On the Road Again

You can see a video version of this sermon here.

Luke 24:13-35 

You probably know that on Easter Sunday morning, some congregations gather at dawn for a sunrise service, capturing the idea of light coming out of the darkness, picking up on the image in the Gospel according to John of Mary Magdalene arriving at Jesus’ tomb “early on the first day of the week while it was still dark.”

 

I’ve been to a few of those over the years. But my wife, Ellen, has never been along for even one of those.

 

I’m the morning person in our house. Ellen, most definitely, is not. She says: “Jesus and I have an arrangement. I’ll meet him later on the road.”

 

That’s where we are today. On the road. Again.

Remember this song from Willie Nelson?

 

Art by He Qi

On the road again

Just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is making music with my friends
And I can't wait to get on the road again

On the road again
Goin' places that I've never been
Seein' things that I may never see again
And I can't wait to get on the road again

Think about those words for just a moment.

On the road…making music with friends.

On the road…seeing things that I may never see again.

 

Our  story today from the Gospel according to Luke takes us out on the road…with friends…seeing things in a whole new way. I can understand why Ellen thought it would be a good idea to meet Jesus on the road.

 

The image you see is by He Qi, a Chinese artist currently living in California as the artist-in-residence at Fuller Theological Seminary. I love his vivid use of colors. We’ll see the second part of his portrayal of this story as well as other images as I continue. 

 

I think that much like the two people in the Emmaus story, we’re on the road in our own lives as we try to figure out what it means to follow the way of Jesus. 

 

Sometimes we’re as confused and disillusioned as those two travelers we heard about today. 

 

Sometimes we’re nourished by the encounters we have along the way. 

 

Sometimes we’re energized to go out and share our excitement with others. 

 

So I’d invite you to come along with me on this journey to Emmaus.

 

Of course, finding Emmaus is a little tricky. In the Holy Land today, there are several sites that claim to be that village. Nobody knows for sure where that original Emmaus was, other than about 7 miles from Jerusalem. The folks on the road back then knew where they were going in a physical sense. Their spiritual journey – and ours – is more complicated. 

 

Put yourselves in the place of these two people. They were not part of Jesus’ inner circle. They were on the B team among the followers of Jesus, part of that wider group who had come to look at him as the hope for their future. 

  

Artists’ portrayals usually picture them as two shell-shocked men on the road. That’s the image we have in that Tiffany glass window in the room at the back of the sanctuary that we call the Emmaus room. 

That 131-year old window – the first Tiffany window in Madison – was in our church when it was on the block downtown where the Concourse Hotel now stands. It was in storage here when this building opened 60 years ago but then found this place of honor in the early 2000s.

 

More recent images, like the one from He Qi or this mosaic by Rowan and Irene LeCompte from the Washington National Cathedral tend to suggest it was not two men on the road but a man and a woman, perhaps a married couple. 

 

Personally, I like that image, but what is essential here is that we have two people who are feeling very disoriented and very demoralized. And then they meet a stranger, someone they do not recognize as Jesus. 

 

Perhaps this is because people walking under the hot Israeli sun kept their hoods up over their heads. Perhaps it was because the resurrected Jesus had a new look about him. Whatever it was, he noticed how sad they appeared.

 

“What are you talking about?” he asked them. 

They were amazed that he had not heard about all the turmoil in Jerusalem, the execution of “a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.”

Then those excruciating words of disappointment, even of despair:  “We had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel.”

 

They felt alone, abandoned, mired in grief. 
They were afraid. 
They were looking for something, not realizing that what they were looking for was already with them.

 

Let’s pause for a moment and consider what has happened up to this point in the story. Jesus encounters two people on the road and recognizes their sadness. He does not walk on by. He reaches out to them, asking what is wrong. That’s one lesson from this story for us.

 

But when they tell him why they are sad, Jesus’ words in the story have a kind of harsh sound: 

 

“Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” And then he gave them a tour of the Hebrew scriptures.

 

Let me frame this just a little bit differently. The couple on the road were in deep grief. They were puzzled over the story about the women who went to the tomb and said that Jesus was in fact alive. How could this be? How could any of this be?

So Jesus walked with them. He helped them understand the sacred writings that were their heritage. The Messiah was not to be a warrior or a powerful ruler but someone who would transform the world with his message and his life. 

 

This stranger reminded them by his presence and by what he said -- that in the midst of their anguish and confusion, God was still walking with them.  

 

It’s not only a reminder to us that God is always with us. It’s also a model of what we do as followers of Jesus. We walk with people in their times of suffering. 

Mosaic by Rowan and Irene LeCompte

They were beginning to see something in him that had not been immediately obvious. And then they did what followers of Jesus do – they offered him hospitality – a meal, a place to stay. 

Their spirits had been nourished. Now their bodies would be nourished as well.

 

Luke has just a brief but powerful description of what happened next: “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.”

Breaking bread and sharing it.

 

Folks here do that on the third Monday of every month at Luke House, passing bread around the tables as you eat with strangers you have met. You do that here on Sunday mornings as you invite any and all to share bread at this table. 

In a broader sense, we do that when we put food – bread and other items - in the Community Fridge. We do that when we buy bread and other treats from Just Bakery as through our sharing we open new opportunities for the people learning job skills there.

 

Art by He Qi

The power of Jesus breaking bread at the Last Supper, at this table in Emmaus, in so many places in our lives is what helps us see Jesus in the people we encounter every day – and for them to see Jesus in us.

 

“Then their eyes were opened,” Luke writes, “and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight.”

 

The reality of this man they had followed so passionately, grieved so deeply, rediscovered so curiously – the reality of Jesus had not changed. But now they saw him differently. 

 

They went back to Jerusalem and told others about their experience. They did not keep it to themselves.  As Luke put it, “The two disciples described what had happened along the road and how Jesus was made known to them as he broke the bread.”

 

Their disappointment had given way to hope. 

 

Their misunderstanding of the sequence of events from Friday’s execution to Sunday’s discovery had given way to a new understanding of what this all meant.

 

Their sense of abandonment as they walked on the road back home gave way to once again knowing they were part of a community of people gathered by Jesus and people unwilling to give up on his message. 

That experience propelled them out into the world with new energy,.

 

Icon by Sister Marie-Paul 

As we move out of here this morning, we can carry with us the images of this good news from Luke. 

We can walk alongside those who are suffering. And if we are the ones suffering right now, we can be assured that our God is walking with us.

 

We can share our bread. And if we are the ones who needs nourishment, we can be assured that the bread of life is there for us.

 

We can live with hope.  And we are walking the road in confusion and disorientation, we can lean on one another on this journey.

Who We Are Becoming – With the Earth

 

You can find a video of this sermon here.

March 12, 2023, Christ Presbyterian Church - Luke 12: 22-31

 

Sometime in the early 1970s, I went off to an individual retreat during the summer at what was then Campion High School in Prairie du Chien along the Mississippi River. I spent time reading, praying, talking with a spiritual guide. 

 

One of my texts for the retreat was Psalm 103. Part way through are these words: “As high as heaven is over the earth, so strong is God’s love to those who fear God. And as far as sunrise is from sunset, God has separated us from our sins.” 

On a clear June evening, I went out for walk and sat down under a tree on the campus, looking up at the star-filled sky. It was one of the most transcendent experiences of my life. I felt pulled into the vastness that was above me, felt God’s love all around me. It was only for a few moments, but I have never forgotten those moments.

 

At the beginning of 2021, at the church that our daughter and son-in-law attend in Chicago - a place that became one of our spiritual homes online during the time of the pandemic - the pastor invited people there to choose a word from a list she offered that would help shape their year ahead. 

I picked the word “branch.”

 

I liked the image of being connected to a tree with roots reaching deep into the earth. For me, the tree would be Jesus, the roots the vastness of creation. My branch reached out a bit, growing each year, giving life to leaves that draw from the aquifer that runs below.

 

The branch holds steady through the seasons, emerging with the spring, offering shade in the summer, holding the colors of autumn and remaining in place even as the leaves fall away. 

Of course a strong wind can take down a branch, so being a bit flexible in the midst of the storms helps. Letting nutrients flow helps with that flexibility. And then growth – slow, steady, continuous – adds strength. 

 

The picture that you see on here has become a vital image for me, connecting my life, the creation around me and God.  It’s a picture by one of my favorite photographers, Bryan Hansel of Grand Marais, Minn.

 

The branches are framed by the starlit sky – stars that stretch out far beyond what I can see, surrounding me with the glory of creation, reminding me that I am just a small being in an enormous universe, all shaped and sustained by a divine energy. 

 

“Consider the ravens,” Jesus told his disciples. “Consider the lilies, how they grow.”

 

Jesus walked through nature all the time, resting under the stars, watching the birds soar overhead, seeing lilies bloom in the fields, praying among a grove of trees.

 

Augustine – the great Christian thinker who lived around the year 400 – once wrote: “Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Note it. Read it.”

 

That was the first articulation of what became known as the “two books theory” of coming to know God. Madison resident Daniel Cooperrider has a new book called Speak With the Earth and It Will Teach You where he explores how this might work in our time as he takes hikes into mountains and walks along rivers and wonders how we might change the world by remembering to learn from it.

 

In our time, when we are all vividly aware of the impact climate change is having on our lives – and on the lives of those living in more vulnerable situations – I think there is wisdom in that idea of reading the created world around us and noting what we might do to protect its livability not just for ourselves but for generations to come.

 

Let me reach back to a moment to someone with roots both among Presbyterian and Wisconsin ancestors. His name is John Muir. He was raised in a strict Scottish Presbyterian home near Portage and attended the University of Wisconsin starting in 1860.

 

Muir is a huge presence in the nation’s understanding of its natural environment, but we also know that his life was complicated by initially horrific attitudes towards the indigenous people who lived here first and the Africans brought here as slaves. His attitudes tempered in time, but are still part of his legacy, because we are a complicated people after all. 

 

For now, though, I’d like to focus on how Muir found new ways to connect to God through nature. This is a brief clip from a brand new video our own Scott Wilson made exploring the spiritual history of the University of Wisconsin. Rebecca Crooks is the narrator.

Muir video clip

 

Think about those words of John Muir: “God’s love covers all the earth as the sky covers it. And this love has voices heard by all who have ears to hear.”

 

John Muir was reading the book of creation. That, in turn, sustained him as he sought ways to expand the nation’s appreciation for and preservation of the earth on which we live.

 

There’s a contemporary story from UW as well. Some of you may know Cal DeWitt, who taught environmental science for many years as UW-Madison and has been one of the leading voices in the faith-based movement for creation care. 

 

Here’s another brief clip from Scott’s video:

 

DeWitt video clip

 

“Behold the earth through the eye of its maker.” What a wonderful phrase that ties together our exploration of the natural world and our call to protect it for generations to come.

Cal DeWitt was one of the advisors who helped shape publication of what is called The Green Bible.

 

This is a regular New Revised Standard Version translation of the Bible, but with phrases related to the natural world printed in green. At the beginning are ten essays from Jewish and Christian authors on how to live in ways that care for God’s creation. One of them is by Cal DeWitt, where he writes, “The Bible turns out to be a powerful ecological handbook on how to live rightly on the earth.”

 

Of course, the problem that we face today is that we are not living rightly on the earth.

 

You all know the litany of climate change impacts – rising temperatures, more violent storms, enormous fires, drought, floods, the glaciers receding, the oceans rising. 

 

We here in Wisconsin can often seem pretty isolated from all this. Yes, our winters are less cold than a few decades ago, but it’s pretty clear that we still have winters. Water is abundant. Our four seasons are still well defined. People talk about our state as one of the places that will grow in desirability as other parts of the nation reel from climate change.

 

We are not free of the impacts, though. And we know that every part of our world has a part to play in countering the causes of that lead to climate change. We are all truly connected.

 

Beyond looking out for ourselves, I believe one of the messages from Jesus is that we are called to look out for each other. And it is the most vulnerable people in our world that will suffer the most from climate change.

Yes, some expensive homes along the shore in Florida eventually may be under water. But the horrific impacts are going to fall on struggling  people in nations all around the globe. 

Our own Angie Dickens recently gave a presentation to a group called 350 Wisconsin on the connections between climate change and migration. Rising sea levels, droughts, food scarcity are all contributing to migration that is hugely destructive of individual lives but also destabilizing to so many nations. 

These are stunning numbers she cited from a report by the World Bank:

 

By the year 2050 – that’s only 27 years away – 40 million people in South Asia will have been forced to migrate within their own county. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of those internal migrants will be 86 million. Our neighbors in Latin America will see 17 million internal migrants. Of course, migrants who ultimately leave that region tend to seek refuge in the United States.

And here, in the U.S., we are looking at some 13 million Americans forced to relocate due to sea level rise. That’s five times the size of the Dust Bowl migration in the 1930s.

 

All of this makes me want to shout out the first words of Psalm 69:

 

Save me, O God,   for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.
I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched.

 

Whew!

 

There are lots of ideas about what we as individuals, as communities, as a nation, as a world can do to offset the pace of climate change and adapt to its impacts. I’m not going to recite those today. You can find many good sources of information for those.

 

What I want to consider is where we might find the hope we need to carry us forward.

I can sit and revel under a starlit sky. I can walk down to the shore of Lake Mendota. I can watch as the sandhill cranes set up a nest in the pond near our home. I can appreciate the beauty of this earth, give thanks to God, read the book of nature alongside the books of the Bible. It all makes me want to do something that will sustain our futures.

 

But then I read about National Public Radio host Ari Shapiro asking author Michael Pollen – known for his books about plants and food and the human relationship with the natural world – why Pollen had not written a book about climate change.

 

Pollen’s response? 

 

He likes to write books that give people hope and he doesn’t know how to do that with climate change.

 

That’s not an uncommon feeling. So one of the things we can do as a congregation of followers of Jesus is to think about who we are becoming with the earth, to think about how we can make a difference in the effort to slow down climate change, how we can give ourselves and others hope. Because without hope, we will all be stuck.

To do that, first we need faith. Listen to the words farther along in Psalm 69, which began waters up to our necks and our feet stuck in the mire:

 

I will praise the name of God with a song;   I will magnify God with thanksgiving.
Let the oppressed see it and be glad;  you who seek God, let your hearts revive.
For the Lord hears the needy  and does not despise God’s own who are in bonds.

 

We are not doing this alone. God is at our side.

 

To act, we need love – love for the world as we experience its beauty, love for our fellow human beings as together we look out for each other. Love is at the core of being followers of Jesus. After all, they will know we are Christians by our love.

 

To act, we need hope. And that’s when I turn to Katherine Hayhoe.

She is a climate scientist and an evangelical Christian. In her most recent book, A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World – which you can find on the book carts in the gathering space – she starts her chapter on hope with a quote from Augustine – the same Augustine who wrote about the book of nature and the books of the Bible.

“Hope has two beautiful daughters,” he wrote. “Their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are and Courage to see that they do not remain as  they are.”

 

Hayhoe quotes UW-Madison ecologist Rick Lindroth as saying he is hopeful because of his kids who are taking the challenges of climate change seriously. That is an answer she hears from many people. Then she adds, “Our hope isn’t based on an expectation that they will fix it for us. Rather, we want to fix it for them.”

 

She acknowledges that success in slowing down climate change is not inevitable. That’s where the courage Augustine wrote about comes in. And hope – well, we need to find that in the things happening around and within us that make protecting the earth possible.  

Hayhoe writes about making hope a practice – recognizing reality, identifying what we hope for, then taking steps in that direction, even if we are not sure we have it all figured out. “Together,” Hayhoe concludes, “we can save ourselves.”

 

At the beginning of this reflection, I talked about sitting under a tree sensing the presence of among  the stars, being inspired by the role branches play for a tree and how they can be a metaphor for my life. 

 

I want my kids and grandkids to have those same opportunities as they encounter the beauty of the world around us.

This is my granddaughter Ellie. She is 19 months old. She delights in new discoveries about the world every day. Here I see her reaching out into the future.
 

One of my tasks is to work to protect that future for her. One of all of our tasks is to protect that future for all of our children and grandchildren, for all of today’s children living in every part of our globe.

 

So we need to touch the earth lightly as we live. The song I am going to invite you to sing is based on a Celtic melody, which fits into one of the threads running through our time together today. The words “touch the earth lightly, use the earth gently” speak to the task before us.

Please join in as we sing this global hymn that comes to us from New Zealand.

Rediscovering Jesus: Redeemer

You can see a video of this sermon at this link.

1 Corinthians 1: 18-31

I’d ask you as we begin today to take a few moments just to look at the cross we have at the front of our sanctuary. 

 

What are the ideas that come to mind as you look at it?

Pause.

 

It’s a beautiful cross. We have a similar one over our main entrance, reflected in the window behind it, another on the outer wall of this sanctuary facing Gorham Street.

 

Clearly, it is not only a beautiful cross, but also an important symbol of this congregation. And the cross – in whatever shape – is one of the identifying symbols of Christianity throughout the world. 

 

Among the things I think about when I look at a cross is a simple question: Why did Jesus have to die on a cross? If only the answer were as simple as the question.

 

Last week, Pastor Jessica in her sermon invited us to go ice skating with Jesus on Lake Mendota.  So today I am going to go ice skating with Jesus -- on the thin ice out there. Trying to make sense of what the crucifixion was all about has been one of the great controversies in the history of Christianity.

As a kid, I learned a simple – and perhaps the most common -  explanation. Jesus died for my sins. He was my redeemer. And just to make sure that I understood that I had something to do with this, every time I sinned – whatever that meant as an eight-year old – I was pounding one of those nails a little farther into Jesus’ hand. But, thank goodness, he suffered so that God would not hold my sins against me. 

 

Thank you, Jesus!

 

In theological terms, this whole issue is called atonement. As luck would have it, I wrote my thesis for my theology degree about atonement. Don’t worry – I am not going to read my thesis here for you today. (If you are up for reading 75 pages about atonement, I’d be happy to email it to you.)

 

What I would like to do, though, is suggest that there are many ways to think about why Jesus died on the cross. How we think about that can actually affect how we live our lives as followers of Jesus.

 

Even though the phrasing “Jesus died for our sins” is one of the most common explanations, it is hardly the only one. Yes, it is woven through familiar hymns and prayers.  

 

Think about that classic hymn, “The Old Rugged Cross.” 
“On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,” it begins. 

 

And the second verse says:  

“In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,

A wondrous beauty I see,

For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,

To pardon and sanctify me.”

 

All of this comes out of a time when people put Jesus’ death into a model of transactions – maybe calming an angry god with a sacrifice or settling a debt in court. 

Spiritual guide and Franciscan priest Richard Rohr described this as “the strange idea that before God could love us God needed and demanded Jesus to be a blood sacrifice to atone for our sin-drenched humanity.”

 

We talk a lot in our time, in this congregation, about God’s love and God’s grace, saying that God loves us, no matter what. No matter what, God loves us. God did not need Jesus to be killed to make things right with humanity. 

 

So I’m back to my question. Why did Jesus have to be killed on a cross?

There are the very concrete realities he faced. His teachings, the way he lived challenged both the religious and political establishments of his time. The Temple leaders and the Roman occupiers held power and they were threatened by this wandering rabbi.

 

We know all too well what can happen when power is challenged, especially if that power thinks it is impervious to the will of the people or to the basic rights of humanity. 

 

We have seen that play out over and over around the world – in the massacres of the indigenous people here, in the colonizers in Africa and Asia and Latin America, in the Israeli occupation of Palestine, in the beatings and murders of people seeking a more just society. 

 

We have witnessed that abuse of power once again in the last few days with the horrifying videos of five Memphis police officers pummeling Tyre Nichols to death, apparently as a way of using brutally to show that they had power.

 

And we have seen the cross perverted into a sign justifying violence, whether on the shields of crusaders in the Middle Ages or on flags as insurrectionists stormed the U.S Capitol on Jan. 6 two years ago.  White nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis have taken that image of the cross that we honor and appropriated it into a symbol of hate.

 

Yes, we live in a world where people are killed for challenging power. That’s what happened to Jesus.

 

The earliest Christians struggled with that, as we heard in that letter from Paul to the people of Corinth that was our scripture reading for today.

 

“The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God… we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ (is) the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

 

Their leader had not only been tortured and killed, but all this had happened in the most public and humiliating way. Clearly a crucified leader was a stumbling block for those who might consider joining his followers. Those followers – and those they were talking to – would have to make that leap of faith to the Resurrection for the crucifixion to make any sense.

 

The cross, after all, does not stand alone. That nimbus – that circle – around our cross can be a reminder that there is life beyond the suffering and death of Jesus. And it can be a reminder that Jesus’ suffering and death need not be explained simply as a sacrificial sin offering but as one piece of a life that reconciled  humanity to divinity, that took the worst humanity had to offer and transformed it from the cross through the resurrection.

 

Having said all this, I don’t want to diminish the importance for some folks of their commitment to the idea that Jesus died on their behalf. That is a belief that clearly has deep roots in Christian history, even in the Gospels themselves.

 

There was the time Jesus was talking under the cover of darkness with Nicodemus when he said one of the most quoted sentences from the Gospels: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” That’s the verse – John 3:16 – you sometimes see on signs at sporting events and other places where Christians choose to publicly proclaim one manifestation of God’s love.

 

Jesus talked about himself as the Good Shepherd who would lay down his life for his sheep. John in his Gospel uses the image of the Lamb of God, connecting Jesus to the lamb sacrificed for the Jewish Passover meal, although in Judaism, that is not done as an atonement for sin but as a remembrance of the Exodus journey to freedom from slavery.

 

In the Gospel according to Matthew – but only in that Gospel – Jesus says as he gives the cup of wine to his closest followers, “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

 

That idea that Jesus died to save us – that Jesus is our Redeemer – can give us a degree of confidence in the way we live our lives, can be an invitation to gratitude for the life and death of Jesus.

For me, though, it is also an understanding that has problems – as do all of the understandings of why Jesus died on the cross.   I’m uncomfortable with the idea that God chose to send his son to die. I’m not convinced that each mistake I make is another hammer blow to those nails. As I said at the beginning, it’s a simple question with complicated answers.

 

Let me offer just a few other ideas about all this.

 

One comes from two contemporary writers – Will Willimon, a retired Methodist bishop, and Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian who has taught at Duke and Notre Dame among other places.  They wrote about the role sin played in the execution of Jesus.

 

They describe those sins as religious and government leaders lining up to protect their powers, allies abandoning him, bystanders mocking him. Violence is used to try to solve a “problem.” Yet on the cross, Jesus asks God to forgive those who are doing this to him. 

That, Willimon and Hauerwas say, “throws a monkey wrench in to the eternal wheel of retribution and vengeance.”

 

I don’t think a monkey wrench hanging over our sanctuary would be quite as beautiful as our cross, but it is a neat image of how Jesus’ actions as he was dying offered a very different way to respond to violence. This does not let violence have the last word. And the resurrection does not let death have the last word either. From that, I can draw hope as I navigate the realities of our world today.

 

Another idea comes from Richard Rohr, who I mentioned earlier. He summarized the teaching of one of his theological heroes named John Duns Scotus this way: “Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity (it did not need changing)! Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God.”

 

Instead of counting sins, weighting guilt, punishing people, Jesus offered a new world where, in Rohr’s words, “God's abundance has made any economy of merit, sacrifice, reparation, or atonement both unhelpful and unnecessary.”

 

When we change the trajectory from what we and others do wrong to what God’s love offers all, then we can be reconciled to each other and to God. And reconciliation to God is really at the heart of all of this.

 

One more way I like to think about all of this. 

 

It seems to me one of the continuing themes of Jesus’ life was about forgiveness. When we say the prayer each Sunday – and other times as well – that Jesus taught his followers, we say, depending on our backgrounds, forgives us our debts – or our trespasses – or our sins – as we forgive others.  

 

We can say that knowing how Jesus assured us that God forgives us as well, knowing that Jesus forgave even  those who tortured and killed, who abandoned and mocked him.

 

That’s a transformation – not a transaction. 

 

For that, I give thanks to God.