Luke 6:27-38
February 20, 2022
Seventh grade was not a good year
for me. Seventh grade is not a good year for many people. The changes of
adolescence are hitting hard. Your body is changing, and your hormones are
raging. These changes make it hard to navigate relationships, school, peer
pressure, etc. It can be a difficult time. But all the challenges of my seventh-grade
year were made even harder by a mean girl – a really mean girl. I’ll only refer
to her by her initials – Y. T.
Y. T. was popular. She was smart.
She was a cheerleader. And, I thought, that we were becoming friends. She
invited me over to her house to spend the night. She encouraged me to confide
my secrets and fears and secret fears to her. Then, on Monday, during a break
in class, with me right there, she told all the other girls all the things I
told her. She mocked and made fun of me, and, of course, the other girls made
fun of me too. It was humiliating to say the least. That was just one incident,
one example of her meanness. I tried to keep my head low, stay away from her,
but from that point on I the target of all her venom. It was a long year. And I
have never been more grateful that we didn’t have classes together in eighth
grade, and that we ended up going to different high schools. I would have
begged my parents to move, send me to private school, or enter me into a
convent, whatever it took, not to spend those last four years of my public
education with her.
This was a long time ago. And
looking back, I realize that Y. T. was probably dealing with her own insecurities
and demons. She was dealing with the changes of adolescence too. Maybe there
were things happening in her life then that none of us knew or could
understand. But even with this long-distance perspective, I still haven’t
forgotten how badly she wounded me, how horribly she embarrassed and humiliated
me. I still have not forgotten how she betrayed my trust and scarred me. Those
scars are still with me. They always will be. For good and for bad, they are
part of who I am.
I have never prayed for terrible
things to happen to Y. T. I have never prayed for her to be harmed, to have
terrible, tragic accidents happen to her or to the people she loves. I never
wanted vengeance in any violent sort of way. But I did pray for her, quite
often. I prayed and prayed, I prayed fervently that she would come to no harm,
but that if there were any small amount of justice in this world, then I prayed
that she would age badly. How are those wrinkles working out for you, Y. T.?
Huh?
Clearly, I have some work to do, especially
when it comes to forgiveness. So, reading the next part of Jesus’ sermon from a
level place in our scripture today is not easy for me. Because what Jesus
declares in these verses is pretty radical stuff. He calls those who will
listen to do some of the hardest work there is – to treat those who have hurt
us with kindness, to forgive those who have harmed us, abused us, to turn the
other cheek, to show kindness, grace, mercy, love even to our enemies. Jesus
calls those who will listen to forgive those just as we have been forgiven, to
show those who harm us not the retaliation that the world would encourage, but
to show the mercy that God shows us.
I think it is important to clarify
here what forgiveness of those who have harmed us really is, because these
verses have been used against the people who are harmed and to justify those
who do the abusing. Forgiveness, like love, is not passive. It does not mean
that if someone is being harmed or abused that they must continue to stay in
that relationship, to continue to be abused, mistaking that as turning the
other cheek. Forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation or staying in
a relationship. Sometimes, even with forgiveness, the ties that bind need to be
severed.
No, forgiveness is not passive. And
forgiveness is not magic either. Someone once told me that true forgiveness is
being willing to accept the fact that you will never get the apology that you
deserve, but you forgive the person anyway.
Forgiveness is not passive, and
that’s what makes it hard. That’s what it makes so hard to do. Because we
humans are messy, messy creatures. And so often the wounds that hurt us the
most are the ones that cannot be seen. And it is those wounds that continue to
hurt us. Forgiveness is so hard, but it can be the key to our healing.
Forgiveness is not a one-time thing
either. Just saying the words, “I forgive you,” does not make it happen.
Forgiveness is a process. It is something that we have to work for and work at
over and over again.
And ultimately, forgiveness is not
just about the other person. Forgiveness is about the one who is doing the
forgiving. When I work to forgive those who have wounded me, those who have
hurt me, I am working on myself. I am doing the work of healing for myself,
much more than for them. As I forgive others as I have been forgiven, I learn
to let go of my own bitterness, my own anger, my own grief, and frustration.
Forgiveness is not passive. It is messy and it is hard, and it is a process.
Several years ago, director Ken
Burns, produced a series on World War II for PBS called “The War.” It was a
powerful, haunting, and difficult series to watch. People who had lived through
the war, who had fought in the war, told their stories. One man, a veteran from
Mobile, Alabama, talked about his experience as a prisoner of war in a Japanese
prison camp. It was brutal. He made it home safe, but not necessarily sound. He
hated the people who had done such harm to him. He hated them. But he came to realize
that the only person his hatred and bitterness was hurting was him. The men who
had imprisoned him were living their own lives, dealing with their demons. They
weren’t thinking about him. They weren’t worrying about how his life was going.
So, this man, this veteran, decided he had to forgive them. He said that with
the help of his wife and his preacher, he did just that. He worked and worked
to forgive his enemies. And that forgiveness set him free.
Lutheran preacher and teacher and
writer, Nadia Bolz Weber wrote about the wounds caused by others as chains that
bind us, and that forgiveness breaks those chains. She wrote,
“Maybe retaliation or holding onto
anger about the harm done to me doesn’t actually combat evil. Maybe it
feeds it. Because in the end, if we’re not careful, we can actually absorb
the worst of our enemy, and at some level, start to become them. So, what
if forgiveness, rather than being a pansy way to say, ‘It’s okay,’ is actually
a way of wielding bolt-cutters, and snapping the chains that link us? What
if it’s saying, ‘What you did was so not okay, I refuse to be
connected to it anymore.’? Forgiveness is about being a freedom
fighter. And free people are dangerous people. Free people aren’t
controlled by the past. Free people laugh more than others. Free
people see beauty where others do not. Free people are not easily
offended. Free people are unafraid to speak truth to
stupid. Free people are not chained to resentments. And that’s worth
fighting for.”[i]
And when we are free, free from the
chains of resentment and anger and bitterness that binds us, maybe that’s when
we can finally be open to the abundance that Jesus speaks of. The abundance
that comes when we forgive, when we love, when we cease judging, when we give
back, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, all the love
that we give, will be given in return, poured into our laps, overflowing our
cups, flowing with abundance and abandon into a world that needs it so.
Let all of God’s forgiven children, God’s
loved children, and God’s blessed children say, “Alleluia.”
Amen.
[i]
Nadia Bolz Weber quoted by Debie Thomas in Journey With Jesus essay, “On
Struggling to Forgive,” February 17, 2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment