Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle A

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

Is God a Torturer?

When I read the Gospel passage for today I was a bit shocked when I reached the end of the passage. This was because it was written there that Jesus said that his heavenly Father would also do unto his disciples if they do not forgive every one of their brothers or companions. This means that his heavenly Father would also deliver them to torturers if they do not forgive their brothers and sisters.

Listen to the flow of Jesus' concluding statement to this parable. Jesus concluded: "Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart."

Notice the word "So". The original Greek word here can be translated "thus" and "in this way". In some versions it is rendered as "also". In the first edition of the New American Bible which I personally use the words are very explicit. This Greek word is translated "in exactly the same way". It means that his heavenly Father will "in exactly the same way" hand over those who do not forgive to torturers.

The logical question to ask is: Is Jesus' heavenly Father, God, also a torturer?

The logical answer can only be: Yes, Jesus' heavenly Father is also a torturer.

This shocked me a bit because we were not taught in our catechism classes or in our theological studies that our God can deliver us to torturers. Our usual image of God is a loving person who takes care of us and overlooks our sins.

But here we have a seemingly completely different picture of God, a God who hands us over to torturers. And the one who gives us this picture is no other than his son Jesus, who alone knows him best and most accurately.

Is this a true picture of God? After much meditation I agree with Jesus that this is a true picture of God. God can and does hand us over to torturers.

I would have thought that picturing God as a torturer is a blasphemy of our imagination, thinking of God in this way is a sin, a very serious sin. But this is one picture Jesus gives us of his Father. We need to know what we can learn from this picture.

It is somewhat surprising that not one of the twenty or so commentaries on this verse I read alluded to such a picture of God. Either they thought Jesus did not really mean what he said or he was using only a hyperbole, a figure of speech of exaggeration to drive home his point on the necessity and importance of forgiveness. Or they did not just care to comment on this remark of Jesus. Or they did not notice such a picture of God as given by Jesus.

But when we look at the whole picture, at the description of God in the Old and New Testaments we cannot fail to notice this description of God which comes from Jesus himself. God does hand over to torturers those who do not forgive their brothers and sisters in the faith.

The Bible, medical science, and common sense bear this out: God can and does hand over persons to torturers.

And we are fortunate that we have heard this from Jesus himself so that we can behave accordingly.

Maybe some of you have heard this distinction made between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. The distinction says that the God of the Old Testament was an angry God, one who went on killing his enemies, while the God of the New Testament is a loving God, wanting to save all. John 3:16 has been used to highlight this distinction. "Yes, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him may not die but may have eternal life."

Some groups have even taught that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New Testament.  These are the atheists, agnostics and secular humanists who follow the teachings of Marcion who existed in the second century.

The truth is that God's nature is the same in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. He was and is always a God who hates sin, who abhors iniquity, who keeps on purifying his people.

God destroyed completely the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, men, women, children, infants, animals and plants because of their sins. Only Lot and his two daughters survived. Look at the record in the Book of Numbers. Only 2 of the 603,550 Israelites aged 20 years old and above survived the journey from Egypt to the promised land, namely Joshua and Caleb. God caused the rest to die in the wilderness. God did not tolerate their disobedience and lack of faith. God commanded the Israelites to completely annihilate the Canaanites, including helpless and innocent infants. (Exodus 23:33, Deuteronomy 7:2, 16). God does punish and he punishes ruthlessly.

It is not without reason that he said, "Vengeance is mine" (Romans 12:19). For, indeed God does inflict vengeance on his enemies.

At the same time this God is most merciful. Our responsorial Psalm witnesses to this. This is one of my most favorite Psalms. It says, 'The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion. He pardons all your iniquities, heals all your ills. He redeems your life from destruction, crowns you with kindness and compassion. He will not always chide, nor does he keep his wrath forever. Not according to our sins does he deal with us, nor does he requite us according to our crimes. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he put our transgressions from us.' And in Isaiah we read of God telling the Israelites, "It is I, I, who wipe out, for my own sake, your offenses; your sins I will remember no more." (43:25).

These two aspects of God are to be held by us together. God is just and gets rid of all unrighteousness. At the same time God is infinitely merciful and forgives us and forgets all the evils we have done against him.

The New Testament image of God is the same. God is just and winnows out the unjust. Jesus pronounced woes or curses on the cities which rejected him, namely Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida (Matthew 11:21-23). They are even now only ruins, not fit for a dwelling place. He pronounced woes also against the Scribes and Pharisees. They were soon tortured, driven to other lands, reduced to only a memory.

And yet this same Jesus forgave those who crucified him, forgave his chief persecutor, Saul, and transformed him to Paul, the Apostle to the non-Jews.

God does deliver people to torturers. The Bible says so. And God does forgive and forgets the offence done against him.

Medical science also gives the same verdict although some medical scientists do not believe in God.

In the website ethoughts.org a story is told about a minister who after 20 years concluded that over 90 percent of all health problems are rooted in unforgiveness. "90 percent of all health, marital, family, and financial problems came from unforgiveness."

Those who do not forgive are indeed tortured by their conscience, by their mind. It is God who designed that their minds are so tortured with distress, regrets, worries, which produce psychological and physical problems in their personality make-up.

Here are statements from other websites: "Unforgiveness causes a lot of stress and a lot of health problems. This can cause fear, depression, frustration, anxiety, self-hatred, and loneliness. It's quite a catalogue of problems, isn't it?"

Medical science shows that God tortures those who do not forgive by producing all kinds of problems in their life. I guess that if all forgive one another, our hospitals and clinics would immediately be half empty.

Common sense also tells us that God can and does torture those who do not forgive their brothers and sisters in the faith. The history of wars waged by Christians against other Christians attests to this. Common sense tells us that wars are the fruit of unforgiveness among nations. Those who engage in these wars are professed Christians. In the movie CROMWELL we see the absurdity of one group of Christians calling on God to kill their enemy Christians who also at almost the same time call on God to kill the first group of Christians. The result? God tortures both of them with dead and wounded soldiers, with widows and orphans.

The first reading is very clear about the evils of unforgiveness and the benefits of forgiveness.   Sirach says, 'Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight. The vengeful will suffer the LORD's vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail."

And our second reading tells us the reason why we need to forgive. Our life is no longer our own. St. Paul says, "Brothers and sisters: None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself."

Let us bow our heads in prayer.

Thank you, Jesus, for giving us a clearer picture of your and our heavenly Father. We now realize that your heavenly Father who is also our heavenly Father is a just and righteous God who infinitely hates sin but is most merciful to us. We who are his children can only imitate him and forgive from our heart those who have wronged us so that we enjoy the best of health. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.