Pastor Ray Stubbe - March 5

Week 3 - Matthew 5:43-48
Thursday, March 5, 2015
A Forgiveness Reflection from Pastor Ray Stubbe

Our enemy might be someone or a group that threatens, makes life miserable, or diminishes our life. Enemies exert more than mere human power; or as St. Paul writes, “we wrestle not against flesh and blood,” but against spiritual forces, confronting us in people or institutions. More frequently, the enemy is within us--fears, guilts, doubts, vexing memories, worries, impulses, or habits that emerge from within our heart.

Forgiveness implies forgetting; some enemies, however, leave lingering memories as though we had been branded with a searing iron. Many years ago, an elderly lady in her 90’s told me: “My uncle sexually molested me as a young girl. I can forgive him, but I can’t forget.” Assault by an enemy affects our whole being, like cloth immersed in a vat of dye, or an iron rod placed in a furnace in which heat thoroughly penetrates the rod. For the woman in her 90’s, remembering sculpted her whole life. The act of remembering shapes our life and results in action. God forgives by not recalling the sin as the basis for actions toward us. God sees us through Christ and does not count our trespasses against us.

What we see shapes our life. My paternal grandmother believed that if a pregnant woman looked at beautiful pictures, her child would be beautiful. While some might laugh, modern science teaches that a brain constantly re-wires itself through new experiences. Perhaps it was not that the child would be beautiful, but that the mother, who has learned to see beauty, would see her child as beautiful.

When Jesus teaches, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” the “be perfect” is a simple future. This is not law, commandment, or a burden, but gospel, good news. We may not see our self or others as perfect, but God does. We look at people from a human perspective, but God looks upon the heart. Right now, we are God’s children, although this isn’t apparent, but will be. We are no longer an old car with dents, scratches, and defective parts, but a gleaming, desirable showroom car!

To see another person creatively involves spinning possibilities around that person, fantasies of who they might become (or are, though not yet). Even though not expressed, they awaken potential. God sees us as already “perfect” and whole, complete, and all together.

Lord, give us power and grace TO SEE OURSELF AND OTHERS AS YOU SEE US. Amen.