The Parable of
the Unmerciful Servant by Jan van Hemessen
I have had many pastoral
conversations in the thirty years I have been ordained. The most common involves a person in crisis
or who has a loved one in crisis, typically health related. The second most common conversation involves
some aspect of forgiveness. Almost
always the person coming to see me is struggling to forgive someone.
Jesus tells us to
forgive a person seventy times. He knits
forgiveness into the very fabric of the prayer he teaches us to say every
day. Hanging on the cross his dying
words are “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” He even dares to make God’s forgiveness of
our sins contingent on our ability to forgive others.
So we know we have to forgive,
but there are times when it is hard, really hard. In truth, it can be one of the most difficult
practices of the Christian faith. Over the course of my conversations with people, I have learned how wrong
assumptions about forgiveness contribute to why we find it so difficult to
do.
Here is one wrong
assumption I hear often: I am not very good at forgiving. Most of us are much better at it than we
realize because we do it all the time. You
are driving and the person in the car next to you does not see you and cuts you
off. When he realizes what he has done
he waves his hand to say I am sorry. All
is forgiven and you get on with your day and with your life. This kind of forgiveness happens all the
time.
Here is
another wrong assumption: if you forgive, everything will have to be like it
was before. Pope John Paul II visited
his would-be assassin in prison to tell him he forgave him, but the assassin
still remained incarcerated. I read the
story of a woman who shared something deeply personal with a trusted
friend, asking it to be kept confidence, only to have that friend turn around
and tell it to the members of their bible study group. The woman
eventually forgave her friend, but never again shared anything personal with
her.
Yes, you are
to forgive a person seventy times, but after the second or third time you need
to take steps to ensure the offender does not keep hurting you. There are
times when forgiveness involves moving forward by maintaining consistent
boundaries about appropriate behavior.
Another wrong
assumption: if you still feel hurt, pain, and/or anger then you have not really
forgiven the person. This week I watched
a TED Talk by Sammy Rangel. It is both
inspiring and difficult to hear. From the time he was three years old he
endured his mother’s unimaginably brutal and degrading treatment until, at the
age of 11, he ran away, lived on the streets, became a member of a gang, and fell
into a life of drugs, crime, and violence.
He goes to prison at 17 and comes out, in his words, more animal than
human. His life begins to turn around
the second time he is in jail as he participates in a counseling program and
confronts his past. Now in his forties, he
has forgiven his mother, but as he tells his story, it is obvious the experiences
he suffered still hurt.
Extending
forgiveness is just one step in what may be a long journey. Some hurts never go away completely, nor
should they. But you want to work toward
a point where they do not dominate your life. At the end of his talk Rangel
says this:
As you can see, getting to this point is still very difficult
to talk about… What I have learned is
although the details of our lives may be different the underlying process of
getting stuck or suffering in our parts of life is the same for all of us. We do not have to be victims of our
experiences or in the way that we tell our stories but interestingly enough,
stories are the only way out and it is us who creates those stories. We hold the power to change our stories and
what they represent. I invite all of you
to consider if it would serve you well to create a new story and a new path and
to please remember that the things that held you down will one day hold you up.
Today Rangel has
a Master’s Degree in Social Work and is helping young men and women get out of
gangs and hate groups.
Emmett
Aldrich, a mediator who uses Christian principles to help people resolve
conflicts, writes this:
Healing from a hurt may generally come with the passage of time, but you
must allow yourself time to reach the level of forgiveness appropriate for the
circumstances. Deeply emotional circumstances or extremely sensitive hurts…
will take time to move beyond the hurt before a person can even begin to
consider forgiving those who caused the hurt.
When you are deeply wounded
it is difficult to generate forgiveness, but your wounds won’t heal unless you
forgive. In his book There is No Future without Forgiveness,
Desmond Tutu tells the story of two former soldiers visiting the
Vietnam War Memorial. One veteran asks
the other, “Have you forgiven those who held you as a prisoner of war?” The other answers, “I will never forgive
them!” The first veteran responds, “Then it seems they still have you in
prison, don’t they?” In his book What’s
So Amazing about Grace, Philip Yancey writes, “Not to forgive imprisons me
in the past and locks out all potential for change. I thus yield control to another, my enemy, and
doom myself to suffer the consequences of the wrong.” When you forgive you let go of being a
victim and begin to live your life again.
This also is
from Emmett Aldrich:
Forgiveness is perhaps one of the most emotional and psychological
experiences we will ever encounter. It involves feelings of anger,
revenge, resentment, hurt, hostility, sadness, bitterness, retaliation or
retribution. At the same time, depending on whether we are seeking
forgiveness, are asked to forgive someone else or forgive ourselves, it can
also involve reconciliation, compromise, concessions, contrition, atonement,
repentance or redemption.
The reason God
forgives us is to create the possibility we can grow and become a better
person. We extend forgiveness to others
in the hope they will grow and become better people. Not to forgive locks the other person in his
or her mistake and none of us should be defined by our worst moments. The core of who we are is set at
baptism. Each of us is a beloved child
of God and we are related to one another as members of a household of
faith. When we are wronged this
relationship is damaged, and when we forgive we do our part to help it be
restored. This is what God does for us
and it is why God asks us to forgive each other.
I really struggled writing this sermon.
This past week I had two more conversations with parishioners struggling
with forgiveness, so I wanted the sermon to be a perfect and definitive
statement on how and why to do it. I
have come to see that forgiveness is not a mechanical act nor is there a recipe
for how to do it. Each hurt is as unique
as the person who experiences it and forgiveness is more an art than a
science. Please know if you are
struggling to forgive you are always welcome to come and talk with me.
