Our Trespasses

The sixth “line” of the Lord’s Prayer will take more than a single blog post. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” There’s a lot there.
    I begin with a clearing of the throat. “Trespass” is one of those double-footed words. Both syllables are accented. It’s not TRESSpuss. (That’s the UK, not the US, pronunciation, according to the Cambridge dictionary. It’s well-known Americans are more pious than Brits.) Don’t try to rush over it. It’s not a word quickly left behind. TRESS-PASS. Two beats. I know people who try to “lead” the congregation by saying this line very loudly and very quickly, tripping right over it, and creating havoc in the congregation. Don’t.
    You can’t get past your trespasses quickly. It should be a hard word to say. You should slow down here. You need to look at your sins.
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    That we have sins is a truth that’s hard to look at squarely. I have said before that I like to meditate on the Lord’s Prayer as I do a morning run. I have told you that it might take me ten minutes to say the Prayer. Well, it’s worse than that. I might take all the time I have, and enjoy meditating on God as my father, then going on to his wondrous accessibility (“in heaven”). I can think of so many aspects of creation that I wish hallowed his Name. I can think of parts of creation where his kingdom has not come and where his will is not done, and I can long for those parts of creation to be brought under his gracious rule. I can even take several minutes thinking about what I need today, the “daily bread” that I want him to give me.
    And guess what? Time’s up! So sorry . . . didn’t get to the end of the prayer today.
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    It’s hard to get there, and we would love to just rush over it. But we can’t. The trespasses exist. And they aren’t somebody else’s. They aren’t the ways other people act against God’s kingdom. They are ours. Yours. Mine.
    We need to slow down. Let this sink in.
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    Jesus did not assume that his disciples would be good, complete, integrally functioning human beings. He allowed as how we might sin.
    But more: Jesus did not assume that his disciples might (from time to time) sin; he didn’t tell us to pray “And if we have sinned, please forgive us.” (And isn’t that such a weaselly way of speaking! “If I have offended you, I’m sorry” so easily means “I regret you are such a super-sensitive person that you took offense.”)
    No: Jesus assumed we would sin. Every time we say this prayer, we will have sinned in the time leading up to it. It’s an ongoing reality.
    We need to see that. We need to slow down.
    (I need to slow down and stop here. More to come.)
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    Out & About. Sunday, July 14, I am to preach at the traditional services at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas: 7:30, 9, and 11:15 a.m.
    My sermon on Trinity Sunday (“The Father’s Day”) is here: http://www.allsoulsokc.com/sermon/6309/. The Canadian reference was provoked by the impending retirement of the rector of All Souls’ Church, Patrick Bright, who is retiring to Our Neighbor to the North.

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

Taking it Seriously

 A great thing about being a priest is you get to hear ordinary stories that are also awesome. Here’s one.
    The parishioner was having a hard time, understandably so. First a parent had died, and then about a year later, a spouse. The priest was good, was with this parishioner with prayer and (as we say) support. But one day he was exasperated.
    He blurted out: You know, your spouse doesn’t miss you!
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    It’s true: the dead do not miss us. We entrust them to Jesus, and we pray that God is doing for them better things than we can ask or imagine. But that means—if we think about it—they have no longings for us. God satisfies all their longings! We look forward with Christian hope to seeing them again, but in the meantime, it’s not for them as it is for us.
    We may miss them; they do not miss us.
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    The years passed and then it happened that the priest suffered his own loss. And that parishioner wrote to him, with thanks for his faithfulness and encouragement. His words were hard but true, and had been very important to hear.
    And now the parishioner spoke them back to the priest. “You know, your family member that died doesn’t miss you.”
    Ricochet. Hard words of truth. Real good.
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    I was reading the March issue of First Things—I’m always living in the past, you know—where there’s a goodly excerpt of a book about the Copts who were executed a few years ago by Islamic State in Libya, where these young men had gone for work. These 21 men are recognized as saints in the Coptic church; their families do not view the (quite grisly) video with anything but awe. They were martyred: they are in paradise: in the inscrutable mystery of God it happens that the families and community they left behind now know personally some saints who are in heaven.
    That’s how they look at it: We know some saints. They died because they are Christians. They now see God, and we know them.
    It’s as if we were back in the days of the Roman persecution of Christianity. These surviving Christians have a hard word that doesn’t allow for thoughts of revenge or for the breeding of hostility. Just matter of fact: What happened to Jesus has happened to my brother (or my husband, or my son).
    Faith taken as truth is hard. It is also good, the best good of all, the good (indeed the only good) that can carry us through life.
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    Out & About. Sunday, June 30, I am to preach at the traditional services at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas: 7:30, 9, and 11:15 a.m. I will preach there again, God willing, on July 14.

 

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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