Sermons

Sep 11 - The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

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It’s good to be back home. I’ve thought of you often over the last 2 weeks as we’ve all been deeply affected by the disaster in New Orleans. I’ve thought especially about those of you who are from that part of the country or who have loved ones there. I’m also mindful that today is the 4th anniversary of the terrorist attack on New York City. For both these reasons, some of us may come to worship today with a heavy heart.

And so it is remarkable that our readings today are all about forgiveness. In particular, they tell us that God’s forgiveness of us is linked together with our capacity to forgive others. And Jesus speaks of forgiveness without condition, without end.

Peter, perhaps wanting to put some limits on Jesus’ call to unbounded love, suggests that 7 times is the magic number. After that, No more forgiveness for you! But Jesus responds, no, 70 times 7, Peter; which is biblical speak for an unending number. Never stop forgiving, if that’s what is needed. Never say That’s it, I’ve had it, you’ve used up all your chances!

Jesus then draws a correlation between our capacity to forgive others and our capacity to receive God’s forgiveness for ourselves. He tells a story about a slave who is forgiven much by his master, but who then turns around and refuses to forgive his brother. Jesus did not make up this correlation; he learned it from his scriptures, maybe even the one we heard as our first lesson today: Does anyone harbor anger against another, and expect healing from the Lord? If one has no mercy toward another like himself, can he then seek pardon for his own sins? Jesus, of course, summed up this basic truth in his teaching on prayer, which we repeat weekly, if not daily: Forgive us our trespasses/sins as we forgive those who trespass/sin against us. It’s a scary thought, that we might only be able to receive as much forgiveness as we give.

So we’ve been given a tall order today. How do we forgive others – even terrorists and disaster relief leaders, not to mention our own friends or relatives - multiple times, without setting a limit on our love? How do we hope to be forgiven if it is so difficult for us to forgive others?

It is so difficult for all of us to forgive, that we tend to resort to one of two extremes. At one extreme we rush to forgive, bypassing some important things along the way. As a Jewish friend used to say to me You Christians are too quick to forgive; we Jews take a little more time. We don’t want to condemn anyone, so we put on a happy face and pretend everything’s alright when it isn’t. This isn’t forgiveness; it’s denial.

At the other extreme we withhold forgiveness altogether, because we believe that the other must first take responsibility for what they’ve done and repent of their sin. Or maybe we just feel that certain things are humanly unforgivable. And so we hold on to our principled resentment forever.

Real forgiveness, the kind our scriptures speak about, is indeed humanly impossible. It is only possible through grace, and we can only access this grace through a spiritual process. Think of this spiritual process as a cultivated outlook towards others (and ourselves), a point of view that, with God’s help, we can have. I’ll share with you three things we can pray for, to cultivate this point of view: accountability, understanding, and letting go.

First, forgiveness begins with accountability. This is where my Jewish friend is right. We shouldn’t shortcut the process of forgiveness. Jesus taught his disciples to forgive endlessly, yes, but first he taught them to hold one another accountable.

Perhaps you remember last week’s gospel. It consisted of the verses that immediately precede the ones we heard this morning. He said that if a brother sins against you, go and talk to them about it; if he doesn’t listen, take two or three others with you and speak again; if he still doesn’t hear you, take the matter into community; if that fails, exclude him from the community.

So sometimes accountability is tough; it can lead to exclusion. We don’t have to stay in active relationship with those we forgive – sometimes it is necessary to divorce, to get a restraining order, to put someone in prison, to separate ourselves from those who would harm us. But we’re still called to forgive.

Only after Jesus talks about accountability does he then say And you must also forgive, 70 times 7 times, if necessary. But the accountability of which Jesus speaks is unlike the kind we often employ. It is about the other’s behavior, not their identity as a person. Jesus named sinful behavior; he never condemned someone in their personhood.

When someone slights us or speaks to us insensitively, when someone tries to cheat or deceive us, it is our business to say you spoke unkindly; you lied to me. This kind of judgment is a spiritual discipline; it is called discernment, given from God. It is not our business to conclude therefore that their behavior shows that they are a terrible person, a liar, an abuser with a mean and wretched heart. That kind of judgment belongs to God alone.

Similarly, it is our business to pursue terrorists, to try to bring them to justice. It is our business to demand accountability from failed leaders in the wake of a badly botched disaster relief effort. It is not our business to then enter into God’s territory and think or speak of terrorists or politicians or anyone else as evil people, unworthy of anything but contempt or elimination.

By the same token, it is not even our business to judge the quality of our own heart, the worth of our own person; that is God’s concern, not ours. Our concern is the spiritual exercise of discernment about our own behavior, holding ourselves accountable for what we do and don’t do.

Second, in order for us to exercise this accountability for behavior, understanding is critical. Understanding helps us to see other individuals who have harmed us, public figures whose actions we abhor, violent Muslim extremists – why, even ourselves – as fallen, imperfect, foolish, deluded, damaged people who all have histories that have made us live the way we do. We may not have excuses for sin; but we certainly have reasons.

And so, with understanding, we might wonder how the other who harmed us was originally hurt, how they ended up making the choices they do. This understanding then opens the way for compassion, because we know that any harmful action is a result of brokenness, and any form of brokenness deserves compassion. We know that God understands our limitations, our delusions, all the history that provides reasons we sin as we do. We know that God knows all this, and still has compassion for us. That’s the spiritual outlook God asks us to take towards others. Even if we don’t know specifically why they act as they do – and we never will, really – we can at least remember with compassionate understanding that they, like us, have a history that has shaped them.

Third, the spiritual process of forgiveness involves letting go. As someone whom I was reading recently put it, Forgiveness is giving up on having had a different past. I would add to that Forgiveness is giving up on someone being different than they are.

Think about this for a minute. What would it be like to stop wishing that things had been different for you, that certain events hadn’t happened, that others hadn’t done what they did to you, that someone could and should be different than they are, that you should be different than you are? What would it be like to give all that up? You can’t change the past. You usually can’t change another person. You can’t even really change yourself, fundamentally. What would it be like to stop wishing and hoping for things you’re not going to get? What would be left?

Contrary to what we imagine, we aren’t left without hope. We aren’t left in resignation, not caring about whether others sin or harm people. We aren’t left with a fatalistic sense that personal transformation is impossible.

Instead, we are left with a fresh start every day. If we have let go of our fixed ideas about what kind of person the other is and should be, if we let go of who we think we are and should be, who knows, maybe we’ll see things as they are. Maybe we’ll see ourselves and others as God sees us, and allow a fresh start to take place today. Surely this is forgiveness.

It is possible to forgive others and to forgive ourselves, with God’s help. But we must be willing have our change our point of view changed, so that we approach things from a spiritual perspective, not just a reactive human one. To access this divine point of view, I believe we must pray for the discernment to exercise accountability, the compassion to understand, and the self-denial to let go.