On Monday, I was reading through friends’ Facebook posts about 9/11 when one of the images grabbed me. It was similar to most of the images I had seen that day (never forget) but it had two extra words on the image: Never forgive. I sat with those words. I did not press the like key. I couldn’t. - Never forgive.
I wrestled with those simple words – why do we forgive? Is anything unforgiveable? Never forget is an admonition I can get behind; I can & do remember 9/11 & I think we should; but never forgive, who are we not forgiving? (and does that hold us back?)
In The Gospel, Peter came and said to Jesus, “Lord, if another sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”
Forgiveness is not easy. It may be one of the hardest things that Jesus asks of us. He knows we sin against each other & God. “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” To err is human, to persist in error is diabolical (Seneca, 1st Century) To err is human, to forgive divine (Alexander Pope 18th Century). And yet Jesus calls us to do just that and emulate God’s forgiveness. Again & again & again.
Whenever I think of the difficulty of forgiveness, I think of Nelson Mandela. Mandela was a human rights lawyer and freedom fighter, but for many of the white South Africans, he was a terrorist. In 1964, Mandela was sentenced to life in prison for his participation in several bombings around South Africa.
As Mandela wrote in his autobiography, "A Long Walk to Freedom," he was suffering at the hands of his guards, and he became determined to study his enemy. He wanted to understand them. He wanted to know them. He befriended many of his prison guards. And by the end, Mandela forgave the Afrikaners.
He forgave them. That same forgiveness Jesus asks of us. Forgiveness removed the shackles of hate that Mandela wore & he knew that such forgiveness was going to be the key to any reconciliation in SA.
"Forgiveness liberates the soul, it removes fear. That's why it's such a powerful weapon."
Forgiveness ultimately is not about someone else. It is about us. Our hearts and our lives, if we forgive others we will be truly free. Mandela came to understand that truth that forgiveness will help us be free, to let go of whatever injury we sustained, and find healing for ourselves & others.
For Joseph in the Genesis reading, the injury was personal. His older brothers had sold him into slavery. They got rid of him. How would you react? & now they are in Egypt due to famine in their homeland. Their father is dead & they are begging for mercy from Joseph who works for Pharaoh. How would Joseph react?
Joseph wept when they spoke to him. Then his brothers also wept, fell down before him, and said, “We are here as your slaves.” But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.” In this way he reassured them, speaking kindly to them. (Joseph forgave them. He reconciled with his brothers and their families.)
Forgiveness is at the heart of our faith. It was so with Joseph in the OT and we see this in the Gospel reading as Jesus uses a parable of the unforgiving servant to answer Peter’s question about forgiveness.
The parable begins with a king settling his accounts. When a slave who is brought to him owing a huge sum, one he could not pay, he is ordered to be sold with his family to repay the debt. But the slave promises to pay the king everything he owes, which of course as a slave he could never obtain that amount of wealth. Ever.
But the king has mercy; he has a change of heart. He releases the slave and forgives the debt. That’s it. No repayment necessary. Not even a little bit of what he owed. The slave is freed!
"But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him money; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt."
The slave who was freed, fails to show mercy like the king did to him. The king hears about it and relents of his mercy and has him tortured until the debts are paid off because he did not have mercy and forgive his fellow slave. And how does Jesus end this parable?
“So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” That is blunt. Forgive your brother or sister, from your heart!
As one of my seminary professors has put it, “the main message of Jesus was about forgiveness and how it transforms lives.” (Bill Countryman) Through forgiveness the King was transformed & offered mercy, but the unforgiving slave was not & could not. Jesus who died on the cross for us, for the forgiveness of our sins, gives us that gift of grace, the forgiveness of our sins. Not because we earned it, or begged in the right way, but because God wanted to do that. It is gift. It is grace. And it is what we owe each other.
On a busy New York City street, a long line of cars had backed up behind a sanitation truck picking up the week's garbage lined up on the curb. At one point, a woman got out of her car and marched indignantly up to one of the sanitation workers to complain that she needed to be somewhere soon.
Before he could reply, a rat jumped through a hole in the bag he was holding and ran up his arm, perching momentarily on his shoulder while considering its next move. With a visible shiver of disgust and loathing, he smacked the rat off his shoulder. Turning to the woman, who stood there stunned, her mouth wide, the sanitation worker said, "Lady, you see what we gotta contend with here." Chastened, she spun around without uttering a word and returned to her car, where she waited patiently for the garbage truck to finish its stop. [New York Times]
Forgiveness begins with empathy: being able to see a situation from the perspective of another person. The woman's self-importance shatters when she realizes what the sanitation workers must contend with. As the parable of the unforgiving servant makes clear, such empathy is not easy: it means overcoming our own anger and outrage at what we have suffered and focusing our concern, instead, on the person before us; such empathy means possessing the humility to face the hurt we have inflicted on others as a result of our own insensitivity and self-centeredness.
But only in such forgiving and seeking forgiveness are we able to realize the possibility of bringing healing and new life to such situations. For Christ calls us to create within our lives: our families and communities that kind of environment in which forgiveness is freely offered and humbly sought, where empathy sees beyond our own hurt and disappointment in order to understand the plight of the other. Let us never wall ourselves up by not offering forgiveness but instead transform our souls from fear and hurt by offering that forgiveness that God has given to each of us by grace. Amen.
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