Lent Week 4 – Forgiveness and Reconciliation

By Rev Paul Clark

I was a good kid growing up.

I had heard the stories of Jesus and prided myself on being someone who looked out for the outcast, the forgotten, and who followed the rules.

So, I’m pretty ashamed of this story.

In year 6 a new girl arrived at our school. She happened to have a big nose. For some reason everyone in my grade started to tease her. It probably wasn’t everyone, but enough that somehow, I was drawn into this. I’m not sure why, but it seems that in that moment, I gave up good sense for a chance to be a part of the in-crowd, who were feeling big by making someone feel small.

I knew it was wrong, but it was just fun, wasn’t it? It wasn’t long before we heard that this girl wasn’t coming back to school. We had made her life so miserable that she had to move to another school. I lived in Tenant Creek. A new school meant leaving town.

It suddenly hit me. I did that to her! I chased her from town. How would I like that to be done to me? I suddenly saw the hatred and venom in my heart, and it made me sick. I wanted to find this girl and say I was sorry. I wanted to hold her so she would know someone loved her. I was the good kid! I was the kid who knew enough about God to know that Jesus was the friend of the outcast, not the cause of their outcast. I cried and wished and prayed I could turn back time.  But she was gone.

The only thing I could do was plead for God’s forgiveness, but I had a dilemma. How could God forgive me, when this girl deserved justice? This girl deserved to see someone squirm and suffer for all that she had gone through. If God forgave me, she would never see justice done.

That’s when I realised, someone did suffer; Jesus. Jesus could forgive me, because he had suffered and squirmed and been called names for all the pain I had caused. Justice could be done and be seen to be done, with forgiveness also given.

This realisation undid me. My sins were real, but so was God’s forgiveness. The Easter story wasn’t simply a fairy tale from the past, but a story about my future.

“In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting our trespasses against us.” 2 Corinthians 5:19

Questions for reflection:

Imagine being the young man in the story of the prodigal son, who walked away from his Dad, and then was welcomed back. How would you feel?

Have you ever felt terrible because of how you treated someone?  What did you do?

Has someone ever forgiven you for something, when they really didn’t need to?  How was that?