Forgiveness: Who Holds the Key to Your Happiness? Preached on September 27th, 2020 For Wollaston Congregational Church Online Service Scripture: Matthew 18:21-35 Today we come to the third theme in our elements of Spiritual Health. The first week we considered Love and Belonging, last week we talked about Identity, and this week we will talk about Forgiveness and Reconciliation. Forgiveness and Reconciliation is a tough one. Today we’re going to look at it from the perspective of the forgiver. This sermon series is about our - yours and mine - spiritual health. And so, we are talking about how forgiveness makes the forgiver and reconciler healthier and more resilient. The benefit for the offender is for another time. It’s surprisingly difficult to find any hymns about forgiving others. I know, I tried this week. There are many hymns about us – human beings – being forgiven by God. The popular hymn “Amazing Grace” was written by John Newton, a former slave trader, who believed that he had been forgiven. By the grace of God he turned his life around and became an abolitionist. Newton found God’s grace to be quite amazing, considering that it “Saved a wretch like [him]!” God’s grace is amazing, and yet it’s unnecessary for us to think of ourselves as “wretches” today. That’s been overdone. So let’s turn the tables, and focus on what it means for us to forgive others. In the reading from the gospel of Matthew that we heard today, Peter comes to Jesus with a question. Peter asks how many times he ought to forgive another member of the church. This is a little confusing because, there was no church during Jesus’ lifetime. We can assume that Matthew is doing some back editing, appropriating Jesus’ words to apply to the church. This comes in a section of teaching on behavior in the church, or the faith community. We might suppose that Jesus is talking about his vision for the community of followers he is creating. This section begins with advice what to do if another member of the church sins against you. This isn’t a quick admonishment to “forgive and forget” this is no “cheap grace.” The aggrieved member is supposed to go and confront the offender. If they listen, then the offender can apologize, ask for forgiveness, and agree to mend their ways. If not, then one or two others should go along from the church and confront the offender together. If they are still unapologetic, things get serious. The whole church is told about the situation, possibly the offender is removed from the community of faith because they refuse to acknowledge their offense. Now Peter asks Jesus, “isn’t there a limit on how many times this can go on?” Effectively, Jesus says “no.” The offender is held accountable, apologizes and swears to do better. This could go on 77 times, that is infinitely. The disciples may remember an earlier time when Jesus taught them to pray to God: “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” They are to forgive in the same proportion and with the same frequency that God forgives them. Jesus goes on to tell a parable. It’s a hyperbolic story in which a King forgives the debt of a servant who owes him a fortune. Unfortunately this servant does not learn from the experience. He goes and seizes someone who owes him a much smaller sum, threatening to throw him into prison. The King is angry over the servant’s un-forgiveness, and so backs down on the forgiveness of his debt. The King severely punishes this offending servant. This is not a particularly inspiring story! But there is something we can learn from this story. Note which way forgiveness is directed. This tells us a lot about what forgiveness meant in Jesus’ time. The King forgives the servant who owes him a great deal of money. The servant has no need to forgive the King, who is keeping him as a servant. Perhaps he is an indentured servant trapped in a cycle of poverty. Now the servant is not supposed to forgive the King, but he is supposed to forgive his fellow slave who owes him a smaller sum of money. The direction of forgiveness goes from the one with more wealth and power toward the less powerful. Not the other way around. This is the notion of forgiveness in time of the New Testament. The “Book of Joy” by Douglas Abrams documents a conversation between the Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. These two deeply spiritual and learned men talk about what they perceive as the pillars of joy. It not surprising to learn out that Forgiveness is one of those pillars. The chapter of the book on this topic is entitled “Forgiveness: Freeing Ourselves from the Past.” Archbishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama give some powerful examples of forgiveness, from their own experience of deep hurts and wounds. The Archbishop talks about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was formed in South Africa when apartheid was ended. The idea of the commission was to seek out the truth of the atrocities that had been committed during the struggle for black liberation in South Africa. The intent was forgiveness and reconciliation, but first the truth needed to be told. A mother who came before the commission had seen “the body of her son being dragged … like the carcass of an animal.” Her son had been betrayed to government forces. When the mother saw the perpetrator during the commission, she took off her shoe and threw it at him. The meeting had to be adjourned, but during the break the woman came around, saying to the man “My child, I forgive you.” [1] The archbishop asserts that “no one is incapable of forgiving and no one is unforgivable.” The Dalai Lama had witnessed a similar act of forgiveness from a man, Richard Moore, who was blinded by rubber bullets in northern Ireland as a child. When this man grew up, and had a family of his own, he sought out the British soldier who had shot him so that he could offer his forgiveness. [2] The archbishop sums up our need to forgive in this way “Without forgiveness we remain tethered to the person who harmed us. We are bound to the chains of bitterness, tied together, trapped. Until we can forgive … that person will hold the keys to our happiness … when we forgive … we become our own liberator.” [3] And so I wonder: Who is holding the keys to your happiness? The parable Jesus provided describes a more powerful and wealthier person forgiving a poorer person. The problem arises when the poorer person was unforgiving toward someone less powerful than himself. Surely, it is not difficult to forgive people who borrowed from us and cannot pay us back, especially if that loan didn’t mean much to us anyway? Forgiving someone I lent a book to and they didn’t return it, isn’t too hard. “Consider it a gift,” I think. Perhaps that book will be more valuable to them than to me. Forgiving an offender who has some power over us is so much harder. How can you forgive your bully, your abuser, a political leader who enacted policies that ruined your life, the boss who fired you, the local gossip who damaged your reputation, or your spouse who left you for another lover? Bullies and abusers are not worthy of cheap grace. Some say that while someone like this has power over you it is impossible to forgive. And yet the examples from the Book of Joy tell of people forgiving those who had power over them. Those who say it is impossible to forgive someone who has power over you are forgetting the power of forgiveness. Forgiving a bully, or an abuser or a spouse who cheated on you, does not mean letting them back into your life. It does mean releasing yourself from the hold they have over you. Forgiveness must be done from a safe place. Perhaps it must be brokered by a moderator who will keep the victim from harm. In some cases someone may need to undergo trauma therapy before they can even begin to forgive. Perhaps this kind of forgiveness is not even done in person, but in the heart. Over this past summer, I took further pastoral education with a focus on the spiritual toll the pandemic is taking on us all. One of the tasks for the class was to put together spiritual resources for the COVID pandemic, such as songs, poetry, scripture passages and prayers, for each of the aspect of spiritual health. The one aspect that really stumped me was forgiveness and reconciliation. I realized that I am finding it immensely difficult to think about forgiving our leaders their mistakes and lack of transparency during the pandemic. I struggle with forgiving those who walk around without masks, those people who gather for large parties without a thought, and anyone who refuses to take quarantining seriously. Even though it may not make sense, I blame all these people for the fact that I cannot see my parents, that my son’s wedding was postponed this year, that we cannot gather to worship, that many of us remain isolated and alone … not to mention the fact that 200,000 Americans have died. And I know I am powerless over these people and circumstances. I worked with my supervisor on the problem of finding a spiritual resource for forgiveness during COVID. We both agreed that it will take some time to forgive those we hold responsible. And I can’t begin to imagine what how much more difficult that would be for families and communities who have been affected much more severely by the disease. Some “truth and reconciliation” will be needed when “all this is over”. Finally I realized the resource I was looking for was the song “You Can Do this Hard Thing” by Carrie Newcomer. [4] We heard the song during a service back in the spring. This song was performed by a virtual choir to encourage people during shelter in place. But, it could be the song we need to remind us that yes “we can do this hard thing.” In order to be whole and to release ourselves from those who hold the keys to our happiness. We can do this hard thing: we can and we need to forgive. May all God’s people say, Amen [1] His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams, “The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World”, (New York, Avery, 2016), 229-230 [2] Ibid, 232 [3] Ibid, 234-235 [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHxRsSSeNBo
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