Gordon Wilson worked as a draper in a town in Northern
Ireland called Enniskillen. On Remembrance
Day, November 8, 1987, Wilson and his twenty-year-old daughter Marie went to
the center of their village to watch a parade that was to include the British
Legion and local police. They took a
position next to a tall brick wall.
Gordon asked his daughter, “Will you be able to see from here?” “Yes,” she replied.
Suddenly there was a tremendous explosion. The Irish Republican Army had placed a forty
pound bomb on the other side of the wall where Gordon and Marie were
standing. They were thrown forward and
to the ground by the force of the blast.
The wall collapsed and fell on them.
Gordon found himself buried in four to six feet of rubble. He was injured, but alive. Five or six people around him were already
dead. Marie, also buried in debris,
reached out for her father’s hand.
“Daddy, is that you?” she asked.
“Yes Marie, it’s me,” he responded, thinking to himself, “Thank God she
is alright.”
All of this took place in a matter of seconds. It was followed by a short period of complete
silence that quickly gave way to screaming coming from every direction; screaming
that was raw, naked, and terrifying.
Again Gordon asked his daughter, “Are you alright?” “Yes,” she said, but then she too screamed. Gordon was confused. Why was his daughter screaming if she was not
hurt? Again and again he asked her if
she was okay and each time she responded that she was fine. The last time he asked her, Marie said,
“Daddy, I love you very much.” Those
were her last words before slipping into a coma. Marie had suffered catastrophic injuries and
she died four hours later in a hospital.
How do you think Gordon Wilson would hear the gospel
reading we heard just moments ago? Peter
asked, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” “Not seven times,” Jesus responded, “but
seventy-seven times!”
Undoubtedly one of the other disciples had wronged the
great Apostle and he had forgiven that person.
The Pharisees taught that we are required to forgive the offenses of another
just three times and now Peter wanted some praise for his manifold and great
mercies. Jesus’ response told Peter that
he was just beginning to scratch the surface of what forgiveness looks like and
what it costs.
Most of us have not lost a loved one to an act of terror
and therefore might not be able to comprehend fully the agony and anger to
which it gives birth, but I suspect most of us would not condemn Gordon Wilson
if he said, “Forgive them?” Forget
it!” Still, you don’t have to lose your
daughter to a senseless act of brutality to know how difficult forgiveness can
be to muster.
It is my experience that the stranger far away and the
enemy close at hand are not the ones whose blows we find most difficult to
forgive because they are outsiders. We
do not give them access to our innermost being where pain cuts cruelest. It is the people we love the most and who
love us the most who are the ones who can hurt us the most. Those who are closest to us are the ones who
can cause the deepest pain.
Our greatest hurts come from those who love us, but
cannot love us in the way our heart desires.
It is our father, our mother, our brother, our sister, our spouse, our
children, our closest friend, our neighbor, our priest who can hurt us most and
be most hurt by us. In these primary
relationships our greatest joy and our greatest pain touch each other. Henri Nouwen, the Roman Catholic Priest and
author, wrote,
“The
great tragedy of human love is that it always wounds. Why is this so? Simply because human love is imperfect,
always tainted by needs and unfulfilled desires.”
Nouwen went on to say,
“Forgiveness
is the name of love among people who love poorly.”
If it is true that we love poorly, it is equally true
that we forgive poorly by substituting all manner of pretenders for the real
thing. Have you ever forgiven someone
saying to yourself, “Oh well, it is no big deal,” when in reality it was? Forgiving does mean denying your hurt and
suppressing your pain. In some
situations, we rationalize “I’ll just have to grin and bear it,” but
forgiveness bears no resemblance to martyrdom.
Sometimes we are willing to extend forgiveness with conditions attached
(i.e., “I forgive you as long as…”), but forgiveness does not mean putting a
person on probation. To forgive is not
to excuse bad behavior, saying for example “boys will be boys”). And to forgive, with the exception of small
indignities, is not necessarily to forget, like when we say, “I’ll just have to
pretend this little episode never happened.”
If forgiveness is not these things, what than is
it? Here are five things to ponder:
First,
forgiveness involves a conscious choice to release the person who has wounded
us from the sentence of our judgment, however justified that judgment might be. It represents our decision to forgo
resentment and retribution.
Second,
forgiveness also means giving up our expectation of emotional restitution. We want so badly for the person who offended
us to acknowledge the wrong, to do something to mend our hurt, and to repay us
for the loss of dignity and trust we have experienced. But in most instances, the person who wronged
us does not comprehend the destructive magnitude of their behavior and, in many
instances, never intended to cause us harm.
Here
is a third truth about forgiveness. The
Latin word for mercy, eleison, literally means “to unbind.” When we refuse to forgive, we hold others
firmly enmeshed in the bondage of our judgment.
When we forgive, we loose others from their connection to our anger and
vengefulness. This act also frees us
from the corrosive burden of anger and bitterness that eats away at the peace
in our souls. Thus, forgiveness is a
gift that allows us to untie the knots that connect us to the offender while it
unbinds the burden we carry inside.
Next,
forgiveness must have as its goal reconciliation. When we offer forgiveness, it is a one-way
action undertaken without conditions.
Reconciliation is a two-way street where forgiveness is offered and
received in such a way that restoration of a relationship is possible.
Finally,
forgiveness constitutes a decision to call upon divine love in order to heal
and rebuild a fractured relationship. As
we are drawn to God’s love we are compelled to imitate and express what we
find. Forgiveness is an important
manifestation of the love we find in God.
All of this suggests that forgiveness is a choice to
release another from internal judgment, to forego restitution, to loose
emotional binds, to seek reconciliation, and to draw on God’s love. I know that this is a lot to think about and
that it makes something which is deeply emotional and painful sound as simple
as following a Betty Crocker recipe.
Still, if today’s gospel tells us one thing, it is that we will not be
forgiven any more than we learn to forgive.
Which brings us back to Gordon Wilson. In an interview with the BBC, he described
his last conversation with his daughter:
“She held my hand tightly, and gripped me as hard
as she could. She said, ‘Daddy, I love
you very much.’ Those were her exact
words to me, and those were the last words I ever heard her say.”
Then, to the astonishment
of listeners, Wilson went on to add,
“But I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her
back to life. She was a great wee
lassie. She loved her profession. She was a pet. She’s dead.
She’s in heaven and we shall meet again.
I will pray for these men tonight and every night.”
The historian Jonathan
Bardon wrote of this, “No words in more than twenty-five years of violence in
Northern Ireland had such a powerful, emotional impact.”
Due in part to the
notoriety he received from losing his daughter, Wilson was elected to Ireland’s
Senate. He began to wonder if there was
something he could do to end the violence.
He decided to meet with the leaders of the IRA because he felt Maria’s
death would be in vain if it did not lead the country closer to peace. Sitting around a table with some of the very
people who executed the bombing that took Maria’s life, Wilson said this:
“I know that you have lost loved ones, just like
me. Therefore, on the grounds of our
common humanity and for the love of God, is there not a better way to achieve
our goals? Surely enough is enough. Enough blood has been spilled.”
Before his death in 1996, Wilson helped to found The
Spirit of Enniskillen, a trust
whose mission is to bring together Ireland’s youth in settings where they can
cross boundaries in order to learn from and appreciate one another.
I suggest to you that Gordon Wilson suffered an
incomparable loss. I also suggest that,
through the mercies of God, he was set loose from his deep loss. Always remember this: forgiveness is the name
of love among those who lover poorly.
