May the words of my
mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
How is your Lent going? Lent is a good time for us to take a good look in the mirror and consider how we are doing. It is a time to journey into our souls and passions. And any part of healthy introspection will lead us to consider sin, both the sins we commit and the sins that have been committed against us. Our focus this morning will be forgiveness.
Before considering the Gospel which addresses forgiveness, the backdrop of Exodus is a helpful one. What we see in this particular passage is that God indeed hears our cries for redemption.
God longs for reconciliation and redemption for all of Creation. There is a divine yearning to respond to the cries of injustice and inhumanity. And, with all of my being, I believe and trust that just as God heard the cries of the Hebrew people, God also hears our pleas for reconciliation and justice. But justice and redemption do not exist in a vacuum, they come through the process of forgiveness.
As we all know, forgiveness is a two way street. Recall that Jesus, when he teaches his disciples to pray, doesn’t include much at all, but does include the line “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” First we’ll consider what it means to forgive, and then what it means to be forgiven.
When we forgive someone, there is an embedded moral judgment. You do not need to forgive the things that you can condone, those things don’t need our forgiveness. What needs to be forgiven are those actions which we cannot condone. Before we can begin to forgive someone, we must recognize that we have been wronged, that we have been sinned against. And so we must consider what sin is.
A good way to define sin is “that which strains relationships.” It was the Anglican priest John Donne who famously noted that “no man is an island.” We are creatures of relationship. And, invariably, we will strain and stress those relationships. Each time we make a decision, we are affecting someone else, and sometimes we are a bit short-sighted or selfish in our actions, and that is where sin exists.
When we begin the journey of forgiving those who have sinned against us, there must be some recognition and naming of that strained relationship. But it is important to remember that though we might recognize the sin, it is not our task to judge the sin, nor is it our place to dictate what justice look like. Judgment and justice belong to God.
When Jesus is speaking about forgiveness in today’s reading, he wonders “Those eighteen who were killed
when the tower of Siloam fell on them- do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No.” Jesus makes it clear that there is no cause and effect relationship between sin and divine punishment. But too often we suppose that there is. Someone recently told me the story of a mother in another church being confronted by a parishioner who told her that her 5 year old son’s cancer was due to their sins as parents. And as repulsive as that sounds, that sort of thinking is commonplace in our culture.
We see someone in prison and we assume that they’ve done something to deserve to be there, that their sin has lead to this punishment. And while sometimes that is the case, our overcrowded prison system is indicative of a culture that fails too many people. I recently heard a presentation about the Augustine Literacy program that operates out of the Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill. They remarked that several states base their long term prison system planning on the literacy rates of second graders. Is it really their fault for ending up in prison when our educational system has failed them? Sin is not about cause and effect, but it’s far too easy to think that it is. So let us remember in our work of forgiving, we are called to recognize sin, not judge it.
The second part of forgiving is that forgiveness requires forbearance. This is where the letting go comes in. We’re not very good at this part of it; we often make bad situations worse. In arguments, it is far too common to break confidences or bring up the past. Forbearing must be a part of forgiving. We all know that the concept of an eye for an eye is self defeating.
An angel came to a someone one day and told them that they could be granted any wish in the world, the only caveat is that their worst enemy would receive double. So at first they thought about asking for a bag of gold, but they changed their mind when they realized that their enemy would be getting two. Then they thought about asking for a farm, full of livestock and crops to live on. But they couldn’t stand the prospect of their enemy having a farm that was twice as large. And so the angel pushes them and says, “I need an answer; what is your wish?” And they think about it some more and say, “I wish to be blind, in one eye.”
If we seek vengeance and avoid forbearance, we will do irreparable harm to ourselves. If we do not let go of the sin, it will consume us. Now, we’ve all heard the phrase, “forgive and forget,” and let me make clear that is terrible theology. Nowhere in all of the Bible does God ever call the people to forget anything. In fact, one of the refrains of the Old Testament is “remember.” A better way to forgive would be to “remember and forgive.” When we forget, we are doomed to repeat our mistakes, and acting as if the wound never happened won’t lead to healing. For forgiveness to come, we must let go of the sin so that it does not grasp all of our life.
In forgiveness, there must also be empathy with the wrongdoer. Empathy, not sympathy. But trying to understand the sin is important. There are very few people that do evil for the sake of doing evil. Many of the sins that we do are done invisibly. None of us want children in third-world countries to be enslaved in sweatshops, but sometimes our clothing choices lead to that. It wasn’t an intentional sin. And many times, when we are wronged, the person wasn’t out to get us, they were just consumed with their own agendas that led to their sinful and selfish behavior. Perhaps they acted out of anger because someone else had wronged them. It’s a vicious cycle, and in forgiving, we must break the cycle and try to understand one another.
And finally, in forgiving someone else, we have to desire a new relationship. The theological word for this is “metanoia,” which literally means to change your mind. We go in a new direction. Without this step, inertia will control our relationship and we will not be able to live in forgiveness, but will be stuck in the past. And this is important to remember: the relationship is new, not the same one in which the sin strained. If we try to simply to return to the way things were, the sin will return, but forgiveness is about a new relationship. There are some sins that are so grievous that though there can be forgiveness, the relationship will never be what it used to be. Often we see this in sins of adultery- forgiveness is possible, but intimacy may never be again.
So those four elements are required to forgive- a recognition of sin without judgment, forbearance, empathy, and the desire for a new relationship. And that is only half of the equation of forgiveness; in addition to forgiving, we are also called to seek forgiveness from ourselves, from others, and from God. In the thought of the Old Testament, there was a process to being forgiven, and it started with the recognition of our own sin.
Admitting sin is something that we all struggle with. I think of people like Lance Armstrong, Bill Clinton, and Tiger Woods, all people who instead of admitting their sins, chose to hide them and only made their situations worse. I am a sinner. You are a sinner. It is time for us to stop pretending that we have nothing to hide. Our Church, our nation, and our world need more courageous people who are willing to admit their wrongs and seek reconciliation instead of self-preservation.
We also need to take caution that we don’t confuse excuse making with the admission of sin. If we think we have a good excuse for something, then why should we ask for forgiveness? But too often when we come to God, we are asking God to accept our excuses instead of our regrets. It is not easy to take ownership of our sins, but it is the first step in being forgiven.
And I should also point out that, for the most part, sin doesn’t fall entirely on us. We live amidst sin. Sin is a reality of living in this world, so we don’t need beat ourselves up over it. Self-loathing is not the path to forgiveness. But we do need to recognize that we participate in sin. As Jesus suggests in the Gospel, our fate will be sealed if we do not seek forgiveness. And Lent is a great time to do this soul searching. Part of being healed by God is in our willingness to show our wounded places to God and each other.
Hebrew thought suggests that remorse is the second step in being forgiven. Another word for this might be “compassion,” which is derived from the root meaning to “suffer with.” To be forgiven, there has to be an acknowledgement of the pain and suffering that we have caused others. Before St. Paul converted to Christianity, he was an oppressor of the early followers of Jesus and one day he was traveling on the road to Damascus when the resurrected Jesus appeared to him. His name at the time was Saul, and Jesus asks him “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” In this encounter, we see that Jesus identifies with those being oppressed and persecuted.
When we sin against our neighbor, we sin against God. When we grieve the heart of a loved one through sin, we grieve the heart of God. When we tell ourselves that we’re stupid, or ugly, or worthless, we are rejecting the God in whose image we are made. Our sins are not isolated. Now I’m saying this not to make you feel worse about sin, but as a way of encouraging compassion and remorse in seeking forgiveness.
Next,
we must desist from the sin. This is where repentance comes. The root meaning
of repentance is “to turn away.” Whatever the sin is, we put our back to it and
we move in a new direction. It is important to remember that forgiveness is not
the reward for change, but it is the source and condition of that change.
We amend our lives not because we feel sorry, but because we seek forgiveness.
The wisdom of the Old Testament then suggests that restitution is needed in forgiveness. We find this referred to in the Bible in examples such as, if you kill someone’s cow, you need to replace it. We can’t always fix the situation or undo it, but we can seek to make things right. As you might have picked up earlier in this sermon, I’m not a big fan of our criminal justice system. And part of that is because it is not a system built on forgiveness or that works towards reconciliation. Instead, it is a system of vengeance and judgment. But there is an ancient, and new-found, understanding of justice that is emerging known as restorative justice.
Instead
of justice being about punishment, justice is about metanoia, and forming a new
and healed relationship. Instead of focusing on the offender, this sort of
justice focuses on the victim and the community. In January, there was a
powerful article written in the New York Times called “Can Forgiveness Play a Role in Criminal Justice?” It tells the story of 19 year old Conor McBride who
killed his long-time girlfriend, Ann Grosmaire, after an argument. It happened
in Florida, so you’d expect him to be on death row. But instead, Ann’s father
recalls standing next to her hospital bed, hoping and praying that she’s wake
up and hearing a voice in his head saying “forgive him.” He said “no, no way,
it’s impossible.” But he kept hearing his daughter’s voice calling to him,
“forgive him.” It’s a long and complicated story because the legal system
didn’t know what to do with the forgiveness that Ann’s parents wanted to offer
Conor. They realized that in forgiving him, they found release for themselves
as well. Now Conor is still serving time in jail, because as we all know,
forgiveness does not mean release from the consequences of our actions. But
this restorative justice has given Conor the prospect of living a life with
meaning instead of being a murderer on death row; it gave Ann’s parents the
ability to be defined not as the parents of a murdered daughter, but as people
of hope. Restitution has been missing from our understanding of being forgiven,
but it is the vehicle in which grace enters the picture.
And finally, in being forgiven, we must make a confession. In Israel, this was done though a liturgical act. For us as Christians, it can be done through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or Confession as some call it. What is so powerful about this Sacrament is that forgiveness becomes an actual experience instead of a vague idea. It is often said that sacraments are the outward signs of inward and spiritual grace; sacraments are a way of feeling the presence of God. And I wonder what our lives would look like if we had more experiences of being forgiven. I invite you this Lent to consider the Sacrament of Reconciliation, even if you’re not sure if you’re ready for it, perhaps we can begin a conversation. The Israelites knew that for forgiveness to happen there had to be an act of confession once the sin was recognized, remorse felt, after the sin ceased, and restitutions were made.
Jesus offers us the interesting parable of the fig tree that isn’t producing fruit. Earlier in the gospel, Jesus says that we should “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” The tree didn’t, and was going to be condemned for it. But it is given another chance. Let us remember, God gives us the grace of another season to work towards repentance. But let us also remember that it is not an indefinite period of grace. The tree is expected to produce soon. Now is the time to forgive others. Today is an opportunity to practice forbearance and seek new relationships in forgiving others. This moment is a chance to start down the path of being forgiven. Forgiveness is a powerful instrument of grace and transformation in our lives and for our world. Our Father in heaven- forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Amen.
