The day came when the tank rusted and finally fell to pieces. He walked out of it with little regret. There was a man with a gun standing outside.

Transcription

1 Life to the Full: Forgiveness So today we re on forgiveness. I want to start with a parable that James K Baxter tells at the start of his Jerusalem Daybook. For those recently granted PR, Baxter was a poet who became a kind of hippie prophet in the late 60s and early 70s. Here s the parable. A certain man decided that life was too hard for him to bear. He did not commit suicide. Instead he bought a large corrugated iron tank, and furnished it simply with the necessities of life a bed to sleep on, books to read, food to eat, electric light and heating, and even a large crucifix hung on the wall to remind him of God and help him to pray. There he lived a blameless life without interruption from the world. But there was one great hardship. Morning and evening, without fail, volleys of bullets would rip through the walls of his tank. He learnt to lie on the floor to avoid being shot. Nevertheless, he did at times sustain wounds, and the iron walls were pierced with many holes that let in the wind and the daylight, and some water when the weather was bad. He plugged up the holes. He cursed the unknown marksman. But the police, when he appealed to them, were unhelpful, and there was little he could do about it on his own. By degrees he began to use the bullet holes for a positive purpose. He would gaze out through one hole or another, and watch the people passing, the children flying kites, the lovers making love, the clouds in the sky, the wind in the trees, and the birds that came to feed on heads of grass. He would forget himself in observing these things. The day came when the tank rusted and finally fell to pieces. He walked out of it with little regret. There was a man with a gun standing outside. I suppose you will kill me now, said the man who had come out of the tank. But before you do it, I would like to know one thing. Why have you been persecuting me? Why are you my enemy, when I have never done you any harm? 1

2 The other man laid the gun down and smiled at him. I am not your enemy, he said. And the man who had come out of the tank saw that there were scars on the other man s hands and feet, and these scars were shining like the sun. * * * I once heard a preacher defending the sermon. He d been told that sermons were a waste of time, because no one ever remembered them. Ah, he said, sermons are like meals. Over the course of your life, you might only remember a few of them, but nonetheless, they ve all helped to sustain you. One sermon I do remember was on forgiveness, and it was preached by my Dad a long time ago. For those who don t know my dad, he s a very gentle, mild-mannered man, and a lawyer. In the sermon he described how the worst parts of his experience as a lawyer all had to do with unforgiveness. Especially, he said, in cases where family members were fighting over their parents will. The bitterness, the failure to forgive, the unwillingness to let go, just eats people up. My dad, as I said, is a mild man. But there was a forcefulness, an authority in that sermon I ll never forget. If you don t forgive, as it says on our pewsheet, you re toast. You ll know someone like that. It might be someone who s become obsessional about spending their last $ on a court case. It might be someone who was betrayed by a good friend or a spouse. Might be a friend mistreated by their friends in childhood. Maybe the person is you. Now, every experience of being wronged is hard, really hard. None is ever solved by just snapping your fingers and pretending the wrong never happened. It takes time and prayer and wise counsel and love. It is always costly. But unless, in time, you can come to a place of forgiveness not denying the wrongdoing, but able to forgive the perpetrator it will eat you alive. The desire for revenge seems like sweet wine at first. But as you savour it, over time it turns into a poison, that will destroy you and not your adversary. 2

3 [[IN fact, you might be interested to know that that s not just talk. There s medical research out there which seems to confirm that. People who forgive others and let go of grudges are happier, healthier and live longer than those who are never able to reach that place of forgiveness. 1 ]] So, how can we get there, to that place of forgiveness? I mentioned a few things in passing: time, prayer, love. In today s pretty sobering reading, Jesus directs us to another one. Interestingly, today s reading follows on directly from last week s reading, the one about resolving conflict among disciples. Peter is clearly a bit disturbed by Jesus words there, so he comes to Jesus asking how many times he has to seek restoration with a person who s wronged him. And when Jesus says seventy seven times, he s basically saying, you have to keep on doing it. And then he tells the parable to explain what he means. Imagine that you owed your master ten thousand talents, or as some translations have it, ten thousand big bags of gold. It s a huge amount of money. We ve heard a lot of sad stories lately about people owing WINZ big money for emergency motel accommodation. This is way bigger than that. It s owing 160,000 years wages, something like $4,800,000,000. Well, says Jesus, that is basically where you stand in relation to God. If God was one to keep scores, you could never repay him. You d owe him for your life - how can you repay a life? You owe him for your sins - how can you repay the debt of sins? You couldn t and you can t. The only way you could get on an even keel with God would be if, well, if God paid the price for you. And hard though it is to understand, that is one of the ways that we understand what Jesus did, when he took on flesh, and came to live among us and die among us on the cross. The blood he shed there out of love for us is like the priceless gold cement with which God glues us back together and makes us whole. As we heard in 2 Corinthians, in the cross, God was personally present, to reconcile the world to himself. The whole chapter is marvellous. In Paul s exact words

4 ... in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us... So,we should be filled with gratitude and awe. We should be overflowing with the forgiveness we have received, and seeking to practise it wherever possible, seeking to live out the message of reconciliation, seeking to be Christ s ambassadors through him God is making his apeal. And that means that none of us can possibly think of ourselves as somehow more morally pure, or more deserving than our neighour, and so presume to stand in judgement on them. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. To stand on my own presumed self-righteousness and demand that another repay me would be to trample utterly on God s grace to me, would be to take far too lightly the cross of Christ. It s not always easy to grasp what it means that God in Christ has forgiven us. Not easy, until we see radical forgiveness in action. Then I think we get a glimpse of why human forgiveness echoes God s forgiveness. Then we see why to err is human but to forgive is divine, as the poet says. Because that kind of forgiveness always, it catches us by surprise. And in fact, it quite often makes the news, reported every time with a kind of breathless wonder that someone who has felt such deep hurt has nonetheless still been able to forgive. I googled something like forgiveness stories nz, and it led me to some really recent stories that I d heard in passing on the news over the last few months. There was the story of the two women, one of them 8 months pregnant, who d been killed in a car accident by a tourist driving on the wrong side of the road. Through the restorative justice process, the families of the two women had moved from fury and anger to a point that they were able to forgive the tourist driver, and able to urge him to forgive himself. 2 There was a story about Melanie Taylor, whose husband had been shot dead by Daniel Luff, 15 years ago. Remarkably, Melanie was able to forgive her husband s 2 4

5 killer, knowing that if she didn t, she would pass on her resentment and uptightness to her infant son. 3 But the story which had the most impact on me was one I don t remember having heard at all. It s the story of Iafeta Matalasi, Wellington father, teacher, golfer and rugby coach. 4 I found it both deeply moving and deeply painful to read. Forgiveness, remember, always comes at a cost. Iafeta is the father of four adult boys, including Sio, the youngest. Sio sounds like a real joker. He was the one who could get their disciplinarian father to back down, through his humour and good natured cheek. Sio was no angel, but he was the apple of Iafeata s eye. And then, in 2013, tragedy. Sio was killed by Mongrel Mob members in Petone. Iafeta s favourite son was dead. Iafeta is a Christian, but a grieving one, and an angry one. The newspaper article quotes extensively from his facebook posts over the next year or so; the time he learned news, when he marked the anniversary of Sio s death; when he attended the trial in the High Court. The posts don t hold back. Iafeta calls the killers scum and he promises that he will be waiting for them. He declares that even if God will forgive them, he will not. My grief grows deeper as days go by. My heart is broken to a million pieces, and I will never be the same again. He drafted endless Victim Impact Statements for the sentencing, full of threats and curses for the killers. May your passages and paths lie bleeding. In all this pain, the only reason Iafeta could see for living was to look after his orphaned grandchildren. Then one day, while settling the little grandkids in their bed, he saw what it would mean for him to hold on to the hatred. He found himself wondering if his desire for revenge put him on a level with the killers. And somewhere in his head, he seemed to hear Sio s cheeky voice, Dad you arsehole; just leave the people alone. He knew he had to forgive. He picked up his pen and started to rewrite the Victim Impact Statement. On the day of the sentencing, that was easier said than done. Iafeta had to fight the urge to rush the gallery, and attack the accused s supporters. But the urge kept meeting his

6 son s voice in his head, Dad, you re an arsehole. So he stuck with his rewritten statement, telling the court of his readiness to forgive. Here s what he says: "I stood up and read the impact statement. And the closer I got to [the forgiveness part of the statement], the warmer I felt. I lost my son... If I was going to do what I would have done, I would have lost myself, too It s still hard for Iafeta. Of course it is. But here s his facebook post for 1 January To all my families and friends...in all the corners of the globe. I remember each and every one of you on this very special day. Let us all put our minds and souls together and ask our Almighty God to deliver us from any evil, be with each and everyone of us, and guide us through this long and challenging journey we are on. To me, Iafeta s story says it all. Here is a life which says, loudly, clearly, painfully, beautifully, that to be forgiven, we must ourselves forgive, which says that the alternative is too horrible to bear. Many of you have carried great hurt in your lives, though I pray never as great as Iafeta s. But I think his experience is a powerful one for all of us, whatever we ve been through, whatever resentment we carry, whatever dreams of revenge we harbour. And so I pray also that his experience would be all of ours. May each of us learn the great cost of our forgiveness, so that we may truly forgive those who sin against us. * * * The day came when the tank rusted and finally fell to pieces. The man walked out of it with little regret. There was the man with a gun, standing outside. I suppose you will kill me now, said the man who had come out of the tank. But before you do it, I would like to know one thing. Why have you been persecuting me? Why are you my enemy, when I have never done you any harm? The other man laid the gun down and smiled at him. I am not your enemy, he said. And the man who had come out of the tank saw that there were scars on the other man s hands and feet, and these scars were shining like the sun. 6