July 26, 2007
Forgive
Pentecost 9/12C Lk 11.1-13
Once upon a time, I was at a cocktail party. Heaven only knows what I was doing there. Along with whatever else I had in my hand, there was this small paper napkin. As small paper cocktail napkins seem to go, this one bore a message. It said, “To err is human. To forgive is out of the question.”
In Luke’s accounting of things this morning, the disciples finally ask Jesus to teach them to pray. I say “finally,” because the question seems long overdue. So he answers sort of with, “I thought you would never ask” and with what we now call the Lord’s Prayer, the one that shows up nearly every time Christians and all sorts and conditions of others, as well, get together to pray.
There is a lot to say about the Lord’s Prayer, but since I’m more or less stuck with my cocktail napkin story, it’s the phrase in the Lord’s Prayer about forgiving that I’d like to talk about. By the time it got to us, it became “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Some others use “debts” and “debtors,” I suppose because “trespassing” is hardly common parlance except maybe largely to show up on fences and yard signs.
“To err is human, to forgive is out of the question.”
Like most good humor, that saying is of a truth. Forgiving a wrong — even one of our own — may be one of the most difficult choices we human beings ever face, and that, for some of us, we never face. Not the least of the reasons for this reluctance, I suspect, is not only the pain of bringing it up and wrestling with it, but that the meaning of forgiving and forgiveness is pretty confusing stuff.
So at the outset, maybe it’s best to get rid of the notion that to forgive means also to forget. Neither does forgiving mean that wrongs have no consequences or any need for punishment or that these things can be altogether dismissed.
To forgive — and the meaning is always close to reconcile — means at least that a relationship be kept open. Even hostile communication is better than none. And it applies to all levels and kinds of relationships. In all the continuing rhetoric about 9/11 and as we go through all the rituals and ceremonies recalling this terrible wrong that has been committed against us and against all humankind, we rarely if ever hear anything about forgiveness. May we never lose sight that as hard as it might be, 9/11 is also something we must inevitably come to forgive. Otherwise, so much for the Lord’s Prayer and so much for this notion of our being a Christian nation.
It’s up to us, of course, and to God’s grace whether we ever forgive anything, personal or public, individual or international. Yet, it is still ours to give it our best shot, not only for our own spiritual well being, but for that of our nation, and ultimately for that of the entire world. We must remember. We must never forget. But we must, as well, forgive. Sure, it’s a burden, but we are not somehow exempt, for it’s also a blessing. The reason is quite simple.
Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian who wrote tediously and unbearably long volumes, was asked to sum up his theology in one sentence. He answered, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” The reason we must forgive is that simple. Because Jesus said so. It is a reason every parent sooner or later uses when their authority is questioned. So indeed, we must forgive — and especially forgive our enemies — because God’s son says so.
It was that way with Jesus. It is also the prime jewel in the gospel covenant we made in our baptism. The Lord’s Prayer plants forgiving in every liturgy we celebrate. But the reason is also simple because it’s right. It is ultimately the sanest way for people to live together in harmony, whatever our religion or lack of it, wherever we hang or don’t hang the Ten Commandments, on the court house square or over the kitchen sink.
So we’re not talking about individuals in a family or a congregation where love and forgiveness might be readily accessible, where the steps outlined in the gospel just might be followed. We’re talking about a whole country. But just as countries or nations make clumsy at loving their neighbors, just so are they altogether maladroit at forgiving. But there is a way.
We are a nation already proven vulnerable precisely because our commitment to liberty and justice has been used as a terrifying and devastating weapon against us. But the irony is that it is these very principles, themselves, at national and international levels, that are the stuff of forgiveness and reconciliation. Loving never has cured vulnerability, and it never will. It only makes it more so.
We must ask, then, How does a nation enter into reconciliation? What are the instruments of justice and liberty? How are they manifest? By vengeance? By isolation and withdrawal? By denial and arrogance? By breaking promises? By dissimulation? It should be obvious from our own personal experience that these not only prolong, but as well intensify hostility and resentment and postpone any possible resolution into a peaceful community, whatever the size — two or two billion.
There is a clue in our Declaration of Independence where our founders made a startling offer. It had as much to do with our nature and with what we wanted to become as a nation as almost any other of those great documents that signaled our founding. In the prologue to the Declaration, we expressed that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that (we) should declare the causes which impel (us) to the separation (from Great Britain).
And then we said, as we outlined our grievances, “let (these) facts be submitted to a candid world.” And then, near the end, we appealed to the “Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions…”
For this nation to enter into a mode of forgiving and a desire for reconciliation, we must first keep our own founding commitments clearly in mind and what is more, practice them among ourselves. One of the most important steps we can take in that direction is not to let our fear and its ensuing anxiety and anger and resentment, no matter how justified, distort our system of government, hamper our capacities to use it fully and honorably, and blind our vision to be and to become who and what we are.
This American political experiment is currently on precarious times. Not only is it in jeopardy from without, but, as well, in peril from within by an all too casual, passive, and permissive manipulation of its impressively balanced systems of justice.
So let us take this heritage and this commitment once again to ourselves,. Let us evermore renew our Baptismal Covenant and the forgiveness at its heart. Let us reach out in all the ways we can find appropriate for us and our system. Let us choose and call on our leaders to enlighten the minds and stir the consciences of all. We’ve spent untold billions on war over the ages, and millions have died, so often in vain. Might those billions have better been spent on preventing poverty and genocide and on adequate health care and clean air?
Justice is always compromised precisely as forgiveness and reconciliation diminishes. War never has winners, only losers. The message on the cocktail napkin was uncomfortably close to accurate, but for us, it must say: To err is human, but to forgive must never be out of the question.
God’s criteria are always love and justice and peace for all, including our enemies. And if all else fails, remember the words of St Paul about heaping coals of fire on our enemies by loving them. If that illustration proves too quaint, then try it as translated through no less than Oscar Wilde, who said, “Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.”
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