrandt_Harmensz_van_Rijn_-_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/1569px-Rembrandt_Harmensz_van_Rijn_-_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg