September 11, 2005 - What Do You Owe?

Yesterday I officiated at a wedding of two adults who are not members of this church. It was a lovely day and the bride and groom looked into each other's eyes with love and and tenderness. I see it every time I marry people. Fast forward 20 years and where is this couple? Are they still treating one another with care and love? Are they still in relationship? I saw a young mother this morning, out walking with her infant child. She stopped to attend to her, smiling at her daughter and her daughter smiled back. Where will these two people be in 15 years? Still smiling at each other? Still in respectful relationship or at each others' throats? Immigrants move to a new county, drawn to the lifestyle of the new country, hopeful about creating a life there. How will they be received by the people in their new community - curious about their customs and welcoming or distrustful that this new family is taking over their community?

To be human is to be in relationship with one another. Sometimes we get it right, never perfect, and we find ways to patch up any rough spots. When we are fully mature and resilient and resourceful we negotiate the challenging terrain of life successfully. When people snub us or wrong us, we find a way to resolve it without harboring deep resentments and hate. When we are the targets of injustice, we are mobilized to turn respond to that injustice in faithful ways. I'm not saying this is easy or done quickly; in fact, the larger the pain or infraction, the longer it takes us to work through our feelings and our pain. Sometimes it is hard to let go of our anger. We think it is easier to hold on to it.

Lewis Smedes writes in his book Forgive and Forget that there are four stages to forgiveness:

The first stage we hurt; somebody causes us pain so deep and unfair that we cannot simply brush it off.
The second stage we hate - we cannot shake the memory of how much we were hurt and our attempts to talk it through with a friend or two has not lessened the feelings one bit. We often times want the other to hurt as much as we are hurting.
The third stage we begin to heal - where, over a period of time we are able to see the person or the situation in a new light, we are able to not wish ill on the one who hurt us and we begin to turn the flow of pain into a new feeling of hope and openness.
The fourth and final stage is when we begin to come together or reconcile - when you move towards a new and healed relationship with the other. This final stage is as dependent on us forgiving the other as it is about the other coming to us with apologies or an olive branch. Sometimes, and we all know this, there is no reconciliation and we have to be healed alone (Smedes, page 3).

It looks so easy to think about four steps to forgiveness, but far harder to work through them successfully - not unlike Kubler-Ross's stages of grief. The pain of working through loss takes time and energy and is not easily done. So, why would we do this? Why work through the process of forgiveness? First of all, as Christians we must remember that forgiving and being forgiving is central to our faith. It is featured in our Lord's Prayer, The Apostles' Creed which is the earliest creed of the Christian Church, and is central to our sacraments of Baptism and Communion. Forgiveness is at the heart of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. Divine forgiveness is a gift thread throughout our sacred scripture. Human forgiveness is another matter. It is slower, weighted with feelings, questions, ifs. But still it is important to our relationships and our churches. "The purpose of forgiveness is the absolution of guilt, the reconciliation of brokenness, and the creation of a new future." (Last paragraph excerpted from Healthy Congregations curriculum, Workshop 4, chapter 1).

Our scripture text for today gives us a detailed story that addresses the need to forgive. It is an inside story - Peter comes to Jesus and ask specifically how many times he should forgive someone in the church who sins against him. Peter is looking to uphold the letter of the law - is seven times enough? Jesus responds by saying two things - no, seven is not enough, but 77, or some versions say 7 times 77, which is to say that we are to forgive again and again if we are to be in relationship with someone. And then Jesus gives us a dramatic story to illustrate some aspects of forgiveness.

You heard the story. The king decided to settle his accounts and a man is brought in who owes the king and enormous amount of money - so much that he can never re-pay it. The man begs for mercy and the king releases him and forgive his entire debt; there is nothing due, just mercy. The same man goes on his way and encounters another person who owes him a small amount and demands payment. When he asks for mercy, none is offered. The story concludes as the king is informed of the forgiven man's actions and the king summons him and chastizes him and hands him over to be tortured. Matthew closes with the admonition that God will do so to us if we do not forgive our brother or sister from our heart.

Our Bible text makes the link between being forgiven and forgiving. The two are linked. We are not just asked to forgive. We are forgiven by God for all the ways that we fall short, miss the mark (some call this sin), neglect to love or help or correct justice. We live as forgiven people, and we are called to forgive. We cannot just take the money and run. We are bound by our tradition to offer it to others. God and Jesus have modeled this for us and we are called to embody it in our life. Matthew's story is meant to shake us up and remind us that we have been offered something. Sometimes we forget this, so Matthew gives us a dramatic example of this; we will be tortured if we do not do this. Well, what kind of torture is this? I'm not thinking so much from the outside but from the inside. When we hold on to our anger, our bitterness we cannot move forward in our lives. We are closed up, closed off. The Old Testament word for forgiveness means to remove a weight. The New Testament words mean to let go or release. (Ibid p. 12). You know of people who are stuck in this place. They have been wronged by their families, their society, their loved one, their country and they are full of hatred and pain. They are blocked off from receiving love and moving in to the future without having suspicious eyes to who will hurt them next. To some extent, not forgiving keeps us focused on the past. Forgiveness instead, is "giving power to the future." (Ibid). It is saying: I have been wronged by you, I have every reason to end any connection to you and demand payment or an apology from you; yet, I refuse to let the wrong consume me in resentment; I want to be at peace with myself and I want to be open to the door of tomorrow with hopefulness. (Ibid). This may or may not involve reconciliation. The now-famous account of Pope John Paul receiving the man who tried to assasinate him was astonishing. Here was a spiritual leader confronting the person who tried to kill him and forgiving him instead. What a public witness of undeserved mercy. This man did not deserve this but the leader of the Catholic Church modeled for us this act of love and forgiveness.

I think this all makes sense with smaller acts of sin or hatred. In fact, that may be part of the lesson to learn today - for us to begin to let go of the smaller acts of hurt and injustice and save our energy for the larger ones. Maybe today our Bible story urges us to address one or two of those smaller infractions and put them behind us. Wipe the slate clean. It is powerful to be the holder of forgiveness when someone has come to us, apologized and is waiting for our forgiveness. Maybe we need to remember the story of the man being forgiven a huge debt and denying the much smaller debt that someone owed him.

But what about those larger acts of: betrayal, murder, rape, terrorism. Somehow it doesn't seem the same to forgive someone of a minor act of injustice when we compare it to the deep wound of genocide or violence? What about the act of terrorism on our country four years ago today? Do we just forgive those people who murdered almost 4,000 people and shook up our country in that one act? Peter's question was about a member of his church community. What if the sin is from someone halfway around the world and who continues to plot our demise and destruction?

"Forgiveness is the distinguishing mark of the Christian Community." (Ibid, p. 15). Think of Jesus on the cross, forgiving those who are killing him. He never turns his pain to hatred, lashing out to his perpetrators. When you think about it, it is shocking to hear him in the moment not railing against those who are causing him pain and death. Throughout history we have some other examples of people who have borne great pain and suffering and who have not turned that into hatred and retaliation. Nelson Mandela's witness of being imprisoned for 27 years and then working to heal the injustice in his country of South Africa is extraordinary. Holocaust survivors who remember the death and destruction of their people, who spend their time educating us about the horrors of hating others have taught us a great deal about forgiveness. It does not mean setting aside the need for justice. It does not mean forgetting. I think we will always remember and observe the Sept 11th nightmare in our country, just like other countries mark anniversaries and events in their national consciousness; but we are called to not dissolve into people who hate; into people who barricade ourselves from others; into people who look at the world with fearful eyes. Forgiveness is not really about other people. It is about what happens within ourselves as we move beyond an understandable human feeling, to act with Godly intention.

Today, as we Americans remember and observe a national day of remembrance for the act of terrorism against us, may we open ourselves to God's healing direction to let go of hatred and open ourselves to hopeful forgiveness. Amen.