Embracing Forgiveness
Psalm 32 and Mark 2:1-12
One
of the striking characteristics of the Christian vision of God is that God is a
God of infinite mercy and amazing grace.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever
believes in him will not perish but will have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
This is the core truth of the gospel. When the Pharisees brought to Jesus a
woman caught in the very act of adultery, and even though Jesus knew the Law
said that such a woman was to be killed, even so did he say to the Pharisees,
“Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone.” And when all the Pharisees, one by one, left
without a word, Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more” (John 8:11). This is the
core truth of the gospel. Paul reminds us that “when we were still powerless,
Christ died for the ungodly…Indeed, God demonstrates his own love for us in
this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6, 8). Before we knew we needed grace – the gift of
God’s mercy – it was already before us.
Before we knew we needed God – he was right beside us. Before we knew we needed to be forgiven, God
already had acted on our behalf. This is the core truth of the gospel. The
Scriptures are exquisitely clear that God is a God of infinite mercy and
amazing grace. So it is a bit of a
surprise, and certainly sad, when I as a pastor experience someone for whom
God’s mercy and grace cannot be embraced.
In Texas I
encountered a 75 year old woman under hospice care, dying in her bed at home:
she was afraid. She had lived her life like most of us do. Some days were
better than others, some were worse. She had told some lies, but mainly held to
the truth. There were moments in her past that she greatly regretted and others
for which she was deservedly proud. For most of her 75 some years she had never
given forgiveness much thought. It had always been assumed. Though her life had
not been perfect, it wasn't that bad either. But now, as she lay in her bed at
home with hospice care, facing the certainty of her own death, she was afraid.
She was afraid because she wasn't sure if God could ever forgive her. Her fears
were unfocused on long forgotten, uncertain sins which she could not quite
remember. She was sure, though, that she had done something for which God would
not forgive her. Her eternal rest was in peril and she wasn't sure how to get
it back.
Many
of us will find something quite familiar about such fears. There are those here
today who were raised to hold a fundamental fear of God and of unforgivable
sins. Some faith traditions are so good at preaching hellfire and damnation
that fear has been seared into our souls. In some churches there are mortal
sins punished by eternal death. Often folks in these traditions can’t remember
which sins are mortal and which are merely venial; some folks worry themselves silly over whether or not they
have committed a “mortal” sin. In yet
other churches there are evils for which God will not allow us into the kingdom.
I once heard a well-known televangelist say that all of this business about God
forgiving people was ridiculous because unless one became holy God would pay
you no never mind. God was not about to allow sinners into his heaven.
Others of us, who
have little self esteem, may harbor a deep seated unease about God forgiving
someone as unworthy as ourselves. I
know a brilliant man who was second in his high school graduating class of 720. At his graduation, his parents told him, “Is
that the best you can do?” The man went
on to an elite, prestigious university in the South where, once again, he
graduated second in his class. His
parents told him, “After four years, you’d think you would have learned how to
be number one.” The man went into officer training school for the Navy; when he
was commissioned, he was made a second lieutenant. The man had a successful career as a banker, eventually becoming
the executive vice-president – heir to the corporate throne – of a large
bank. Unfortunately, his bank was taken
over by an even larger bank, and he was told that he would never ascend to the
number one position. The man committed
suicide.
Whether it is the
message the Church has proclaimed or the message our parents have proclaimed or
merely the message we ourselves have taken, it is a shocking, sad tragedy that
some folks cannot accept the core truth of the gospel: God is a God of infinite
mercy and amazing grace. How is this
possible? How is it that the Creed can
be so crystal clear that our sins are forgiven, yet so many people struggle
with embracing their own forgiven-ness?
*****
There
are many ways we can begin to engage this question, this dissonance between the
clear core of the gospel and people’s experience of struggling with their being
forgiven. One way is to ask ourselves
what is meant when Jesus enjoins us to pray – and so we pray each week in the
Lord’s Prayer – “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” On the surface this sounds like it means
that we get forgiven as well or as poorly as we forgive. If we forgive someone, we are forgiven. If we don’t forgiven them, we will not be
forgiven. It sounds rather simple. It’s not.
This straight-up quid pro quo cannot be
what this phrase from the Lord’s Prayer means, however. If my being forgiven by God is dependent
upon my forgiving others, then where is grace?
Where is forgiveness as the free gift of God? Forgiveness cannot be a gift, for I will have earned it. So perhaps something else is going on here
with this phrase? Perhaps this phrase
is best understood recognizing that it would have been spoken originally by
Jesus in Aramaic, then translated for the New Testament into Greek, and finally
translated for our Bibles into English.
What we seem to have here is an idiom, an expression that means
something clear in one language and culture but gets lost in the conversion to
another time and tongue. One possibility for what this petition from the Lord’s
Prayer suggests is a connection between our ability to forgive and our ability
to embrace our own forgiven-ness. If we
can forgive others, then we can embrace our own forgiven-ness. If we cannot forgive others, we cannot
embrace our own forgiven-ness. One who forgives little will swim in the
shallows of the stream of forgiven-ness.
One who forgives much will dive deeply into the depths of the ocean of
forgiven-ness.
So,
what does it mean to forgive another?
It
is useful to begin answering this question with a list of what forgiving is
not. Forgiving is not forgetting. It is often important to remember the hurt
another has caused you. The wife who
“forgets” that her husband abused her is likely to be abused again and again
and again. The husband who “forgets” that his wife has committed adultery will
not recognize the signs and symptoms of the betrayal happening a second
time. No, forgiving is not forgetting.
Rather, forgiving is about letting go of one’s pain and hurt, letting go of
one’s legitimate rights of justice and retribution even though one remembers what has been done to them.
The
reason forgiving and forgetting are often linked together is that people
correctly understand that forgiveness necessarily relates to the past. When we forgive another we are making a
commitment: we will not allow the past to define our identity and integrity in
the present. When we forgive, we let go
of the past. No longer will the anger
generated in the past corrupt our perceptions of the present. No longer will the hurt created by past
betrayal burden our relationships in the present. No longer will the past continue to live within us in the
present. The past is not forgotten; it
is merely dead, for we have forgiven.
Forgiving is
not instantaneous. Many people have the mistaken impression
that forgiving is a one-off event: “I forgive you and now it’s over.” Hogwash!
Oh, sure, there are times when forgiving is that quick. But usually, with any situation of any
significance. When one of my children
spills milk at the table, I can say and mean, “It’s okay, I forgive you.” But when a spouse betrays, when a colleague
stabs in the back, when a friend lies to your face, when someone we love and respect cuts us so
deeply that the pain and hurt cannot be ignored, forgiving is not instantaneous.
To forgive someone is a process that takes
time; forgiveness is gradual, sequential, progressive. Rather than, “I forgive
you and now it’s over,” it would be more appropriate to say, “I forgive you and
now the journey has begun toward our eventual and complete reconciliation.” We know this intuitively from our personal
experience. We know that some hurts
take months to heal, some anger takes years to move beyond, some brokenness
requires a lifetime to find wholeness.
Forgiving takes time because true forgiveness is about healing. That’s okay. Jesus never said we had to forgive one another immediately; he
only asked that we have the courage to walk the journey.
Forgiving is
not easy. Too many folks think offering forgiveness
should be easy and they struggle because it is not. They look at how often Jesus says that we are to forgive one
another and they think, “Well, I should be able to do that?” But Jesus also said that guys should never
lust and religious folk should never be hypocrites; just because Jesus says we
are to do something doesn’t mean it’s easy!
Rather, to forgive another is a radical moral act of courage. Forgiving is difficult spiritual and social
work that takes all the intellectual and emotional gifts we possess and all the
help the Holy Spirit can give.
To forgive another
is to accept one’s cross. Jesus said
that we are “to take up our cross and follow him” (Mark 8:34). It is neither easy to bear one’s cross nor
to forgive. When we forgive we imitate
Jesus. When Jesus was on the cross he
took the guilt of sin upon himself.
Paul says that “he who knew no sin became
sin that we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus embraced the hurt and anger, embraced
the brokenness and betrayal, embraced the suffering and sin of this world. The cross was painful for Jesus; crosses
always are. But Jesus was willing to
bear the pain of the cross within himself that he might then release it. In a similar way, when we forgive, we bear
the pain caused by another. We bear it,
willingly, that we might therefore release it.
Such forgiveness is not easy; indeed it is most costly. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Grace is
costly because it costs [us our] life; it is grace because it gives [us our]
only true life.”
*****
Jesus understood all too
well that there were those who had fallen away from God and the life and love
God had to offer. Their reconciliation to God would not be an easy task. Many
were too far gone for the Temple to do them any good. Others were rejected by
the religious rule keepers and their interpretations of the law, so that they
had given up hope of ever being forgiven. These had become the lost sheep, who
no one was seeking to find. But Christ came into the world with but one goal in
mind, to seek and to save sinners. He came offering forgiveness to the
unforgiven. All that he asked was that folks turn to him, believe in the power
he presented, and believe in the One who had sent him to save others. All it would cost them was their life; all
it would give them was the only true life.
John was a man who believed he was too far gone to be reclaimed. He had grown up in a sea faring and rigorously religious family. And yet one day John decided to leave that all behind. He engaged in every type of activity parents dread to think about. His friends feared for his sanity. Later he became involved in the slave trade, buying and selling human beings as if they were no more than animals without feelings or families. Though he tried to reclaim his Christianity, he failed and refused to admit how far he had fallen. John spoke of the times, when he would read the Psalms aloud on deck as the screams of the suffering rose up from below while he remained unmoved above. But one day God opened his eyes and John asked for forgiveness and a new chance at life. God granted forgiveness to him, and he became not only a minister but one of those who worked to end the slave trade in England forever. He discovered the truth behind God's forgiveness and amazing grace. And that is the name of the hymn John Newton wrote to celebrate God's forgiveness of sins.
Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my
fears relieved. How precious did that
grace appear the hour I first believed.
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