The Gospel for today on this Forgiveness Sunday is from St Matthew, chapter 6. The Gospel begins with the advice of Christ at the end of the Lord’s Prayer: “For if you forgive others for their transgressions [that is, for their faults, for their breaking of rules], your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.” That is my experience of this parish community: We forgive each other. You forgive me for any mistakes I make in leading the Divine Liturgy, in preaching and teaching and talking to you and praying for you. I forgive you for any faults in your own lives—knowing that my sins, being forgiven, challenge me to be more forgiving. We pray and ask the Lord to help us improve, as we also continue to forgive each other. We accept each other as we are, with the hope that we will each grow closer to the Lord and closer to each other. This sermon is called, “Forgiven, now forgiving.” Because we have been forgiven by the Lord and by each other, we gain the ability, through grace, to be forgiving of each other.

Now, Father Gregory has a word for the children about the true meaning of forgiveness. . .

St John Chrysostom, the remarkable 4th century pastor and preacher, wrote about this scriptural passage: “Nothing makes us so like God as our readiness to forgive the wicked and wrongdoer. For [as is written in Matthew 5:45,] it is God who has made ‘the sun to shine on the evil and on the good.’ In every one of the clauses [of the Lord’s Prayer] Jesus commands us to make our prayers together in one voice, saying, ‘OUR Father’ … and ‘Give US this day our daily bread and forgive us OUR trespasses and ‘lead US not Into temptation’ and ‘deliver US from evil. So everywhere [Christ] is teaching us to use th[ese] plural word[s] [OUR and US] that we may not retain so much as a vestige [that is, even a very small amount] of resentment against our neighbour. . .. Christ is seeking in every possible way,” preached St John Chrysostom, “to hinder our conflicts with one another [that is, to stop any conflict continuing]. For since love is the root of all that is good, by removing . . . whatever mars love [that is, whatever disfigures or spoils love] Christ brings us together and cements us to each other. For there is not one, not a single one, whether father or mother or friends who loves us as much as the God who created us,” concluded St John Chrysostom.

So God does love each of us, young and old, as unique persons—with our own ideas and hopes and prayers. Yet we would experience far more of God’s love if we could let go of one trait—resentment—the feeling that in some way in our past we have been injured or damaged by how someone has treated us. St John Chrysostom has suggested that the best way to face resentment is to be aware of our unity as human beings, of our togetherness, of the manner in which Christ, as St John Chrysostom phrases it, “brings us together and cements us to each other.” Now, cement takes a while to dry, doesn’t it? But once that cement is set, once that cement has dried, it is permanently in place. That’s us as a parish, here at St. Aidan’s. We are stuck to each other; and we are stuck to the Lord. We have made our decisions. We have chosen, perhaps with the help of our parents, to be baptised and to believe that the Lord can guide us.

What guidance can the Lord give us on this Forgiveness Sunday, as we soon begin the journey of Great Lent—of preparation for Pascha? I think the journey of Lent is a bit like Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” That poem begins, “Whose woods these are I think I know.” That’s us, isn’t it? We know the woods of Great Lent; we’ve been there before; and at times, as Frost says, it appears “the darkest evening of the year.” That darkness is to me, the struggle to do what I intend to do, to have the self-discipline to accomplish a meaningful Lent, to place the will of God before my own will, before my own wishes.

Robert Frost ends his poem with the words: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep,/ And miles to go before I sleep,/ And miles to go before I sleep.” The loveliness, darkness and depth of Lent are with us each year; and we too have promises to keep—promises to the Lord, to our families, to ourselves about the kind of Christian lives we wish to live. It is because of those promises that we all have “miles to go before [we] sleep.” Our situation in Lent in precisely what Metropolitan Silouan told us last week on his first parish visit in the Diocese of the British Isles and Ireland— “I need you and you need me.” We need each other. And that is how we can help each other throughout Lent—to be aware of each other’s needs and hopes, to be honest with each other, to be transparent—that is, to let the rays of the Light of Christ shine into our lives so that we can know ourselves better and know each other better, for then we will also know the Lord better.

We can only achieve that transparency in which the Light of Christ is visible in our lives if we throw out any resentments from the past and begin anew in the present moment—perhaps with an apology given now or prayed into a past situation. We are scattered in our lives—thrown in many different directions. I think that’s why I like a poem by the West Indian poet Merle Collins called “Where the Scattering Began.” She locates the scattering—the being thrown into many new situations, meeting new people and new experiences—-in London, but for us the place is Manchester. The poem begins: “Here on the streets of Manchester/ where, some say, the scattering began we come to find our faces again/ We come to measure the rhythm of our paces. . . “The poem concludes: “We all come speaking so simply/ of complicated things. Here/when we recognise each other/ on the streets of Manchester/ hands and eyes and ears/ begin to shape answers/ to questions tongue can find/ no words for asking.” [REPEAT]

So may it be for us this Great Lent. Perhaps we cannot find the words to ask questions about how to live during the Fast. However, if we reach out to others “with our hands and eyes and ears,”—if we look at other people and listen to their needs and hopes, we will “recognise each other.” By reaching out to God and to others, we can each find out how the Lord wishes us to live in this holy time.