Practices for Strengthening Community- Forgiveness

 

Gen 45:1-15; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 23:32-43

We are continuing with our sermon series on practices that strengthen community, and today we are looking at forgiveness and reconciliation.

In some parts of social media, the value of forgiveness seems to be being challenged. Every word that is written can be preserved and combed over, even from decades earlier. If someone chooses to do so, they can probably find something to be critical of. Perhaps a word that now has different connotations and is no longer to be used in polite conversation. This can lead to a call to “cancel" this person. To “cancel” someone, according to urbandictionary.com, 

“means to stop giving support to that person. The act of canceling could entail boycotting an actor's movies or no longer reading or promoting a writer's works.”

 But it is not just for the famous. There are restaurant owners and small business owners and professors who have felt the consequences of being “cancelled” as well. … In some influential circles, the desire to cast judgement is overwhelming the desire to show grace and forgiveness.

In some cases, people have looked into the past, to historical figures from a different time and culture, and have sought to “cancel” them as well. Whether we agree with this or disagree with this, I think we can agree that this is an act of judgement. It is a focus on what was disagreeable, rather than what was agreeable, about a person. Sometimes this has also reached across generations where children or grandchildren are held responsible for the actions of their relatives. … This makes for a difficult world to live in because every family has something in its past. If we go back far enough, every culture surely has crimes, and every individual makes mistakes. One of the values of learning history is to learn not to repeat its errors. … If we desire to “cancel” everyone who has sinned, or spoken wrongly, then we will create a flood that will wipe away humanity.

We don’t hold all Germans responsible for the actions of the Nazis in WW2. We don’t hold all Turks responsible for the actions of the Ottoman Empire, such as the genocide against the Armenians during WW1. We don’t hold all Mongolians responsible for Genghis Khan’s armies killing up to 10% of the world’s population. … This is one of the benefits of the rise of individualism. 

There was a time in the past when people were thought of primarily as being a part of their tribe, and therefore responsible for its crimes. Children could be punished by an army in retaliation for what their grandparents did. Children and their mother could be thrown into jail along with the father for the father’s crimes. … It is true that culture reaches across the generations, and the effects of actions in the past can be felt for many generations, but with the rise of individualism we learned that we can’t push this too far. It might be true that a child of an abusive parent might become an abusive parent, but it might also be true that they would learn not to be an abuser because they know what it is like to be abused, or to see their mother abused. … The prophet Jeremiah said, 

“In those days they shall no longer say: ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’” (Jer 31:29, see also Ezekiel 18:2-4).

 Jeremiah is saying that the children will not be responsible for their parents’ crimes.

If we are going to learn forgiveness, we need to know what we can hold people accountable for. When we are hurt by someone, we usually analyze what they have done by looking at both their action and intention. Someone might perform an action that is hurtful, and if they intended to hurt us, then it is a more serious offence than if they didn’t intend to hurt us. If they didn’t intend to hurt us, their action might still be hurtful and might still need forgiveness to repair the relationship, but if someone didn’t intend to hurt us it is usually a less serious offense. (Forgiveness in this case might be something we do internally, rather than vocalizing that to them.) … Joseph’s brothers intended to sell him into slavery because of their jealousy, it wasn’t an accident. In that way it is a more serious offence. When we are dealing with someone who has hurt us, it is important to take into account their actions AND their intensions. …

Jesus’ words are very powerful, 

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

 There is a sense that we know what we are doing on one level. But, on a more profound level, we really don’t know. If we really saw the world as God sees it, a lot of our actions and intentions wouldn’t make sense. There is a level where we really don’t know what we are doing. … The people who hurt us do it often out of a place of fear, or hurt, or neglect. Sometimes they hurt us and they think they are trying to help! Often they are acting from the point of view of a very small world. Often, they hurt us not really realizing what they are doing from God’s point of view. 

 Part of learning to forgive is to take Paul’s advice, 

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view” (2 Cor 5:16).

 This means that we see people as created in the image of God who have been enslaved by the power of Sin. They are trapped in a kind of delusion, so they sometimes make decisions that come from their brokenness and not from the image they carry.

We are called to be a reconciling community. Paul says, 

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us” (2 Cor 5:18-19).

 We forgive as people who have been forgiven. This is a message we carry, teach, and practice. It is a message our world needs.

Forgiveness is a persistent theme throughout Scripture. Within the pages of the Bible we meet a God who takes sin incredibly seriously, but who is also very willing to forgive his people when they honestly repent and humbly seek forgiveness. When we get to the New Testament there is an increased emphasis, not only on God’s forgiveness of us, but our need to forgive one another. Jesus says that if someone is repentant, that we should never draw a line as to when we stop forgiving someone even if they sin against us over and over (Lk 17:3-4). When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, he relates God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others as if they are two sides to the same coin- 

“forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Lk 11:4).

 In the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) we often emphasize the Father’s incredible forgiveness of the lost son, but we often don’t see that the older brother’s un-forgiveness of his brother leaves him outside his father’s house. We could also look at 

“The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant” (Matthew 18:21-35)

 about a forgiven servant who was unwilling to forgive, even though he was forgiven much more than he was asked to forgive. Jesus declared at the Last Supper that the cup is for the forgiveness of sins (Matt 26:28). Forgiveness was an important part of the Gospel Jesus’ followers were trying to spread. We are inheritors of that Gospel and so we are also ambassadors of that that message.

Yes, there are many complications that arise within us as we hear these scriptural urgings to forgive. 

How do we forgive someone who is likely to hurt us again? 

What do we do with our emotions, such as anger? Surely we can’t just deny that we have such emotions, and we can’t just shut them off. 

 How does our awareness of God’s forgiveness of us effect our ability to forgive? 

Does forgiveness mean that there is no justice? If someone does a crime and we forgive them, should they still go to jail? 

Is there a difference in how we forgive long standing hurts, vs. fresh wounds? 

What if I need to forgive someone who I need to ask to forgive me? 

Is forgiveness a one-time act or is it a process? … 

There are important questions to deal with when it comes to practicing forgiveness, and we can’t deal with all of them right now. Some of them I’m still dealing with and asking myself. 

I do think it is important to say, however, that sometimes we have this image of forgiveness that tells us that forgiveness means saying what happened wasn’t really so bad after all, which isn’t true. That would be denial. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, 

“forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship.”

 We need to recognize what has been done that has been wrong, and hurtful. Forgiveness is not forgetting, and it is not about saying it’s not really that bad.

We should also not make forgiveness equal to reconciliation. Forgiveness is our part. We can do forgiveness apart from the person who has hurt us. Reconciliation is a restoration of the relationship. Reconciliation requires both people- the person who has been hurt and the offender. Reconciliation won’t happen if one party is unwilling. It might also be unwise in some abusive relationships to pursue reconciliation. Or, the other person might have died or they might have lost contact. So, reconciliation doesn’t always happen, but forgiveness can happen apart from reconciliation. That means we also don’t need someone to confess their fault to us for us to forgive. That is part of reconciliation, but not forgiveness. Forgiveness might be seen as putting down our right to revenge.

We might think forgiveness is a difficult thing for God to ask of us, but we should also consider how it goes for those who don’t forgive and are filled with bitterness and anger. … God specializes in bringing beauty out of human darkness and pain. Human beings caused the cross and God brought forgiveness and resurrection out of it. When we open ourselves to forgiveness we could be making space for God to do something beautiful. … There is tremendous power and healing available through forgiveness. As disciples of Christ we are ambassadors spreading the gospel of forgiveness, and our world desperately needs that now. AMEN