Forgive Us Our Trespasses — Just Not the Ones on the Parking Lot

Today, on the Cathedral's own Facebook page, the administration posted a reflection on the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant — the story of a man forgiven an enormous debt who then refused to forgive a small one owed to him. The post called on the parish to set aside "background, wealth, political opinions, or old disagreements," to stop asking "whose side is he on," and to ask instead "do we belong to Christ." It closed with a promise: where there is unity, love, and forgiveness, Christ dwells.

Read that again, slowly. And then look at who posted it.

It is worth reading the parable itself again too, carefully, because the administration that posted it today is not living out the forgiven half of that story. It is living out the other one — the servant who took the mercy, grabbed his fellow servant by the throat, and kept the ledger anyway. This post is not an invitation to peace; it is a demand for silence. It is theology weaponized to protect a board from its own actions. The administration wants the parish to practice the Gospel of unconditional surrender, while they execute the law of total enforcement under the Bishop’s own oversight. They quote a parable about mercy not to seek it, but to disarm the very people they are actively prosecuting.

Ask for forgiveness on a Sunday morning. Send a debt collector's Writ of Restitution the same week. That is the actual sequence, not a rhetorical one.

Fr. Dragoslav Kosić is a priest on medical leave, protected under Article 25 of the Diocesan Regulations, and the Board has spent months pursuing his eviction anyway — while his mail was quietly diverted at the post office on a false claim that he no longer lived at his own address, not once but twice, and while the salary he was owed simply stopped arriving. Whatever debt is owed a sick man denied his income, his residence, and his own mail — the Board has not forgiven it. It has gone to court to collect on it.

And in the parking lot, on the ground, the same posture repeats itself with the people who never left. One of the parish's oldest members had her own car almost towed off St. Sava's lot on Petrovdan — a woman standing on ground she has worshipped on for decades, told by her own church she was no longer welcome to park on it. She is the same woman whose mail to Fr. Dragoslav was returned "not known, unable to forward" months earlier. Twice targeted, not once by accident.

Nor is she the only one. A parishioner has already faced a criminal trespass citation for standing on the grounds of her own parish. That is what "old disagreements" has come to mean at St. Sava: a priest pushed out of his home, and grandmothers cited for trespassing on the church their families built. A church that cannot forgive a car in the church parking lot has no business lecturing anyone about grace. That is not pastoring; it is abuse under the cover of piety.

"Whose side is he on" is not a question anyone had to ask. It answered itself.

The sermon says the Church should not divide over background or old disagreements. But the trusteeship has spent months insisting on entry into a family's home mid-medical-leave, towing cars, and citing parishioners for trespass — all while standing at the threshold of a handover ceremony it may or may not choose to honor in full. These are not disagreements over politics or wealth. They are a priest locked out of his own home and parishioners locked out of their own church, set beside a bulletin post asking 120 families to stop counting whose side anyone is on.

So the question is not rhetorical. It is the only honest one left.

Hypocrisy is not disagreeing with someone. Hypocrisy is asking for what you refuse to give. If forgiveness is the standard the administration wants applied to the parish's grievances — the missing endowment, the diverted timber proceeds — will that same standard be applied first, by them, to the priest they pushed out and the parishioners they've been towing and citing? Or is forgiveness, like in the servant's story, something demanded of everyone except the ones holding the tow truck and the eviction filing? A sermon does not undo an eviction. A Writ of Restitution does not read like repentance.

Repentance gives back. It does not give speeches.

The Gospel has an answer for what real repentance looks like, and it is not a Facebook post. When Zacchaeus met Christ, he did not ask to be forgiven in the abstract — he stood up and said he would give back what he had taken, fourfold. That is the measure Scripture itself sets: repentance is restitution, not rhetoric. An administration that wants to invoke the Gospel has to invoke all of it, including the part where forgiveness is something you earn by returning what you took, not something you request while still holding it.

Until the parish priest is returned without conditions, until the mail reaches the man it is addressed to, until the money owed is paid and the tow trucks stop coming for grandmothers in their own church parking lot — there is no metanoia here, no turning. There is only a public relations posture wearing the vocabulary of the Gospel. That is not Christianity extended in mercy. That is a corrupt structure weaponizing Christ to silence its own victims.

Christ's warning in that Gospel was not about disagreement. It was about a man forgiven everything who could not forgive a fraction of it to someone else. And it is worth remembering what comes just before that parable in the same chapter of Matthew — the very passage the parable exists to illustrate. Peter asks Christ how many times he must forgive a brother who sins against him — "till seven times?" Christ answers: "I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven." No one standing outside St. Sava for ten months has asked for less than that. It is the administration counting in evictions and citations that has yet to reach even seven.

The parish did not write that parable into this week's bulletin. The administration did. It would be a mistake not to take them at their own word.

The parish has not asked the Holy Synod for punishment. It has asked for a decision, and it has waited for one patiently, because it trusts that Belgrade will be wise where Parma has not been. But patience must not be mistaken for a willingness to submit to those who wrong their own flock. Reconciliation with this administration, or with Bishop Irinej, is not merely delayed — as things stand, it is not possible. There can be no reconciliation, now or ever, with a board that answers its own parish with court filings, tow trucks, and police citations, all under the Bishop’s oversight. The only thing capable of ending this is the Synod's own definitive ruling — not another bulletin post, and certainly not another bad-faith appeal to "unity" from the very people responsible for the division.

A sermon on forgiveness costs nothing to post. Undoing an eviction, returning a man's mail, and letting a grandmother park where she has parked her whole life would cost something — and until the Board is willing to pay that, "unity" is just a word they like better than "accountability."