Scripture Reflections for the Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Year A, Lectionary 130
When we close our perspectives to only ourselves we begin to hold others accountable to how they treat us. We seek vengeance and our form of justice and ignore our own sins and offenses. Only in broadening our sight to see God's mercy and forgiveness of our faults can we begin to offer the same to others. For we begin to understand that all of us sin yet are offered mercy by our Father in Heaven. Instead of hugging tight anger, wrath and hate let us instead hold tight to God who forgives us with loving mercy.
Hate feeling lost on Sundays at church? Searching for a better explanation of the Bible than what you hear from your pastor's sermon? Check out the following collection of audio, video, and text commentaries from various Christian experts for a better understanding of today's scripture that deal with: Anger • Bond • Conflict • Courage • Covenant • Death • Debt • Ecology • Fear • Forgive • Freedom • Grace • Healing • Identity • Judgment • Justice • Love • Mercy • Neighbor • Obedience • Purpose • Reconciliation • Relationship • Remember • Sin • Unity •
“Christianity should be the ultimate antidote to individualism. Paul's saying 'yeah you live and yes you're an individual but you don't live for yourself or to yourself. You live, you should live for Christ because he lived for you.'”
“Jesus isn’t talking about maths but about the nature of forgiveness, the kind of forgiveness called for is beyond all calculation. It’s limitless”
“what Jesus is saying is, in effect, you have to forgive over and over and over and over and over again. Your mercy has to be like God's mercy, an exuberant mercy. A mercy that forgives over and over and over again. It's a shockingly gratuitous number of times of forgiveness.”
“I have found as a priest working with congregations all these years that the problem is not convincing you to forgive. The problem is that we don't know how sometimes. Sometimes we're so wounded or so angry or so hurt that we can't find our way to forgiveness.”
“It may make no sense but we must forgive because the bridge that we burn today may be the only bridge we will need tomorrow when the other side of the river will be on fire”
“Forgiveness is fundamentally an individual act but with social implications. Every harm has repercussions, rippling impacts through time and community. Really living into the fullness of forgiveness means moving toward as full a reclamation of human dignity and communion as possible.”
“As a leader we can teach every generation to pardon inequities, heal social ills and redeem lives from destruction through the grace and mercy. Not revenge, not selfishness, not fear.”
“It's ridiculous to even think that we can pay back even a fragment of all that God has given us. And if we remember that then we'll have the inner strength that we need to forgive what proportionally is an incredibly small thing, all of the people in our lives that God is asking us to forgive right now.”
“This story is talking about salvation. You're debt-free in Christ and what the only thing God wants you to do is share it with somebody else.”
“Let us count on God's grace to cultivate a spirit of forgiveness mercy and interconnectedness. They remind us that our actions should reflect God's love and grace especially in our relationship with others, which helps us show compassion to one another.”
“Today's readings remind us that our response to God's goodness and mercy requires a change of heart and a commitment to ongoing conversion”
“God created us to be happy in this life and to be happy in the life to come. And the way to embrace this happiness is to let go of some of the traps that hold us back. To identity the traps and let go of them. Today's readings identify anger and the refusal to forgive as examples of such traps.”
“if wrath and anger moves in and starts a family we become impacted and unable to even see forgiveness as a possibility”
“It pays not just to know history but to know faith. To understand where God comes into this picture, to understand what it is that we bring to the social discourse of our times.”
“Don't go to your grave carrying grudges in your heart because I believe that a heavy heart will make it hard for you to climb the stairway into Heaven”
“God knows all those people that hurt you. God knows how much you have been hurt or maybe are still being hurt by someone...And God also knows the people that you have hurt...God knows the effect, the hurt that you have inflicted on them”
"we're not immune to tragic events or to illness or to anything. We just have a different, I guess, we just have a different way of approaching it and that's through the lens of faith."
In the latest episode of the 1 Christian 1 Topic Podcast "Faith Amidst Tragedy," we have a conversation with Liz on faith, suffering, and prayer. More