A Fourth Church Sermon by Victoria G. Curtiss

March 8, 2009 | 6:30 p.m. Vespers

The Challenge of Forgiveness

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 22:23–31
Matthew 6:9–15
Luke 17:3–5

Robert Coles, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard, remembers a seminar conducted by Anna Freud. The case study was a woman who had a lifelong habit of making everyone around her very unhappy. She had driven her husband and son crazy, spent her own unhappy life going from therapist to therapist, and kept her own family in a constant state of turmoil and conflict.

Dr. Freud asked at the end of the presentation,

What would we want for this old woman? I don’t mean psychoanalysis. . . . This poor old lady doesn’t need us at all. She’s had her fill of us. She’s been visiting one or another of us for years, for decades. . . . What she needs is forgiveness. She needs to make peace with her own soul. There must be a god somewhere to help her, to hear her, to heal her. We certainly aren’t the ones who will be of assistance to her.

Robert Coles reflects, “When will some of us learn that . . . on our knees, in prayer, we might at last find God’s forgiving smile?” (Harvard Diary, cited in “Love’s Extravagant Demand,” a 16 September 1990 sermon by John Buchanan).

Forgiveness has a transforming power. Sometimes the power of forgiveness catches our nation’s attention. In the fall of 2006, a man named Charles Roberts shot eleven girls in an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County and then killed himself. It shocked the nation. But just as astounding was how the Amish community responded. Even before the funerals of the girls were planned, the grandfather of one of the victims went with others from the community in search of Roberts’ wife and children. They hoped that family would stay in the community so they could care for them. They let Roberts’ parents know they had forgiven their son. Many of the Amish attended Roberts’ funeral, and they invited the Roberts family to attend the girls’ private funerals. During one such funeral, the presiding minister quoted a grandfather of the one of the girls, who told the children, “Forgive. Forgive as God forgives us.”

In South Africa, the system of apartheid included rape, abduction, imprisonment, torture, and killing. It could have sown the seeds for many generations of violence and hatred to come. But in contrast to places like Bosnia, Kosovo, and Northern Ireland, South Africa has amazing stability. This is attributable to remarkable leaders such as President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who led the country in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process. The nation needed healing, which would happen only by helping people overcome what had been done to them or what they had done. Reconciliation was made possible by uncovering the truth of what happened and by providing a way for victims and survivors to tell their stories and be heard. Full truth was only going to be disclosed if the perpetrators told it, and that would happen only if they received amnesty. Rather than a form of justice that sought retribution, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission pursued a form of justice that led to restoration. Forgiveness in the form of amnesty allowed the transformation of a nation to begin.

Few of us have faced such major wounds as those inflicted by violence. But all of us have been wounded. Often those who wound us are people whom we love and who love us. Priest and author Henri Nouwen wrote, “When we feel rejected, abandoned, abused, manipulated, or violated, it is mostly by people very close to us: our parents, our friends, our spouses, our lovers, our children, our neighbors, our teachers, our pastors. . . . We cry out, ‘You, who I expected to be there for me, you have abandoned me. How can I ever forgive you for that?’” (Bread for the Journey, January 28).

Even late in life, after those who wounded us have long since died, we might still need help to sort out what happened in those relationships. Presbyterian elder and professor of psychology Everett Worthington Jr. wrote,

When we are hurt, or offended, we cover our tender hearts to protect against further “heart attack.” Underneath the cover . . . can come pain, memories, and flashbacks. If we are honest with ourselves, we reluctantly admit that in the late show that plays in our mind, we often watch reruns of [rejection], hatred, anger, and fear. Worse yet, these images and thoughts do not always intrude forcefully. We too often invite and indulge them. (“Unveiling Forgiveness,” Presbyterian Outlook, 26 March 2007)

“Forgiveness,” he went on to say, “is the force in our heart that tries to break out from under the veil of un-forgiveness that comes from a sense of entitlement and self-importance.”

But how do we become forgiving people? It helps to understand what forgiveness is and is not. People often assume that “to forgive is to forget.” But it’s more accurate to say, “Remember and forgive.” Forgiveness begins with a remembering and a moral judgment of wrong, injustice, or injury. Forgiveness is not acceptance or condoning, which turn a blind eye to wrongdoing. Neither is forgiveness the suppression of negative feelings. It cannot be reduced to simply a kind of naïve attitude shift, nor is it possible by sheer force of will.

Christian forgiveness is an act, a “loosing” in the words of Jesus, which, at its fullest, requires a Spirit beyond us. When a reporter asked a family member of one of the Amish girls who was murdered how she could forgive, she answered, “With the help of God.” Forgiveness is primarily a response to God. While forgiveness may be glad for an apology, it doesn’t need or wait for the apology. The only people we can really change are ourselves. Forgiving others is first and foremost healing our own hearts.

Henri Nouwen wrote, “The great challenge is to acknowledge our hurts and claim our true selves as being more than the result of what other people do to us. Only when we claim our God-made selves as the true source of our being will we be free to forgive those who have wounded us.”

Forgiveness is choosing not to act with vengeance. This differs from “Do unto others what they have done to you.” Forgiveness aims at the renewal of human relationship.

It involves empathy and compassion for the other’s humanity. A political philosopher, Jeffrie G. Murphy, wrote, “I once heard a boy say, after learning that the class bully was in fact a victim of child abuse, ‘That takes all the fun out of hating her.’”(Donald W. Shriver Jr., An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics, p. 8).

Forgiveness can come when we realize that there is nothing in our neighbor that we do not recognize in ourselves, when, as Henri Nouwen put it, we can say, “In my heart I know his yearning for love, and down to my entrails I can feel his cruelty. In [her] eyes, I see my plea for forgiveness and in [her] hardened frown, I see my refusal. When he murders, I know that I too could have done that, and when [she] gives birth, I know that I am capable of that as well” (With Open Hands, p. 104).

We long for perfect love. We have to forgive one another for not being able to give or receive that perfect love in our everyday lives. Our many needs constantly interfere with our desire to be there for the other unconditionally. Our love is always limited by spoken or unspoken conditions. Nouwen wrote, “What needs to be forgiven? We need to forgive one another for not being God!”

To forgive another person from the heart is an act of liberation. We set that person free from the negative bonds that exist between us. We say, “I no longer hold your offense against you.” But there is more. We also free ourselves from the burden of being the “offended one.” As long as we do not forgive those who have wounded us, we carry them with us or, worse, pull them as a heavy load. The great temptation is to cling in anger to our enemies and then define ourselves as being offended and wounded by them. Forgiveness, therefore, liberates not only the other but also ourselves.”(Bread for the Journey, January 26).

When we forgive our parents for their divorce, our children for their lack of attention, our friends for their unfaithfulness in crisis, our doctors for their ill advice, we no longer have to experience ourselves as the victims of events we had no control over. Forgiveness allows us to claim our own power and not let those events destroy us; it enables them to become events that deepen the wisdom of our hearts. Forgiveness indeed heals memories. (Bread for the Journey, January 29).

When Jesus taught his disciples how often they should forgive another—seventy times seven—they were amazed and responded, “Increase our faith!” Forgiveness is, indeed, an act of faith. It is not easy, and may take time and much prayer. We need to rely on God to heal and transform our hearts. But because of God’s forgiveness of us, we can be at peace in our souls. Jesus lived for us; Jesus died for us; Jesus rose in power for us; Jesus prays for us. We have been given the grace to say, “In the name of God you are forgiven.” Let us be such instruments of God’s love.