St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, April 19, 2009

Freeing Forgiveness – Rev. David Mundy

Acts 4:32-35 John 20:19-31

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Two weeks ago a sombre anniversary was observed by Rwandans living in their homeland and in other countries around the world. April the seventh marked the fifteenth anniversary of a genocide that defies understanding. After decades of peaceful coexistence the ethnic group known as the Hutus began slaughtering the minority Tutsis, who were their neighbours, their co-workers, even their husbands and wives. The carnage unfolded in a variety of ways but the weapon of choice was primitive – the machete. It is one thing to go to war with an enemy on whom you drop bombs, or shoot from a distance. It is another altogether to take a person’s life by hacking them to death with a blade. It is still cause for great shame that the other nations of the world stood by and did nothing to stop the killing which resulted in anywhere between 600,000 and a million deaths. We will probably never have an accurate body count.

In addition to the murders, hundreds of thousands more were tortured and raped. There are an estimated twenty-five to thirty thousand children in Rwanda today who were conceived and born as a result of those rapes. Many of the women have developed HIV and AIDS as well.

While there were and still are attempts to bring the worst of the evildoers to justice, it has been impossible to prosecute everyone who committed a crime against humanity. Countless thousands have gone free. In this nation where the family clan is so important, the majority of victims and victimizers simply went home to their villages. So many people are now living alongside the murderers of their loved ones. In some places virtually every day women walk past the men who raped them, the criminals who will never be brought to justice. To us this would be unthinkable, but for most people in Rwanda there is no alternative.

Needless to say, the issues of forgiveness and reconciliation are constantly at the forefront of life in Rwanda. For some it is impossible to forget or to forgive. Others see it as the only way to rebuild a country virtually destroyed by irrational hatred.

Do you think you could forgive under these circumstances? We have just come through the time of the year when we consider the saving and forgiving love of Christ. On Good Friday we hear Jesus cry out “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing!” Except that they did know what they were doing two thousand years ago and they knew what they were doing fifteen years ago and each and every day people cause heartache to those they know and don’t know and they know what they are doing.

On this Sunday following Easter we listened to the passage which tells us about the doubts of one of the disciples who was not there when Jesus first appeared to his grieving followers. Because all he wanted to see was what everyone else had seen Thomas has been labeled Doubting Thomas for two millennia. Enough already! What John tells us is that a week after the day of resurrection, Jesus appears again to the disciples, including Thomas, and assures him that he has risen. Because this is such a good opportunity to explore the theme of doubt, we might miss what Jesus has to say about forgiveness: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

How important is forgiveness for us as Christians? Poll after poll finds that we believe that God loves us and forgives us. A much smaller percentage find it easy to forgive others.

As we journey through this season of Easter we will acknowledge that the message of eternal life through the resurrection of Christ is central to our faith, but today’s gospel reading reminds us that the early church realized that the road to eternity always includes forgiveness in the “here and now.” And while forgiveness is divine, the forgiveness we extend to one another is an essential witness to whom we are as resurrection people.

That’s why virtually every Sunday morning we remind ourselves of the importance of forgiveness as we repeat the teaching of Jesus which we call the Lord’s Prayer. We say “forgive us our trespasses” or “forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” In some ways speaking of debts forgiven is more practical and understandable. We probably aren’t all that sure what a trespass is, but these days we all have a pretty good idea about debt, and we know that a cancelled debt, or a forgiven debt is a “big deal.”

Jesus didn’t stop with these phrases in his prayer. He goes on to say: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” This sounds a lot like what he says to his followers in the story we heard this morning. Forgiveness is both a divine gift and a human enterprise.

What I have come to realize through the years, speaking to scores of people about their struggles with forgiveness is that while we often speak about it, we rarely define it. In a thoughtful little book called Finding Forgiveness Jim McManus and Stephanie Thornton offer their perspectives on what forgiveness is not, as well as what it is:

Forgiveness is not . . . forgetting.

Forgiveness is . . . about coming to terms with reality.

Forgiveness . . . cannot be a moral duty imposed upon us.

Forgiveness stems from the decision to forgive.

Forgiveness is not . . . the same as reconciliation.

Forgiveness is . . . strength.

Forgiveness does not . . . let the offender “off the hook.”

Forgiveness . . . sets the victim free.

These observations about forgiveness, especially about what forgiveness can be, work for me because they address the concerns we often have. It can feel as though forgiving another is a sign of weakness, a “giving in” when we don’t want to. It is also important to realize that we can’t simply be instructed to forgive, it is a choice we make. And of course forgiveness is meant to set us free, and can also mean freedom for the perpetrator of the wrongdoing.

I preached about forgiveness in another congregation and afterward I had a conversation with a woman who was a physician and a therapist. She appreciated that I hadn’t said that forgiveness was an obligation because she was dealing with the pain of the loss of a grandchild. Her daughter’s newborn child died as a result of a medical mistake and she couldn’t imagine her daughter simply forgiving and forgetting. Her observation was that their anger would be a catalyst in bringing about change in a system that had failed them. But she agreed when I suggested that the danger of anger is that it can close the door on forgiveness and lock us in a place that becomes a prison.

Sometimes we have difficulty forgiving ourselves or believing that we are worthy of God’s forgiveness and it is guilt rather than anger that holds us back from abundant life. All of us develop a personal narrative, a life story that can shape how we live in the world. When we make mistakes which we feel have sidetracked or stalled our lives we can be wracked by guilt. We become what we used to call a “broken record” which goes back to the olden days when we would put a record on a turntable and it would play music –remember that? A damaged record would skip and play the same part of the tune over and over again, and be good for nothing.

So, can forgiveness set us free? Experience tells me that some of you are listening to all this and saying that you understand all of this in theory, and you’ve heard it before, but the anger hasn’t gone away, or the guilt hasn’t gone away.

The New Testament is always calling us to do what we cannot do. No, we ourselves cannot forgive, but as we strive to forgive we are given God’s forgiveness as a gift. We are not called to create forgiveness; that is beyond us. We are called instead to participate in a forgiveness given to us as a gift. Thomas Long

It is important for us to continue to talk about forgiveness, and to sing about forgiveness and to pray about forgiveness, as regularly and as meaningfully as we can. Forgiveness is a lifelong process that is a combination of God’s grace and our determination.

You know what is easy about forgiveness? Nothing! Forgiveness is not straightforward and it tends not to be permanent and at times forgiveness can seem far more costly than holding grudges, don’t you think? Still, we hear Jesus’ words “Receive the Holy Spirit” as a comfort and a challenge to do what is necessary to receive forgiveness in our own hearts and to extend it to others.

I want to bring you back to where I started this morning, in the African nation of Rwanda.

It is next to impossible for us to comprehend the deaths and injuries of more than a million people, but we can listen to a single story. Immaculee Ilibagaza is a Rwandan Tutsi woman who watched as family members were murdered by neighbours and then ran for her life. She survived by being hidden along with seven other women in a tiny washroom in a house, the door masked by a large wardrobe. The person who saved their lives and fed them in hiding for ninety-one days was a Hutu priest.