SERMON
Peggy grew up with Roger in the suburbs of a large metropolitan center in middle America. They had been friends and attended the same high school, but parted after she went to college and he joined the Army. Many years later, Peggy, now a registered nurse, was working in a suburban hospital emergency room when she met Roger again, lying on a stretcher. Roger has been in a bad car accident with a painful back injury which needed at least several months to heal. Roger's life before this accident had been listless as he had drifted from job to job after his discharge from the service.
Being a big hearted woman, Peggy was moved by his situation and volunteered to bring him home and care for him. Roger was very grateful as he had no money and recovered well with Peggy's tender loving care. Soon a spark of romance began to kindle between them.
One evening Peggy came home from her hospital shift with some take out Chinese food only to find Roger's bed and his closet empty. Not only was his closet empty but he had also cleaned out her jewelry box and taken some checks from her checkbook which he used to clean out both it and her savings account. In shock, she sat down next to the answering machine to review any messages that might be left. On it was the voice of an aide who had helped take care of Roger, leaving a seductive message about leaving town together for Roger he hadn't erased. Peggy sat clenching the arms of her chair as she felt her heart being torn in half.
Sandra grew up in a home where her father drank excessively. Her father was unable to hold a job so her mother supported the family of six by working two jobs. Sandra being the oldest had to take care of the younger children. Not only did her father verbally abuse her, but he also took sexual advantage of her until she made it clear with her teeth that she wouldn't take it anymore. Once she felt the youngest children could take care of themselves, she left her family and moved to the other coast to get as far away from her father as possible.
To deal with the enormous pain of her childhood and function in the world, Sandra buried it deeply in her subconscious and made contact with her family as infrequently as possible. Then two things happened which blew her world apart. First she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and had a hysterectomy. About six months later after her first round of chemotherapy, she got a call from her father. He had been told by his doctor that he was about to lose his feet from diabetes if he didn't stop drinking. This had finally scared some sense into him and he started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He was working on the eighth step of the recommended twelve steps to sobriety and wanted to ask for forgiveness and make amends with Sandra. Sandra slammed down the phone in rage and began to cry uncontrollably.
Carlos had the misfortune of living in a small village near rebel-held territory during El Salvador's civil war. His work as a mechanic would have had him drafted in a minute by either side except for the fact that he had already lost a foot because he had stepped on a land mine when he was a teenager. His skill in fixing things made him much sought after and always had his shop full of cars, trucks and farming equipment. The wide network of people he knew and worked with brought him under suspicion by the police chief, always looking for rebel sympathizers. But Carlos' popularity in town kept him from taking any action against him.
One time the town suffered a great deal of damage after a surprise attack by the rebels. Just about every building was damaged except Carlos' shop. In a rage at being attacked (the town tried valiantly to stay neutral), the police chief arrested and tortured Carlos as a suspected rebel sympathizer. After a sound beating, electrical shock to the genitals and cigarette burns on the back didn't elicit a confession, he threatened, then chopped off three fingers of his left hand, one at a time hoping for a confession and some information which would appease a local army captain breathing down his neck. The police chief usually got his confession after chopping off the first finger but when he didn't get anything after the third finger, he was convinced either Carlos was telling the truth or he was an impressively courageous liar. So he let him go. As you might imagine, the police chief's generosity of sparing his life didn't endear the police chief to Carlos as he nursed the three stumps on his left hand.
What really made things difficult was the fact that both the police chief and Carlos were Catholic and attended the same, the only, church in the small village. Carlos hated him with a passion and wanted to get even, but while the war was on he would be immediately suspected if anything bad happened to the police chief. And this time there would be no mercy. Carlos would burn with anger as they sat in the same church together. He could not believe that they worshipped and were loved by the same God. Each Sunday, Carlos prayed with all his might for God to strike the chief with a horribly painful disease.
Once the war ended, the village police were granted amnesty for their actions during the war. This enraged poor Carlos, who spoke with his priest about his anger that his unjust torture could not be punished. Carlos demanded the priest ex-communicate him for his crimes against humanity, in particular Carlos. The priest responded to him, "Carlos, the war is over, it is time to forgive."
As horrible as the stories of Peggy, Sandra and Carlos are, they are far from unusual. In fact, I'm sad to say, they are more the norm in our world rather than the exception. In the course of a lifetime, most of us have been or will be unjustly harmed by another person in ways we cannot hope to remedy. The difficult work of forgiveness isn't most clearly seen in the minor violations of a spouse forgetting our birthday, a child who stays out past curfew, or the friend who stands you up for a date - the day to day stresses and strains of daily life. These problems which disturb our relationships require mending the torn fabric of connection. When forgiveness is required, the fabric has been shredded and run through the garbage disposal.
Peggy, Sandra and Carlos have been deeply wounded. None could contest their legitimate claim to victim-hood. Nor could one equivocate that they "had it coming" because of their own morally ambivalent behavior. Peggy, Sandra and Carlos have been wronged and have every right in the world to want revenge.
And the priest says, "Carlos, the war is over, it is time to forgive."
The most important thing to understand about forgiveness is that it is for one's own benefit and not for the person who has hurt us. Forgiveness is a letting go of the pain another has caused us. It must be entered into freely without obligation. The reason to forgive is not because the other person wants it, rather because the victim is harmed by picking at the open wound.
Forgiveness does not mean pretending to forget what happened. Forgiveness does not require re-entering relationship with the person who violated you. Forgiveness does not mean giving up a legitimate claim for justice. Peggy can forgive Roger and still want him to go to jail for the theft.
Forgiveness does not require restoration of relationship. Carlos can forgive the police chief and never speak to the fellow again. Sandra can forgive her father but require a great deal of remorse, repentance and restitution before letting him anywhere close to her emotional life. Peggy has every right to repayment from Roger whether or not she forgives him. Neither Peggy, Sandra nor Carlos must begin trusting or even liking their adversaries as a part of their forgiveness.
The key to forgiveness is giving up the grudge, which only the victim can do. One can give up the grudge independently of whether the perpetrator shows any remorse. The primary reason to give up the grudge is not because we are all sinners and only God can judge us but rather because of the tremendous harm it does us to hold the grudge. We can murder, draw and quarter our enemies a thousand times in our minds but ultimately the only one who suffers is us.
"A rattlesnake, if cornered, will become so angry it will bite itself" says E. Stanley Jones. "That is exactly what harboring hate and resentment against others is - a biting of oneself. We think that we are harming others in holding these spites and hates, but the deeper harm is to ourselves." It is quite possible, as we are now learning, that Sandra's buried rage compromised her immune system and made her vulnerable to ovarian cancer. Forgiveness is for the victim's physical and mental health, NOT the perpetrator's.
As I think we all know, giving up a grudge is hard to do especially when we have been greatly and profoundly wronged. The prisoners of war, conscience, and domestic violence carry deep festering wounds that ooze venom not outwardly but inwardly dripping into the heart, slowly poisoning the soul. Giving up a grudge requires beginning to see something we would rather not: The humanity, the inherent worth and dignity as well as the demonic hardness and isolation coexisting in the person who has wronged us.
Believing every last one of us is a mixture of sinner and saint is a deeply religious truth I cannot hope to prove to you except by encouraging you to look deeply within yourself and carefully observing your inner reality reflected in the world. We are all made of blood, bones and brains. We all harm each other. We all help each other. We all heal each other.
But when we are violated, we passionately bury any sign of betrayer's goodness. It goes against our moral sense that a person who loves his wife and children can machine gun Jewish babies. It really has happened. We are horrified at how friendly and kind con men can be as they take full advantage of our trust and the warmth of our affections. This world into which we are born will always, I repeat, will always contain people capable of heinous crimes against humanity. And all of them, whether we like it or not, will still have good and decent qualities which coexist with their capacity for evil.
So no matter how vile the person who stabs us in the back may seem as we view them through blood-soaked lenses, they are still human. Martin Luther King Jr. put it this way: "The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human, and therefore, brothers." Seeing the humanity of our enemy brings them closer to us and prepares the way for the next stage of forgiveness: Letting go of our right to get even[1].
Letting go of one's right to get even is letting go of the need for revenge. It is relenting from the demand for a pound of flesh, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It does not require the abandonment of the call for justice. In fact, a tremendously healing thing can be to direct the pain into action. Hannah Arendt calls forgiveness the key to action and freedom. The tremendous pain of the mothers who have lost family members to drunk drivers gave Mothers Against Drunk Driving the power to dramatically change the drinking and driving behavior of this country. The abused woman who works in a battered women's shelter and the crime victim who organizes a Neighborhood Watch all transform their pain by trying to make a difference. Letting go of the need to even the score allows the wounded person to liberate that anger and use it toward the good rather than as a weapon of self- destruction.
The final stage of forgiveness is really a product of the first two. By reaching past our hatred to seeing the other's humanity and releasing the need for revenge, our feelings can begin to change. It is only in the softening of our feelings that forgiveness can fully take place. A change of feelings cannot be commanded or programmed; it is a spontaneous restoration of love which truly accepts the humanity of the other and welcomes them back into the human race. The problem is that this change of feeling can be quite unwelcome if we are still clutching the grudge. The final stage of forgiveness is to wish the bastard well as he journeys on in life with or without us.
David Augsburger, I think, sums it up by saying, "Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness." Norman Cousins calls life "an adventure in forgiveness". If we are ever to begin to approach the commandment to love thy neighbor, we must learn to forgive. Peter Ustinov calls love "an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit."
Remember that forgiveness is not turning into a mushy doormat on which the world can wipe its feet but rather a clear-eyed and large-hearted attempt to live in an impossibly flawed world where at times injustice reigns, the bad guys live to a ripe old age eating caviar and drinking fine wines, and the good die young. In the midst of wrong, love can be recovered whether or not justice is served. It is possible to forgive and not forget as an individual or as a nation. Not only is it possible, it is imperative for our own health and the health of the world.
In the absence of forgiveness, ultimately we are the only victims.
Copyright (c) 1996 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.