Forgiveness ... Can you imagine?

 

September 13, 2020

Genesis 50:15-21, Matthew 18:21-35

One of the rare shared moments of excitement during the pandemic was when Hamilton was released to streaming audiences.  I’ve seen it three times now and each time I find myself in tears during a scene near the end, when after all the misery and pain that Alexander Hamiton has put his wife Eliza through -- absence and distraction, public infidelity, the death of her oldest child -- we see the two of them walking quietly uptown.

 

There are moments that the words don't reach

There is suffering too terrible to name

You hold your child as tight as you can

And push away the unimaginable

 

Even though Alexander has been a selfish, unthinking schmuck, even though he clearly doesn’t deserve Eliza, I can’t help being overcome by the beautiful moment of redemption when Eliza takes his hand.

 

They are standing in the garden

Alexander by Eliza's side

She takes his hand

It's quiet uptown

Forgiveness. Can you imagine?

 

And I can’t help but feel that right there in that moment is the theological triumph of the whole 2 hour and 45 minute production.  It might be about war and politics and brotherhood and romance and the making of America on the surface, but for me, this moment of forgiveness near the end is the highlight.

 

There are moments that the words don't reach

There is a grace too powerful to name

We push away what we can never understand

We push away the unimaginable

 

Forgiveness in the face of the unimaginable.  That’ll preach.

 

And, unless you snuck in a nap during our readings, you can’t have helped but notice that forgiveness is the main theme for today.

 

In Genesis, we see Joseph’s emotional reunion with his brothers who decades earlier sold him into slavery.  Everyone is weeping and Joseph assures the brothers of his forgiveness, "Do not be afraid! ... Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.”

 

And in our reading from Matthew, Jesus tells Peter that he should forgive someone who sins against him not just once, not even just seven times, but seventy-seven times. And then Jesus proceeds to tell a shocking parable that ends with a slave being tortured when he doesn’t pass down the forgiveness he’d been shown.  Jesus’ words put a chill in my heart: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart."

 

Some forgiving is easier than others.  Small amounts of money, like this story, sure.  My kids misbehavior or rudeness, sure.  Unintentional mistakes, sure.  Angry words here or there, sure.  In theory, anyway.  Truth be told, sometimes even those things can be hard to forgive. 

So what about the big things?  What about the things that really hurt?  The things that might even change your life forever? 

 

 After reading this Gospel, my head went immediately to the 2015 massacre at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.  Where a white stranger was welcomed by a small group of Black parishioners and their senior pastor for Bible study, and then while they closed their eyes for a final prayer, he shot and killed nine of them.

It was horrific.  Unimaginable.  Unforgivable.

And yet, only 2 days later, some of the family members of those who had been killed appeared in court.  And when they were invited to make a statement, the first woman, whose mother was killed said this:  "I forgive you ... You took something really precious from me. I will never talk to her ever again, I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you and have mercy on your soul.”  

When that story of forgiveness made headlines, I was shocked and impressed by their faith, convicted that this was the true Christian response, and that I could never in a million years be equal to it.

 

How do you forgive the unforgivable?  How do you forgive once, much less 7 or 77 times when your heart has been broken and everything you thought you knew is ripped away?

 

The question feels especially relevant this weekend - 19 years after the horrors of 9/11.  How do you forgive the unforgivable?  

 

And then I happened to start reading the June issue of a Christian Century magazine that had been sitting on my bedside table, and came upon an article written by Waltrina Middleton, the cousin of DePayne Middleton, one of the women so brutally killed at Mother Emanuel Church.  And she wanted to set the record straight.  

Waltrina took issue with the immediate headlines about forgiveness after the Charleston murders.  For her, the quick narrative of forgiveness suggested that the lives taken didn’t matter, and that the remaining loved ones didn’t deserve the dignity to grieve -- and didn’t have the right to be angry.  She thought that the forgiveness headlines served only to ease the guilt of white supremacy and remove accountability for this nation’s racism.  As she saw it, instead of a time of deeper truth-telling and reconciliation around the violence that targets black and brown bodies, people wanted to hurry up and get to the other side so that they could be comfortable.

For Waltrina, what was needed in the aftermath of Charleston wasn’t forgiveness but lament.  What was needed was the freedom “to tell our own stories, speak our truths, and cry out with our rage and sorrow” from our brokenness.  And only from that lament could come transformation and beloved community.  “[A]s a Christian, yes, I have the capacity to forgive,” Waltrina writes, “but no one gets to define for me what forgiveness looks like for me. And there’s no timetable for attaining or reaching the point of forgiveness. If I have to spend the rest of my life wrestling with the pain of such a loss that we’ve experienced, then I believe that God has grace for me and space for me to use the rest of my life to do that and to get there.”

 

As I read the article, something shifted for me.

 

Forgiveness isn’t denial or pretending that a wrong doesn’t matter or a wound doesn’t hurt.  Forgiveness doesn’t mean allowing pain to continue or tolerating abuse.  Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily come without judgment and it doesn’t automatically restore trust.  If it were these things, it would be shallow and meaningless.

Instead, forgiveness is a transformed way of seeing and living. It is a decision not to absorb the wrong done; not to be chained to someone else’s brokenness or to our own bitterness; not to allow someone who has wronged us to define our humanity.  Forgiveness is a choice to live into the future despite the scars of the past, prioritizing love rather than resentment.  

 

And forgiveness not only can lift the burden of anger and bitterness from the person wronged, but it also has the potential to lift the burden of guilt and inhumanity from the person who is forgiven.  Forgiveness holds in tension both that the wrongdoer is accountable and that nonetheless there is for them a way back into grace.

 

But forgiveness -- real forgiveness -- isn’t easy.  It is a messy, non-linear process that involves grief and lament and chaos and letting go.  It is hard work that requires transformation.  And, truth be told, it isn’t a one-time thing.  It’s a life-long pursuit -- a never-ending practice essential to the Christian life.

 

As Henri Nouwen puts it, "Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that [the human family] love[s] poorly, and so we need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour...."

 

And when I look closely, I see the hard and beautiful reality of forgiveness not only in Waltrina’s insistence on lament and truth-telling after the Charleston shootings, not only in my own life, but also in our readings for today.

Joseph’s tear-stained forgiveness of his brothers is decades in the making.  He arrived there slowly and painfully, and only after a fair amount of wrestling and testing.  And only at the end is he able to reframe his suffering to include the possibility of God’s redemptive presence.

So too in our Gospel, where this urging of 77 bouts of forgiveness comes only after last week’s story, in which Jesus set out the process the community was to use for confrontation and accountability when someone in the church sinned. 

 

At the end, all stories of forgiveness are more about God’s mercy and forgiveness than our own.  That is always the context for our lives -- the magnitude of God’s grace and love for us.  Only as we experience God’s forgiveness for ourselves are we able to turn it outward to others.  We forgive as we are forgiven.  We love as we have been loved.  And someday we may find that love and forgiveness aren’t something we do, but part of who we are.  As we become givers and receivers of mercy.  Children of God living by the grace of a loving God.  Beloved community.  Step by painful step.

 

Forgiveness. Can you imagine?

If you see him in the street, walking by her side, talking by her side, 

Have pity -

They are going through the unimaginable.

 

Amen.