Ephesians 4:25 32 Forgiveness August 9, 2009 Forgiveness starts with being forgiven; so writes theologian L. Gregory Jones, Dean of the Divinity School at Duke University and author of this week s essay from Practicing Our Faith, the book we ve been reading in our Summer Sermon Series. Our topic for today is Forgiveness, and this is the working definition we re given: People are mistaken if they think of forgiveness primarily as absolution from guilt. The purpose of forgiveness is the restoration of communion, a reconciliation of brokenness. To forgive another means to provide a door of opportunity for reconciliation that is not just a restored relationship but a new, changed relationship between forgiver and forgiven. Crucial in forgiveness is the connection between receiving forgiveness from God and giving forgiveness to another, and one is not possible without the other. Forgiveness starts with being forgiven. If only we all knew that down through our bones. If only we knew that we were all forgiven, already, of all the wrong we think we carry then maybe we wouldn t take out our misplaced anger, our misguided frustration, our unfounded guilt on one another, and I mean that for us as individuals, and also for us as part of the human race. *** By now, you all know that I sometimes begin my sermon writing process by looking for justthe right picture for the bulletin cover. This week I found this striking picture of a sculpture with an even more compelling story behind it. I d like to share some of the story with you. This sculpture is located in front of the remains of Coventry cathedral, in England s Midlands. If you remember the history of the Second World War, on the night of November 14, 1940, Hermann Goering, chief of the Nazi Luftwaffe, unleashed nearly four hundred fifty bombers for the air raid on the city Coventry, long known as a center of industrial production for trucks and heavy machinery. Timed to the full moon and perversely code named Moonlight Sonata, the operation dropped five hundred tons of high explosives and forty thousand firebombs during eleven hours. It was the first attempt in history to destroy an entire city with a single air attack. Coventry suffered enormously. The bombing is said to have killed more than fourteen hundred people. When I first read that number I thought it was a misprint. I thought that number had to be much higher. That in itself says something of how twisted our minds have become when we read about wartime statistics. But I double checked, and the actual number of casualties may 1
well in fact be lower. The bombing of Coventry was but the first of many incendiary bomb strikes that took place in the Second World War. The numbers of casualties run dramatically higher as the war wore on. Between 8 and 10 thousand people died in the Allied bombing of the German port city of Kiel in 1942; some 15,000 people died in the serial bombing of Berlin in 1943, between and 30 and 40 thousand people died in the fire bombing of the city of Dresden, in 1945. That is not to mention the 140,000 people who died from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which recognized the 64 th anniversary of the bomb this past Thursday. So, it works out that one hundred times more people died in one night at war s end than at the beginning; unimaginable. So, now, in front of the shell of the Coventry Cathedral, is this sculpture, of two people embracing on their knees. A new, modern Cathedral was built, just behind the old one, and also on the site is located a new Centre for Reconciliation and Forgiveness; a place where people can come to terms with what happened there in the bombing and hope to make a new, fresh start. Since 1956, Coventry Cathedral has sponsored an international network of people devoted to reconciliation. This sculpture, symbolizing forgiveness, has been copied many times, and now stands in front of some 160 locations worldwide, where forgiveness and reconciliation has rooted out enmity and hatred. Significantly, the first location where an identical sculpture was placed was before the Cathedral in Dresden, Germany. Other sites are now in Northern Ireland, South Africa, Japan, Italy, Poland, Serbia and many, many more places. This sculpture is but a larger symbol of a greater truth, that forgiveness starts with being forgiven. Unfortunately, we all too often only learn the power of forgiveness until after harm has been done. We only find out the power of really reaching out to one another until after tragedy. Another example closer to home. On October 2, 2006, at the West Nickel Mines Elementary School, in Bart Township, PA, a heavily armed gunman took a classroom of school children hostage and killed three young Amish girls, critically injuring seven others, before taking his own life. It was a tragedy like the school shootings at Columbine, or Virginia Tech like all too many of these events that could be named, except for a key difference. The Amish community responded with forgiveness, instinctively and immediately, without question or hesitation. Their emotional reaction took the world s breath away. Shortly after the shooting, it was reported that Bishop Desmond Tutu sent an e mail to one of the victim's mothers with the words, 2
"Your reaction to the murder of your beautiful daughter is inspiring and awesome. Emily is smiling at you from on high. May God wipe the tears from your eyes... It is a privilege to have shared this planet with her and you." A foundation was quickly established to benefit the Amish of Nickel Mines, and in just a few weeks raised over 3 million dollars. Diana Butler Bass, the editor of our summer guidebook, wrote an essay reflecting on the nature of the Amish at Nickel Mines, summarizing it this way: "In the most straightforward way, they embarked on imitating Christ in acting as Christ, they did not speculate on forgiveness. They forgave." In other words, the bottom line is this: forgiveness, rather than retribution or vengeance, goes to the heart of how we should treat each other. Forgiveness starts with being forgiven and then forgives. In this regard, there are some very appropriate words to be shared from Paul s letter to fellow believers in the church of Ephesus, those who were still learning to walk in God s light, as we all still try to do. Hear these words, with open hearts: So then, putting away falsehood, let us all speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not hurt the Holy Spirit, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. For most of us, of all the spiritual practices, forgiveness is the most difficult. It s one that has to be learned again and again, because all the people in our lives with whom we have dealings are flawed and imperfect people, just as we ourselves are flawed and imperfect people, and the only way we are ever going to get anywhere is for us to forgive one another as God has forgiven us. Even those who most sincerely want to please God find the task of forgiveness a challenge of the highest order. Getting our hearts wrapped around it, and getting the message into our own thick skulls, is really one of the primary tasks of the church and for all who try to follow the way of Christ. *** 3
It s always an uphill struggle. All to often we allow feelings of resentment, anger or bitterness to define and consume our lives, even to our own destruction. The story of the two shopkeepers is a good example of what I mean. Two rival shopkeepers were across the street from one other, and whatever one did, the other would try to match, and if possible, exceed. One night, an angel of the Lord came to the first shopkeeper and said, The Lord has sent me to you with the promise that you may have one wish that, no matter how extravagant, will be granted to you. There is only one catch: whatever you receive, your rival shopkeeper will receive twofold. What is your wish? The first shopkeeper, thinking of his rival, responded: My wish is that you would strike me blind in one eye. Such self destructiveness in the service of seeing that someone else gets theirs creates a vicious circle. As they say, an eye for an eye makes everyone blind, in more ways that one. I think people have a hard time forgiving for a lot of reasons. The most important is that we usually start in the wrong place. We start with ourselves. "How can I forgive?" We think of ourselves as the center of our own universes, and we conclude that the only power we have to go on is the power that we generate. That idea falls fall short of the true source of forgiveness, where is resides in the heart of God. We can make peace, at least in our hearts, because we know that God has made peace with us already. The British author C. S. Lewis made this note in his journal, "Last week, while at prayer, I suddenly discovered that I had really forgiven someone I have been trying to forgive for over thirty years. This is divine mercy in its very essence. We discover that we have gradually forgiven someone else because we have gradually discovered that we ourselves have been forgiven. I have a final insight about what forgiveness means, on a very personal level through some words penned by the author Robert Benson in a little book titled Between the Dreaming and the Coming True, a book I find myself reading over and over again. Like a fair number of folks who grew up around churches, he says, many of us grew up feeling as though we had something to prove. And, all along the way has been the unstated assumption that the one who had doubts about us was God. The logical extension then, is that the primary activity of our lives is to be about proving ourselves worthy enough to earn our passage through the pearly gates. 4
What would be the odds that God the One who brought all creation into being, who set galaxies in motion, who carved out lakes and rivers, was going to throw me out with the trash because I did something that was unforgiveable even if it was something I couldn t figure out what it was it was still what had brought on punishment that I couldn t understand. The God who would do that has less mercy than your average adolescent kid. Yet that is what many of us were taught about God if not explicitly, then it was something we read between the lines; that we have all sinned, come up short of God s expectations, and then need to somehow overcome our deficit by taking it out on others by elevating ourselves over others, any way we can. The result of all this is then not a life of faith, but a life of fear; a life that doesn t so much lead to a life with God, but a life of avoiding God. It leads, as often as not, to a life of anxiety and suspicion and self centeredness and jealousy, imagining that others have it better than you do; for what ever reason, and trying to either get even or get back at them for it; which all means having a life of starting over, and over and over. The fact of the matter is that the great risk of life is not that we ll fail to qualify to be reunited with God. That much, in Christ, is guaranteed; of that we need not worry. All of us will be forgiven. In Christ, forgiveness comes in buckets. The risk in life is that we will fail to understand why it is we were sent here in the first place. That we will end up believing that we re being punished because Adam and Eve were barking up the wrong tree. That we will be so fearful of the stories of the wrath of God that we will mistake truthfulness for vindictiveness, and we will then somehow suppose ourselves to play God s role; meting out justice on our own very self centered terms, ignoring forgiveness and replacing it with our own egos. In other words, the biggest risk in life is to be so afraid of our own fears that we ignore and overlook the love and forgiveness that God has already poured out to us in Jesus Christ. Forgiveness starts with being forgiven. We are not here to prove anything to God because God has already given us everything in Christ Jesus, our Lord. We are here because God has something to share us with now and that is God s pure and constant love, that chases away fear, and instills love and forgiveness beginning with our lives today, and lasting into eternity. And maybe, just maybe, if we all knew this, deep in our bones, no bombs would fall, ever again. Amen. 5