Forgive

Craig Anderson

Brookside Community Church

February 17, 2002

Luke 6:37-42

            After humanity perfected the art of getting revenge: after getting mad AND getting even, we discovered another way.  Forgiveness was the next big idea, a better idea.  But forgiveness has not come as naturally nor as easily as revenge, and so it makes sense to revisit this subject early and often.

            Did the reading from Luke sound like a list of proverbial sayings to you?  These were pithy little one liners, full of common sense and wisdom, weren’t they?  As such, they have almost a scolding tone to them, sort of like, “Well of course dummy!  This is how the world works: it is reciprocal!  You give a little, you get a little.”

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.  But what Luke has condensed into 33 words, took women and men centuries to learn, and indeed I’m here to tell you that I haven’t fully learned the lesson yet.  I need constant reminders.

            Luke takes 33 words, but some of the most powerful stories and scenes in scripture show and tell this truth much more fully.  Do you remember the passage from Hosea, where God is trying to decide how to be God? 

   When Israel was a child, I loved him,

and out of Egypt I called my son.

The more I called them,

the more they went from me;

they kept sacrificing to the Baals

and offering incense to idols.

    They shall return to the land of Egypt,

and Assyria shall be their king,

because they have refused to return to me.

     How can I give you up, Ephraim?

How can I hand you over, O Israel?

My heart recoils within me;

my compassion grows warm and tender.

I will not execute my fierce anger;

for I am God and no mortal,

the Holy One in your midst,

and I will not come in wrath.

            Or maybe you remember the story of the wicked servant, forgiven an enormous debt by the king, only next to encounter a friend in the hallway with a tiny outstanding commitment, and throwing the book at him.  It did not go well for the wicked servant when the king got word.  And certainly the image of the woman caught in adultery is indelible; as is Jesus’ question to her accusers about which of them is without sin.  The stones hit the floor.  Then finally, perhaps most memorably, a prayer spoken from the cross, “Father, forgive them...”

            Nevertheless, the proverbs from Luke tell their own story.  They condense the truth.  They remind us that forgiveness is about relationships.  And relationships are reciprocal: “give, and it will be given to you.”  Unless we plan to check out of hotel humanity and take a single room on an isolated island, we need to heed this advice.  Life is transactional, relational.  If we are going to live in community, rubbing shoulder to shoulder with others, then it is going to go better for us if we learn this social skill.  One’s motives are not purely altruistic here, they seldom are anywhere.  What’s in it for you if you forgive?  Maybe you’ll be forgiven.  Forgive now and make a down payment on a pay back later.  What this comes down to is a recognition that we cannot go it alone.

            When all else has failed, to forgive is always there.  As a last resort, after revenge and negotiation have failed, when building higher walls and wider moats no longer works:  when all else fails, forgiveness offers the possibility of a new beginning.  Without it, we remain trapped behind walls of our own making which isolate us from our community, our families, our friends.  This is a wasteland:  a lonely wasteland.  We’ve all been there, and the only way out is forgiveness.

            Forgiveness, like figure skating or half-pipe snow boarding has degrees of difficulty.  In the Olympics, the points you earn depend on complexity and execution.  Just ask the Russians, a perfect, simple maneuver is not worth as much as a tricky but less refined one.  Some of the more difficult forms of forgiveness depend on remorse and relationship.  The deeper the relationship, the more serious a rift.  The less the remorse, the more difficult it is to forgive.  These are matters of degree.

            We have on parade these weeks executives from Enron, who for the most part, to listen to their telling of it, had nothing to do with the collapse of their company or the costs to their employees, customers and stock-holders.  No remorse.  No shame.  No regret.  And let the chorus, congregation and congress say, NO FORGIVENESS! 

            Slobodan Milosovich is also on parade and on trial.  Here we have yet another sociopath, who fails to see what everyone else sees: that he has committed monstrous wrongs.  Before his trial for crimes against humanity is over, we can be certain he will join history’s gallery of tyrant monsters who prove the limits of forgiveness.

            How do we forgive the unforgivable?  How do we forgive the unrepentant?

            Just as high on the degree of difficulty scale, is when our most important relationships are breached.  The people who matter the most, to us, with whom we share the most, are fortunately, the ones who know us best and who will put up with our faults and failings and offer forgiveness... up to a point, and that point is when the relationship itself is betrayed.  There is some stuff we should not take.  There are lines which should not be crossed.  There are times in our relationships when we must no longer accept abuse or disrespect.  Partners of alcoholics must learn this.  Families with addicts cannot feed their addictions.  Corporations with dishonest, me-first cultures must not turn a blind eye to greed and corruption.  Catholic and Protestant dioceses cannot condone sexual predators.  Sometimes, to be forgiving is the equivalent of being a doormat.  The most delicate balancing act in the world is to be both forgiving and demanding.  I love you still, but you must change.  I will always be your brother, but I will not lie for you.  You are precious to me, but I won’t let you betray my trust.  You are my beloved child; but you may not do that.

            Still, to forgive is always there, and it is our good fortune to live in families and to have friends.  For the  more important the relationship the greater the motivation to forgive.  Home is a place where they almost always have to take you in when you go there.  It is in our closest relationships where we are given the most significant opportunities to start over, to begin again, to create new futures despite the past.

            It is also our good fortune to participate in a faith tradition where stories of forgiveness are so central.  Each Sunday we pray to be forgiven, and ask for strength to forgive.  Here we think of forgiveness as a spiritual gift.  We measure our encounters with God in terms of grace.  Here we are accepted, warts and all, quite apart from our merit, despite our reluctance to admit our wrongs, regardless of the degree of our sin.  Even when they won’t open the door at home, we can find sanctuary in prayer.  God has vowed not to execute in fierce anger, but to restore with compassion.  Jesus’ dying words were “forgive them.”  And we are; time after time; day by day: allowed to begin again, to start over, to clean the slate and write a new story.  Besides all this we also get another chance to be forgiving.  Having received a gracious gift, our own streams of compassion are renewed, and we become givers of the gift.

            We’re not ever going to get the forgiveness game right, consistently right every time and every place.  We will remain messes of conflicting motives and emotions, selfish one second, magnanimous the next.  We will be arrogant, afraid, judging, guilty, revengeful, and as a result lonely.  But to forgive is always there.  The best we can do is keep trying, trying both to be forgiving and to accept forgiveness.  This is a continual challenge, our constant need. So take it easy on yourself, but keep forgiving.  You never know, you too may be surprised by grace.