Sermon prepared for a Wednesday night in Lent
by Gregory S. Kaurin, pastor
Do we have
to forgive everybody for everything?
At the beginning of the
service:
Let me tell you about
my first memory of betrayal. I’ve felt
betrayed since then, but for me every experience afterward was just a
re-experience of that first time. In
fifth-grade one of my good friends joined a group of girls, which—for whatever
reason—had a kind of “hate-Greg” club.
My friend immediately began snubbing me in order to fit in with
them. I let that go, thinking, “Okay, I
just won’t bother her when she’s with her friends.” However, I went up to her once, when they weren’t around, and in
my face she called me “Greg the fag.”
Well,
that was it. She made her point, and it
cut very deep. I held onto that hurt
and grudge all the way through the rest of grade school, through junior high
and high school, even through college and into seminary. This was still bothering me, even though we
were just kids at the time and many years had passed. I knew I was supposed to just forgive her and forget it. I really struggled with and prayed about
these texts and commands to forgive.
At some point—I discovered that I had, in fact,
forgiven her. I can say that today,
that I’m not angry about it anymore, and I finally have a better and more
mature perspective on it. How did that
happen? That is our topic for
tonight. Do we have to forgive, and
how?
I want to begin by
sharing with you an email that got me thinking about this question of whether
we have to forgive everybody for everything, every time. Just about the time that we decided to do
this series on “Questions” for Lent, I received this email from one of our
members:
Pastor Greg:
What does the word, "healing,"
mean in respect to our pleasing our Lord?
I want to forgive, but regarding the healing part…I don't want to be so
completely healed that I forget how much the hurt felt-becoming so vulnerable
that I open myself to being hurt again.
The second hurt, hurts more than the
first hurt—because of the trust involved—and the accumulated effect. I feel even though we say we are healed, as
humans, the first hurt is still there - maybe all tucked away on that shelf
within our subconscious, but still there.
I guess I’m thinking of a number of words
here, or maybe they are all combined to make a whole…words like: forgiveness, healing, trust, faith…
Or, is it one step at a time, with forgiveness first, healing second,
and so on....?
Maybe
you can hear at the end of that email that she has already started to answer
her own question about forgiveness and healing, that it is a process or
journey: “first, forgiveness, then healing, and on from there.” I would add that this process begins before
actual forgiveness even starts.
Forgiveness is a journey – but it is non linear; it doesn’t necessarily
happen a specific order. You might find
yourself bouncing back and forth between the stages.
From
perspective of God’s Law: the question of whether we are to forgive is
straightforward. Yes. It is our job as Christians. As our first lesson states, we are in the
business of forgiveness and reconciliation—reconciling people with each other
and with God.
On
the other hand, from ministerial, pastoral and “real life” experience, this
business of forgiving – does not have such an easy answer. Let me give you the key, then, that begins
to unlock God’s commandment to forgive.
The key is that God’s commandment to forgive includes everything that
might help us to arrive at forgiveness—even if it is a long process. That process might include expressing anger
or grief; it could include confrontation and binding sins; it might include
prayers and waiting and patience.
Above
all I want you to know that forgiveness cannot be forced. I think that we have not truly forgiven
someone if we felt forced to do it, or if we forced ourselves to forgive. Forgiveness cannot be compelled; it must
simply or eventually be given. (To be
more exact, forgiveness is something we let go.)
Again,
from the perspective of God’s law we are to be like him, always as ready and
able to forgive as God is. God’s
forgiveness is something he simply and always holds out for us. It is something that, by the power of the
Holy Spirit, we can receive and accept.
Forgiveness isn’t so much of an action as it is a way of being. It isn’t just that God forgives as an
action, but that he simply is a forgiving God.
We
only experience it as an action because we keep messing up, and constantly need
to hear God’s reassurance that his grace and forgiveness still applies. We walk along and make a mistake. “Oops!
Do you forgive me for that one?”
God answers, “Yes, I forgive you for that.” We go a little further and, “How about that one.” “Yes, I forgive you for that one, too.” “What about all my sins, known and
unknown?” “Yes, I forgive all of them.”
The
same for us. In Kendi’s sermon last
Sunday she mentioned that the command to “Repent!” in the Greek is more
accurately a command to always “be repenting.”
The same applies tonight. More
than being commanded to “Forgive!” time and again, Jesus’ whole point with the
seven times and the seventy-times seven is that we are to always “be forgiving”
as our way of life. It’s not an action
we do time and again, forgiveness is how we are to live.
This
attitude of forgiveness includes how we see ourselves. Sometimes we walk around with the weight or
cloud of guilt on our heads, constantly feeling guilty and harassed by all the
things we did wrong, or everything that we should be doing. If that’s how you are feeling, then I have
this commandment for you tonight: Start trusting God! Trust him when he says you are forgiven! He means it, and he has the power to do
it. You are a forgiven child of God.
You
need to be friend enough and neighbor enough to yourself to announce your own
reconciliation with God! You can
announce your own forgiveness by the power of Jesus Christ.
I
love this story of Martin Luther and the devil. I’ll try to clean it up a little bit for you. You know how you sometimes get that voice
yammering in your head, how you’re not good enough, all the mistakes you make,
not smart enough, not pretty enough, etc. etc.? Sometimes we think that it’s our own voice, our bad self-image
talking to us. It isn’t, and it’s
certainly not God telling us we’re not good enough. Who is it that would talk like that? Who would want to constantly tear us down and undercut God’s
message of love and grace? Martin
Luther would tell you that voice is the voice of the devil.
He
once told a group of people what he did when he started hearing that
voice: “When I realize it’s the devil,
I [pass gas], and say, ‘There! Add that to your list! I am a child of God.
Neither you, nor my sins, hold any power over me. …Get thee behind me!’” (So to speak.)
We
need to trust God and let go of the guilt that holds us down. You are forgiven, but until you learn to
forgive yourself, you won’t experience the peace you are called to share with
others. How can you ask others to trust
God and his forgiveness if you don’t trust him?
The
next thing, I want to say tonight is that forgiveness gets mixed up with
consequences. If you get a loan from
the bank, and they suddenly announce to you that the loan has been “forgiven,”
what does that mean? It means that it
is no longer there. No more
consequences. When it comes to the
forgiveness we’re talking about tonight, you can forgive, and there may still
be consequences. Forgiveness doesn’t
mean that all the consequences of past actions go away.
Imagine
that some Sunday Christi comes to church and I kick her really hard in the
shin. And afterward, I honestly look
ashamed and repentant, “I’m so sorry, Christi.
Please forgive me.” What are
these Bible passages saying she should do?
She’s supposed to forgive. Well,
then, the next week she comes back and I do it again. And again I seem truly sorry and repentant. Think of our second lesson; what is Jesus
saying should do? Again and again,
forgive.
That
is true, but nowhere in the Bible do I find this command to “forgive and
forget.” Christi does not have to
“forget” each time I’ve kicked her. We
can learn from our hurts, and there are consequences to my actions. She can forgive me, and—at the same time—she
will probably find ways to avoid me, to avoid being hurt by me week after week.
We
Christians are not called to remain in abusive or dangerous relationships. To remain in a situation or a relationship
that hurts you is 1) abusing a creature that God created and loves. 2) Jesus already suffered and died for us –
we don’t need any more sacrificial lambs.
3) Finally, we sometimes need to help abusers by removing the object of
abuse or potential abuse. Otherwise, we
enable their abuse—we enable their sin if we remove the consequences of their
actions.
You
can forgive actions without changing the consequences. This isn’t amazing. Parents do it all the time. Parents often forgive their children in
their hearts long before the punishment is over. Imagine that Billy’s ball comes flying through the window. It’s possible that you already forgave him
before the ball hits the floor, and yet you can still expect him to do extra
chores, until he pays for the window.
I
don’t think we will ever run risk being “too forgiving,” but we are often too
lenient. We confuse forgiveness with
consequences, and that undermines the whole message and experience of
forgiveness. Consequences show the
depth and harm our sins cause, and as a result they help us see how big
forgiveness is.
The
only consequence that forgiveness removes is spiritual separation from
God. That is the only consequence that
can and must be removed. Notice that
God is the only one who can remove that one.
We can announce it, but God is the one who does it.
So
if a convicted prisoner has a conversion experience, we don’t throw open his
jail cell just because he “found Jesus.”
Real forgiveness and conversion gives a peace and assurance so that even
a life sentence here on earth or even capital punishment is only a temporary
experience compared to God’s eternity.
It may not be fun, but it’s not forever. We are all called to do God’s work where we are, even if that’s
as a prisoner serving a just sentence, or as an abusive parent or adulterous
husband separated from spouse or children.
Forgiveness is not an excuse to remain in or to allow the sin.
This
all has something to do with Jesus’ command; he said that if your eye or your
leg causes you to sin—as much as you might like to keep them—if they cause you
to sin, it’s better to pluck them out and let them go, than to go on separated
from God.
Perhaps
the most important thing tonight I want to say tonight about forgiveness is
this: Forgiveness feels like a gift
that we give to others… when, really, forgiveness isn’t something we give. Forgiveness is something that we let
go. We let go, so that it doesn’t
destroy our soul or get in the way of our relationship with God.
Forgiveness
is saying, “I’m not holding this against you any more. I’m letting go of my built up anger and
resentment. I’m putting both you, and
what you did, into God’s hands and I’m moving on. In the end, we forgive others so that we can feel peace
and reconciliation with God.
I
believe that guilt, shame and resentment, even justifiable resentment, are
demonic possessions…when you hold onto them.
They eat at us; they undermine our Christian faith and his gospel.
We
need Jesus Christ, the strength of his love, forgiveness, death and
resurrection to help guide us to a kind of “exorcism” in order to let go of
this stuff. Nail it all to his cross
and let it die.
Forgiveness
is a process that might include confrontation, that is, the binding of
sins. The Bible talks about binding
sins, saying: “Bill, you stole from me.”
“Mom, Dad, what you did to me all these years ago was wrong.” “Timmy, you ran into the street and I told
you not to.” That’s what "binding
sin" is. It is confrontation,
taking the thing done and attaching it to the person.
So,
again, forgiveness may include confrontation and binding sins. Forgiveness can include the emotional
expressions of anger or grief, and the consequences of our actions. Forgiveness can include the whole process of
prayers and waiting, and—by God’s power through Christ—a letting go, and
receiving peace at last and forgiveness.
I
know I’ve talked at length already, but I want to read to you a few pages from
a story that finally pulled it all together and helped me to understand
forgiveness. A couple years ago, one of
our Bible studies was using this book, Whole Prayer, by Walter Wangerin,
Jr. He tells about a woman he met. She had been sexually molested by her father
from the time she was twelve until she was sixteen. Her family lived in a house where her part of the bedroom was
divided from her brothers’ by a curtain.
Let me finish tonight’s sermon by reading what she told Pastor Wangerin
about forgiveness.
“This is the sequence,” my friend said, as if she were laying down a hand of cards… “In my sixteenth year my father stopped coming to my bed. I believe he had begun to fear that my brothers were not sleeping during his midnight visitations. But I don’t pretend to understand my father’s motives then. He just stopped.
“No one spoke of the secret after that, of course, and I remained estranged in the midst of my family.
“No one spoke of it, I say, until my youngest brother graduated from college. Shortly before he moved away for good, he took me out for a country drive. He pulled off the road into a little woods, then asked if I remembered our father’s visits to our bedroom at night. I was stunned. I could only stare at him. There had never been words for this thing before—never!
“Well, he took my hand and started to cry and begged me to forgive him for never doing anything.
“He knew! My brother had known. How many others had known? Surely my mother knew! All at once the whole ocean of my grief poured out of me with a tremendous roaring. It was like to drown my brother!
“The fact that he was apologizing caused a switch to turn in my soul, filling me with a brilliant light and understanding: No! It had not been my fault! And I was furious. I hit him. He bowed his head and didn’t fight back. I screamed and slapped my brother in his face. In a high, bloody jubilation, I cursed all of them, my father for hurting me so much and so long, my brothers just for knowing, my mother for her silence.
“’Why didn’t you do anything?’ I screamed.
“But all he said was, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
“So I threw myself out of his car and walked away. My whole body was strong with anger. Anger felt so good to me.
“That was three years ago—the second event in the sequence. In the next months I confronted every member of my family and told them what they had done to me. I gave voice to the child they had wounded. I approached my father with a wild freedom. I mean, I didn’t care what he did, whether he’d confess his sin, or deny it, or blame me. I didn’t care, because my fury had set me free.
“But I wanted to crawl back into myself again. Oh, I yearned for the consolations of peace. So I began to talk with a counselor, a calm Christian, a man clear regarding fault in the matter. It was not my fault. He repeated the message a hundred different ways, it was not my fault.
“But something kept troubling me.
“’I can’t forgive them,’ I told my counselor. ‘I just can’t. I mean, I am not able.’
“’I understand that,’ he said.
“’But am I wrong not to? Am I still an evil person after all this if I don’t? Do I have to forgive them?’
“And then that dear pastor preached for me a sermon I had never heard before. No, he said, I did not have to forgive them.
“He told me that forgiveness is of grace. It is a free gift, freely given, whose source is in the Lord. He said that an enforced forgiveness is not grace at all but a law which someone is demanding the victim to keep. Forgiveness which must be commanded is not forgiveness at all. Yes, they needed forgiveness, the pastor said; but let them go to its true source. Let them confess their sins unto the Lord Jesus Christ, whose forgiveness is their salvation. But I, he said, I did not have to do that which I could not do…
“Now I will tell you the truth,” she said. “Jesus was there all along. I verily believe that it was Jesus who needled the soul of my younger brother until he confessed. And through that year of confrontations and counseling—the third event in my sequence—Jesus granted me first the anger of separation and independence, and second the peace of his grace.
Love
me, love me—Jesus come and help me.
Amen.
“He did. He answered my prayer.
“But it was not until the fourth event in my sequence,” she smiled, “that I saw the full evidence of it.
“One morning last December, I woke up and discovered that I had forgiven my family. All of them. That’s it.” She smiled, spreading her fingers flat on the table. “Maybe I forgave them in my sleep. I don’t know. Only know that I woke up with true forgiveness in my heart.
“Or perhaps I should say that forgiveness was given me to give to them. You see? I was free of their sin. I was free of the pain it had caused me, free of hatreds and blame and keeping accounts. And here’s the kicker, Walt: I loved them. My parents are no beauties. My poor parents scarcely know what a blessing I have for them whenever they’re ready to receive it.
“It’s right here,” she said, touching her breast. “Blessing is right here, completely free and pure for them.”
The woman suddenly grew sober. She did not remove her hand from her breast. She began to blink rapidly, for the thing she was about to say was so important.
“It
is Jesus here,” she said. “Here in me
is Jesus, my dear Lord and the answer to my prayer. Because,” she whispered, “I could never have forgiven them on
my own. It simply was not me. Even now it isn’t me. It is Jesus who grants me my freedom with
their forgiveness. It was Jesus all
along.”*
Be
forgiving. And when you find that you
cannot, pray for the guidance and strength of Jesus Christ to let go. Allow him to lead you to it. Amen.