Last week someone in our flock noted how she was expecting more jokes in the sermon. I know there is some past history with jokes here, so I will at least increase my efforts to tell you some funny stories. This one happened just a couple of weeks ago.

I was walking to the hospital to see Joan late one afternoon. It was a beautiful warm sunny day and I was wearing shorts, a loose Tee shirt, hat and sunglasses. As I made my way up the little hill to the hospital I encountered one of our parishioners who attends church regularly. “Hi Doris” I exclaimed. Doris is not her real name. She was accompanied by a friend I did not recognize. After the usual “How are you?” exchanges, I mentioned something about her involvement at church. This was met with a puzzled stare. I reframed my remark adding a bit more detail. Again, deer in the headlights. It soon became clear that something about Grace Church, this particular woman and me wasn’t quite clicking. Finally she mustered the courage and asked “Do I know you?”

I pulled off my hat and sunglasses and said, “Doris, I’m your pastor at Grace Church.” At that point her friend just about cracked up. It is so typical of us. Sometimes in a different context we fail to recognize a person we see every week and think we know. Although I doubt he was wearing sunglasses, the women at the tomb thought that Jesus was the gardener and later the disciples failed to recognize Jesus several times after the resurrection.

The gospel today says that the sheep follow the shepherd because they know his voice. But given the recorded failures to recognize Jesus in their midst, I wonder if the sheep aren’t sometimes confused and follow a different voice? It is worth noting the difference between following the voice of the right shepherd versus the wrong one. Jesus mentions thieves and bandits that jump into the sheepfold over the fence at night. These are the obvious false leaders we see in our society to this day: power addiction, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, work addiction, rage addiction, sex addiction and so forth. Some of us devote much of our lives and our fortune to such thieves and bandits. Such addictions are bandits that literally steal our soul.

Those are the easy ones. In biblical times, it was costly to build a high stone wall. For reasons of cost as well as the mutual protection offered, the sheep from different flocks were brought into a common stone walled enclosure called a sheepfold. In the morning when it was safe to go to pasture, the different shepherds came through the gate calling their sheep. This was common agricultural practice and people would have instantly understood how sheep follow the voice of their shepherd. Yet clearly with people as with sheep, the system breaks down every now and then. What happens when we think we are following the good shepherd but we went out the gate following the wrong one?

Following the wrong shepherd is characterized by several human traits we have all seen:

A sense of absolute surety. We are convinced this is the right path A denial of all other paths. Unwillingness to consider things that may be uncomfortable or don’t seem right Strong herd mentality Intellectual justification In extreme cases: behavioral norms that are unhealthy or even destructive This process happens in religion, in political movements and in just about any social group. Given our human tendency to herd together and follow the leader who has a convincing story, how do we discern whether we went out the gate following the right shepherd?

I will give you two criteria. First, follow the money. People are motivated by simple things like political power, social power, prestige, control and wealth. If you think of all these things loosely as a form of motivational money, look at a given shepherd closely. By leading a particular flock in a particular way, does that shepherd stand to gain in any of those categories? If so, my advice to you is RUN. Following the real Jesus will never result in personal gain in terms of political power, social power, prestige, contro,l or wealth. RUN from such a leader as fast as you can.

Secondly, (this is where the shepherd thing breaks down), you won’t be following the right shepherd all the time. The Gospels record that when people initially fail to recognize Jesus and the “aha” moment finally arrives, Jesus vanishes from their sight. This means that following the right shepherd is a lifelong pursuit. It is never finished where we can sit back and smugly say to ourselves, “I’m on the right track now. All I need to do is coast until I hit those pearly gates.” No single religion or Christian religious denomination will offer, at any point in time, everything that is necessary to follow the right shepherd.

Christian life is a journey, not a destination. We can never be complacent. We must always be seeking and searching. By doing so, when Jesus comes into our lives in those fleeting moments we too will have the “aha” experience of the disciples. We too will know that we have encountered something way beyond what we can ever ask or imagine.

How do you recognize that one of those “aha” experiences is the real deal? On the downstream side of an encounter with Jesus, you will be changed. You will not look at things the same way. Your heart will be “strangely warmed.” Yet even a binge night with a controlled substance can produce these symptoms. How can we know?

The answer is the flip side of following the wrong leader. Hearing the Good Shepherd’s voice and following that shepherd will cost you. It may cost you social power. You may lose some friends. Others may not understand you like before. It may cost you political power. You may have to re-think your political position. It may cost you prestige. Your own sense of self importance may diminish. It may cost you that elusive sense of control. You will realize that you are really not in control now. You never have been and you never will be. Finally, it will likely cost you money.

If those are the costs, why would anyone want to follow such a shepherd? Because following the Good Shepherd will take you to green pastures where you may lie down and live. You will have life abundantly.

Did you hear about the preacher and the New York cab driver? They both die about the same time and find themselves at the pearly gates of Heaven. St. Peter sees the cabbie first and says, “God has a mansion prepared for you, come on in.” Meanwhile the preacher stands outside the gates patiently waiting his turn. He can see between the bars on the gates where the cabbie is going. It looks like one of those neighborhoods that popped up like dandelions. In California we referred to them as “McMansions” or “starter palaces.” That’s where the cabbie gets to spend eternity.

Two commercial kitchens, flat panel televisions everywhere, awesome pool, cabana, hot tub, exquisite landscaping, six car garage, beautiful decorating – nothing like the squalor of the Bronx apartment he left behind. The cabbie is so thrilled he can hardly wait for his friends to pass so they can party with him.

St. Peter returns to the gate and ushers the preacher to his mansion. It is a dark, musty, cramped concrete cell with a bare light bulb, writing desk, and an old army cot. The preacher is shocked. He finally musters the courage to tell St. Peter there must be some kind of mistake. “I have devoted my life to God and this is where you have me spend eternity?” St. Peter shakes his head and says, “No mistake here. … when you preached they slept. When the cabbie drove they prayed.”

The first half of this text from John is often selected for funerals. It is a comfort to those grieving to hear that “in my father’s house there are many mansions.” Actually “rooms” would be a better translation than “mansions”, but the King James Version dies hard.

We want our place in heaven to be well appointed in the same way we shopped for our last house or selected our casket. We carry this real estate notion with us beyond death into heaven. We think somehow that it is OUR house that we have earned because of our good behavior or because we said a bunch of words about Jesus as a personal lord and savior.

Whether you look at it in English or Greek, John very clearly says right up front, “In my Father’s house.” In other words, it is God’s house, not yours.

Several years ago author Phyllis Trible wrote a book about certain Biblical passages titled “Texts of Terror.” She tackled all the uglier pieces of the Old and New Testament; things about mayhem, violence, murder, rape, incest, war etc. But in some ways we could nominate portions of John’s Gospel as terror texts.

When Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”, some people take this statement as legitimizing only their interpretation of the Bible. Whole Christian denominations exclude one another from God’s Grace because some people believe that ONLY their interpretation is the correct one. What passes for Christianity for the next two thousand years uses this exclusive claim to subjugate or eliminate people of other faiths. The five dollar term for this is “Christian supercessionism.” Violence used to forcibly convert people, or the more pernicious form of oppressing other religions as inferior (think of the Crusades or the Holocaust) continues to cause enormous suffering in the name of Jesus.

Christians do it to each other. Christians do it to Jews and Muslims. Muslims do it to other people. Orthodox Jews do it to all the others. Hindus do it to the Jains, Buddhists, and Muslims in their countries. And in Muskogee we have people preaching and teaching how other Christian denominations are invalid or inferior or incorrect. What arrogance our religious leaders show when they try to claim it is “my way or the highway.” No wonder the modern world rejects religions of all kinds, preferring instead to stay home and try to lead a quiet, decent, righteous life.

Do we think that God, the creator of the universe, cares whether people on this tiny planet choose to see the face of the resurrected Christ in a blond haired, blue-eyed upper middle class male driving a BMW instead of a dark haired, dark eyed Hindu woman selling tea in Madagascar? Or could it be that when we persecute others who are not like us in the name of some religious interpretation, the creator of the universe sheds a tear? Yes, God suffers with us and cries in anguish because after thousands of years of human history, we just don’t seem to get the message.

Religious violence is just the handmaid of religious superiority. Now I can give you all kinds of historical, social, and political reasons why John’s Gospel is unique in the Bible in terms of its exclusion of others, animosity towards Jews, and its offer of salvation in exchange for belief. To learn more about that you should come to adult ed because we are looking at just those topics for the next few weeks.

Humans have a propensity towards making outrageous claims, persecuting others and circling the wagons in the name of something we don’t understand. This is why I get nervous when people interpret the Bible as if it were listing a set of exclusive benefits for a group called “Christians.” “In my Father’s house there are many mansions” is not an invitation to join an exclusive eternity club by muttering a few words or doing a good deed. It is a statement of fact.

The creator of this enormous expanding universe loves each tiny person on this little chunk of rock in space. We are loved so much that there is a place for each one of us – Hindu, Jew, Muslim, Jain, Buddhist, atheist, Baha’i, Shinto, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, able bodied, disabled, gay, straight, Christian, even Episcopalian. God has prepared a place for each one of us. All that is asked of us is that we be humble not arrogant, that we live decent righteous lives, and that we work to make the world better for other people.

Maria stood in front of the enormous Mall of America and said, “Good people of Minnesota, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as we went through the mall and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, we found among them an altar with the inscription ‘In God we Trust.’”

Her friend Stephanie always spent Saturdays at the mall with her. Somewhere between puzzled, amused, and aghast, Stephanie wondered what had gotten into her friend with this religion stuff. She smacked on her chewing gum and asked nervously, “What has happened to you Maria? These people out here are going to think you have gone nuts. Frankly I was thinking that myself, but then again I know how prone to practical jokes you are.” Stephanie paused. “You are OK aren’t you?”

Maria looked back at her friend while people going into the mall stopped and gathered into a circle. Minnesotans are polite people. They don’t want to tell somebody to buzz off, but they will in fact circle around a curiosity. Maria had become the latest source of interesting things that happened at the mall that Saturday. She replied “I’m sorry, Steph, I must have gotten the rapture or something. I was just thinking of Paul’s speech to the people of Athens. I mean have you ever noticed how much like a cathedral this mall is?”

“We did sort of make a pilgrimage after all” Stephanie observed. “Our families came all the way up here from Muskogee, Oklahoma just to shop in the world’s largest mall. Did you know that they have 8 acres of skylights in the ceilings?” “Oh you read the same stuff on the web site that I did”, Maria said. “Did you know that you could fit 32 Boeing 737 aircraft inside the mall, or that 40 million people visit the mall every year, or that 16 million people are just here as tourists? They never buy anything … Can you imagine?” Stephanie interrupted. “They’re not power shoppers like us. I spent weeks making up my list. Dad said when I turned 15, I could take a friend up here to the mall. I’m glad you came here with me.”

“Look at that group over there”, Maria exclaimed. “Are they models shooting a movie, or is this for real?” Stephanie replied, “This mall has had over 5,000 weddings performed in the chapel since they opened. Wouldn’t it be awesome to get married here? [gushing] I mean you and your husband could just go shopping on your honeymoon!”

“Come on Steph. We’ve got some shopping to do!”

In a scene repeated week after week all over the country, our children find meaning in life, relevance, a sense of purpose, social belonging, personal identity, and fulfillment at the local shopping mall. In a very real sense, the god of commerce has become the deity of our modern cathedrals. A recent book title says it all, “Will Our Faith have Children?”

Will our faith have children? Our competition is not only the youth group down the street, it is the lure of the mall, the siren call of commercialism that tells us that to be happy you must make a lot of money and spend a lot of money. To be respected, commercialism says you must wear the right clothes, listen to the right music and know about all the right products to own and places to see. To get ahead in life you must be willing to bully the weaker people and get what you want. And of course to really fit in, some of our children are falsely taught to develop the attitude that they earned everything they have and they deserve it.

Our culture and even some churches continue to teach the old heresy that poor people and people with lots of problems somehow deserved what they got because they sinned, and if you have money then that means God has blessed you. But then we know better.

We know that bad things happen to people who have done everything right. We know that whatever we do we cannot earn God’s blessing. We are blessed already for whatever we have in life. We are here. We are blessed. We teach our children that happiness is a choice not something we can purchase at the mall. Competing with the mall is what we must do if our faith will have children.

We have a marvelously diverse and faithful group at Grace Church. Many of us have weathered life’s storms and we come to church every Sunday smiling, happy to see others and with an unshakable confidence that ALL SHALL BE WELL. Fundamentally our faith is not about being perfect Episcopalians. It is not about perfection in liturgy or prayer or music. It is about sharing and passing it on.

Paul stood there in the public gathering place, the Aeropagus in Athens long ago. He connected their public pagan culture to the God of Israel who raised Jesus from the dead. Will we be bold enough to do this in our pagan culture? Will we be able to convey our faith to our children? Here are some things we can do.

Vacation Bible School – promote it, support it financially, volunteer for it, bring children to it

Sunday school – help out with it, bring children to it, teach or help the teachers

Youth group – help us build a top flight youth group over the next few years, support it financially, maybe you have a farm where we can do a hay ride, help get more teens involved

Nursery – help out by volunteering, support the nursery financially, bring more children here

Web site – if you have web skills, we need your help. It is time to get some new functions added for youth and Sunday school

Special events for children – We need to plan another fair or fall festival. We need to open up what we have for the community around us.

Grace Church has a lot to offer the youth in this community. Faith and the bible are not fixed things that do not change over time. They must be interpreted and reinterpreted in the context of every generation the same way Paul did in Athens that day. If you will roll up your sleeves, open your hearts and make room for our youth, then indeed our faith will have children.

This Journey to Easter is a wonderful event for our community and I am honored to be here. When, after all, does a bald white Episcopalian get to preach in a black Baptist Church? Now you all can say “Amen” and whatever, since my church is just now learning how to do that. Since you all might not know each other please take a minute to turn to someone you don’t know and welcome them here. Tell them “I am glad you are here.”

 At this stage in our journey to Easter we need to come to grips with two things:

1. The true nature of the cross

2. How we use the cross to cause harm to others

Although the cross is mentioned a number of times in the Bible, we tend to glorify the cross thinking of it as the image of our salvation. We sing hymns to “Lift High the Cross”, calling it the “glorious tree.” In Holy Week many churches leave a plain wooden cross in the sanctuary and then on Easter cover it with flowers symbolizing the resurrection.

But I have always been uncomfortable with this language and the flowers-on-the-cross practice. It obscures the original purpose, violence and brutality of the cross. The flowers of resurrection literally hide the true nature of the cross from our eyes. Do we cover it over and sing nice hymns to it in order to submerge the uncomfortable truth of the cross from our tender hearts?

The cross was an ancient means of public execution and humiliation practiced by the Romans and other cultures of the ancient Near East. It was a public display so that the victim would become an example for others not to follow in that path. Without breaking their legs, victims often hung on the cross for days before drawing their last breath. As we walk the final steps of our journey in Holy Week and we contemplate the agony that Jesus suffered, it might be helpful for us to get rid of all language and all images of the cross of glory, substituting them with what the cross really is – a violent, brutal means of execution.

So the next time you sing “Lift High the Cross,” you should make a substitution. Try singing “Lift High the Electric Chair.” … That’s right. “Lift High the Electric Chair” It makes it hard to think of the glory of the electric chair or the electric chair as a symbol of our salvation doesn’t it?

But that gets us around to the second concern – how we sometimes use the cross to cause harm to others. In my twelve years as a priest and pastor, I cannot tell you the number of times people from other churches have come to my church for counseling. I will never forget the woman who came to my office with bruises on her face saying that the pastor of her church told her that she should submit to her husband and endure the pain because Jesus suffered on the cross for her.

Yes, Jesus suffered a violent, brutal agonizing death on the cross. You can take that fact home with you. No one will dispute it. But in spite of our good intentions, can we stop causing more pain in the name of the cross. One act of violence is enough.

In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians tonight we hear the same words of our Eucharistic prayer. We are comforted knowing that in some measure we are doing what Paul’s church at Corinth, along with millions of Christians for two thousand years, have been celebrating with the same commandment from the Bible. But what we miss in this snippet of scripture is the important context for these words. We will return to the context in a minute, but first we need to talk about natural systems in contrast to man-made systems.

Take a walk in a National Forest or somewhere that is mostly free from the human influence. Look at the plants around you. What you will find is a riot of diversity with lots of different kinds of plants blooming at different times and providing all kinds of valuable services to the forest community. This is nature the way God created the earth.

Now take a walk in a soybean field or even a pasture. You will find only one kind of plant or maybe just a few. The diversity of insects and animals and wide array of plants that were originally there are now gone. The field serves one purpose only: to provide food for humans or livestock. I am not making any moral or value judgments between these two examples. One is not necessarily better or worse than the other. Yet, our agriculture and landscape reflects what comes naturally to human nature while the diversity in the forest reflects one aspect of the nature of God.

Humans just don’t like change or difference. That is why most of us are so comfortable with our jobs, homes, families, and what seems to be a stable lifestyle. It is settling to us and comfortable. Imagine how stressful it would be to move every two or three years and start over with new friends in a new community. A few of you have done it, but most of us would be terrified by the prospect. We like to be rooted in one place. We like to have a universe that is (or at least appears to us) to be nice and stable.

That is why major weather events, earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes get so much attention in the news. They disrupt our desire for stability. Social change can be equally unsettling. Lottery winners report that they often feel shunned by other people with great wealth. They do not share or speak the same social language and customs. In the same way, once thriving Episcopal parishes in California have imploded in a decade when the surrounding neighborhood becomes all Asian. The challenge to them was not lack of people to attend the church. The challenge was their comfort with social differences.

And that gets us around to the context for Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church. Just ahead of the reading we just heard, Paul criticizes the Corinthian church for the manner in which they celebrated the Eucharist. The Corinthians were allowing social divisions within their culture to shape the way they celebrated communion. Paul was not a happy camper.

In the ancient world of the first century Roman Empire, social stratification was extremely strong throughout the empire. In a glance, people could determine social status on the basis of dress, transportation, servants, food, accent, housing, and so forth. It was common in a meal setting for the host to intentionally serve larger portions and better food and wine to people of higher social status. It was an accepted custom.

Paul believes the Corinthians dragging their social customs into the Eucharist compromised the Good News and everything their faith stood for. Two verses before our text tonight, he notes that “in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another is drunk.”

Like the California churches that failed to grow when their neighborhood changed, we too are faced with a changing town and neighborhood. Grace Church is one of the more loving, open, and socially accepting parishes I have had the privilege to serve. I also believe that God is calling us to open up even more.

“Do this in remembrance of me” is a kind of reminder note from Jesus. “Do this” means to feed 5,000 people without distinction. On the field that day were rich people, poor people, criminals, saints, prostitutes, beggars, bankers, lawyers, farmers, merchants, and fishermen. Jesus made no distinction between them. He just fed them. He also sat down for meals with the most hated people in his society – tax collectors, prostitutes, and gentiles.

We have plenty of people around us who really do not know the Good News that we proclaim so well at Grace Church. When we “do this in remembrance of Jesus”, our challenge is to get those in the wider community to sit down with us, have a meal together, and enjoy how God has made us better because of our new connections.

After all, God’s love is really about who we are connected to.

In seminary I once made a spreadsheet of all the different doctrines of atonement. I wanted to trace the history and development of the idea that Christ’s death on the cross atones for the sins we commit as baptized Christians. After spending a good deal of time studying this vast amount of theology, I must confess to you that I remain as confused and even skeptical about the “atoning sacrifice of Christ” as I did that day in seminary in 1997. For me the focus all seemed misdirected. Theologians want to ask what Christ’s sacrifice does for baptized Christians. I want to ask the opposite question: What are we going to do once we know about Christ’s sacrifice?

The Book of Acts records that the earliest followers of “The Way” (the original name for followers of Jesus) believed that Christ would come again within their lifetime. They pooled their money and possessions and lived in common with great anticipation of Christ’s second coming. The only problem was Christ did not return during their lifetime. This led to two schools of thought:

1. We’d better get serious about this Christian living business because it looks like we’re in it for the long haul.

2. Let’s just eat, drink, and be merry, for who knows when Christ will return to judge us.

The second behavior comes NOT from a sense of end-of-the-world fatalism but amazingly from a sense of outrage. One could argue that the crowd calling for Jesus’ crucifixion can be forgiven because they were ignorant. But I would argue that they called for his crucifixion NOT because they were ignorant, but they called for his crucifixion deliberately because they knew that this Jesus really was the Messiah. They had seen the miracles. They had heard his teaching. They knew friends who had witnessed signs. They were eager to welcome him into Jerusalem as their new king on Palm Sunday. Then on Friday that same welcoming group joined the all too human mob and called for his execution.

We are not very different. We know that Jesus is the Messiah and Lord of all, and yet we live our lives just like his killers. We stand with one foot in faith and one foot in our humanity. “HOW can there be a God who does not want us to suffer when God’s own son is tortured and executed?” “HOW can there be a God who does not want suffering in the world when in fact there IS so much suffering all around us?” “HOW, HOW, HOW?” we shout at the wind outraged by the silence.

How can we humans, as weak and vulnerable as we are, be expected to trust a God that seems to allow such suffering? The outrage at the inability of anyone to give a reasonable answer fuels the desire to just eat, drink, and be merry because there may be no tomorrow.

In the 1300s during the worst of the plagues in Europe, the people watched helplessly while 30 to 80% of their families and friends died horribly from the Black Death. They were understandably frightened and outraged. They blamed God. They lashed out. In some villages the priests were hanged, since if the villagers could not put God in the gallows, they could at least put his representatives there.  Yes, outrage at God leads to violence.

But there is some odd irony in the crucifixion of Jesus and the two criminals. It is Passover, and by custom Pilate can release a prisoner from his sentence at the will of the crowd. “Whom do you want to crucify?” he asks. “Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?”

Now this crowd wasn’t witness to the kind of unimaginable suffering of the European plague, but like us they did stand there with one foot in hope that what they saw in Jesus was real, and one foot in their squalid humanity. They acted like sheep in a thunderstorm, like any of us would act. They followed the mob rule of the crowd and they called out “Crucify him.”

Pilate wanted to get rid of the troublemaker Barabbas, but the crowd called to release him. Pilate could not find any charges to stick against Jesus, but the crowd called to crucify him. Barabbas did nothing to deserve his release; in fact he probably deserved the punishment set for him. But he got a free pass that day.

And so did we.

To be baptized means simply to be immersed. The original baptisms by John took place in a river where the person being baptized would be fully immersed under the water three times into the name of the Father, Son. and Holy Spirit. Coming up out of the water each time symbolized rebirth and new life. Like so much about church this splendid ritual of gathering by the river and really dunking people gradually morphed over time so we simply sprinkle some water on the forehead of the one being baptized. By minimizing the real thing we are saying sprinkling is enough. It’s symbolic anyway.

To be baptized INTO the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit comes from the idea that the very name of the Trinity carries power. We have a vestige of that notion in our legal system today where someone may speak on behalf of another person. But what is the power of that name?

Turn to page 308 [of the Book of Common Prayer] and look at the prayer after baptism. “Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon your servant the forgiveness of sin…” I do not think the wording there is a mistake. It is intentionally ambiguous.

The common interpretation of baptism is that OUR sins are forgiven by God. But we are made in God’s image. We are given the powers that Jesus’ disciples had, and in fact Jesus tells us he gives us GREATER powers than the disciples. One of those powers is forgiveness of sin.

There is so much pain and suffering and violence in the world at every level. From the intimate sphere of family life to our jobs and local communities, all the way to our nation and the world. You cannot drive down the street without encountering an aggressive driver. You cannot go to work or school without finding a bully somewhere. And you cannot turn on the news without hearing about bombs and bullets somewhere in the world.

The way of the world is to solve conflict by just having a bigger stick. The biggest guy with the biggest club wins the battle. But that is not what Jesus teaches. God may forgive our sins, but do we and so are we able to forgive the offenses others have done to us?

Many times in counseling I encounter people who say they are unable to forgive the parent for their alcoholism or their abuse, or they cannot forgive the betrayal of the ex-spouse, or they cannot forgive the colleague at work who gossiped and told lies. But if God has the ability to forgive sins and we are given the power to forgive sins in baptism, why do we say we are not able to forgive? In the Lord’s Prayer we ask God to forgive our wrongdoings in the same way as we forgive others.

Forgiveness is not an ability we are given, it is a choice we make. The only difference we will make in this world as Christians is how we forgive others who have wronged us. We will relieve the suffering in the world one wrong at a time.

So get out there and do the hard work of forgiveness. You may not reconcile with everyone, and that is not the point. When you forgive those who have wronged you, your heart will change and you will be much closer to God.