The Faces of Forgiveness

Scripture: Acts 7:54-60

Our faith assigns a high value to the virtue of forgiveness.

Jesus emphasized its importance several times in the Sermon on the Mount. He gave it a central place in the prayer that he taught us. He displayed it, and asked the Father for it on our behalf, in the very throes of death. Indeed, I do not believe that in the history of the world a more tragic or more beautiful sentence was ever uttered than this: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Our faith similarly reveres stories in which someone demonstrates an extraordinary capacity to forgive. We encounter one in this scripture: Stephen, suffering under the blows of the stones that will kill him, pleads for mercy on behalf of his assailants. Under the circumstances described here, we might expect Stephen to call out in anger with cries of condemnation or warnings of divine vengeance. Instead, his dying words echo those of the Messiah he had chosen to follow.

I recently had a powerful experience that involved a story of remarkable forgiveness. For reasons with which I will not bore you, on May 1st of this year I found myself in the magnificent St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York. That happened to be the day on which the Catholic Church celebrated the beatification of Pope John Paul II—an important step in the process of declaring him a saint. Cardinal Egan, who was leading the mass, knew John Paul II and had many stories to tell about him. But he focused his remarks on a story of forgiveness.

As you will recall, in 1981 an assassination attempt was made on the Pope and he was seriously wounded. As soon as he was well enough to do so, he made a public statement declaring his forgiveness for the man who had shot him. And then—to give life to his words—John Paul II went to visit the man in prison. For more than twenty minutes, he spoke quietly to this declared terrorist, at one point softly wrapping his hands around the hands that had pumped four bullets into his body.

Such stories and scriptural passages provide us with a specific image of what forgiveness looks like. It is instantaneous, complete, and unconditional. It absolves the offender of wrongdoing, almost as though the offense never occurred. In the same vein, the great preacher and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher once declared that “Forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note—torn in two, and burned up, so that it can never be shown against one.”

I am going to call that kind of forgiveness “absolute forgiveness” and I am going to start with an obvious point about it. We ordinary human beings—who are not Stephen or a saint or the Savior of Mankind—have a hard time getting there. We struggle to forgive and forget. As the old saying goes, we want to “bury the hatchet … but mark the spot.”

That great Texas theologian, Lyle Lovett, has some fun with our human reluctance to forgive in a song called “God Will.” It goes like this:

Who keeps on trusting you when you’ve been cheating and spending your nights on the town?

And who keeps on saying that he still wants you when you’re through running around?
And who keeps on loving you when you’ve been lying, saying things ain’t what they seem?

Well, God does.

But I don’t.

And God will.

But I won’t.

And that’s the difference between God and me.

Not the only difference, certainly, but a common and conspicuous one.

Unfortunately, this way of thinking leaves us with a dilemma. It tells us that only absolute forgiveness matters. It tells us that, if we offer those who have injured us anything less or different, then we must count ourselves among the unforgiving wretches of the earth. It tells us that forgiveness is all or nothing.

I want to invite you to consider whether the gospels actually endorse this all-or-nothing perspective. Now, please don’t get me wrong. I am not questioning whether the gospels recognize absolute forgiveness as sacred, beautiful, and ideal; obviously, they do. Rather, I am questioning whether the gospels say that absolute forgiveness is the only kind that Jesus recognized or that makes a difference in the world.

In my opinion, this question is terribly important to our spiritual well-being, to our psychological health, and, in fact, to the very institution of forgiveness. I believe that some (perhaps many) people despair over their ability to forgive because—in their effort to be good Christians—they conclude that nothing short of absolute forgiveness counts. At the same time, they do not, and feel they cannot, experience the kind of instantaneous, complete, and unconditional forgiveness that our faith celebrates. As a result, they cannot figure out what to do next; they grow increasingly despondent over the issue; and, at some point, they simply give up and declare forgiveness impossible.

I think this is bad for the heart, the mind, and the soul. I also think it reflects a misunderstanding of what Jesus asks of us.

Let’s start with a fairly straightforward observation: we do not ordinarily think of Christian virtues in all-or-nothing terms. Take, for example, the virtue of self-sacrificial charity. It is true that when the rich young man asked what he needed to do to inherit eternal life Jesus answered by saying “Sell all that you have and distribute the money to the poor.” And it is true that charity of this magnitude has a special purity and sanctity to it. But it is also true that when members of my church donate food to Faith in Action, give clothes to the Salvation Army, visit the sick, offer their blood to the Red Cross, sing in the choir, and volunteer their time at the Jackson Interfaith Shelter I do not view them as uncharitable Philistines because they failed to give away everything they own.

Similarly, we do not ordinarily limit the category of valuable faith experiences to those that occur dramatically and suddenly. So it is true that some conversions happen at a single, miraculous, attention-grabbing instant—like the voice and flash that threw Saul of Tarsus to the ground. And it is true that such amazing transformations have an honored place in our religion. But it is also true most of us experience our faith as a slow-going marathon rather than as a sprinting leap across the finish line.

Of course, that does not render the way we run our race spiritually unworthy. Many years ago, I ran a marathon as a fundraiser for the Leukemia Society. The Society sponsored a dinner the night before at which a former Olympic runner gave an inspirational speech. He said something like this: “I know some of you will complete this race in just a few hours. But the runners I respect the most are those of you who will take five or six hours or more to finish. You will have to show patience, determination, and grit that a faster guy like me could probably never muster. I can run toward the finish line. But you will have to stay pointed in the right direction, keep putting one foot in front of the other, and believe.”

Since so many dimensions of our faith work this way, it is little wonder that forgiveness sometimes only comes to us as the result of a journey, a process, rather than by way of a total and immediate shift in consciousness. Indeed, there are a number of passages in the gospels in which Jesus describes or exhibits forgiveness as a process—often a process that emphasizes the repentance of the one who seeks forgiveness. For example, in the seventeenth chapter of Luke, Jesus says: “If your brother sins against you, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turns again to you saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.” You will note that Jesus does not shrug off such forgiveness as unworthy of the name simply because it anticipates a show of regret and reformation on the part of the offender.

This connection between forgiveness and repentance was a favorite theme of the great Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer warned against a state of mind where forgiveness is gleefully received without any apparent cost to the beneficiary. He cautioned that such behavior can so “cheapen” forgiveness that it becomes trivial. That is the point of a wonderful joke told by the comedian Emo Phillips: “When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized the Lord doesn’t work that way. So I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.”

Over and over again, Jesus implored us to have forgiving hearts. He displayed the spirit of absolute forgiveness for all of us to see. But he also recognized that forgiveness sometimes comes through the passage of time and as the result of a process—a process that includes remorse and repentance on the part of the one who inflicted the injury.

Because that process gets worked out between human beings it will often prove harder and sloppier than we might wish. But that should not surprise us. Indeed, I am aware of very little within the realm of human relationships that qualifies as neat, tidy, and wholly rational. This is one of the many reasons that forgiveness offers us such a rich occasion for prayer.

Let me return to where I started and put it even more bluntly. As Jesus declared from the cross, we do not know what we are doing. We do not know what we are doing. Who could possibly argue with that?

We blunder our way through childhood and youth and we do not know what we are doing. We fall in love and we do not know what we are doing. We go to work and we do not know what we are doing. We raise children and we do not know what we are doing. We vote and argue and dream and falter and buy and sell and applaud and condemn and we do not know what we are doing—particularly when we condemn. Funny, isn’t it, that Jesus tells us that we must not judge and that we must forgive and we spend most of our lives getting that job description exactly backwards.

But of course we do. We’re human. So we need forgiveness. And we need to forgive.

Praise the one who sees us for who we are. Praise the one who knows us for what we are. Praise the one who gives us the capacity to forgive and the resolve to try to be forgivable. Praise the one who forgives us as we would be forgiven.

Say alleluia.

Say amen.

A Brief Introduction to the Human Condition

Scripture: Genesis 2 and 3

It is impossible to overstate the influence that the story of Adam and Eve has had on Western culture. It serves as the focus of the greatest epic poem written in the English language—John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It provides the subject matter for countless masterpieces of Renaissance art, including works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Tintoretto, Titian, and Masaccio—about whom I’ll have more to say later. Indeed, their pervasive presence in Renaissance art leads me to wonder whether Adam and Eve fled Eden for Tuscany, a notion that might explain why my Italian in-laws are constantly urging me to eat something.

But the story of Adam and Eve has not been reserved to the lofty bastions of high art. For better or worse, it permeates our popular culture as well. It has been parodied in countless jokes and cartoons. It shows up in the lyrics of songs by everyone from Paul Anka to Gary Puckett to Bob Marley to Bruce Springsteen.

Clearly, and I guess ironically, we find this story irresistible. But this familiarity brings with it the risk that we will not just secularize, but trivialize, this important piece of scripture. That would be a terrible shame, because—as is true of so many passages in the Book of Genesis—this is not just a story about where we came from. This is a story about who we are. Indeed, I want to suggest to you that this passage is nothing less than a brief introduction to the human condition.

Of course, we all recognize the tragic human weakness of Adam and Eve. God gave them a single rule—and they could not follow it. Little wonder that God did not meet with much better success in persuading humankind to follow the ten rules he later delivered to Moses.

After Adam and Eve disobeyed this command they heard the sound of God walking in the garden, felt ashamed, and tried to hide. As I have observed before, trying to hide from God is surely one of the stupidest ideas ever. It is right up there with the idea that the earth is flat, the idea that the world is the fixed center of the universe, and the idea I had in high school that I could persuade a girl to go out with me by observing that she had the same name as my dog.

Then, when God found Adam and Eve and confronted them with their transgression, they did not accept responsibility. They did not ask for forgiveness or express regret or demonstrate repentance. They just tried to lay the blame on others.

Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake. In fact, have you noticed that the snake is the only player in this drama who didn’t argue with God and blame somebody else? I thought about titling this sermon “On the Moral Superiority of Snakes” but I did not want to generate unnecessary controversy.

We can see so much of ourselves in Adam and Eve. They don’t like being told what to do. They try to hide from the consequences of their misconduct. They dodge responsibility. They blame others for their failings.

But the story does not portray them as one-dimensional troublemakers. If it did, the story wouldn't be so engaging. To the contrary, their decision to eat the apple seems driven by a complicated collection of motivations: aspiration; imagination; curiosity. It may help us to appreciate the full humanity of Adam and Eve to remember that, in other contexts, we think of those motives as virtues.

In Milton’s memorable words, Adam and Eve were “sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.” They had a choice. It was the basic choice inherent in the human condition, and, as the old hymn says, that “choice goes by forever, twixt that darkness and that light.”

Over time, we have made Adam and Eve into symbols—even into caricatures. But it is important to recognize that this is not how the Bible gives them to us. The Bible presents them as fully human: at once extravagantly noble and catastrophically weak. And it is only when we can see them as fully human that we can begin to imagine the unspeakable pain and horror they must have experienced when they were cast from Eden and separated from the place that God had made for them.

I suppose that is why I find Masaccio’s famous fresco in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence among the most powerful renderings of this story. Adam bends over, his head in his hands, his muscles tight with sobbing. Eve throws her head back, her mouth agape and gasping, her eyes clenched shut. It is the perfect expression of inexpressible despair. I cannot look at it without remembering W. H. Auden’s observation about the Old Masters of painting: “about suffering they were never wrong.”

And this, too, is part of the story’s brief introduction to the human condition. From the beginning of time, we have gotten ourselves into places where we have felt hopelessly separated from the things we treasure, even from God, perhaps especially from God. Then we have looked around and asked ourselves—as Adam and Eve surely must have asked themselves—how did I get here? How did my mortality and my weakness bring me so far away from where I belong?

Those are the questions posed by this story. Those are the questions posed by this season of Lent. They are hard questions.

This week's New Yorker includes a fascinating article about one G. Stanley Hall, the founder of gerontology and a character of major proportions. The piece describes a questionnaire that Hall sent around to all the "mostly eminent and some very distinguished old people" he could think of. Among other things, he asked them: How do you keep well? What temptations do you feel? Are you troubled with regrets? The article rightly points out that these are still our questions. Indeed, I think they have been our questions since that first morning east of Paradise.

But there is good news. The truth reflected in the story of Adam and Eve may be fundamental but it is not final. It tells us alot about who we are. But it tells us very little about who we might yet become. For that, we need to look to a different story--the story of an obscure itinerant preacher from the town of Nazareth. It is, as they say, the greatest story ever told.

Certainly, it is a story about betrayal and pain and suffering. But it is also a story about mercy and forgiveness and rebirth. It is a story about peace and reassurance and comfort. It is a story about redeeming sacrifice and everlasting love and amazing, amazing grace.

It is a story about hope, even in a world battered with hate and violence and natural disasters and political upheavels, even here, even now, even this far from a place called Eden.

Praise God that it is so.

Amen.

Caritate Dei

My friend and colleague the Rev. Tom Macaulay preached a wonderful sermon today in which he told a story about a man who had fallen on hard times. Desperate for food, the man took refuge in the soup line of a local church. After he'd been fed, he asked what would be expected in return. Would he have to scrub the floor? Do the dishes? Listen to a sermon about being grateful?

No, none of that, the woman he asked replied. When he looked puzzled she pointed to a sign over the door, which read "Caritate Dei." He asked what it meant. The woman responded that it meant that the church had fed him out of "love for God."

It is a great story, and my dim memory of Latin--largely unused for the past thirty years--suggests that this is an apt translation of the phrase. But, unless I'm wrong, there is another as well: the "love of God," or, if you will, "God's love."

If this is correct, then Caritate Dei is a delightful latinate pun. It means both that God shows love for us and that we show love for God. The symmetry is perfect linguistically; we should aspire to make it perfect behaviorally.

I am not confident that this is good Latin. But I am completely confident that this is good theology.