Lord,
how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" What prompted Peter's question to Jesus? Perhaps someone had said or done something
that offended Peter. Perhaps it was a
friend, perhaps it was another of Jesus' disciples. There must have been a difficult person in
Peter's life as there is in every human life.
Perhaps Peter had had enough of this person, felt that he had been as forgiving
as he should be, and wanted Jesus' permission to let him have it.
I can just see Peter counting up the number of
times he had forgiven this difficult person in his life. One, two, three, four, five, six...
"Jesus, I only have to forgive him seven times, isn't that right? So the next time, I'm going to let him have
it with both barrels, OK?"
Imagine Peter's disappointment when Jesus says,
"I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven." In other words, Jesus says to Peter, “Throw
away your calculator, your computer. Stop calculating the level of your brother
or sister’s wickedness and the number of times you will get to beat the heck
out of him or her. Your capacity to forgive should be as inexhaustible as
God's.”
The problem most of us have with Jesus’ response
to Peter is not only with how difficult it is to forgive someone who has really
wronged us, I mean did something genuinely underhanded, unethical, and nasty,
the problem is that Jesus takes all the fun out of it. I mean, be honest with
me: Isn’t it just a whole lot of fun to engage in fantasies of revenge? To
imagine all the ways that you would torture the person who has wronged you? To
see in your mind’s eye that person being held up for humiliation in public? We
can spend hours engaged in such fantasies. We can think about it all night.
Well, I know I can, and I am certain that I am not the only one who does that.
Jesus says, “Stop it. No more fantasies of
revenge.”
We were reminded this week of the anniversary of
the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Most of us remember where we were that
day. We remember the clear blue sky, the cool early fall breeze, the panicked
voices of reporters on radio and television, the dreadful images of enormous
towers crashing to the earth.
Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury,
was speaking at Trinity Church, Wall Street, that day and very nearly became
one of the victims. The next day he spoke at the Cathedral of St. John the
Divine and said, “I'm sure in the city and the country in the days ahead, the
pressure to do something, anything, is going to be greater and greater. The
rhetoric will become more and more intense. There is something I want to say to
that. One very simple personal observation. Quite simply: I wouldn't want what
we experienced to happen to anybody. I wouldn't want to see another room of
preschool children hurried out of a building under threat. I wouldn't want to
see thousands of corpses just to satisfy someone’s idea of justice. And very
simply: I don't want anyone to feel what others and I were feeling at about
10:30 yesterday morning. I've been there."
Keep in mind that Jesus wasn’t telling us to
forgive only seventy times seven times; he was telling us to forgive until we
have lost count of how many times we have forgiven. But I wonder: Why did Jesus
pick that number as the appropriate number of times to forgive? The fact is
Jesus was referring to a story in Genesis in which Lamech, a descendant of
Cain, the first murderer, claims the right to avenge himself “seventy-sevenfold.”
In other words, Lamech claimed the right to avenge himself innumerable times
for a single injury. That is the usual calculation we make when we are wronged.
We are much more likely to claim the right to infinite REVENGE than to practice
infinite FORGIVENESS.
Notice something else about Peter’s question to Jesus: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?” “If another member of the church sins against me…” I wonder if Peter was an Episcopalian? But it is not only Episcopalians who have a tendency to hurt fellow church members; it seems to be characteristic of all churches.
The late second/early third century theologian Tertullian
said that the pagans of his time admired Christians and would say, “See, how
these Christian loved each other!” I wonder what Tertullian’s pagans would say
today if they sat in on the average church meeting!
I don’t know why it is, but church fights seem to be the
worst fights. Henry Kissinger said that fights between academics were bitter
because the rewards were so small. I think the same might be true of churches.
We fight over the smallest things.
We fight over whether to use port or sherry as the
communion wine. We fight over whether to use incense or not. We fight over the
1928 Prayer Book or the 1979 Prayer book, Rite I or Rite II. We fight over
whether or not to use energy efficient light bulbs in the parish hall. Remember
the old joke: How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb? How
dare you change that light bulb? My great aunt gave that light bulb to this
church and it’s a perfectly good light bulb!!
I want to say four things about forgiveness: The
first is the most important, so I want to be as clear as possible: Forgiveness
is about behavior not feelings. The great psychologist William James said, “Act
yourself into a new way of feeling.”
“Act yourself into a new way of feeling.”
It sounds completely counter-intuitive, but it is
absolutely true. If you want to change the way you feel, then start by changing
the way you behave. If you want to forgive someone, then start acting as though
you have already forgiven them. Practice kindness toward the person who has
wronged you, even if you have to grit your teeth to do it. But I absolutely
guarantee you that the day will come when you will not only behave in a
forgiving way, you will wake up one day and be startled to find that you have
let go of your anger.
Jesus was clearly concerned with actions and
deeds, not feelings. When Jesus said, “Love
your enemies” and “Forgive those who persecute you,” he was not talking about
feelings. Jesus did not say LIKE your enemies and those who persecute you. Jesus
did not say, "Do not be angry
with those who have done you wrong." Anger is a perfectly good emotion
when it is used correctly. Jesus both felt and displayed anger. Concealing and denying our anger is not the
route to spiritual vitality; it is a short-cut to emotional illness.
Secondly, forgiveness is based on tolerance. Ecclesiasticus says, "Does a man harbor
anger against another, and yet seek for healing from the Lord? Does he have no mercy toward a man like
himself..." St. Paul makes it even
clearer that to forgive we must recognize that all of us stand under the
judgment of God: "Why do you pass
judgment on your brother? Or you, why do
you despise your brother? For we shall
stand before the judgment seat of God..." (Romans 14.5-12) Every wrong that has been done to me I have
done or am capable of doing to others.
Thirdly, we have all heard the saying,
"Forgive and forget". There
are wrongs that we should forget--the unkind word said thoughtlessly, the
social group that does not include us in its plans. Keeping a list of such small complaints is
spiritually and emotionally dangerous.
Yet, there are some wrongs that should not be forgotten. The child who has been physically and
sexually abused often blocks out the abuse so that she or he literally cannot
remember the terrible things done to him or her. It is only later in therapy that the dreadful
details of the past come flooding back.
In the case of severe abuse, redemption comes in remembering, not
forgetting. I think, I hope, I pray that
it is possible for abused children and abused spouses to forgive those who have
abused them. But I think that it is not
wise for them to forget what has happened to them and who was responsible it,
for to forget may be to invite the abuse to happen again.
I think there is a difference between letting go
and forgetting. I think that it is
possible both to let go of the pain so that it no longer has power over
us. But at the same time we may have to
remember who inflicted it, so that it doesn't happen again.
The fourth thing I want to say is that Jesus’ commandment
that we should forgive until we have lost count of how many times we have
forgiven is not about our enemies; it is about us. It will probably do nothing
to change our enemies’ hearts. They may still be as mean as snakes after we
have forgiven them. But that is not our business. Our business is simply to
imitate our Father in heaven who forgives us no matter how many times we do
wrong. And God has Her hands full doing that!
I want to tell you two stories about
forgiveness. First, I want to tell you
the true story of a young man who was studying for the Roman Catholic
priesthood. He was sent to a seminary in
Toronto where his living arrangements were supervised by an older priest who
was probably psychotic. The older man
terrorized the younger man with emotional, verbal, and physical abuse, and
finally, in the middle of a bitter Canadian winter night, he locked the young
seminarian out of the house.
Later talking with another older priest, the
young man began to pour out his bitter feelings of rage about this psychotic
supervisor. The older man listened
quietly and finally said, "My son, you must forgive him". That's just what I need", said the
younger man, "that old tired business about forgiveness just doesn't
work". "No," said the
older priest, "what I mean is this.
Every night you must get down on your knees and pray to God and say,
'Dear God, please kill Father So-and-so.
I despise him. He doesn't deserve
to live'. You must pray that prayer
every night. And not that night and not
the next, but later, perhaps years later, you will find yourself saying to God,
'Dear God, please forgive Father So-and-so'."
The point of the wise old priest's advice was
this: Acknowledge your feelings and
honor them in prayer. God knows how you
feel and you cannot change your feelings by denying that they exist.
Finally, I want to tell you a story about
forgiveness in my own life. Father Harry
Reynolds Smythe was the librarian of Pusey HOuse in Oxford, and he's one of the
holiest men I know. One day at lunch I
began to tell Fr. Harry about someone, a man of great power and influence, who
had wronged me and hurt me deeply. Fr.
Harry listened carefully, quietly, and sympathetically. Finally, he said, "You must do two
things. First, let Jesus bear your
pain. He is the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world. That's his job; not yours. Secondly, you must
forgive him".
I think both stories are helpful. I confess my prayers about this man who
wronged me are more often "Dear God, please kill so-and-so" but sometimes
they are also "Forgive him and forgive me, for we are both
sinners". But it is very helpful to
remember, as Fr. Harry said, that Jesus bears the sin of the world, that he
bears our pain, and that that is his job, not ours.
I don't know about you, but all this leaves me
feeling uncomfortable. My reaction to
Jesus' radical challenge to forgive those who have wronged me is at least
discomfort, if not depression. More
often than not I am a failure at loving my friends, much less forgive those who
have done me wrong.
I
am tempted to say that Jesus sets before us an impossible ideal, but that would
be too easy. It would let us off the
hook. The trick is to aim at forgiving
those who have wronged us, really try to do that, and at the same time to know
that most of the time we will fail. And
to realize that God sends sun and rain on the just and unjust, gives life and
health to those we love and those we despise, that you and I and all of us need
God's mercy as much as anyone in the whole creation.
Perhaps
W.H. Auden said it best,
O
stand, stand at the window
as
the tears scald and start;
You
shall love your crooked neighbor
All of us have crooked hearts, but God knows
that. It is with the crooked love of a
crooked heart that God asks us to forgive those who have wronged us. But we might find in trying to forgive that
we succeed in forgiving. And we will find, in the end, that forgiveness is not
an accomplishment, it is God's gift, for only by the grace of God are we able
to forgive at all.
