Scripture Reading: Matthew 6:9-12, 14
‘This, then, is how you should pray:
‘“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors…”
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Meditation
How does forgiveness work? How does it happen? And is it important?
Forty years ago when I was working in my first pastoral charge in Bruce County, a neighbouring minister told me about a woman in his congregation in the midst of leaving a toxic and abusive marriage. She had managed to separate physically from her husband, was receiving good support, and was making new plans for her future apart from him.
She still felt imprisoned, though, by the anger she still felt towards her soon-to-be ex-husband. Whenever she talked about him with others, thought about him during the day, and especially whenever she and he met with a mediator to try to work out the details of their divorce, she felt overtaken and consumed by memories of all she had suffered and by anger. By a cold bitterness. And by the heat and energy of vengefulness.
She didn’t like it. Didn’t like it what it did to her, or what it made her want to do to him.
She knew she would need to forgive. Not to go back to him. But to be able to work out, and move on to her new life in a good way.
Each time she drove to a mediation meeting, she rehearsed what to feel, what to say and how to act out a more forgiving spirit. Each time she failed to be able to do it.
Until one day, on the way there, she stopped to pray. In her car at the side of the road, she confessed to God her anger, and how deep it was, and her longing to move beyond it. She confessed her desire to hurt her husband, and asked God to take care of both her and him. She asked God to help her forgive, and move on.
And by the time she got to the mediator’s office, the mystery had happened. Her feelings, her words, and her goals were changed. She was changed. And she was free to move on, and work out in a good way what moving on could mean for her and her soon-to-be ex-husband.
The minister who told me this story marvelled at the great mystery that forgiveness is. Such an interplay of human weakness and divine grace, of human willingness and divine gift.
It's not always instantaneous. Sometimes it’s the fruit of a long – even life-long, journey and struggle.
I’ve talked here before about Wilma Derksen, a Mennonite woman from Winnipeg who literally has written the book on forgiveness. We read it and discussed it a few years ago in a book group. It’s called “The Way of Letting Go: One Woman’s Journey toward Forgiveness.”
The story and Wilma’s journey began November 30, 1984 – the day her teenage daughter was abducted, assaulted and left to die in the freezing cold of the Winnipeg winter. Her body was found seven weeks later, and at a press conference shortly after that, Wilma and her husband Cliff talked about their relief that their daughter was found, the great shock that she’d been murdered, and their thankfulness for all who had helped and supported them along the way. And then, just as the press conference seemed over, one reporter asked The Question: “And what about the person who murdered your daughter?”
As Wilma puts it, “The reporter who asked the question was standing in the back, his black note pad in his hands, pen poised. The question hung in the air for quite a while as we just sat there deliberating about what we should say. I think we were in a bit of a fog.
“Cliff, my husband, was the first to answer it. And he said it with a kind of fait-accompli assurance: ‘We forgive.’
“…I envied my husband’s confidence; I still do. But I am a reluctant forgiver who needs a lot of time. Plus, we didn’t even know what that would mean. I answered honestly, ‘I want to forgive.’ “
And then she spent – has spent, the last thirty-eight years living into that desire. Learning along the way what forgiveness means. Learning that it’s mostly about letting go step by agonizing step of a lot of different things you cling to be in control of life. Things like belief in happy endings, the power of the ego, the desire to control, and notions of fairness. Things, too, like guilt and self-blame for what has happened, and self-pity. And a lot more seemingly normal things that we use to try to be in charge of our life. In the book Wilma names and explores 15 things she has to outgrow and let go of, step by step, to find peace and the depth of forgiveness of the other, of herself, and of life that she seeks, and wants to know.
It’s a journey that has deepened and enriched every side of her character and life-story, and brought into sharper focus and enlivens every bit of the faith, the hope and the love that she knows as gift and a sign of God’s presence in her life. It’s been an amazing coming together of heaven and earth in her experience – a gracious interplay of human desire and divine direction, of her willingness and God’s empowerment.
I don’t know that I’ve ever worked at forgiveness that hard and that doggedly. Not that my life has been as terribly traumatized as hers. But like many, I live with broken relationships and unresolved conflicts with others. Also, with all kinds of regret and self-blame about things I’ve done that have been hurtful of others, and of myself.
And one thing I am glad for in my life is a spiritual growth group that I’ve been part of for a number of years now. It’s a small group of people who meet weekly to help and support one another in journeys and challenges towards spiritual wholeness and well-being.
One of the things the group uses – one of the tools of spiritual transformation we take advantage of is a version of the 12 Steps of the AA Movement. And it’s interesting ho those steps are focused on the work and in the practice of forgiveness – in forgiveness of self, and forgiveness of others; in letting go of regret and letting go of resentment.
The steps, when you look at all 12, can be seen in three parts. The first – steps 1-3, are about learning to live in trust and obedience to God, committing your life for your own good to the care and direction of a God of love. A version, really of the first Great Commandment to love and commit to God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength.
The third of the three parts of the Steps – steps 8-12, are more about other people and your relations with them. It’s about creating honest and caring relationships with people around us, whatever shape is best for those relationships to take. A version in some sense of the second Great Commandment, to love our neighbour in very practical ways as ourselves.
And the middle of the three parts of the Steps – steps 4-7, the part that holds it all together and makes it all work, are about forgiving. They’re about being as thoroughly honest as you can be, about yourself. First, the steps help you name and list out all the regrets you carry about yourself and all the resentments you harbour about others. Then they help you share all this first with someone else whose job it is, is to accept you as you are, and then with God, who you ask to take all this from you and set you free of its burden.
Because all this stuff – the regrets and the resentments, are a burden. They are a barrier to wholeness, well-being and peace. They imprison you and keep you chained to the past. They ruin the present, both for yourself and for others around you. And they keep you from growing with others towards a new and better future.
And it really is this middle part – these steps about naming and knowing and letting go of resentment and regret, of living into practical forgiveness of others and of self, that makes all the rest work, and work for good. It’s what makes the words about loving God and loving others more than just words. It’s what makes them real, and makes life really better for ourselves and for others around us.
I know I’m still just a beginner in all this. I have a long way to go in letting go of regret and resentments. But I’m pretty sure this is the way to go towards a new and better life. I’m pretty sure that I am only as free to grow and keep maturing as a human being and a child of God, as I allow others to be as well.
So I pray, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”
And I like the way some have rendered this line of the prayer from the original Aramaic into English: “Loosen the cords of mistakes binding us, O God, as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt. Erase the inner marks our failures make, just as we scrub our hearts of others’ faults.”
Amen.
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