The Purpose of Forgiveness

             Forgiveness is one of the hardest things that we ever have to confront.  It is sometimes easy to forgive ourselves, using excuses for our behavior that sometimes we don’t even believe, but forgiving others is incredibly difficult.  We keep slights in the back of our mind for a long time and sometimes they change us.  I have watched people become bitter over the way that they perceive that they are treated by their fellow humans and then treat others with the contempt that they have for the way that they think that they have been treated.

            When I regularly visited in the penitentiary with the men who had killed others, we often talked about forgiveness.  Mostly that fell on deaf ears, because the prisoners couldn’t forgive themselves.  None of them thought that what they had done was justified.  They couldn’t imagine how a loving God could ever forgive what they had done.  They were reconciled to not only living the rest of their lives in the prison, but they looked forward to an eternity in the hell that God would condemn them to because of their crimes.  I talked and talked about what a loving and merciful God we have; who condemns nobody and loves all.  Those words always fell on deaf ears.  I remember one man who had killed two people, who came to me after these discussions and tugged my sleeve and told me that there were two people in the graveyard because of what he had done, and that God was never, never going to forgive that.  There was a moment later on when I knew that he had heard the message.  There was a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.  He lived into his mid eighties, and in his final years, other convicts would bring him out of the hospital and across the yard to our group.  Crowds would surround him, wanting to be near the obvious light that seemed to be everywhere around him.  He was forgiven and he knew it.  That was one of the most beautiful things that I saw in the prison.

            Forgiveness seemed be Jesus’ theme on the cross.  First, the forgiveness of those who were responsible for his crucifixion:  Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do!  And then the forgiveness of the repentant criminal on the cross beside him:  Today, you will be with me in paradise!  There is nothing easy about either of these things.  I can hardly imagine a man on a cross, tormented by horrible pain, letting his tormentors go with a statement about forgiveness.  The taunting and the pain continued; the people around him held him in contempt.  What good was forgiveness going to do?  I suspect that it had something to do with Jesus’ peace.  Even in the horrible condition of pain and suffering that he was under, his peace was a high priority.  In order to remain human, in order to continue for all of his life as the messenger of God’s incredible love, he forgave as he always forgave. 

            There is the teaching for all of us.  Keep your peace, forgive as you have been forgiven.  Let the light of God’s love pour forth from you so that others can be attracted and know it also, for their peace is contingent on their forgiveness and their ability to forgive others.  It sounds so easy, but it isn’t.  It requires of us prayer and a willingness to let the things that have been done to us by others go, so that our peace and our love can remain intact. 

Exalted Humility

        Judgement is easy for most of us.  We do it a lot as we go through our day.  I am critical of the way that other people drive; whether they go too slow or too fast; or if they cut me off or beat me to a coveted parking place.  I love to watch people who are around me.  It is easy to wonder at the clothes that they wear; the way that they use their cell phones in public, or the way that they speak to their kids.  Generally, my judgments stay within me; it is not often that I am arrogant enough to voice them to anyone around me.  Sometimes, in the car on the way home, I will comment about someone to my wife, but mostly, I keep silent. 

         I am not pleased by this behavior of mine.  I think it is not a good reflection of who I am, and I try to not do it so much.  I try to watch my own driving and not be so critical of the people who share the road with me.  I think that we would have a better world if we were all able to be less critical of each other.  I am mindful of the passage in Luke 18 where Jesus tells the parable of the two men who when up to the temple to pray.  One of them was a Pharisee and the other a Tax Collector. The Pharisee prayed Thank God, I am not like other men, particularly that tax collector.  The Tax Collector simply prayed, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.  Jesus went on to ask his listeners, I tell you that this man went down to his home justified, rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.

           That isn't what I seem to do most of the time, so I generally need to be humbled.  I don't like that, but when I assess myself, it is certainly true.  I think it is also true for most of us.  What a wonderful world it would be if we were all able to look at our sinfulness and acknowledge it and live in the exorbitant wonder of the forgiveness of God for each of us, just as we are.  

Waiting for God

           I sometimes get weary of waiting for God to make things right.  There is a lot of suffering in this world and it seems to me that if God wanted to alleviate it, it wouldn't be much of a problem to wipe it all out.  The problem with that is that I am a part of the suffering in the world.  I certainly have adequate food and shelter, I have clothing to fit and warm me and a place to sleep.  I also have a wife who loves me and puts up with me and all that I do.  It isn't easy for her sometimes.  I know that she gets tired of my foibles.  But she is always there for me.  I also have daughters who love both of us and make sure that we know it.  So I am really blessed.

           But there are many others who have nothing.  This world is full of people in the pain of poverty, lack of relationships, and no real way out.  We have a lot of private charities that pump millions of dollars into trying to make much of it right, but we face an overwhelming problem.  I am reminded of the story of the man walking along the beach who saw many, many starfish washed up on the shore.  He picked one of them up, looked at it and threw it back into the surf.  The person who was walking with him said, "that doesn't do much to solve this problem", and the man replied, "it solves it for that starfish!"  Rather than attempting to fix all of our problem with poverty and want, maybe it is up to each of us to try to make a difference for the poverty that we find among us every day.

           Jesus told us to love our neighbor as a person like ourselves.  I think that God has presented us with the means to solve the problem of poverty and want in this world.  The solution is each of us.   When we simply open our eyes to what is happening around us, we can find many places where our help is not only needed, but welcomed.  Our problem is that we are overwhelmed by the difficulty and we keep waiting for someone else to solve it.  We want the government or the charities, or anyone to throw money and effort at taking care of the millions of people who have absolutely nothing.   These organizations have a significant place in making things work, but their efforts aren't enough.

           What is necessary is the concern of each of us as we go through our day to be sure that we do what we can for the people whom we meet along the way who have needs.  This isn't easy.  Sometimes we will feel that we are intruding in other people's lives, but the reality is that our intrusion is helpful.  Even when we overstep, our efforts are often appreciated.  Giving of our selves is an elegant present to the world.  In Matthew 25, when Jesus talks about the separation of the sheep and the goats, he tells his listeners that when he was hungry they fed him, when he was thirsty, they gave him drink and when he was in prison, they visited him.  They asked him, "when did we do these things?"  He said to them, "whenever you did this for anyone in need, you did it for me."  That is our mission, and it is also how God enters the pain of this world.

Our Lives in Exile

             Rachel Maddow had a wonderful analogy on her program the other day when she was talking about the looming crisis over the debt ceiling and what ignoring it would mean for the country, our economy and the standing of the United States in the rest of the world.  She talked about Captain Ahab chasing the White Whale.  She said that there was a boat launched from the Pequod with the Captain and members of his crew.  They hit the whale with a harpoon that was tethered to the boat by a rope.  The angered whale began to swim, towing the boat with it.  If the whale sounded, meaning diving to the bottom of the sea, the boat would go with it and they would all be drowned.  The captain had a hatchet on board that could be used to cut the rope and free the boat from the whale; but the rest of the crew protested when he wanted to use it and kept him from cutting the rope.  Maddow suggested that this is what is going on with our congress and Speaker Boehner; that a small group in congress, the most radical of the Tea Party members, is keeping the speaker from finding a solution to the debt crisis. They are all willing to go over the edge into whatever comes in the name of decreasing the government and defunding the Affordable Care Act. 

            Her analogy certainly makes a lot of sense to me, particularly since the “full faith and credit” of the United States is being placed in jeopardy by this move by congress to not pay the bills that they have incurred.  We wonder what will happen if we indeed go over the edge and the debt ceiling is ignored.  There is no doubt that a lot will happen.  Interest rates will likely go up and middle class people will find it more difficult to obtain loans for cars or homes.  Other nations will cease to look to us for leadership and the dollar will cease to be the standard used by the rest of the world.  Much of this could be devastating in terms of our standing among the nations of the world.

            The words of Jeremiah the prophet strike me today as being good advice for all of us if we are headed into a place of exile from the country that we love so very much.  He tells the Hebrew people who have been taken hostage by the Babylonians not to despair, but to continue to live their lives; to build houses and to live in them, to create families and offspring and to live as close to normality as possible.  He tells his people to seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.  That seems to me to be excellent advice for a people headed for trouble.  We all need to continue to live our lives, regardless of what a rebellious congress decides to do.  The next election will certainly be an opportunity to weed some of these people out of the national legislature; but the final answer to this is the rest of us cleaving to whatever part of normality that we can find until a final answer is created.  That might not seem like much at this moment in time.  But our prayer continues to be that God’s Grace may always precede and follow us that we may be continually given to good works.  Our trust in that Grace is all that keeps us from ultimate failure, regardless of what people in congress may do.

The Meaning of Forgiveness

            Not long ago a controversy erupted in Connellsville, near Pittsburgh, about a replica of the Ten Commandments that had been erected on public property.  They were banned by a court and the people erupted with anger over this decision.  The other day, a group of these citizens began erecting signs showing the Commandments all over the place.  One of the members of the group said that “if people would simply obey these simple rules, all of the wars would cease and we would live very happy lives.”  That is certainly true, and it is exactly what God had in mind when the Ten Commandments were handed to Moses on Mt. Sinai after the freeing of the Hebrews from Egyptian captivity. 

            Of course, it didn’t work.  Humanity has its own idea of what the rules ought to be and the Ten Commandments aren’t a part of it.  The truth is, all of us have broken every one of them.  This is why God repeatedly returned to us with new ways to help us to understand what the thinking behind the Commandments involves.  The prophets were sent to point out our failures; and when that didn’t work out very well, finally God sent Jesus to come among us to show us the meaning of Love as the way for us to live, so that the Ten Commandments could really be obeyed.  “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as a person like yourself”, said our Lord when he gave us what we call the Summary of the Law.  We still recite this in our liturgy as a reminder to us every week of what it is that we ought to be doing in our lives.  Of course, we don’t do it very well.  We still don’t obey the law in the way that our God would like for us to do. 

            That is why the confession of our sin is such an important part of our liturgy every week.  It is no accident that the confession and absolution is given to us right before the Peace.  So that a congregation of forgiven sinners can embrace each other in newness before God right before we begin all over again with the celebration of the Eucharist.  The intention of this is always to make us a new people; people who can let the past be the past and get on to new relationships without the shadow of the past.  Forgiveness is the issue.  When we can learn to forgive in the same way that our God forgives us each week; then our relationships will blossom and our lives will be filled with the wonder of God’s love.

            I have always loved the 137^th Psalm.  It is the one that was supposedly composed after the captivity in Babylon happened in 587 BC and the Hebrew people were taken far from their home in Jerusalem in to the bondage that they suffered for so many years.  They tried to sing, but the words just wouldn’t come to them. The words of the Psalm tell the story very well:

                By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, *
            when we remembered you, O Zion.

            As for our harps, we hung them up *
            on the trees in the midst of that land.

            For those who led us away captive asked us for a song,
            and our oppressors called for mirth: *
            “Sing us one of the songs of Zion."

            How shall we sing the LORD'S song *
            upon an alien soil?

            Indeed, how can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?  That captive people remembered the happy times in Jerusalem, when life was free and times were good.  After their captivity, that all vanished and singing the songs of Zion seemed to them a mockery of what their lives had become. 

            Sometimes we get bogged down with our problems and our sins.  We all know that we haven’t lived our lives in the way that God has intended, yet we are a forgiven people.  That is the good news that lets us live for today, not for yesterday.  Accept your forgiveness and live your lives in the knowledge of God’s perfect love.  I know that is hard, but it is the key to renewal and the essence of faith.