I know what Jesus says, but the truth is this: there are times when I don’t want to forgive! I want to get even. I want my day in court. My pound of flesh. I want everyone to know I’ve been wronged, and I want the one who hurt me to get what’s coming.
That’s the truth. And I know I am not alone. The problem of course, is what happens when we organize our lives around our injuries— when I start to build my living around all the ways that I have been denied my due, and all the ways I have been injured—then it becomes quickly apparent that my life will bear the fruit of anger, of fear, of resentment. And that’s why Jesus says what he says about forgiveness.
Forgiveness happens when we
choose to no longer organize our lives around the things and the people who
have hurt us.
What the late Presbyterian
pastor and religious writer, Frederick Buechner said of the deadly sin of anger
applies to forgiveness as well:
“Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun.
To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over
your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to
the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are
giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is
that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”
But it is not magic. Forgiveness
doesn’t come with the snap of a finger. Forgiveness is a journey and a
discipline.
I remember an example of this
from two decades ago, when five Amish schoolgirls were killed and 11 others
were wounded by a gunman in Pennsylvania in 2006. What made this stand out from
the rash of school shootings that have infected our country (and our unresolved
trauma from 9/11/2001!), was that the Amish community not only comforted the
shooter’s wife and children, but they also forgave the perpetrator. But what
was even more astounding was the anger, the revulsion, and the vitriol that the
Amish received from their “gentile” neighbors, the media, and even from preachers,
because they forgave even as they mourned the deaths of their own innocent
children.
A more startling example
happened in 1948. Pastor Yang-Won Sohn’s two teenage boys were shot for being
Christians by a rioter in Korea. Yang-Won not only forgave the shooter but
arranged his release from prison and adopted him as his own son.
Were these people crazy? How can
people forgive such heinous crimes against innocents? It messes with our minds.
Yes, Jesus said forgive, but there must be an upper limit and these crazy
people must have crossed it.
But Jesus said, forgive not
seven times, but 70 times seven. OK, let’s count it up; we must be way beyond
that limit now. But put away your calculators and be honest. We know that when
Jesus said “Seventy times seven” he meant “always.” You must always forgive.
And then Jesus told a parable
about the wicked slave who is forgiven a huge sum by his master but then shakes
down a fellow slave and throws him in prison for being owed just a fraction. We
hear in the story that the wicked slave gets his just punishment. “Good,” we
may say. “He surely deserved that!” But notice that the wicked slave was not
punished for back debt, but because he did not forgive. Jesus is very serious about
this forgiveness thing.
The Apostle Paul reminds the
Romans about another side of forgiveness. He reminds that how we treat each
other because of our differences defines the quality and nature of our life
together. So, some eat anything they want, others are vegetarians; they must
not despise each other. Well, that’s easy enough. We can do that.
Some may worship God on one day,
some on another; do not despise one or the other. Another easy one – we can do
that! To each his own, we say!
But then Paul asks, “Why do you
pass judgment on your brother or sister?” meaning, why do we pass judgment on everybody
else? Perhaps because we so often see immense hurt and evil in our world and we
want to see justice done. We cannot imagine why people maim and kill innocent
people. We cannot understand the sickness of domestic abuse, trafficking of
young men and women and children, the horror of genocide. These evils need to
be dealt with. They need to be eradicated from the earth, and humanity deserves
to live in peace and safety. Forgiveness? Was Jesus being naïve when he said, “Seventy
times seven?” Actually, no. Remember that even as Jesus was being executed, he
prayed that God would forgive his tormentors and executioners “for they don’t
know what they are doing.”
So, how do we start? We might
look once again at the Amish. Their ability to forgive came from the center of
their theology, which is the Lord’s Prayer. They believe it when they say, “…As
we forgive those who trespass against us….” Over and over, Amish leaders tried
to explain that to journalists and others who could not believe the parents of
the dead little girls could forgive. The Amish in that community made quite
clear that forgiveness did not take away the pain of the death of their
children. It also did not take away the requirement that the perpetrator be
held accountable. They were choosing not to build their lives around hatred for
the person who caused that pain.
Forgiveness doesn't say, "It’s
like it never happened”—that’s amnesia.
And forgiveness doesn't say,
"well, nobody could have expected you to do any better"—that’s condescension.
And forgiveness doesn’t mean
that one who injured us is freed from accountability—that’s cowardice.
Forgiveness puts demonizing the
other person out of bounds. When we demonize another person, we deny their
moral agency, as well as their fitness for being loved. In suggesting that the
others are incapable of moral action—by turning them into monster-- we lets
them off the hook. In so doing, we give away our power for good.
The truth is that when we are
hurt and we want to hit back and we want to make the other person suffer but to
choose not to, we have taken control of the situation but not in arrogance but
in mercy and love. When we make the hard choice to stop organizing our lives
around the injury, we are freed from the shackles of living in the past, feed
from the fetters of living the injury over and over again, freed from the
prison of rehearsing the hate.
You see, forgiveness doesn’t let
the other person off the hook. Forgiveness frees us to continue to live
faithfully and ethically.
Now I must underscore something that
is very important and central to a full understanding of Christian forgiveness.
Safety is a crucial component. Safety is all important. The fact is that abusive
people often manipulate their victims into continuing their reign of emotional
or physical terrorism but sneering things like “but what about forgiveness? I
thought you were a Christian!” Please do not fall into that trap! Remember my
definition of forgiveness: no longer organizing our lives around the injury?
That means that sometimes we need to create a safe space, get away from (maybe
far away from!) the perpetrator.
And when we are around people
who, for whatever reason, bring out the worst in us, the forgiving thing to do
is create the safe space that will not draw us into that destructive spiral.
In a few minutes, just after we
recall Jesus’ gift of himself on the cross and just before we break the bread,
which is also his body that feeds us, his body, we will pray the Lord’s Prayer.
And we will all say, “as we forgive those who trespass (sin) against us.” As
you let that prayer marinate in your heart, think about what the late Archbishop
Desmond Tutu once said about forgiveness:
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