Forgiveness

Ezekiel 33:1-11; Philemon 1-20; Luke 14:25-33

Last week I shared with you about the letter grade "F" which stood for faithfulness. But faithfulness is only half of the story of being in a covenantal relationship with God and with each other. There is another part of the story. The other part is another word that begins with the letter "F", the word being Forgiveness.

Our whole Bible is about faithfulness and forgiveness and the struggle to forgive each other and be faithful. The whole area of forgiveness is a difficult one for us since it involves emotions that are tied to direct actions that take place within our lives. In other words, it involves something concretely happening to us. In order for each of us to be faithful to God or to others, there needs to be an enormous flow of forgiveness, since none of us are perfect and we all make mistakes. Faithfulness coupled with forgiveness is the best any human relationship can hope to achieve.

It has been said by many a theologian that "few old saws have been more used, and gone more unsharpened, than "forgive and forget". We have the keen ability to recall old injustices, dredge up insignificant slights and reopen old wounds in a most masterful way. How many of us can remember our parents' anniversary date? Or our cousins' birthdays? How many of us can remember well the day we were punished for something we did not do? Thought we have no recollection of all the times our brothers or sisters or friends helped us with our homework, we can remember the way he or she or they ridiculed us in front of someone else on one occasion. The same mind that can go fearfully blank during an important presentation (or sermon!), can clearly recall every injustice it has ever suffered at the hands of an employer. "Forgive and forget" is an oft-mouthed, but rarely remembered recommendation. In fact, at the UMW meeting this past week, we had a speaker on memory. It was a treat for me to hear her share about remembering things and seeing us forget during some of the exercises she had us try. I bet, though, our memories would have been great if we would have been asked to share past hurts.

While marriage for many of us is a primary relationship in life which depends upon forgiveness, all the facets of our life grow cleaner and brighter when a spirit of forgiveness washes over them. As a stress-reducing tech nique, forgiveness beats aerobics and the primal scream therapy. It also helps to reduce high blood pressure, reduce heart attacks and ulcers.

But, let me say, forgiveness is not a duck's back. In other words, being a "forgiving" person does not mean a water-rolling-off-the-back kind of disengagement from people or situations that hurt us. Quite the opposite occurs. Forgiveness requires deep involvement with the offending party and situation. It requires facing up to and feeling the full brunt of the hurt. Hidden feelings do not have the necessary strength to forgive.

In the Letter of Paul to Philemon which I read today, the whole subject matter is on forgiveness. Philemon's slave Onesimus is has run away from him to find Paul. Onesimus felt he was being abused by Philemon and was afraid, so he ran away. Onesimus was considered by Philemon to be a useless slave, not doing his work, so he was enraged by this behavior of Onesimus. From the lesson we also learn that when Onesimus left he most likely took some funds and things with him to help him on his way to find Paul. Paul writes Philemon that Onesimus is with him and that he will re-emburse him for any costs that Onesimus has taken. Paul asks Philemon to pardon Onesimus for his stealing and for running away, and to not punish him when he returns, even though he has every reason to do so. Paul reminds Philemon that we are all brothers and sisters under Christ and that Philemon accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior. He reminded him that he should practice love and forgiveness. Onesimus is one of his brothers, even though he is a slave. Paul is asking Philemon to remember Christ, and to rise above this difficult wrong of Onesimus.

Does this lesson for today prime your memory of persons who have wronged you? Can you remember how angry you were and how much you wanted to get even? I can think of persons in my own life who have hurt me. How I have had to struggle with the hurt in order to forgive! Forgiveness is not an easy thing because of the hurt, the feelings of betrayal, of being crossed, wronged, unfairly taken advantaged of, our trust violated.

Let me say here that forgiveness is a step by step process whether nor not we are talking about forgiveness within a marriage or any other relationship within our lives where forgiveness is needed.

One of the first things I have learned in forgiving someone is that forgiveness begins from within ourselves, within our souls. Before we can approach another person whom we perceive has hurt or wronged us, we need to look within ourselves. We need to be realistic about what we are forgiving. We must clearly define just what it is that requires forgiveness. What is the sin or transgression? A lot of innocent bystanders and nursed grudges can get gathered up, and lumped up together in our remembrance of sin. We must search within us and uncover exactly what has been transgressed before us. We must avoid the error of exaggerating the effect of the fault so that we do not muddy and confuse what the incident is so that forgiveness can take place. By doing this you save yourself from adding sin to sin. And we all know how easy it is to blame the person closest to us and add on and make a list of many incidents of wrongs rather than look at the one sin. We tend to lump and dump a thousand grievances into a pot of a single sin when in fact is was just one sin that took place that particular day or time.

Now, when we have identified the sin, we need again to look within ourselves and "remember our own forgiveness" before we consider offering forgiveness to another. It only takes one quick, private inward glance to make us painfully aware of the need all of us share for the gift of God's grace and forgiveness. When we recollect those times we needed the forgiving and healing grace of God, we undergo the great "equalizer" which is removing from our spirit any sense of superiority over those who sin against us and that we have more in common with our fellow sinner than we do with the righteous God.

Thomas Merton in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation characterized the moral theology of the devil in this way -- "In the devil's theology the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong. And in order to prove you are absolutely right, you have to punish and eliminate those who are wrong." This does not make for peace and unity...because it means that everyone wants to be absolutely right.

If we think about it for awhile, we know inside that "the sins we see the easiest in others are learned first in ourselves; we know their behavior and their signs from the inside." For example, "gossips spot gossips a mile away, as wolves know wolves by a familiar scent. I remember in my student parish on the islands how one day Miss Josie came to me all upset because Miss Irene was tellin' stories around the parish about her son Everett not being up to workin'. She insisted that he was workin' and Miss Irene was a gossipin'! Well, as we explored it further, Miss Irene was a gossipin' but only because Miss Josie was a talkin' about her daughter-in-law not helpin' her husband, who was our D.S. She was a runnin' around shopping antiques all the time. Miss Josie denied she gossiped and so did Miss Irene, until we shared together about the talkin' and the hurt feelings.

We can not practice forgiveness with any trace of smug superiority staining our soul. Our ability to forgive is only possible because we have already been offered the ultimate gift of forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

Sometimes we get hung up here. In order to be able to forgive others, we must believe we can be forgiven for our sins or the wrongs that we commit. We must believe that God loves us so much that He does forgive us our sins. I can not give you the number of persons I have counseled over the years who simply could not forgive others who had hurt them because they could not believe, first, that they, themselves, could be forgiven for the sins they had committed. Since they felt they were not worthy of forgiveness, through transferring this feeling onto others, they felt they could forgive the other person's sins. the other person was not worthy of forgiveness either. Those who hurt them must be punished and suffer as they did. There could not be any release for the offenders of the present sin because the person I was talking with felt no release from their past sins. God does forgive. You are made worthy of forgiveness of all your sins by the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. You can be forgiven...if you ask God for it, and then believe he gives it to you. Do not believe you are not able to be forgiven and loved. It is not true! Our communion service is a covenental act of being forgiven and made right with God. Each week we have a prayer of confession followed by the Words of Assurance, that your sins are forgiven. God calls us to seek forgiveness...and it will be granted. He calls us to come forth in prayer and ask; not to stand and wait and suffer or be puffed up that we think we are too great to ask, or too low with no worth. God has mercy for us, not blind justice. Yes, God demands justice, but not without mercy. We do have to acknowledge our sins to be forgiven. Naked justice is not God's way with us, it never has been, nor is it the way of Christian forgiveness. Making forgiveness real is not to "get even" with others or to keep a score card. It means compassion and also being honest where we have gone wrong or being honest in seeking to look at and identify where others have wronged us.

In seeking to forgive others who have hurt us, it is important to talk with the person or persons who have hurt us. I had to get Miss Josie and Miss Irene together. It was not easy. I know, also, that it is scary business doing this. You are hurt and angry, but resolution comes only from communication. The specific wrong or sin needs to be placed before the wrong doer. Sometimes the wrong-doer may not know they have wronged you. Sometimes they will turn and run from you because they are afraid, embarrassed or hurt, themselves. That is part of the seeking to communicate and work through the wrongful act. Doing this is not an easy task! Sometimes we believe it is easier to suffer in silence, nursing our personal misery, than risk facing the wrong, perhaps even aggravating it by bringing it into the open and talking about it. Being able to forgive means being able to expose your hurt to another and risking that they may try to hurt you again, even as you are sharing it with them. Yes, I know they can walk away, become angry. But then they are the ones who are left to deal with it. You have offered to heal the wrong doing. You have shared your hurt. You have been open to healing. You can feel then that you have done your best to make things right. And you have to realize you cannot control other people's responses. It is risky business forgiving persons. You can forgive then even if they turn and run, but the forgiveness you have that comes this way is one sided and there is nothing more that you can do. The rest is in God's hands to work with those persons. And believe this. But also know this, that eventually this sharing of your hurt and the wrongful act exposed, does get to the other person -- unless they are psychotic.

I have had persons come to me after years and years of being haunted by someone sharing with them years before something wrongful they had done. They could not get it out of their mind that the person had shared the hurt and then they ran or did nothing. These persons were "haunted" by it. They did reconcile, but after a lot of pain had been carried around for a long time. Running and holding out never works...it only causes more prolonged pain. You can't run from sin and be whole, happy human beings and have a full rich relationship with God or with other people.

One other thing about forgiveness I want to share with you: When you share your hurt and the wrongful act is shared, something more needs to take place than just the talking. There needs to occur some action afterwards. Paul urged Philemon to take Onesimus back without punishing him. Identifying a wrong and voicing forgiveness is not worth much. A behavior has to follow which is not punishing. As Philemon was not punish Onesimus and thereby set into motion a whole new standard of expectations, so are we not to punish others who hurt us. We are not to follow our words with loving actions to re-establish a relationship that had been broken. This re-establishment helps us to define what kind of behavior will be expected from each other in the future. We humans always need guidelines, limits, known expectations, in order to adjust our behavior accordingly. A covenant with a reciprocal nature and its mandate for a faithful commitment brings a new relationship into being. God did this with us when he sent his Son Jesus Christ to us. And so we are to bring a new nature into our restored relationship.

Forgiveness is not an easy task. We have to work with each day as we are always open to having things done or said to us that hurt us. The Bible is full of events of persons seeking to restore broken relationships between themselves and others and between God and themselves and Good seeking us out to re-establish a covenant relationship with us. Do we ever master the technique so that everything turns out fine all the time? No, but we are to keep on trying and we can thank God that he loves us so much that he is with us. And, we seek to find forgiveness for ourselves and for others in this world. How much more can we ask for than to have God with us? Thanks be to God for his love for us. Amen.