Re:Verse passage – Mark 11:22-25 (day four)
Do you enjoy the greeting time during church on Sunday? Some of us love to walk around the sanctuary shaking hands, while the introverts among us probably wish that we could just skip that part. Other church traditions refer to this time as “passing the peace,” where, just like in our congregation, the intention is that we greet one another with the peace of Christ in our hearts.
This brief moment on Sunday morning feels routine – but it’s an important part of the liturgy that is filled with significance. Before we continue on in worship, before we receive the sermon, before we take the Lord’s Supper, we actively extend peace to the members of the body of Christ that are around us. But this is hard to do when we haven’t made forgiveness a spiritual discipline in our lives.
Forgiveness is one of the hallmarks of the Christian faith, but this radical forgiveness Christ calls us to isn’t easy. It makes no sense by earthly logic, it only makes sense in light of Christ. We can forgive others because we have been forgiven first, and because the Spirit strengthens us to offer that same forgiveness to others. Here, Jesus is asking us to make this a regular occurrence in our prayer life. He’s asking us to include forgiveness in the daily liturgy of our lives.
What if we really lived out this command? What if, when we arrive at church with unforgiveness towards a fellow church member, we seek the Lord in prayer, asking the Spirit to strengthen us, so that we can pass that person genuine peace when the time comes? I believe the effects would reverberate throughout the entire sanctuary.
I read a book called the hideaway and it said that forgiveness had a whole lot more to do with the person doing the forgiveness than it did with the person in need of forgiveness and that holding on to hurt and anger made about as much sense as hitting your head with a hammer and expecting the other person to get a headache!