Forgiveness: When we become like God
Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32 or Luke 15:1-10
Our television screens are inundated with scenes of violence and strife. Nations are at war against nations: Russia against Ukraine, the two Sudans against each other; intra-national wars in Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Colombia, etc; those nations not at war are preparing for war or aggression, like Turkey and Iran. To this list, one should add American gun-violence and racial tensions, global family disunities and divorces, genocides. We live in a world that needs healing and reconciliation with itself. What happened to the reconciliation God offered humanity through the death of Christ on the Cross of Calvary?
Our first reading today points out one area of disagreement between God and human beings, with respect to the use of human freedom. After a spectacular display of power and strength, with a tinge of favoritism, God delivers Israel out of Egypt, with the intention of establishing a new covenant of love and promise of protection of Israel, but that project was high-jacked – Israel had a different plan, it created and worshipped a molten calf! Aaron bows to pressure, did what the people wanted, not God’s will but human democracy, the voice of the people! How often do we cowed in the face of human pressure and chicken out of our Christian responsibilities? How often do I steal because I need extra money or fornicate because there is a willing partner or because I think God is unreasonable with his demand of celibacy and chastity inside and outside of marriage or in priesthood?
You know what? There are many molten calves out there that you and I worship: every sin and attraction to sin, is a molten calf. Every sin committed puts us in the same boat as Aaron and the Israelites of our first reading. To make matters worse, our society is good at inventing new sins, whether in the name of freedom or research in medical and communication technological fields. Free pornograpghy, eugenics and euthanasia, organ trafficking, etc.
There is a clear sign of hope in this bleak and grim situation described by our first reading: Moses stands tall and high in defense of God and the proof that fidelity is possible even in the very midst of human pressure and concupiscences to sin. Moses shows the power of fidelity because that made his intercession heard by God, contrary to Aaron, who needed intercession himself! Also, Moses shows the strength of love that goes with fidelity to God – intercession for sinners and not to wish for their destruction or condemnation. But where did Moses learn these (intercession and fidelity), if not from his own personal experiences of God’s mercy and forgiveness? When Moses killed the Egyptian, God forgave him by helping him to escape from Egypt and confers a mission of liberation of Israelites upon him, instead of destroying him. When an Egyptian decree of extermination of every male child born of Hebrew slaves went out, God saved Moses from extermination, despite Pharaoh’s injunction! In fact, Moses grew up in the royal family of the Pharaohs, because of God’s benevolence.
Perhaps it is Paul who puts it more elegantly, regarding lessons learnt from personal failures, in our second reading today, when he confesses his personal encounter with God’s mercy – forgiveness – despite his persecution of the Church. Imagine how God made Paul the apostle of the nations, in spite of his past murderous activities. What about Peter, who denied Jesus three times, he became the leader of the Church; Mary Magdalene, who became apostle to the apostles themselves; the doubting Thomas, etc. There is something good about every human being which guarantees that God will never give up on even the worst sinner: we have been created to the image and likeness of God, and God will never abandon his image, except when his image abandons him!
According to our gospel reading today, God places a very high premium and stake on the redemption of his image, a sinner or a saint, it doesn’t matter. The parable which talks about chasing after one lost sheep, even if it were necessary to abandon 99 others in search of one strayed one, simply talks about how priceless each one of us is before God. The greatest militating factor to the experience of God’s mercy and forgiveness is the human arrogance to accept that we are fallible! Hear the older child in the parable of the prodigal father: “I have never disobeyed you,” but he is not obeying his father’s call to forgive and accept his baby brother as a returnee sinner or converted sinner! The younger brother had moved on, the older brother is locked in the repented sin, that used to define his baby brother.
The good news this Sunday is the fact that there are no longer Scribes and Pharisees to accuse tax collectors and sinners before Christ. There is only God’s mercy to welcome every sinner home, like the repentant baby brother. It is not about human prodigality but God’s prodigality or better put, liberalism: God chooses to forgive sinners, and there is no higher court of appeal to contest God’s decision, for God’s court is the Supreme Court of mercy!
If there is one lesson on which to work on this week, it is the ability to forgive oneself and others, as God has forgiven us all in Christ. This reality of forgiveness goes hand in hand with the mentality that says that God never gives up on humanity because of sin, but God offers each human being the opportunity to return home to him. Let our assignment for the week be to encourage sinners, and let them know that God’s forgiveness is nearer to them, than they might know!
24TH Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C, 2022
Forgiveness Sunday: An African Perspective
Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32
In African Traditional beliefs, ancestors are those members of the human society who realized, to a very significant degree, the dreams and aspirations of their societies. These include those who respected the taboos of the society and promoted the positive values of the same. This is not very far from what Christianity requires of every Christian – to live out the commandments of God, which every Christian committed himself or herself to keeping at baptism. Christian Scripture contains the dos and don’ts of Christians.
Whether one takes the gospel of today to run from Luke 15:1-32 or just Luke 15:1-10, one cannot miss the similarity and difference between Christianity and African culture. For example, the parable of the prodigal father (Luke 15:11-32), a father who spoilt his younger son by accepting to divide his wealth into two, and giving half of the proceeds to his younger son. This parable qualifies as a parable of a prodigal father because it is only at the death of a male parent that children receive their share of their father’s inheritance. In this case, it looks like the Father makes an exception to the rule, by granting his younger child his share of inheritance before he died.
Africans, in continental Africa, who were born about 50 years ago, will find this reading antithetical. Parents were not in the habit of spoiling their children, especially a male parent. They were the disciplinarian of the family, those who raise high the moral standard to be met and aspired after by their children. However, there is an uncertain drum sounding in Africa today, not only among the poor, but especially so among the rich. Take the children of African presidents, prime ministers, ministers and stake holders: they are the most unruly, roguish, and losers of all. Their parents give them blank cheques, from their booties of national treasury and looting. We have a whole class of like-father-like-son, who rewrite what virtue means, and what honesty should be. That is Africa in miniature – one thief replaces another, Umar Bongo by Ali Bongo, Kabila by Kabila, Iyadema by Iyadema, etc.
But Africa had and still has worthy sons and daughters, the Lumumbas, Nyereres, Mandelas, etc. Yes, the simple Africans who go about their daily lives and businesses in all decency and honesty. These symbolize the older son of the prodigal Father. They yearn day in and day out for a better society, equality, peace and justice for all, against the younger child who manages to get his share of a collective inheritance, only to squander it in a life of debauchery. Indeed, Mama Africa, with all her wealth, sees her children wallowing in crass poverty, man-made poverty, a mockery of divine benediction to Africa and Africans. Yes, like the squander maniac of a younger son, the wealth of Africa enriches everyone else, but Africa and Africans – the investments of the rich and the powerful, the continental exploitation, all end outside of Africa among colonialists turn benefactors of Africa and Africans.
Christianity provides a different take on African reality and history, the prodigality of God towards all his children, without regard to race and continent. Africa, the cradle of humanity, has enough for all her children, wherever they may be. God has every race and nationality in mind, when endowing Africa with all her riches. The very conservative older brother and the opportunistic younger brother are both children of God, loved by God. A hard lesson, uh?
The cry of every older child, including the cries of Africans, is that of the absence of justice, and the presence of exploitation. It is the foul cry that even God has abandoned Africa to pillage from the powers that be, within and outside of Africa. Just like the God who abandons the 99 sheep in search of one missing sheep! What is justice for God, and who will make Africans understand that there is still justice in all that plagues her as a continent?
Chinua Achebe, in one of his hermeneutic of African proverbs, lays the problem on the foot of Africa: “when two bothers fight, a stranger reaps the harvest.” Africans have been engaged in fratricidal wars that have blinded them to their unity. Wars of tribes and religions, wars of natural resources and human trafficking; today, we experience the war of class and the celebration of mediocrity.
The prodigality of God announces the way forward, an amnesty for all; in theological parlance, general forgiveness. The older child never realized his animosity and hatred up until someone was ready to share in his wealth, someone he considered unmerited – his younger brother. The squander maniac younger child, only learnt hard work from self-inflicted wasteful spending. The prodigal father displays liberality that beats the imagination hollow: he says ‘yes’ to every request made of him. He is always magnanimous, ready to give, ready to forgive, ready to offer second chances to erring children. As a matter of fact, instead of chiding the erring child, it was the older child that he was dialoguing with.
There is sufficient reason to request a cleansing of our political class for the untold pain they have inflicted on ordinary Africans: Rawlings did it without Ghana being better for it – “the Beautiful Ones are not yet Born,” concludes Ayi Kwei Armah. There is sufficient reason to curse our colonial masters for their role in the underdevelopment of Africa: Fr. Zapata and other Catholic priests led the revolution against the Spaniards, but how is Mexico fairing today? The Igbo philosophical saying, “live and let’s live,” sounds beautiful, but outlaws those who go against that principle.
The language of forgiveness is the most powerful language of intersubjectivity, the art of living together. The prodigality of the Christian God made manifest in his liberalism of forgiveness and reasoning with the strong in defense of the weak, teaches humanity about the logic that triumphs over the strength and wisdom of the World. It was Paul himself who confessed, in the second reading of today, that he used to be a persecutor, but now a defender of the same religion he persecuted. It was Paul’s conversion that brought the best out of him, not violence against him. In fact, he (Paul) put up with more violence and dangers, after his conversion, than he ever matted out to Christians as a Jew. More importantly, the death of Jesus Christ remains a classic example of how Christianity works for peace – we die for our enemies, because we don’t have enemies, instead of killing anyone. Perhaps, if we remembered Albert Camus’ admonition that “no one can judge another from the stand point of justice, because no one is innocent,” Christian wisdom will triumph over standards of justice inciting us to violence and intolerance!
Let us learn from the Yoruba proverb which says that, “when a tree falls on top of another, one begins by removing the one at the top, in order to tackle the tree under.” Let us learn the culture of forgiveness, before looking for justice and progress in Africa. Indeed, let brotherhood and sisterhood love reign supreme, because of unconditional forgiveness, then Africa will soar high in peace and harmony!