Forgiveness

THE `R'S' OF FORGIVENESS

 

Sept.21,2008

From last week's reflections on the Scripture, we understand clearly that Jesus commands us to be forgiving—to have in our hearts a spirit of forgiveness. When we reflect on Jesus' own war against those who abused him and others, we also know that clearly we are called upon to resist evil, when we or others are the intended victims of that evil.

Jesus battles those who oppress people—he challenges us to fight both internal and external oppression. Think of the woman at the well, the Samaritans, the paralytic let down through the roof, Mary Magdalene, the Gerasene demoniac and Peter and the disciples.

When other people or when institutions seek to abuse us, we are called to resist. We are called to create barriers and boundaries to protect ourselves. Kingdom building is about creating some of those same kinds of systems of protection of vulnerable people. Nothing in Gospel or in common sense or in the US Constitution says people should allow others to abuse them. Of course, we are not called to hatred. But we are called to self defense.

A little over a year ago, a delegation from Elizabeth presbytery visited CEDEPCA in Guatemala City. CEDEPCA provides training in Bible, theology, pastoral care and church organizing for men and women throughout Guatemala. They are also highly committed to fighting the epidemic of domestic violence in Guatemala. Last year, over 500 women were killed by their husbands/partners. Cedepca operates one of the very few safe houses in the city.

Their roots are ecumenical, now embracing Catholics and Pentecostals as well as Presbyterians. There are in fact a substantial number of Presbyterians, divided into often competing sub denominations. The Guatemalan pastor who hosted us took our group of 14 up into the hills to visit a congregation made up of people who are all been evicted from a plantation for a labor action. On the way to this small church we passed two other Presbyterian churches. These terrible divisions create weakness. We gathered for pray and singing and testimonies with the members of the church in this marginalized resettled community. Proudly, they served fried bananas and then offered us a drink of mixed fruit juices and water. On behalf of the group, I explained that we couldn't drink it because we had stomach problems.

What are the problems in your community, we asked? Well, the water is bad and often people get diarrhea. Do the children sometimes die? Yes, one mother replied, two died last week. Her voice carried sadness and resignation. This community of God's beloved children faces then, the abuse of some individuals, like the plantation owner, as well as the oppression of larger systems of poverty and exploitation. Of course, then, we Christians are called to resist evil against God's children.

 

The focus of our reflections today will be on the process of our seeking forgiveness. The Prodigal son is the iconic parable of Jesus speaking to us about the mysteries of soul's journey away from God and then back home. I have long believed in the 4 R's of the forgiveness process—forgiveness requires Remorse, Repentance, Restitution and Restoration. So with those aspects of forgiveness in mind, on Monday a group of us looked again at the Prodigal Son story. I daresay we had all read it and heard it preached and studied it many times. But the glorious power of much of Scripture is that the Spirit so often unleashes new insights, new ways of seeing, when we hear the Word, listening together.

So we came to this phrase about the son, in his sate of misery, `coming to himself.' How did that happen—for him and perhaps then how does it happen for us. Well, of course, he is in a desperate situation—but he is also reflecting back on his past, on his father and the way the father ran the farm and probably the way the father treated even his servants. He sees his father with new eyes.

Now the cynic in us maybe just says he needs some money. But the parable points to a new awareness of who the father is in relation both to the servants and potentially again to the prodigal. The son remembers his story. And remembering in the context of his present desperation, he Reframes. Now I know that is a 21^st century word, but it describes the prodigal's experience. He sees his father and himself potentially in a whole new way. Remembering has offered the possibility of reframing.

Remember the Emmaus road story—and` their eyes were opened and they recognized him'. The gospel is about our seeing others and ourselves in a new light, the light of the Spirit. Seeing with new eyes. Remember that folk gospel song about putting your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee—it included lines that said you can look at yourself and look at others differently, when you put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee. To say that Jesus is Lord and Savior is to say that we believe that is not only possible—but it is our promise.

But now the going gets really rough. When the going gets tough, the tough use duct tape. Now is the time for Remorse—this is not that wimpy I'm sorry that we sometimes offer up and that others use to try to placate us. No, Remorse is closer to the Biblical image is of repenting in sackcloth and ashes. This is that deep painful knowledge of how much we have wounded someone and of course, the pain is particularly profound when we wound someone we love deeply.

One summer evening during a violent thunderstorm, a mother was tucking her son into bed. She was about to turn off the light when he asked her with a tremor in his voice, `Mommy, will you sleep with me tonight?' The mother smiled and gave him a reassuring hug. `I can't dear, 'she said, I have to sleep in Daddy's room." A long silence was broken at last by his shaky little voice, `the big sissy'.

We are all big sissies when it comes to remorse and then the long journey of repentance. Repentance means turning around, going a different direction and that is what the son must do, in order to get back home. Let us hope that he feels sadness far more than shame—so for us too. On our lonely journey of repentance may God grant us and may we accept the pain of sadness for our past, rather than be infected with shame.

In the 12 Step movement, one of the steps involves restitution. Those making truth filled and sincere repentance are called upon to offer apology, a gift, some sign of sincerity to those they have harmed when appropriate.

In looking at the issue of Restitution, we can turn to the glorious story of Zacchaeus. He is a tax collector in a system of exploitation—he can skim the profits for himself and become rich. Beyond that, those taxes pay for the Roman legions that keep Israel in bondage. He is using the global economic system for his own benefit—if people die on the fringes, up in the hills of Judah or of Guatemala or Lebanon or Zambia, well, I Zacchaeus didn't do anything wrong--directly. But then he meets Jesus and his world is turned upside down. I will make restitution, says Zacchaeus. What does making restitution look like for us??

Often no restitution is possible. Humpty dumpty sat on a wall and humpty dumpty had a great fall and all the kings' horse and all the kings' men couldn't put humpty dumpty back together again. We can't undo what we have done—some things, some relations, some hearts, some bodies are broken. We can only hope and pray and work to put them back together—a little bit, more or less. But we can seek to make restitution.

Now, we come to glory. The father with joyful abandon and almost shocking generosity welcomes the son home and creates a party in his honor. Restoration. So too with Zacchaeus. Jesus says let's have a meal together. Radical hospitality —Jesus going into to eat with a tax collector and sinner. We too are invited again and again to come home to the table—to take our body/soul journey through the R's of forgiveness. We travel from Remembering to Reframing to Remorse to Repentance and then Restitution and finally joyful bountiful overflowing Restoration.

 

Brooks Smith

Forgiveness—Part I

FORGET, FORGIVE AND FORGET

    Texts:Exodus:14:19-31 and Matthew 18:21-35

My grandfather was a Southern Baptist pastor who served for many years in Kansas City, Missouri. He was involved in creating a number of churches, a seminary and a Baptist Retirement home. I went to the dedication ceremony at the retirement home where they honored him for his contribution. I was sitting next to one of the resident's and realized that even with my nametag, she didn't connect me to my grandfather. So I asked, do you know who I am? Well, she said, if you don't know who you are, just go ask the nurse over there and she can tell you.

Yes, don't forget who you are. Remember. Remember. Jesus calls us and commands us to `do this in remembrance of me.' To be a Christian is to remember over and over again—day by remember the life, death and life again of Jesus, the Christ of God, Lord and Savior, hero and leader, our judge and our justification. We gather to fill our souls with personal and communal memories of who Jesus was and is—of who we are and who we shall be.

The Hebrew Bible text is the story of Exodus. We remember Charlton Heston and the inverted waterfalls where the Israelites walked through on dry land and then Pharaohs army was drowned in the mighty flood of the waters of God. Hear O Israel the Lord thy God is one. And remember especially who this God is—the mighty God of hosts, the warrior God, who brought your slave ancestors out of Egypt, the God who tore them from Pharaohs' bloody hands and made them into God's people. And remember you were once slaves in Egypt.

How we remember our story and what stories about ourselves and our people we remember are crucial to our identity. How do you tell the story of your life? What stories of the people of God speak deeply to you of your identity? When you think of America, what stories, what images dominate your consciousness and mine?

Because you see that is of course what is at stake here. Memory shapes consciousness—out of our consciousness of who we are, we make choices about friends and careers and partners and money and politics and religion.

Memory is the lifeblood of our soul.

Now as we think about forgiveness we come up against this peculiar but popular phrase—forgive and forget. But since you already know the sermon title—we are going to forget about it. We are not going to forget—what has happened to others or to us. We are going to remember.

We are not to be about remembering to the point to bitterness—we seek healing for ourselves of some of the pain of past evil done to us. William Blake's poem Poison Tree describes our soul's dilemmas. We will come to that, but let us now turn to parable of our Lord. Some of the details of this parable are not quite realistic. How could a servant accumulate such an enormous debt, the rough equivalent of $100,000? In 1^st century Palestine, families couldn't be sold into slavery for the debts of one person. So we have to stretch our minds to discern what Jesus is saying to us.

The debt is enormous—this is an incredible amount of money. We are called to identify with this unforgiving servant. This is our story—even though it is one we would rather forget. The wealthy master represents God and so the image is that we owe God this huge debt.

So we hear the words of the Lord's Prayer—forgive us our debts, but also in other more powerful translations, forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.

The image then is telling us that we come before God—on the day of reckoning—with an enormous debt, an enormous weight of sin. Is this just fundamentalist theology? After the Renaissance and especially after the enlightenment didn't we chuck this kind of nonsense? We are rational beings—check out Michelangelo's statue of David. Great bodies—well, some more beautiful than others. Watch this—we human beings can control nature in dramatic ways. Aren't we wonderful? This week we celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the computer chip and started up the Hadron Cyclotron.

Yes, yes, we are. Certainly, reflections of the glory of God. Created in the image of God—male and female created God them and us.

And yet Calvin wrote about total depravity. Freud had that catchy phrase saying that human beings were polymorphously perverse.

Four weeks ago, Gail and I were walking the grounds of Dachau prison camp. Dachau was opened shortly after Hitler took power in 1933. Being there, and remembering the story of us human beings, of our cruelty and barbarism, we know that there lurks a deep, deep capacity for evil in the human soul. This is beyond everyday normal sin and selfishness—we all battle this. No, this is what the Bible would call demonic possession or what Paul might call the principalities and powers. At any rate, would you acknowledge with me that there is within us human beings, potential for great evil? And so we carry a great burden, and we owe a great debt.

And the parable say that God is prepared to forgive us—when we come in deep remorse and when we change our ways of relating to others. The deeply indebted servant is in fact himself forgiven—but he turns to squeeze his fellow servant who owes him a piddling amount compared with the million dollar debt. When the other servants hear of his heartlessness, his unforgiving nature, they turn him in. The parable ends with a painful punch. The unforgiving servant is turned over to the jailers or in some translations to the torturers.

Auden's great poem September I, 1939 includes a line that says, we have been silent witnesses to evil deeds. In our most painful spiritual clarity we can acknowledge our capacity for evil and I daresay all of us have done things that at the very least we are ashamed of. We are not that far from Dachau or Wounded Knee or the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory or My Lai.

But we remember who we are and whose we are and we hear the Lord Jesus invite us, all of us to the table. He says something like I know you my sister, my brother, come in remorse and in true repentance, receive then the Holy Spirit—be washed and cleansed in Baptism and refreshed and fed at the Table. Now—forgive one another as I have forgiven you. Remember this—your life depends upon it. Remember. And forget, forgive and forget. Brooks Smith