Some years ago, when I was a minister in
Salt Lake City Utah, a student from the University came to my office.
The student’s name was Mike and he was the star player on the
University's basketball team. Mike was a great player, because after
graduation, he played for some years in the National Basketball League. Mike came to see me because he could
not escape the feeling of hatred that he held towards his parents,
particularly his mother. Mike was born with a hair lip and a cleft
palate, and though surgically improved, it left him with a visible
facial scar and different sounding speech. After a couple of meetings, it was
apparent to me that I was not qualified to deal with this problem, so I
referred Mike to a counsellor who was a member of the
congregation. Apparently,
sometime in his infancy, Mike heard his Mother say that she was sorry
that he had been born. Those words had stayed with him until the
present. They were haunting him, even though by most outward standards
he was an outstanding success.
After many sessions, the counsellor
suggested to Mike that in order for him to improve his mental health
and free himself from this burden, he needed to forgive his mother for
saying what she had said and for being the mother who delivered him
with this obvious difficulty. This
was a difficult task for Mike. Not only did his mother live far away in
New Jersey, but he had not kept in communication with her. The
estrangement had been long and deep. When Mike came to understand his
needs and himself better, he was able to forgive his mother, at first
mentally; that, in itself, was freeing. Finally, he
re-established communication with her and they became a normal mother
and son. I was able to meet her later, when she came to Salt Lake City
to see him play. Mike’s burden was lifted when he could forgive his
mother, and that made it possible for him to forgive himself. At that
point healing came about.
The subject of forgiving, letting go
and moving on is a huge area of concern. None of us are freed
from dealing with this reality, and the fact that someone from the
congregation requested this sermon topic is mute testimony to that fact. Some may think this is a new
concern. Far from it. This topic is frequently addressed in
the Bible, so we know the problem or concern is at least 4 or 5
thousand years old. Dr.
Bernie Siegel, a physician who writes a great deal and does a lot of
counselling writes in his book “Prescription for Living” that
“forgiveness is at the heart of a healthy and happy life. Forgiveness
protects relationships. It also protects the person who does the
forgiving.” (page 19)
One of my favourite writers, Frederick
Buechner, puts it this way: “To forgive somebody is to say, one way or
another, ‘you have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I
should call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand
no less. However, although I make no guarantee that I will be able to
forget what you have done, and though we may both carry the scars for
life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my
friend.’ To accept
forgiveness means to admit that you have done something unspeakable
that needs to be forgiven, and thus both parties must swallow the same
thing: their pride.” (Buechner F. “Wishful Thinking, Page 29)
This seems to explain what Jesus means
when he says to God "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who
trespass against us", or forgive us our debts as we forgive our
debtors. or forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Let’s think about that for a moment.
Hardly a week goes by in our lives when we don’t repeat at least once
what we call the Lord’s prayer. All too often. we rattle it off almost
by rote. failing to see the precision of the wording and the huge task
that this prayer places before us. Let’s look carefully at this prayer.
It is a storehouse of information and
challenge, all packaged in incredible brevity. This is a prayer that
Jesus gave to his disciples, to teach them how to pray. That, perhaps,
is the first clue to our successful understanding. William Barclay, the
great Scottish theologian goes so far as to say that this is a prayer
that only a disciple can truly pray.
The first three petitions have to do
with God, the second three with our needs. Our Father in heaven is a
clear monotheistic statement. In just a few words, the writer has
jettisoned all other pretenders. There is just God, he suggests, who
loves us as a truly. Thus, we must construct metaphors to
describe God, and whatever those metaphors are, they must reflect
holiness. They need not be factual, because we cannot fully comprehend
the nature of God, but they must be true. Thus: "Our Father who
art in heaven, hallowed or holy is your name."
"Your Kingdom come, your will be
done." There, in one sentence, is a great prayer. If God’s kingdom
comes to our surroundings, all of the human problems we face and
wrestle with would simply cease. All the clichés become
irrelevant. All the elaborate procedures created by Church leaders and
faith doctrines become obsolete. When the Kingdom of God becomes a
reality, that which is created mirrors the Creator, and life becomes
what it was intended to be. Selfishness, that’s the basic sin, will be
gone, superseded by love for all, care for all, joy for all: not to be
earned, but to be accepted.
Next we encounter three basic human
needs. The maintenance of life: "Give us this day our daily bread."
That presents to God the needs of the present. The second is "Forgive
us our trespasses." That places before God the past, with the hope and
belief that it will be forgiven, but with a large caveat. The third is
"Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." That prayer
places before God our future. Once we are sustained, we seek
forgiveness from the past, and having received that we face the future,
seeking God’s help to live wisely and well. Do you see how powerful and
compact this prayer is? Reason enough for us to recite it carefully and
with understanding.
Now, the caveat to which I have
alluded in the forgiveness statement is elaborated in verses 14 and 15.
Listen to these verses very carefully. “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.” Two factors become apparent to this
observer. The first is that we have to accept the forgiveness that God
has made available to us through Jesus Christ. It is there.
It is available, but it must be accepted conscientiously. Having accepted God’s forgiveness,
we have an obligation to forgive those who have harmed us in any
way. Now we are into the tough stuff, because forgiving those who
have harmed us includes forgiving ourselves.
The supreme example of this is Jesus,
hanging on a cross and dying, yet still able to say “Father, forgive
them, they don’t know what they are doing.” In that magnanimous
statement, Jesus releases from himself all hatred, self-protection and
vengeance.
One of the traits that endeared the
late Pope John Paul XI to so many was his going into the prison where
the person who had tried to murder him was being held, meeting with
that person, and forgiving him for that action. It a difficult thing to
do, but in the doing the one who is blessed through release of many
passions is the person doing the forgiving.
When I counsel with people who have
come with hard feelings about their parents, or someone who has hurt
them, I try to have them get out all of the feelings they are holding.
Together we discuss them, and then offer them to God. When that step is
achieved (and not all are able to do this), but when it is done and the
person can sincerely say, I forgive my mother, my father, my
grandparent, my sibling, whomever, even though they may never know of
that action, the one who has done the forgiving is freed; a burden has
been lifted.
Through forgiving others, we are
released. Paul put it this way when he wrote to the Philippians in
chapter 3, "Forgetting what lies behind and pressing forward to what
lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call
of God in Jesus Christ.”
I hope I have not conveyed the idea
that this is a simple thing to do. It is not. It is very difficult.
That is why the great saints of faith are so vividly remembered. They
overcame adversity, evil and wrong in the pursuit of doing good.
Dr. Deborah Newman writes in “Women’s
Search For Worth” that there are no easy steps to being able to
forgive but she enumerates 3 stages that she has found helpful.
1. Examine the wrong
fully. A lot of us don’t experience the full healing of forgiveness,
because our spirituality won't allow us to feel the anger that is
inside. Ephesians 4:26 says to be angry and sin not. Anger,
in itself is not sin. It is what we do with our anger that makes it
sin. I find it helpful to express the anger in my soul in a letter that
I don’t send to the person who offended me. This helps me recognize fully the reality of who and what God is asking
me to forgive.
2. Confess your own
sins. Have you allowed the sin committed against you to influence you
to sin? Have you been angry with God? Have you developed a life of hate
and anger? Have you become afraid to live? Have you not loved well?
Have you been afraid to love God? It’s important for you to admit honestly your own sin and take responsibility for
your own life in the process of forgiveness.
3. Commit to the
process of forgiveness. Now, it’s time to let God do what only God can
do. Forgiveness in the Spirit is a spiritual process. God can reach and
cleanse places in your soul that you could never touch. It’s time to
trust God and let him free you from the bondage of unforgiveness. (an
article in Brio and Beyond magazine, 2002)
One author has written:
As children bring their broken toys,
With tears for us to mend, I bring my broken
dreams to God
Because He is my friend. But then instead
of leaving him In peace to work
alone,
I hung around and tried to help
With ways that were my own. At last, I
snatched them back again And cried, “How
can you be so slow?” “My child”, he
said, “What could I do?
You never did let them go”
Dear people, every one of us here has
experienced forgiveness, yet every one of us here needs to forgive
someone for something they did to us. That has to be released. No
matter what process seems to work for you, it seems to me that
somewhere we have to come to the point where we make a decision to
trust God. That means, we have to get out of the driver's seat- a hard
thing for many of us to do. The writer of John I puts it this way. “If
we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins
and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I John 1:9. Isaiah, the great
Old Testament prophet said, “you are forgiven, you are no longer
guilty.” (Isa 6:9)
I want to challenge you to take your
hurts to God and leave them there. Let God know that you are willing to
try the work of forgiveness in your relationships. You will be blessed,
and you will be freed. And then, with the writers who added to
the original Lord’s prayer, you too can pray "for thine is the kingdom
and the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen."