Homily
for June 17, 2007
Liturgical Year C - Cycle I
11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Fr. John Carney Topic:
Forgive Generously
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Reading 1 2 Samuel 12:7-10, 13 Nathan said to
David: “Thus says the LORD God of Israel:
‘I anointed you king of Israel. I
rescued you from the hand of Saul. I
gave you your lord’s house and your lord’s wives for your own. I
gave you the house of Israel and of
Judah. And if this were not enough, I
could count up for you still more. Why
have you spurned the Lord and done evil in his sight? You have
cut down Uriah the Hittite with the
sword;you took
his wife as your own, and him you killed with
the sword of the Ammonites. Now,
therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you
have
despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah to be your wife.’
Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned
against the LORD.” Nathan answered David: “The LORD on his part has
forgiven
your sin: you shall not die.”
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Today, I want to focus on the first
reading concerning
the great David. We all know David. He lived some three
thousand years ago. He reigned for about forty years as King of
Israel. During his reign, Israel
expanded and became one of the most powerful nations on the earth.
When he handed the kingdom over to his son,
Solomon, there was a period of peace because Israel’s enemies had been
conquered. David was a great, great
king. Even today, the state of Israel
has the Star of David in their colors on their flag, the blue Star of
David on
the white background. When we think of David, we think of
somebody truly
great. Jesus is called Son of
David. He comes from the line of David,
on Joseph’s side and was called that by the prophets before his birth.
Nevertheless, this David was a great, great
sinner. Now you know the story with
Uriah and Bathsheba but just to review it: Israel was at war, as usual,
and
David was a warrior king. He was a
soldier as well. At this particular time
he was home in Jerusalem while his army was in campaign against the
Ammonites. While in the palace, one evening, David went
out, looked over the porch, and saw Bathsheba bathing and he was
consumed with
lust for her. Now Bathsheba was the wife
of a Hittite officer of David’s army, by the name of Uriah. Uriah
was a first class officer and an excellent
soldier, very loyal to David and to Israel.
David had Bathsheba brought to the palace, was intimate with her and
she
conceived a child and David was worried because although he was the
king of
Israel, he was not a king in the model of Saddam Hussein or Fidel
Castro. He couldn’t do anything he wanted to because
he lived under the laws of Israel. The
sixth commandment then as it is now is: Thou shall not commit adultery.
He had to cover up this sin. His
plan was to bring Uriah home from the
front so that Uriah could sleep with his wife.
Then when the baby was born, no one would know. He ordered Uriah
to return home. After David dined with him he said, “Go home
to your wife.” Uriah said, “Oh no, I’m a
soldier. It would be improper for me, as
an officer in your army, to enjoy my wife’s comfort while my soldiers
are in the
field.” The next night, David even got
him drunk; hoping that would lower his resistance and it didn’t work.
Uriah slept outside in the courtyard that
night. The next morning, he woke up with
a hangover and returned to the field.
David said, “Well, I’ll have to have him killed.” Uriah was the
only one who knew that he
wasn’t intimate with Bathsheba on this trip home. He ordered the commander of his army
Joab to put Uriah in a place where there would be no hope for him, to
put
him out on point somewhere and abandon him.
The enemy, of course would kill him and that is what came to pass. That is this great David.
Jesus, son David, David the greatest king ever in Israel was also the
greatest sinner. Can you imagine a sin
that was worse than this? It’s adultery,
murder, conspiracy and then we heard in second Samuel today what
happened. When Nathan the Prophet, speaking for God
challenges David, David says, “I am sorry.”
Nathan says, “Well, for His part, God forgives you.” That’s it.
That’s it. That’s the way God
is. I have a friend who almost died a few
years ago. He had a very exotic illness that still
hasn’t been totally diagnosed. He was
not far from death. While in the
hospital, he asked a nurse to take him to the chapel where the Blessed
Sacrament was. He was praying in the
chapel and he told me, he said, “You know….”
This fellow is a very solid, serious guy. He said, “You’re not
going to believe this,
but in that chapel I saw Christ. I mean
I saw him.” Now, I’ve never heard voices
or had visions but I believe people do and I believe this man did
because I
know this guy. He said, “When he looked
at me I felt all the weight of my sins
but I looked at him and he just smiled and looked at me with peace and
mercy.” Then his eyes, as he told this
story years later, filled with tears and he said, “He said nothing.
I knew I was totally forgiven and he said
nothing. No ‘I told you sos’, ‘Don’t let
this happen again.’, ‘How many times do I have to…’, none of that.
He just looked at me.” I believe that that’s a true story.
Similar to David, you are forgiven, period. You will not die. This is a great story for us because
it teaches us about
being forgiven. It teaches us about
forgiving other people and it teaches us about other people who have
been
forgiven. We shouldn’t interfere with
God’s plan of forgiveness. We should
accept it and glorify it. The word forgive is an interesting
word. I’m convinced we can learn a lot by just
looking at our words. Somehow they kind
of lose meaning. But the word forgive,
the root of the word is give, so it’s a gift.
When you forgive a person, you give that person the gift of
forgiveness. For a gift to be given it
must be given freely without strings and without any expectation of
repayment,
right? That is the way God forgives us
and that is the way we need to learn to forgive one another. Now,
I am sure it has never happened with any
married couple here today but occasionally husbands and wives forgive
each other
and then thirty years later remind them of it, so in effect, you never
forgave. Indeed, instead of giving the gift of
forgiveness, you
are holding the other in bondage. You
have got him, you got something on him.
That’s not forgiveness. That’s
some kind of “Mafioso” trick to control someone. That’s “Tony
Soprano” forgiveness. We need to forgive.
You know at funerals, oftentimes, when the family gathers in these
first
couple of pews, I can look at the faces of family members, I know, and
I could
tell you the ones who haven’t forgiven because they’re unhappy.
They’re not only unhappy, they’re angry. When you forgive
another, you give yourself a
great gift. You take poison out of your
heart and get rid of it. Can you imagine
someone who has not forgiven who is happy?
It just can’t happen. If you want
to be happy, if you want to enjoy God’s forgiveness, you have to
forgive
others. We have this great sacrament of
forgiveness in our
church, the sacrament of confession or reconciliation, or penance.
When people come out of that confessional,
they should be doing a jig. Although,
sometimes we go through the sins and I give them penance and absolution
and
they are still like “Woe is me”. More
and more, I get to the point where I tell them, “You know, you’ve got
something
wrong with you. Here you came asking God
and he forgives you. What’s your
problem? When you’re forgiven, you
should rejoice. The sacrament is not
about your sins so much as it is about God’s mercy.” Sometimes, I
tell people, “Don’t come back to
me. You don’t need a priest, you need a
psychiatrist. You need to take some
therapy or something because God is giving you this gift.” If you
give a gift to someone else and they
get rid of it, you’d be insulted. That’s
what we do when God forgives us, we hear the words of absolution and we
still
carry around the guilt and shame that came with the sin. That’s
not accepting the gift. That’s an insult to God. Forgive generously, for God’s sake and
for your own.