by Daniel Rentfro So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart. This week’s gospel, especially the last sentence, must be among the most troubling in all of Scripture.  We tend to think of forgiveness as a virtue. It’s the kind of thing that decent people ought to do. As Laurie points out in her sermon, forgiveness is also thought to be good for us. It relieves us of resentment,…
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by Daniel Rentfro “Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.” It’s commonly said that, in English-speaking culture, the two largest sources of quotes, aphorisms, and phrases are the Bible and Shakespeare’s poems and plays. In Shakespeare, there is no greater concentration of maxims than in Polonius’s farewell to his son Laertes, in the first act of Hamlet. “The clothes make the man;” “Neither a borrower not a lender be;” “To thine own self be true;” these, and many others, packed into a…
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by Daniel Rentfro Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Today’s gospel reading, from Matthew, incorporates a common refrain from Mark’s Gospel: Jesus telling people not to talk about what they’ve seen or heard. In the very first chapter of Mark, for instance, Jesus cleanses a leper, then orders him not to tell anyone but to go present himself to the priests. The leper, of course, ignores him, and tells everyone that Jesus healed him. In the…
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