[AI translation] It is perhaps unusual that on Palm Sunday I am not talking about the usual entry into Jerusalem scene, but about the part of the Lord's Prayer series that takes place on the last Sunday of the month. But I do feel that there is a connection between the two, at the point where it is about Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. Not only shedding tears, but also, according to the original text, crying out loud. Why?", one might ask, since the crowd is now celebrating Him as a king, as is due to Him. Yes, but Jesus sees how much they do not understand Him. But this city, this people did not want what Jesus brought, what Jesus wanted, what Jesus suffered and died for. He did not need the grace of reconciliation with God and with his fellow man. They did not understand that this is why Jesus came. Yes, that is precisely what is expressed in this petition: 'forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us' (v.12). There is nothing sadder than Jesus having to say to someone what he said to Jerusalem here: You have not known, you have not seen what you most needed, what I gave my life for: the grace of full reconciliation with God and man.But is the failure to recognize this grace so tragic that Jesus must weep for it? Yes, because Jesus wants to save us from the greatest peril of all, judgment. He knows what damnation is, what judgment is, what God's punishment for sin is, because he suffered it all on the cross. He truly knows that there is no greater tragedy than not accepting it. It is so great a tragedy that the Son of God weeps over it. Can you feel why Jesus is weeping amidst the cheers of the crowds celebrating Him? Well, it is precisely this sadness of Jesus that underlines this next petition of the Lord's Prayer in a very serious way, because it shows that if one cannot ask with a truly sincere heart, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive", then Jesus came into this world and suffered a redemptive death in vain. And it is not so easy to pray this petition with a truly sincere heart. In many ways it is very difficult.
1) Firstly, because I know from experience how difficult it is for people like us to get to the point where we can beg for forgiveness for our own sins. I remember for a long time I was convinced that not only my name was Joo, but that I was basically a good person myself. Of course, I'm not perfect, I have some minor or major shortcomings and faults, but they are not as serious as the sins I saw in other people, and I thought that if all people were like me, there would be nothing wrong on this earth. Until one day, for the first time in my life, I really stood before God in spirit, and tried to take account of the things in my life for which God could condemn me, not in comparison with others, but in the presence of a holy God. I began to realize more and more that I was not as good as I thought I was. I felt more and more heavily burdened by something I had never really felt before: the weight of my sins, and I was collapsing underneath it.
Try to face yourself like that for once. Try for once to stand before a holy God in your soul and write down on a piece of paper all the emotions, thoughts, desires, and actions that you alone know within yourself, no one else but yourself. Try for once to see yourself as God sees you. You will be amazed at what lies behind the respectable exterior that others see in you.
Notice that Jesus does not say, "Forgive us our sins, but forgive us our trespasses. The word "transgression" sounds a bit old-fashioned today, and does not even express the true meaning of the word here in the original text. In the literal translation, it is more like "debt", "indebtedness", remaining indebted to God and my fellow man, not giving what I owe them. And do you know what one "owes" to God and man? According to the Scripture: with love. And if a person takes it seriously that he owes love, he will always feel indebted. It's not just a matter of having actually done wrong, but where you remain indebted to someone with love. It's not just about the wounds you've inflicted, but the ones you've overlooked in another person's life. It's about the cries for help you didn't hear, the suffering you remained insensitive to.
What is it that destroys a family, tears apart a friendship, makes life difficult? Not the cross, not illness, not poverty, deprivation, but unloving. It is the fact that each one lives for himself, seeks his own righteousness, asserts his own righteousness, and by his selfishness, he shortens, steals, deceives the other. Perhaps not in a nasty way, but simply by forgetting, by failing to do at a given moment what is owed: love. This is the transgression, this debt that Jesus is talking about here. This is the sin that people around us suffer most from, the sin that poisons the whole of human coexistence, the sin that the world is dying of. This is our real sin. It accumulates day by day, year by year, into a debt so immense that it can never be repaid. Oh, but it is very hard to get to the point where I really blame no one else, God or man, for not giving me what is due to me, but only myself for not giving what I owe. I remained an insolvent debtor to everyone.
Then it is also so difficult to say with a sincere heart, "forgive us our trespasses," because even in the consciousness of immense indebtedness, one always wants to do something else with one's debt, one's trespass, first. Not to bring it before God, but to hide it. To pretend that it is not there, to reassure oneself that others owe me the same, or to forget it, to get over it. This goes on for a while. Then the memories come back, accuse you in sleepless nights, weigh on your heart. Then one tries to make amends, to pay it off, but again one realizes that it doesn't work either, that the debt doesn't diminish, but keeps growing. In the end, there is nothing left to do but to plead: Father, forgive me! What can be done with such a great debt, the debt of a lifetime, but to let it go! It is the only thing to do: to acknowledge that someone else has already paid it all for us: Jesus. The sacrifice of love, by which you and I remained debtors to God, to man, was made for us by Jesus, when, out of the purest and most holy love, he sacrificed himself on Calvary. Therefore, in view of this alone, we can ask: "Father, forgive us our trespasses", forgive us our debts, and by this request we receive, as it were, God's greatest gift, the grace of forgiveness of sins.
2) Then, too, it is very difficult to make this request with a truly sincere heart, because it is not only a request for forgiveness of our own individual sins, but a collective request for guilt and forgiveness. It is in the plural first person: forgive us our trespasses. It is as if we were embracing with it all the wickedness of the whole world, all the hatred, envy, lies, immorality - in short, unloving, uncharitable - that makes life on earth so difficult, so full of suffering, so full of peril. He who truly prays the Lord's Prayer cannot say that the sins of the family, the many dwindling of my Church, the many sins of my race, the wickedness of my enemies, are not my business, have nothing to do with me - because I am part of it all, and I am responsible for it. It is my own wickedness, my own sins, that contribute to the world as it is. It's easy to blame the church, Christianity, society, but I must remember that I am part of the collective, and the blame will reflect back on me.
I have read somewhere that the many horrors and atrocities commemorated in Auschwitz and Berchtesgaden and other sad places are blamed in this way: the Germans say: the Nazis did it; the Europeans say: the Germans did it; the Americans say: the Europeans did it; the people of colour say: the white people did it. And maybe one day we will say: we did it, we people did it. Well, something of this commitment to collective complicity is expressed in this plea: "Forgive us our trespasses". I ask not only for forgiveness for myself, but also for the sins of others, of the Church, of my people, of the world, of my enemies, I bring to God the sins of my own.
What would this world, this humanity be without God's forgiving grace for sins? Do you feel the immense responsibility that this petition places on you, the praying people? To embrace this sick world in the radiance of God's saving grace, as Abraham prayed for Sodom and Gomorrah, as Moses prayed for the life of a people under judgment. Do you know that in the whole world God has mercy on the chosen few, whom you and I are called to be?! The whole earth is held up by the Atlas arms of the prayers of those in whom love for him has not yet grown cold, and who beg God's mercy for him? Truly this prayer is like a prayer which, embracing the whole globe, brings it ever and anon into the mercy of God. Jesus entrusts the fate of this earthly world to us when he taught us to pray, "Forgive us our trespasses". The temeneless wickedness that would justly call forth, Lord, your destructive wrath against us, your contemptuous human children. How immensely difficult, is it not, to pray this petition with a truly sincere heart?
3) Finally, it is also very difficult because Jesus adds something else, something very practical: "even as we forgive those who sin against us" (v.12b). This second part of the petition is so important to Jesus that, after the whole prayer has been said, he returns to it and explains it further: 'For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses."
What this means is that the only way to be reconciled to God is to be reconciled at the same time to all those with whom I have any unresolved issues. God's acceptance and transmission of forgiveness of sins belong together as divine and human in the person of Jesus. We have a God who does not sit enthroned above us in some distant, otherworldly inaccessibility, but who wants to meet us here, and who desires love from us by putting the Son of God, perhaps the very person we least want to meet, in our way. We have a God who looks at us through the eyes of the other person, often our very enemy, our fellow human being who causes us so much discomfort. There you can measure, by your attitude towards your fellow litigant, how seriously you have taken and accepted God's forgiveness of your sins.
For a long time, I understood this "how" to mean, forgive me, God, as I forgive you. Well, that would be terrible. Because then woe is us! For we cannot truly, fully forgive. Now I'm beginning to understand that it's the other way around. I want to forgive as you forgive me. According to the verb form in the original text, there is here almost an oath to swear to what we actually do, not a promise to do what we intend to do. In this way: forgive me; I too, at this very moment, have already forgiven everyone who owes me! You can't have one without the other. Neither is it possible to receive God's forgiveness without fully forgiving others, nor is it possible to forgive others without accepting God's forgiving love.
In conclusion, let me draw your attention to the fact that this petition is linked to the previous one, the petition for daily bread, by the conjunction "and", as a sign that we need daily forgiveness of sins just as much as we need daily bread. Physically, the world lives on bread, spiritually on forgiveness, on what we receive and what we give. Both are indispensable: bread for our belly, because without it we would die, and forgiveness for our soul, because without it we would die, and twice over: for the present time and for eternity. That is why it would be the greatest sorrow for Jesus today if one of us could not say with a truly sincere heart, "And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."
Looking on the blood of your holy Son, Do not bring us to judgment,
And rebuke us not for our trespasses, But in all things grant us,
As we forgive those who sin against us.
Canto 483 verse 13
Amen
Date: 30 March 1969 (Palm Sunday).
Lesson
Lk 19,29-44