Sermon: The Art of Forgiveness

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The Art of Forgiveness

By Charles Rush

April 10, 2005

ile we are on the subject of forgiveness, there is the small matter of my no-show for Church last week…. Whew! I was in the Atlanta airport, trying the patient approach. I told the ticket agent I had to get on a 7 a.m. flight to preach- all full- and he looks at me and says "You can tell your congregation it was an act of God Reverend." What I actually said was "This is not helpful". What I was thinking inside was "You get me on that flight or I'll show you an act of God."

Let me tell you, waking Julie up at midnight, parents of small children, to inform her that I'm not going to be in Church and she has to read a sermon that she has never seen cold in a few hours… Not pretty. And what do you say, "Well, I know it's short notice but you've got some great material to work with." … It is one of the simple joys of having a solid staff that things get pulled together and it all does work quite in spite of …I believe that Uncle Chuck is going to be babysitting in the near future while Julie and Jeff go out to eat on me.

Forgiveness, what an important subject…

Perhaps you saw the photo and article 10 days ago on the front page of the New York Times that features the Grand Imam of Jerusalem, the two Grand Rabbis of the biggest Orthodox movements, in the middle the Archbishop of the Armenian Church, the Metropolitan of the Greek Orthodox Church, and the representative from the Vatican, all joining together for a meeting.

Now, there, I thought is a photo we desperately need to see. Unfortunately, the occasion for the meeting was the mutual condemnation of a proposed Gay Pride Festival in Jerusalem later this year. Let me get this straight. These same Spiritual leaders who have been unable to say a constructive word to 98% of their flock who are heterosexual and engaged in murder, suicide bombing, and the politics of hatred but they can come together to denounce the 2% of their flock who are homosexual and would like to march peacefully. Regardless of what you think about Gays, I can assure you they are not that important. We have bigger fish to fry.

I was reading just this week the writer Amy Wilentz quoting David Grossman from Jerusalem, "So many Israelis and Palestinians persuade themselves that the people standing before them are evil by nature and evil in essence, a sort of existential, almost cosmic evil, which turns against them out of a pure malice which has no rational justification… We are so mired in the distortion that we almost do not really register the actual price we are paying for living through four generations in a life parallel to the life we could have lived, the life we deserve."[i]

No, the picture we really need to see is this same group of Clerics from the 3 Major faiths brought together by someone of the Spiritual stature of Mohandas Gandhi. In fact, wouldn't it be wonderful if it was the Christians in the Middle of this group asking, in the words of the bumper sticker, "What would Jesus do?" Wouldn't it be great to see the Christians mediating between the Muslims and the Jews, doing the things that make for reconciliation, developing the capacity for forgiveness, that we might eventually establish the pressing need for peace.

I have a simple dream that one day Christians will be known for their expertise in this area. Right now, if someone were to keel over, someone would cry out, "Is there a Doctor in the house?" I keep hoping that one day, just when tensions are rising and it looks like a fight might break out, that someone will stand up and yell, "Is there a Christian in the house?"

In this season where we lift up the fact that God has reconciled the world to God, we are to become a people of reconciliation. That is principally our spiritual business, reconciliation. We are a reconciling people. And in that context. Forgiveness is important. It is a critical spiritual virtue in making reconciliation possible.

This is the part of Christianity that I find the most engaging and realistic. It is not a spirituality of perfection. It is a spirituality that makes amends and keeps growing. It recognizes that we a difficult and compromised people, that we hurt one another, but that we are in this life together, and that we have to figure out a way to go on.

Some people hurt us because they are selfish boneheads who are indifferent emotional dolts. But, it is also the case that we hurt each other in every profound relationship. Any great friendship, any great marriage, comes to these junctures- and they are often the great growth moments in our lives- where we do something hurtful and destructive not intentionally but we just do and we have to figure out a way to get beyond that. It doesn't mean that we excuse it. It doesn't mean we forget it. But we have to resolve it, let go, of it if we are to be reconciled and take the relationship to the next level.

I love these last couple chapters of the Gospel of John. John depicts Jesus as pretty esoteric in some of the earlier chapters, but here at the end, Jesus becomes very concrete. John depicts the resurrection as a kind of postlude, a couple of scenes at the end of the movie after the credits. Jesus comes back to the disciples and says, "One more thing, don't forget about forgiveness." Then he comes back again and says, "Did I remember to tell you about forgiveness." Finally, he says, "If you can't remember anything else, hang on to forgiveness."

In real life, the actual act of forgiveness is neither simple, straightforward, or done at once. Profound hurts, resentments, and disappointments take a long time to work through and get over.

Perhaps you've started Anne Lamott's most recent book Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.[ii] She writes:

"In a superhuman show of spiritual maturity, I moved my mother's ashes today from the back of the closet, where I'd shoved them a few weeks after she died." When she got the ashes back in a little box, the funeral home had misspelled her mother's name, not Norah, but Noraht.. and she had been calling her Noraht ever since.

"I put the brown plastic box in the closet as soon as it came back from the funeral home, two years ago, thinking that I could at last give up all hope that a wafting white-robed figure would rise from the ashes of my despair and say, "Oh, little one, my darling daughter, I am here for you now." I prayed for my heart to soften, to forgive her, and love her for what she did give me- life, great values, a lot of tennis lessons, and the best she could do. Unfortunately, the best she could do was terrible, like the Minister of Silly Walks trying to raise an extremely sensitive young girl, and my heart remained hardened toward her.

"So I left her in the closet for two years to stew in her own ashes, and I refused to be nice to her, and didn't forgive her for being a terrified, furious, clinging, sucking maw of need and arrogance. I suppose that sounds harsh. I assumed Jesus wanted me to forgive her, but I also know he loves honesty and transparency. I don't think he was rolling his eyes impatiently at me while she was in the closet. I don't think much surprises him: this is how we make important changes- barely, poorly, slowly. And still, he raises his fist in triumph.

"I've spent my whole life trying to get over having had [my mother] for a mother, and I have to say that from day one after she died, I liked having a dead mother much more than having an impossible one. I began to call her Noraht as her nom de mort. I prayed to forgive her but didn't-for staying in a fever dream of a marriage, for fanatically pushing her children to achieve, for letting herself go from great beauty to hugely overweight woman in dowdy clothes and gloppy mask of makeup. It wasn't black and white: I really loved her, and took great care of her, and was proud of some heroic things she had done with her life. She had put herself through law school, fought the great good fights for justice and civil rights, marched against the war in Vietnam. But she was like someone who had broken my leg, and my leg healed badly, and I would limp forever.

"I couldn't pretend she hadn't done extensive damage- that's called denial. But I wanted to dance anyway, even with a limp. I know forgiveness is a component of freedom, yet I couldn't, even after she died, grant her amnesty. Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare- which is the tiny problem with our Israeli and Palestinian friends."

She goes through this ritual of taking the ashes out, only to realize that she just can't do it, and then she puts them back again for months that turn into years. This is the way we are, literally and figuratively. We go over and over these things, considering them from different angles, proposing different outcomes to ourselves.

Finally, one day, she reaches up into the closet and pulls down her Mother's purse that had been sitting right next to the ashes, lo these many months. It is an important moment, as she is ready to leaf through it. It is the time honored spiritual ritual of assessing, reflecting, and letting go that all of us go through with our loved ones- wading through the stuff of the estate, much of it things we haven't thought about for years.

She finds the Kleenex her mother used to dab the over abundant make up that was on her face; pads and pads of post-its that she used in a failed attempt to remember what it is that she was doing when dementia set in. There were receipts from the grocery store for pints of ice cream and cookies, this for a woman with diabetes, sneaking her last little act of defiance, wads of HMO receipts that she was supposed to deal with and never did. A huge tube of toothpaste that has a story with it unexplained. Finally she comes to the wallet. What will be in the wallet? What would that tell her about her place? What would yours right now say to the deceased? Would it be a blessing or an indifference?

After all the cards that identified her professionally and her organizations, there were several pictures of her grandchildren and one of her Mother as a striking young person of 21, the image I suppose that most of us think is the person that we really are… And that was it. Whatever, Anne needed, she didn't get it. And not enough resolution one way or the either.

She says, "I put the wallet back in the closet, next to my mother's ashes. I say a prayer to Jesus: "Here. Could you watch her a while longer?" I left the ashes there for another 6 months…"

Then another day when she was getting ready to go to the beach and she was worried about how aged she looked, she did something her mother would have done, she rubbed lotion on herself, and in so doing remembered that it would have been her mother's birthday a couple weeks ago. So she got down the ashes, wrapped them in lavender wrapping paper, stuck a plastic rose on the top and wished her mother a happy birthday. She writes:

"The thing is I don't actually forgive her much yet… but I'm definitely not hating her anymore. Grace means you're in a different universe from where you had been stuck, when you had absolutely no way to get there on your own.

"When it happens-when you stop hating- you have to pinch yourself. Jesus said, "The point is to not hate and kill each other today, and if you can to help the forgotten and the powerless. Can you write that down, and leave it by the phone? So I picked up my mothers's ashes, and put them on a shelf in the living room, and stood beside them for a while."

Forgiveness is never easy; it is rarely straightforward or done all at once. It is only occasionally unambiguous- we've done it, but we haven't done it as much as we should but more than we thought we had;

It is often observed by counselors and Ministers that the main benefits of forgiveness go not to the person who is forgiven but to the person who forgives. It allows us to get past the recurring internal videos of revenge and resentment. It allows us to get beyond the negative emotions that are clogging our life and move on.

In every profound relationship, we are going to have resentments and disappointments. At the moment of his crisis, all the disciples around Jesus just fled into the darkness. He was left alone to face an unjust trial, torture, and a slow agonizing death.

Peter, the one guy that professed the most zeal for Jesus actually denied that he even knew Jesus, not once but three times. And the last time, he cursed Jesus' name just to provide some cover of association. That kind of betrayal hurts deeply. Finding out your strong support is really weak and fearful is a disappointment that is difficult to get past or ever rely on again.

Jesus gives Peter three opportunities to reaffirm his love. Jesus models forgiveness for Peter in its mature form. At first Peter is confused by what is happening. But somewhere between the second time he said, "I love you" and the third time he said "I love you", I presume the spark jumped the gap. He remembered his betrayal; he was embarrassed; and he was forgiven.

Forgiveness is a spiritual skill. Learn to use it often and to use it well. Like Jesus said, "One more thing… don't forget about forgiveness." Amen.

[i] "The Wall Against Peace" by Amy Wilentz in the Nation (April 18, 2005) pp. 20 ff.

[ii] This is from the Chapter entitled "Noraht, Noraht" in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott (Riverhead Group: New York, 2005) pp. 45-55. Available from Barnes & Nobel and from Amazon.com. This exerpt and more of the work are also available online through Salon.com.