Today’s passage Hebrews 8. Apollo says that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God in heaven serving in the true sanctuary that Moses copied. Because Jesus mediates a new covenant, the old one is useless. Apollo quotes Jeremiah about God’s promise to make a new covenant and write his laws on our hearts and put them in our minds.
Do you follow God’s rules or your own?
Do you keep grudges or do you forget the sins committed against you?
Today I held a high school assembly to talk to the students about three of them who had broken a major school rule.
Two other students had witnessed the crime but did nothing to stop it or dissuade their friends from continuing.
It was a serious moment in the life of the students and of the school.
My main point was similar to what the Lord said through Jeremiah: we have the law in our minds and on our hearts.
We know what is right but we too often lack the will to do it.
I left with a question I repeated a few times.
What do you stand for?
For what is true, good, noble and upright or for their opposites?
I talked about the importance of justice but a justice seasoned with mercy because all of us need mercy since all of us fail repeatedly to do the right thing, including me.
I hold grudges.
The one I remember most was from middle school.
A new boy moved to my neighborhood and had no friends.
His dad worked with my dad, so my dad asked me to befriend the man’s son.
The boy was a jerk. We had nothing in common.
But I did my best and walked to and from school with him to keep him company.
He was a social climber and wanted to be part of the in-group.
I didn’t because I despised them all as shallow, cynical, proud and arrogant, not recognizing my own similar attitude.
The boy I had befriended quickly saw the animosity between the in-group and me, so he mocked me and tried to embarrass me by sharing things we had talked about.
The mockery earned him his ticket into the in-group and my undying hatred for his betrayal. I wished him dead.
A few years later I learned he was killed in a car accident and I was happy.
It took me half a lifetime to see how prideful I had been.
Who did I think I was that I should be immune from mockery?
What was so special about me that my friendship was like some sort of royal blessing for which whoever received it must be eternally grateful?
And maybe, just maybe I was a boring companion and the boy was right to go in search of more lively company.
Partly because of my own lack of forgiveness, I asked my students today to have empathy for their friends who had broken the school rules in a very serious way and to remember that there but for the grace of God went all the rest of us, guilty in our hearts for other sins.
Application: to talk to my middle school students tomorrow about what happened in high school and what it means for them.
Lord, let me honor your great mercy to me and your remembering my sins no more by forgiving others who sin against me.
