Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 380

You say: prophesy not against Israel,
preach not against the house of Isaac.
Now thus says the LORD:
Your wife shall be made a harlot in the city,
and your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword....

There's a pretty clear message in both readings today: "Don't mess with a holy man!" The prophet Amos leveled a severe curse upon Amaziah, the priest of Bethel and messenger of the Israelite king. (So why is a priest delivering messages for a secular authority?) 

In today's Gospel, the Pharisees challenge the Lord's authority to forgive sins. They suppose that God does not, and should not, give that authority to men. The God they knew was far removed from human affairs, and they preferred it that way. Especially because it gave them the right to keep far away from their fellow Jews. Forgiveness wasn't even in their vocabulary, much less their ministerial toolbox. 

The Book of Amos does not say how Amaziah responded to the curse he'd brought up on himself, but the Pharisees in today's gospel were apparently silenced while, 

"the crowds [who] saw this they were struck with awe and glorified God who had given such authority to men."

Forgiveness often appears as miraculous to onlookers. They just can't believe that African-Americans might forgive white, former-racist Americans; or that the families of murdered people might forgive their killers. It seems unnatural and patently suspicious to those who have not encountered the mercy of God. 

But we can do this because, 

...Christ, while we were still helpless... died at the appointed time for the ungodly.

Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.

But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath.

Indeed, if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by his life.

Not only that, but we also boast of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:6-11)

Christians who forgive have peered into the darkness of their hearts and seen the hopelessness and pathos of their resentments, fears, and hatreds. They must also admit that no one entirely knows why they act, think, or feel as they do; and that our human ways are just as mysterious to ourselves as God's are to us. It's better to just let it go than to put much thought or analysis into it. 

They forgive because they have carried the lantern of faith into their own dark cellars, and opened forbidden rooms to the light of heaven. Although it took courage, it was not half as difficult as it had seemed; and infinitely more satisfying than they had expected. 

It is no wonder that the crowds were amazed at the Lord's healing of a paralyzed man. Forgiveness is always unexpected and inexplicably wonderful.