Category: Preachments
0 How Do I Forgive?
Genesis 50
My first church:
It was about this time of year. The scripture that Sunday was Matthew 18 where Peter asks Jesus:
“Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” And Jesus answers, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.’
After the worship service, the postlude was still playing on the organ and I was standing outside on the church steps ready to greet folks.
A woman about my mother’s age marched out of the sanctuary with three kids in tow and elbowed her way in front of an old man with a walker and with absolute fury in her eyes and loud enough for everyone in line to hear she said:
‘Do you mean to tell me I need to forgive my ex-husband for cheating on me and then walking out on me and the kids?’
You all know me. You know how good I am in these situations.
So when she hit me with her question, I stammered: ‘Uh….’
And I qualified and equivocated: ‘Well…um…Jesus was just talking to Peter not all of the disciples and…Jesus doesn’t say that in every single Gospel…and often Jesus speaks in hyperbole to get his point across…I’m sure Jesus understands how you must feel…’
And I stammered some more.
Until finally I said: ‘yes…I think Jesus would… probably… tell you to forgive him…I guess.’
I expected her to storm off, seething, and maybe send me an email the next morning reiterating all the ways I was an idiot.
But she didn’t. She just looked me square in the eye and said: ‘Okay. How? How do I forgive him?’
That’s the rub.
We know we’re supposed to forgive.
We repeat it every Sunday: ‘…forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’
Even if there is someone in your life you doubt you could ever forgive, even if you’re convinced you can’t we still know we should forgive.
Every one of you knows that’s the fine print when you sign on with Jesus.
But how do you do it?
How do you say to the person whose addiction wrecked your family ‘I forgive you’ and have it not just be words but have it be true?
How do you look at the spouse who broke not just their vows but your trust and say ‘I forgive you’ and have it be genuine?
When the person you can’t live with is yourself, how do you look at the face in the mirror and say ‘I forgive you’ and have it be fact?
Because after six years here I know enough of you to know you’ve all learned the hard way that forgiveness requires more than a transaction of words.
Saying ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I forgive you’ doesn’t make forgiveness so.
If forgiveness is just a matter of dispensing the words, if we really can forgive without forgetting, then Genesis 50 shouldn’t be necessary.
Joseph and his brothers shouldn’t need to do this on the heels of their father’s funeral because Joseph already said ‘I forgive you’ back in Genesis 45.
Seventeen years before this scene.
Seventeen years before this scene, before their Dad died, Joseph confronted his brothers and said:
‘I forgive you for betraying me. I forgive you for leaving me for dead. I forgive you for breaking our father’s heart.’
I forgive you.
But the words alone weren’t enough.
Because seventeen years later, Joseph’s brothers don’t feel forgiven.
They still fear their brother’s retribution. They still bear the burden of shame and the weight of guilt.
Words weren’t enough.
Because seventeen years later Joseph’s not forgotten what they did to him. He’s not let go of that past or those memories.
Even after saying ‘I forgive you’ he’s never stopped being Joseph, whose brothers betrayed him; Joseph, whose brothers left him to die; Joseph, whose brothers broke his father’s heart.
Even after saying ‘I forgive you’ he’s never stopped defining himself by what happened to him, what they did to him. His present has never ceased being determined by his past.
So how does he did it here?
How does he forgive?
When I was starting out in the United Methodist ordination process, a pastor on the board who examined me, gave me the very unhelpful ultimatum that before they would ordain me I would have to forgive my father- as though something like that can be done by following three easy steps or in a pre-prescribed timeframe.
So I went to see a counselor, a professor of mine, who already knew the story of my Dad’s drinking and all the rest. And I told him I’d been commanded by the Methodist powers-that-be to forgive him. And that I needed to be quick about it.
I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly, but he gave me a book to read. I was ticked off when I got to the library and found that it was fiction: Anne Tyler’s novel Saint Maybe.
In the novel, Ian Bedloe one evening wanders into a storefront church, the Church of the Second Chance.
He’d been attracted by the sound of the hymns being sung. He hadn’t intended to say anything. But then during the prayer request time, Ian stands up.
‘I used to be…good. Or I used to be not bad, at least, but lately I don’t know what’s happened…Pray for me to be good again’ he told them. ‘Pray for me to be forgiven.’
Ian’s partial confession had to do with the death- the suicide- of his brother. His brother Danny had married a woman with two children from a previous marriage.
Even though he had no proof, Ian had come to suspect that his brother’s wife was unfaithful.
Then one night in the midst of a petty argument with his brother Ian blurted it out, told his brother his wife was cheating.
Not able to bear such a betrayal, his brother had killed himself. As a result, his brother’s wife had OD’d on sleeping pills, leaving behind two kids with no other family but Ian’s parents who were getting too old to raise children.
After the worship service, on his way out of the church, the awkward but intense pastor, Reverend Emmett, asks him, ‘What was it that you needed forgiven?’
The urge to confess comes over Ian, and standing there in the church doorway he summons up the courage to tell the pastor.
When he’s finished Ian says: ‘That’s why I asked for that prayer. And I honestly believe it might have worked… don’t you think? Don’t you think I’m forgiven?’
Reverend Emmett smiles and says briskly: ‘Goodness, no.’
‘I thought God forgives…everything.’
‘He does,’ Rev Emmett agreed, ‘but you can’t just say ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I forgive you.’ Anyone can do that. Forgiveness takes more than words.
Ian asks the pastor what that means, and the pastor replies: ‘For you to forgive- forgive yourself or someone else- it requires you to take steps to heal what’s broken.’
Ian can’t imagine what those steps might be, but the pastor was more than ready to tell Ian what he must do.
First, Ian will have to confess his secret to his parents
And then Rev Emmett tells Ian he’ll have to drop out of college, get a job and raise the children.
Ian tries to laugh it off and asks the pastor: ‘What kind of crazy religion is this?’
‘It’s Christianity. It’s the religion of atonement and complete forgiveness. It’s the religion of the Second Chance.’
So Ian does just that: drops out, joins the little storefront church, adopts his brother’s kids, becomes a carpenter, steps into a life completely different than the one he expected or even wanted and, in the process, he learns to forgive.
It took me a while to figure out why he’d had me read that book.
Forgiveness isn’t you can will yourself into. It’s not something at the end of three or seven easy steps. It’s not like flicking on a light switch, saying the words doesn’t make it so.
And it’s not something you do before you move on with being a Christian.
Forgiveness is something you discover in the midst of discipleship.
Joseph’s able, after seventeen years, to forgive his brothers because for those same seventeen years Joseph’s been contending against a famine that had struck the land.
For seventeen years Joseph’s been working to feed those the famine had left hungry. For seventeen years Joseph’s been working to give water to those the famine had left thirsty. For seventeen years Joseph’s been busy working to provide shelter to those the famine had made homeless.
For seventeen years Joseph has been knee-deep in the suffering and needs of others. He’s been thrust to the center of what God’s doing in the world.
Joseph can finally forgive his brothers because for all those years after he first tried and failed to forgive Joseph’s given himself over to serving others and being used by God.
As a consequence, Joseph’s made himself a part of a larger story, a story bigger and more interesting and more joyful and more determinative than the story of what was done to him.
Joseph can’t undo the past, but it no longer defines him.
And once that past no longer defines him, he no longer has any need to hold it against his brothers.
There are people in this church, people I pray for every week, working at forgiveness:
Couples whose marriages are without grace.
Children who’ve been wounded deeply by a mother or a father.
Wives working at forgiving their husbands’ addictions and husbands working at forgiving their wives’ infidelity.
People working at forgiving the person who abused them.
Parents working at forgiving the person who abused their child.
Many others in this church working at forgiving themselves:
for letting their family down,
for a life they took,
for a lie they’re living or for a secret they can’t tell.
I can tell you what the counseling books say about how to forgive.
The steps:
How first you speak truthfully and patiently about the hurt.
How second you acknowledge your anger and your desire to overcome it.
How next you recognize your own role in the conflict.
And then how you summon concern for the other.
And then finally how you commit to establishing a new relationship.
I can tell you what the counseling books say.
And I can tell you what the theologians say about forgiveness:
How, when you forgive, it’s actually Christ in you announcing through you the verdict that God’s already decided apart from you. God’s already forgiven them; you’re just adding your ditto.
I can tell you what the theologians say.
But the truth is-
As a pastor, I know that all makes forgiveness sound too easy. I know the path to forgiveness doesn’t come with a map and a compass.
Because the fact is it took a cross for God to forgive us, and our own work at forgiveness isn’t any easier.
And make no mistake it is work.
It’s work because forgiveness is a gift that only the wounded can give and the wound-er never deserves.
It’s work because forgiveness in the name of Jesus isn’t just absolving someone of their guilt; it’s your commitment to repair and heal what’s broken.
It’s work because, if we’re honest, we can grow so used to the pain, we can so define ourselves by the past that we don’t want an unknown future forgiveness might create.
Earlier this summer when I solicited your questions for this fall sermon series, I received more questions about forgiveness than any other.
But I only received one question about how to do it.
“How do I forgive?”
It was anonymous.
And so I don’t know if you’re here today.
But the answer is: you need to find yourself a famine.
You need to roll up your sleeves and wade into the suffering of others.
You need to find people who need you.
You need to find a place where you can serve, a place where you can use your wounds to heal others.
You need to throw yourself into the middle of what God’s doing in the world and let yourself be used by God.
Only then can your story become part of a larger story.
Only then can your past can be prologue to what God is doing with you now and tomorrow.
Only then can you look into someone else’s face and truthfully say:
I know you hurt me, but God’s taken that pain and God’s using it for good. I forgive you.
You need to find yourself a famine.
I don’t know whose question it was.
But if you’re here today:
I realize that answer might be more work than you were hoping for.
But trust me, or take it from Joseph, the good news is it’s work that can give you an adventure for the rest of your life.