Hope through Words
Luke 7: 36-50
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Rev. Daniel T. Hans
January 20, 2008

Some solutions seem so simple we ignore them as naively impractical. Building on that thesis, Robert Fulghum wrote the bestseller, All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.  "Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain but there in the sandbox at nursery school."
Some solutions seem so simple we write them off as impractical. The concept of forgiveness fits the heading of naïve simplicity. Forgiveness sounds wonderful, but how practical is it in our arm-twisting, cut-throat, heart-break world?  And yet, those who have wadded into the risky waters of mercy can testify to the healing and hope forgiveness brings. Healing of our hearts, of our relationships and even of our bodies is possible through the simple therapy of forgiveness.

I

Our passage from Luke is all about forgiveness and the hope we can have through simple words of forgiveness.  I'm convinced that all we ever really needed to know about forgiveness, we learned in Sunday school.  It was then and there that we first learned: "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" or "forgive us our sins as we also forgive those who sin against us." But, we have come a long way from those days of child-like faith. We are older and wiser now. We have experienced life.  And we carry scars of hurt and hate from the rejections, betrayals and injustices of an adult world.  The Sunday school sandbox is a quantum leap behind us.  Our resentment is a more dominant passion than mercy. Our relationships look more like the unforgiving world we live in than the forgiving Jesus we follow.

Whether the context is family or friends, work or church, our relationships need the second chance that forgiveness offers and our lives need the inner healing that forgiveness brings. Yet, the hurts and hates we acquire from the hard knocks of life tempt us to throw forgiveness back to the Sunday school sandbox.

II

The reason we don't practice forgiveness may lie in our misconceptions about it. To grasp what forgiveness is let's begin with what it is not. First, forgiveness is not conditional. Strings cannot be attached. Conditional pardon is a common power ploy within families.  A father might let an offending daughter back into the house but not back into his heart.  To say: "I forgive you so long as you do things my way from now on” is not the kind of new beginning we need. When strings are attached, forgiveness gets all tied up in knots.

Second, forgiveness is not cheap and easy.  Cheap forgiveness fails to address the wrong done.  Our desire to avoid conflict and make everyone happy can lead us to ignore injustice under the guise of kindness.  Imagine an abused woman who continually forgives her abuser, even though the man admits no guilt and persists in his abuse. Her "forgiveness" of him endangers her and her children. Forgiveness is not ignoring or excusing the wrong done.

Third, forgiveness is not resentful. To say: "I forgive you" but then to continue to bring up the offense is not forgiveness. While the notion "forgive and forget" sounds impractical, it carries great practical promise.  To forgive and forget does not mean to ignore the offense and its pain or to pretend it didn't happen. It did happen and we have the scars to prove it!  To “forgive and forget” is to start anew with a person, aware of the painful past but not controlled by the past.  Since we cannot change yesterday, we have but two options for dealing with our hurts and hates: Either we clutch them with the grip of resentment or we let go of them in the risky and costly freedom of forgiveness. The choice is ours.

III

The question is: Do we want to be healed of our hurts and hates? Or do we want to continue harboring resentment that causes us to suffer even more? I wrestled with the question during a period in my life when deep hurt and even hatred had taken up residence in my heart.  I have told this story before and I repeat it because the memory of the experience continues to hound me emotionally and sometimes cripple me spiritually.

At age two, my daughter was misdiagnosed as having cerebral palsy. She spent five months in daily physical therapy. The physician handling her case would not listen to us when we requested further diagnostic tests as her condition worsened. His mind was made up. Cerebral palsy was her problem and his clinic was her treatment!  Meanwhile, a malignant and fatal tumor grew in her brain. When the earlier diagnose proved faulty, I faced three options:

1. I could sue for malpractice, which I did not want to do as I felt my energies needed to be given to my daughter's illness. In hindsight, I have wondered if I should have sued. But I didn't.

2. I could have built an altar of resentment in my heart where I could repeatedly crucify that doctor. This I began to do until I realized I was the one who suffered in these rituals of resentment.

3. I could begin to try to forgive this man. I don't know why he wouldn't listen to us: maybe ignorance, probably arrogance. Even had he listened and the tumor been discovered sooner, it is doubtful my daughter would have survived her cancer. I do know that if I am to move on with my life and survive my loss my hurt and hate need the healing found only in forgiveness.

I had to choose whether I wanted to hold to hate or move to mercy.  I have to admit that 23 years later I still wrestle with these options.

If we are to be healed of our hurts and hates, if we are to be set free from our resentment, and if we are to live today with our hands not clutching yesterday but open to tomorrow, then we need a forgiving love in our lives. Most religions view forgiveness as essential for the life of faith. Jesus' radical forgiveness is the foundation for Christianity; Judaism's holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur focus upon atonement and forgiveness; Buddhism calls for ceaseless compassion even for one's enemies; in the Koran, the angel Gabriel tells Mohammed to set aside vengeful anger; and in the Hindu text, Bhagavad Gita, it says: "If you want to see the brave, look for those who forgive; if you want to see the heroic, look at those who can love in return for hatred." (US News and World Report, 12/27/04- 1/3/05, p. 86)

IV

To discover the source of forgiving love, we have to return to our childhood and to a lesson learned back then in Sunday school and repeated weekly in worship now, though seldom fully practiced. The simple lesson is this: "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."  Or as Jesus told the religious leader: “Whoever is forgiven much loves and forgives much.”  It begins with the conviction that we have debts and debtors.  We have sinned against others and others have sinned against us. Most of our hurts and hates result from our feelings that our debtor's debts to us are worse than our debts to them. What they did to us is far worse than anything we ever did to them. Whether this is true or not, we feel it and are wounded by the inequity of the iniquity.

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" contains a little that packs a big wallop. The word is "as".   Forgive us as we forgive.  The implication is not that we are forgiven by God only after we forgive others.  If such was the case then forgiveness would be an earned reward by human will rather than a gracious gift by divine will.  The meaning of "forgive us as we forgive" is that to be forgiven requires us to be forgiving. If we want to experience the joy of being a forgiven person then we must find the love to become a forgiving person. It is not a question of cause and effect.  The two go together: being forgiven cannot be separated from being forgiving.

However, in our moments of painful honestly, most of us will admit: "If my 'being forgiven' depends on my 'being forgiving', I'll forfeit 'being forgiven' so that I don't have to 'be forgiving'- not with him or not with her." So strong and deep are the hurts and hates we carry. Yet, in so doing we continue to suffer. Resentment is far more bitter than sweet.  Nursing grudges raises our blood pressure, depletes our immune system, makes us more easily depressed and stresses our body.

"Forgive us as we forgive" is not some cross-stitch slogan to insure happy hearts and homes. It is the desperate cry to God from people seeking a love that can survive in a world of great pains and deep scars where: parents abuse children, partners break life-long promises, companies reward loyalty with layoff, and little people try to make themselves big by undercutting those around them.
In such pain, we know our love is inadequate for the task. The love needed to "forgive us as we forgive" lies not in the ones making the request but in the One to whom the request is made. The love of God in Jesus Christ that offers forgiveness to us when we don't deserve it enables us to offer forgiveness to others when they don't deserve it.

While God forgives us instantly and completely, rarely are we able to forgive others instantly and completely. To be forgiven can occur today; to be forgiving takes a lifetime. But, to be forgiving can begin today and needs to begin today. A man on his deathbed told his wife, "You know how much I hated your brother for all the mean things he had done to me. I want you to go to him and tell him I love him and I forgive him. But I want you to wait until I am dead."   That's not good enough!

It is no coincidence that the words "forgive us as we forgive" come to us in a prayer. Prayer is the key to being forgiven and to being forgiving. Prayer takes us to God whose love is the power for forgiveness. Jesus could not have prayed on the cross: "Father, forgive them" had he not spent time in the garden of Gethsemane praying, "Father, your will be done."

My resentment over my daughter's misdiagnosis put me into a rage whenever I thought about that ignorant and arrogant physician. Then, for a time, I blocked out any thoughts about the man. It wasn't until I begin to think about him in the presence of God through prayer that I was able to deal with my hurt and my hate, to say the doctor's name and to ask, "Forgive me as I forgive."

Dutch Christian, Corrie Ten Boon, was imprisoned with her entire family in a Nazi concentration camp for helping Jews escape.  The experience left her scarred with hurt and hate. The hurt resulted from losing her entire family to the death camps. The hate resulted from the inhumane treatment by guards who sneered at the naked women as they took group showers and verbally assaulted them daily. After the war, Corrie began a ministry of preaching to scarred Europeans about God's love and forgiveness.

At a church in Germany, she spoke about how God forgives people whatever their sin when they confess and turn to him. After the service she stood face to face with a man who obviously had been touched by her message. He asked, "Fraulein Ten Boon, do you remember me?"  Remember him! She had spent years trying to forget him! He was one of her prison guards! "Yes, I remember you," she said coldly. With emotion choking him, the former Nazi asked, "Is it true that God can forgive me of all the horrible things I have done?" "Yes, God will forgive you as you give your life to him." "Oh, this is such good news!" he said with tear-filled eyes. "Fraulein Ten Boon, will you forgive me?"

Corrie stared at him and thought, "The question is not will I forgive you, but can I forgive you?" The answer was clear: NO! "No, I cannot forgive him. I don't have that much love." Yet, she knew, for the sake of both of them, she must forgive him. So she prayed silently, "Lord, I cannot love this man. I cannot forgive him. Give me your love so that through you I can begin to forgive him so he and I can find the healing we both need." Are we carrying hurts and hates from betrayals, cruelties and injustices? Are we struggling to try to forgive when forgiveness seems like post-doctoral coursework?  God wants to heal us of resentment and liberate us for new life. But God will not and cannot do so unless we want to be healed and to be free. Our healing and freedom begin as we begin to forgive. While our love is not strong enough for the task, we do have a greater love available to us.  Open our lives to God's love; let God love through us: and let God’s forgiveness move through us.

It sounds so simple we want to write it off as naively impractical.  But don't let that happen to something so important to our health, to our peace, and to our salvation. We learned all we need to know about forgiveness in Sunday school as we learned: "forgive us as we forgive."  Now, we must spend the rest of our lives putting that lesson into practice for Christ’s sake and for our own sake.

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