The power and problem of forgiveness #5 - accepting forgiveness RUMC 3/25/18

The power and problem of forgiveness

#5 - accepting forgiveness

RUMC 3/25/18

She sat in my office, in my grandma’s rocker, her knuckles white as she clutched the arms of the chair as if it was an electric chair. She had cancer at the age of 35, and might not live. She stopped by to talk and reflect on her life as one does when they face their mortality.

 the cancer and she deserved to die. I invited her to explain what she meant. That is when she grabbed the chair as if for dear life.

She started talking about how she deserved

She began to tell her story. She became pregnant at the age of 16. When she told her parents they screamed and yelled about bringing shame to the family. “Don’t you care anything about us?” “How could you do this?” And then they put her in “exile.” They took her out of school and kept her at home because she was an embarrassment.

In the hospital they would not allow her last name to be put on the door of her room; just her first name. They forbade her to name the child and forced the nurses to remove the baby before she saw it or held it. (And I say “IT” because they wouldn’t even tell her what the gender the baby was.) She was a disgrace, a shameful blot on the family name, a whore, a tramp, stupid, foolish and everything else they could think of. She had been carrying this with her for almost 20 years. Is it any wonder she had cancer? The studies prove unforgiveness will kill us. I am sure that being unforgiven and its twin siblings guilt and shame are just as deadly. Guilt and shame metastasized in her body first, long before cancer.

  The woman who sat in my office that day is among millions of people who live with toxic and maybe even deadly levels of guilt and shame. No matter how many times they hear “God forgives sin” “You are forgiven” For God so loved the world” it doesn’t penetrate to the cellular level and they live in their own personal hell.

But the Bible says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Easy peasy right? Confess it, God forgives it, and we are back to normal. Metastatic guilt does not go away that easily once it invades every cell of our body.

Now I hope you are not as bad off as that woman. I thank God that I am not, but I carry my share of guilt and shame, and you probably do too.

So what do we do?

First, let’s differentiate between guilt and shame. Guilt comes from wrong actions, Guilt is about what we have “done or left undone” as the prayer of confession says.

Shame, on the other hand, has nothing to do with behavior. Shame is embarrassment about who we are on the inside

I can be ashamed that I like cookies a little too much… ok a lot too much.

I don’t feel guilty until I have eaten the whole package and Noah asks, “Do you have any cookies papa”… or worse, Robyn asks “What did you do?!” See the difference? Shame comes from who we are. Guilt comes from what we do.

But the good news is that Jesus died on the cross for our guilt and our shame. Today we will read the story of Jesus’ death on the cross. We think of Jesus sacrifice on the cross as addressing the sins we commit. In other words, letting us out of our prison of guilt. That is also what animal sacrifices were for. That is what the scapegoat was for when you put the guilt of the nation on a goat and drove it into the desert never to be seen again.

That is part of what Jesus did. But there’s more. Jesus also went to the cross to free us from the prison of shame.

You see crucifixion is a terrible thing! It is a slow painful, torturous death that could take 3-4 days, it was designed to torture, and kill… but it was also designed to shame. ..Totally shame the person. Now we have a pretty sterile image of crucifixion because we love Jesus and don’t want to think about this. But join me for a minute. When a person was crucified they were stripped naked, nailed to a cross, and left there. They hung there in all their glory for all to see. They lost control of their bowels and bladder for all to see. They fought for breath and screamed in pain for all to see. They died a shameful death for all to see. Jesus took that shame upon himself in order to show that he loved us that much. He did that to set us free us from the prison of shame. Shame says we don’t deserve love… the cross says, you’re right, but I love you this much anyway. He not only let us out of the prison of guilt, he set us free from shame.

So Jesus died for our guilt and our shame. Accepting forgiveness is hard. Mostly because our shame tells us that we don’t deserve it. And we are right. On the cross, however, grace won the victory over shame, guilt, and death.

This follows the same outline we used when we are forgiving someone so do you remember what I said the first step in forgiving someone is? To re-humanize them. To see them as a child of God.

 The first step to accepting forgiveness is to rehumanize yourself and claim the truth that you are God’s beloved child. You are not a slob, or a whore, or an idiot, or an adulterer, or a thief, or a liar, or a monster of any kind. That kind of thinking is dehumanizing, reducing us to a caricature of who we are.

Our shameful feelings are right in as much as NO ONE deserves forgiveness. But grace happens anyway. But Jesus died for us anyway. God loves us anyway. And God wants to forgive us anyway.

But the first step in receiving forgiveness whether from God or neighbor is to let go of our shame so we can be open to forgiveness.

Do something with me. Read these statements that are extrapolated from scripture with me.

1.           I am a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).

2.           I am a child of God (John 1:12).

3.           I am God’s handiwork (Ephesians 2:10).

4.           I am a citizen of heaven (Philippians 3:20).

5.           I am more than a conqueror (Romans 8:37).

6.           I am Christ’s friend (John 15:15).

7.           I am the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13).

8.           I am complete in Christ (Colossians 2:10).

9.           I can be forgiven. (1 John 1:9).

Those are on your Know, Grow, Go sheet. That is the way God sees you. If you don’t see yourself like that, you have some shame and perhaps you can begin to leave it at the foot of the cross by reading them aloud every day as a reminder of who you really are in God’s eyes.

 Second, when we are forgiving I said we had to give up our right to justice and not expect them to make it right. In accepting forgiveness we have to release out guilt that makes us think that we have to fix everything. Guilt is based in part on the belief that we screwed things up and have an obligation to fix them. You can’t. You can’t unsay, un-lie, un-hurt, or undo your wrong behavior. There is nothing you can do to earn forgiveness.

Now, sometimes we have to apologize, or pay damages, or go to jail, or lose a friend, or suffer other consequences for our behavior. I am not saying that we should not. I am saying that there is nothing we can do to make what we did go away so we have to let go of the idea that we can. There is no way for us to fix it. We have to rely on forgiveness.

 Which brings us to the third point. If we can stop shaming ourselves and admit that we can’t fix it, we can confess our sin and throw ourselves on the mercy of the court.

With human beings that is always a gamble. You can confess and ask forgiveness, but there is no guarantee how they will respond. You may not receive the forgiveness you are seeking from a person. That is unfortunate. And it is hard to accept. They are essentially compounding the wrong that was done. At those times we rely on God’s forgiveness.

…Which is guaranteed and absolute? “Confess your sins and God, who is faithful and just will forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.”  Grace guaranteed. “If you forgive the sins of others your sins will be forgiven.” Grace guaranteed.

Not remembering guaranteed.  Remember God can’t forget our sins, but God graciously chooses to not remember them, not to hold on to them, not to hold them against us.

So the third step in accepting forgiveness “Accepting that we are not imprisoned by the past so we can be forgiven, loved, and free.”

If only my friend sitting in my office had known that:  forgiven, loved, and free.

If only I could remember that: forgiven, loved, and free.

If only you could remember that: forgiven, loved, and free.

Let’s watch a video about a man accepting forgiveness.

Not shame and guilt but forgiven loved and free.

The power and problem of forgiveness: Now what? RUMC 3/18/2019

The power and problem of forgiveness: Now what?

RUMC 3/18/2019

We have been talking about some amazing stories of forgiveness. Do you remember the man who forgave his son for hiring a hit man? Do you remember the woman who forgave her son’s killer and now he lives next door to her. Do you remember the woman who forgave the man who sexually assaulted her as a teenager? The woman whose uncle took his own life? Those are amazing stories.

Most of life’s wrongs are not that dramatic, but forgiveness is always amazing. Most of our forgiveness is aimed at little things: the friend who wrongs us, being accidentally excluded or overlooked, being wrongly accused, or blamed, being thoughtlessly embarrassed… None of these makes the cut as the most dramatic or unbelievable stories of forgiveness, but they are still miracles that would not have happened had it not been for God’s grace. Forgiveness, by definition, is always a miracle of grace.

 This is the 5th week we have talked about forgiveness. We have talked about the source of forgiveness, the importance of forgiveness, the way of forgiveness, and barriers to forgiveness.

 Today we want to tackle the indigestion we get after we forgive. Don’t get me wrong. It is not the forgiveness that give us indigestion, it is the fact that too often we have not totally digested forgiveness and that comes back to haunt us. Too often we have not really totally forgiven and it causes us problems.

  We have all heard and even used the phrase, “forgive and forget,” right? We need to put that one to bed today. No one knows the origin of the phrase forgive and forget, but it was not the Bible.

The Bible does talk about God not remembering our sins. For instance, Isaiah 43:25 says, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” Hebrews adds “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

It does not say that God forgets. No, God is omniscient… God knows everything and never forgets anything. The passages say God does not remember. Not remembering is different from forgetting. To forget is to not be able to recall. God never forgets anything. Forgetting is an accident. ..Not remembering is a choice. What God does is chose to not remember… not bring our sins to memory… not dwell on them… not keep bringing them up.

 Remember how I am defining forgiveness. “A decision we make to not imprison others - or ourselves - in the past.” In other words, to forgive is to decide not to remember. To set the memories aside. Not imprisoning anyone, including ourselves, in the mistakes, hurts, and memories of the past.

 That’s all well and good. But let’s try this… I want you to follow my directions very carefully. Do not think about ice cream. Ah… I caught you. Thinking about ice cream… weren’t you. No matter how hard we try, if something triggers a memory it comes flooding back. And whether it is a good memory or a bad one, it can bring back all the same feelings that originally came with it

 Even when we have forgiven all of those memories are still there. In theory, they are harmlessly in the past. When memories of past hurts, injuries, and wrongs involuntarily come back on us, that is what I am calling forgiveness indigestion. It might be triggered by seeing the person, hearing similar words, being in the same place, or there may be no trigger at all. For no apparent reason our minds will be flooded with the hurts others have caused us, and the feelings of anger, or hatred, or revenge, or fear, or victimization will come back. And you know what… we have to forgive all over again.

That happened to me this week. Even though I had forgiven someone several times, the minute I saw them my stomach tightened, my pulse went up and I raised my guard. Not voluntarily, mind you. It just happened automatically. That is why this sermon is different from the title in the bulletin… because I realized I forgot an important step and that is living with forgiveness rather than letting it give us indigestion. This week, along with the flood of memories came the pain, the anger, and the fear the of being attacked all over again. To be clear they did nothing. This is not about them. I have forgiven them. I have released them. I have not, however, set myself free of the pain and anger. That is forgiveness indigestion

Last week I talked about Peter asking how many times he had to forgive and Jesus answer 70x7. One way of looking at that is that if someone keeps hurting us, now many times do we have to keep forgiving them?

Let’s look at the same question through a different lens. Could Peter have been asking, “How many times do I have to forgive if a single hurt keeps coming back like indigestion?” And Jesus’ answer is just the same 70x7.

Let’s go to the scripture for today.

Romans 12 has some great advice. Let’s start with verse 9 on page 162

 “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.”

Isn’t that interesting? Outdo one another in showing honor. In other words, no matter how dishonorable they were, be the first to show respect.

By doing so we are freeing ourselves from unforgiveness. And we will not suffer forgiveness indigestion.

Similarly…if we keep working our way through the passage;

No matter what they did, keep loving God and you are being set free from unforgiveness.

No matter what they did, be the first to serve and you are being set free from unforgiveness.

No matter what they did, do not give up hope on them and you are being set free from unforgiveness.

No matter how much they hurt you, be patient with them and you are being set free from unforgiveness.

No matter how you may feel, pray for them and you are being set free from unforgiveness.

No matter how selfish they have been, be generous with them and others and you are being set free from unforgiveness.

No matter that they did, show them hospitality and you are being set free from unforgiveness.

No matter what is in the past, bless-- do not curse them and you are being set free from unforgiveness.

Even if they don’t show you compassion, have compassion on them rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep and you are being set free from unforgiveness.

Even if they don’t try, you try to live in harmony with them and you are being set free from unforgiveness.

Even if they are vengeful, do not repay evil with evil. and you are being set free from unforgiveness

No matter what they think of you, try to find something good in them and you are being set free from unforgiveness.

 “If it be possible… so much as it depends on you live peaceably with all.”

No matter what anyone has done to you do not seek revenge, let God be the judge.

If they are hungry, be the first to feed them.

If they are thirsty be the first to give them drink and you are being set free from unforgiveness

Then Paul quotes Proverbs 25, which sounds harsh… “By doing so you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Which sounds harsh, it sounds like lowering yourself to their level. But not really… NOTICE THE NEXT LINE, “DO NOT BE OVERCOME BY EVIL, BUT OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD. That makes it clear that Paul is saying that when we do the right thing, it illuminates the wrongdoing of others. They may begin to feel guilty enough that God can work in them… they may repent. They may become open to seeing God’s love in your actions and they may change.

Or they may not, but either way we are living lives set free from unforgiveness.

In summary… love them… Is spite of them…love them… in spite of yourself… love them the best you can. No matter what… love them. If you have forgiven them, love them. If you are having trouble forgiving them, love them. If you feel bitter love them. If you want revenge, love them. No matter what love them. That is the only road to freedom from unforgiveness.

 In Total Forgiveness, R. T. Kendall. Puts it this way:

1.         Make the deliberate and irrevocable choice not to tell anyone what they did.

2.         Be pleasant to them should you be around them.

3.         If conversation ensues, say that which would set them free from guilt.

4.         Let them feel good about themselves.

5.         Protect them from their greatest fear; being found out.

6.         Keep it up today, tomorrow, this year, and next.

7.         Finally, Pray for them.

In other words, no matter what… love them.

But I don’t know if I can… you might say… I don’t know if I have that in me. I promise you that you do not. You don’t stand a chance of loving those who have hurt you on your own. But Paul also addresses that at the beginning of today’s passage.

  “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

The world says revenge… you mind says get even… your twisted-up gut says teach them a lesson… but Paul writes, don’t be conformed to that. But be a transformed creature. Transformed by the grace of God into a child of love and forgiveness.

You can’t do it alone. Not a chance in the world. But God can. Yes, God can transform your anger to love, your vengefulness to forgiveness. God can and God will cure you of your forgiveness indigestion.

THE POWER AND PROBLEM OF FORGIVENESS: Really? (When forgiveness is hard) Reinbeck UMC 3/11/18

THE POWER AND PROBLEM OF FORGIVENESS: Really? (When forgiveness is hard)

Reinbeck UMC  3/11/18

From the sandbox and school yard; to the work place and the family, forgiveness is a critical part of human relationships. None of us gets through life without hurting someone’s feelings, stepping on someone’s toes, or breaking someone’s heart. Likewise, none of us gets through life without having our feelings hurt, toes stepped on, or heart broken.

There are some big stories of forgiveness. The man who forgave his son for hiring a hit man to kill the family. Corrie Ten Boom forgiving the Nazi guard whose abuse led to her sister’s death. The spouse who forgives infidelity and the marriage is saved. Do you remember my pastor friend who forgave his father’s murderer and took him into his own home after he was released from prison? 

Most forgiveness is not that dramatic.  One child taking a toy from another.  One child pushes the other down on the playground.  A son or daughter wrecks the family car.  A misunderstanding between friends or spouses.  Perhaps they are the training grounds for those times in life when we face bigger hurts. They are mistakes, and misjudgments, and oversights but you know what?  They are still hard. Forgiveness is just really hard. Let’s talk about some barriers to forgiveness today.

         

If you have heard the first three sermons in this series you know that

•        The source of all forgiveness is God’s grace.

•        Unforgiveness will kill us physically, emotionally and spiritually (especially if we pray that dangerous prayer Jesus taught us… “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.) 

•        And you know that forgiveness is a process

o        Recognize that they are a child of God

o        Don’t expect them to make it right (give up our claim to justice)

o        Change our attitude toward them

o        Until we can pray for God to bless them

If you missed them you can read them on line through our website.

 Why is forgiveness so hard?  It is such a good thing.  If we release them, we will be set free from our anger, our need for revenge, our anxiety about them. We can be set free from so many negative things.  We can release them from the prison of the past and at the same time we are set free too. If forgiveness is so good, why do we hear Jesus’ teachings to forgive, and look and God to ask, “Really?” Because it is hard.  I can’t fix that.  But we can address a few barriers to forgiveness.

 The first barrier is simple WE SIMPLY DON’T WANT TO FORGIVE.

Let’s face it. On one level we tend to think it would be good if we could hate someone for what they did to us and still have the blessings of God, still be filled with the Spirit, still walk in joy every day, still radiate the love of Jesus, and still have our prayers answered. We’d much prefer if we could just have our relationship with God insulated and encapsulated so we could treat other people any way we like. Jesus says, “No deal. You can’t have it that way.”

Let’s take a look at page 5 of our pew Bibles if you will.  Starting with 5:43

  “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ Sometimes that’s the way we want it isn’t it. At least some times we want to be left alone in our anger and hatred. Sometimes we just want to be angry at them and feel sorry for ourselves. Some people find that they get more attention if they can be the victim. Some people have such high expectations that they can’t stand others who don’t live up to those expectations. Others are just vindictive and like holding the power of unforgiveness over others.     But Jesus continues I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; … skipping down to verse 46  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” 

You see, Jesus won’t accept our resistance to forgiveness.

The ultimate example… and I can’t even wrap my head around this… the ultimate example comes in our second reading today. Jesus has been betrayed by one of his closest friends, unjustly arrested, falsely convicted, whipped, taunted, spat on, nailed to a cross, and was hanging there gasping for breath …and with one of his last breaths says what? “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  How could he do that? Jesus knew the power of unforgiveness to kill and the power of forgiveness to set people free from the death of guilt and shame.  He chose forgiveness for all of us.  “Father, forgive them.  For they know not what they do.” 

The icing on the cake comes in the prayer Jesus taught. Back in chapter 6 of Matthew. Jesus essentially put an end to the discussion about forgiveness.  Verse 12 says. “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  And verse 14-15 “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.”

NO doubt, NO wiggle room.  NO escape clause.  No matter how much you like to bear a grudge Jesus says “do whatever you have to do to get over it and Forgive.

 If we get past the wall of our own resistance, there are other barriers.

One is that sometimes there is no apology, no acknowledgement of the hurt, no repentance, nothing.  If you forgive someone who doesn’t believe they need forgiveness, they may just look at you funny… or they may punch you in the nose.

We would like to have some justice.  We would all like to hear the other person acknowledge their wrong. We would all like to hear an apology, but that is not one of the steps in forgiveness. Step two, in fact, is to specifically give up our claim to justice. Give up any expectation that they will take any steps to make it better.

Let’s step back for a minute.

The source of all forgiveness is God’s grace. What do we have to do to receive God’s grace?  Nothing! By definition grace is unearned, undeserved, and has no strings.  Refusing to forgive for lack of an apology is a string. And therefore, the forgiveness that follows an apology might be called cheap or easy forgiveness. An apology makes forgiveness easier, but it isn’t necessary.

Did Judas come running to Jesus and apologize while he was on the cross? Peter? the guards? Pilate? No. No one asked to be forgiven How could Jesus forgive.  GRACE.

Get in your mind one of those situations where there is no apology. We all have 1 or 20 in our lives. How does it make you feel?  Take your pulse do you feel you pulse going up?  Your blood pressure? Your anxiety levels?  Most of us probably do.

Is that the way you want to live?  Even though you might burry it most of the time, what is it doing to you physically? And what is it doing to you spiritually if you don’t forgive that person.

Even if there is no apology, we have to forgive for our sake and God’s.  Forgiveness is not just for the person who wronged us.  Remember forgiveness sets us free.

 Just like Jesus, we have to forgive. Father forgive them even though they don’t admit to doing wrong.  Father forgive them even though they don’t know the full extent of what they did.  Father for give them even though they deny doing anything wrong. Father help me to forgive.  I release them from the prison of the past. Please set me free of my pain, anger, resentment, hatred, set me free from this hurt. Set me free from the prison of unforgiveness I have built for myself.

I Corinthians 13, says “Love keeps no list of wrongs.”

To love our neighbor means to forgive just as we have been forgiven... no matter what.

 The last barrier I want to address is repeat offenders. They never seem to change. The example that comes to mind is the alcoholic who is remorseful when they are sober, but they are so owned by the alcohol that they keep repeating the very behavior that hurts those close to them.

It might be someone who gossips, a spouse who is unfaithful or anything else that happens over and over.

Our first reading for the morning from Matthew 18 lays out a conflict resolution plan for Christians.  If we work through the plan and they still continue to sin… they continue to hurt us… Jesus says to treat them “as a gentile and a tax collector.”  How did Jesus treat Gentile san tax collectors?  Let’s see… he healed them, he forgave them, he loved them, the treated them the best he could, and maybe better than they deserved. So, to treat someone as a gentile or tax collector is to treat them with grace and love even though they may not reciprocate.

  Peter steps up and asks, “When is enough, enough?  You know I have my limits and at some point, I’m just going to throw the person if the lake.”  Jesus says, no… there is no limit to forgiveness.  There is no limit to grace.  You must forgive …what does he say 70 times 7 times.  How many is that?  490?  Are you likely to keep track of 490 offenses?  No. Am likely to write down every time you hurt me. No.  I think Jesus point here was to chose a number so big that we would lose track and have to start over so I can keep track? I don’t think Jesus expects that we will ever get to 488, 489, 490 OK you’re cut off no more forgiveness for you.   He chooses 7 because 7 is the Hebrew number for completeness and perfection (both physical and spirit

Jesus is really saying you must forgive completely … until you have lost track of how many times you have forgiven.

Jesus says forgive… whether we want to or not, whether they apologize or not, whether they change their behavior or not.  It is hard… Who knows better then Jesus who forgave me of my sins and you of your sins.  Jesus knew it was hard, but whatever barriers we face… we forgive because we have been forgiven. 

 Now, Jesus doesn’t say it, but I have to clarify a few things

•        Forgiveness does not mean approving of what someone else did.

•        Forgiveness does not mean pretending that evil never took place.

•        Forgiveness does not mean making excuses for other people’s bad behavior.

•        Forgiveness does not mean justifying evil so that sin somehow becomes less sinful.

•        Forgiveness does not mean overlooking abuse.

•        Forgiveness does not mean denying that others tried to hurt you repeatedly.

•        Forgiveness does not mean letting others walk all over you.

•        Forgiveness does not mean refusing to press charges when a crime has been committed.

•        Forgiveness does not mean forgetting the wrong that was done.

•        Forgiveness does not mean pretending that you were never hurt.

•        Forgiveness does not mean that you must restore the relationship to what it was before.

•        Forgiveness does not mean that you must become best friends again.

•        Forgiveness does not mean there must be a total reconciliation as if nothing ever happened.

•        Forgiveness does not mean that you must tell the person that you have forgiven them.

•        Forgiveness does not mean that all negative consequences of sin are canceled.

FORGIVENESS DOES MEAN THAT YOU RELEASE THE PAST SO YOU CAN HE SET FREE TODAY.

The power and problem of forgiveness: How? Reinbeck UMC 3/4/18

The power and problem of forgiveness: How?

Reinbeck UMC 3/4/18

RT Kendall, who wrote one of the books I read in preparation for this series, tells someone very near and dear to him hurt him greatly. He doesn’t go into detail, but he says the pain was deep and the hurt profound because he had looked to this person as a surrogate father figure. The anger that he felt overwhelmed him. At length he talked it over with a friend the Romanian evangelist Josif Tson. After he poured out all the sordid details of what his so-called friend had done to him, he paused, waiting for Pastor Tson to say, “R. T., you are right to feel so angry. What happened to you was awful.” But he didn’t. After listening to all the details, Josif Tson said simply, “You must totally forgive them.” Pastor Kendall was dumbfounded so he started to tell the story all over again, this time adding more details.

 Josif Tson interrupted with words that would change R. T. Kendall’s life, “You must totally forgive them. Release them, and you will be set free.”

“Release them and you will be set free.”  This whole series might be summed up with those words. “Release then and you will be set free.” For this series of sermons, I am defining Christian forgiveness 

 as “A decision we make to not imprison others --or ourselves- in the past.”

It’s a conscious choice to release others from their sins against us so that we can be set free. “Release them, and you will be set free.” Which sounds great until like Pastor Kendall we are faced with real hurt in our lives. Remember I said last week that CS Lewis said everyone thinks forgiveness is a great idea, until they have someone to forgive.  It is much harder than it sounds.

Just a moment of review, I think this might be one of the most important and difficult series I have ever preached, so I left copies of the last 2 sermons on the table in the fellowship hall in case you missed them. 2 weeks ago, in the last sermon on essential prayer I said that God’s very essence is grace and it is that grace that makes forgiveness possible.

Last week I continued by teaching that unforgiveness will kill you physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  And as recipients of God’s wonderful forgiving grace we are required to forgiven others. Remember to harbor unforgiveness in our hearts and pray “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us” is to sign our death warrant.

 Fair enough, but how?  How do we forgive the person who hurt us so badly?  How do we forgive the spouse who betrayed us?  How do we forgive the person who took advantage of us a child? How do we forgive the person who took our loved one from us, or maybe worse did unspeakable things to our child?  How do we forgive the mass shooter, the drunk driver, the child pornographer, the child who broke our heart, or the preacher who failed us? 

To tell you the truth, a while back I was deeply hurt by someone I loved, respected, and trusted.  I tried but they would not work out the conflict. My only choice was to forgive. It took a little while, but I really thought I had forgiven them. At the last Academy for Spiritual Formation we were asked to write a letter of forgiveness. I thought I had this forgiveness thing all under control so I wrote to that person. As I wrote, the deep wounds opened up again and I discovered that I had to forgive all over again.

In that process I learned some things. Then when I came home and read more to prepare for this series, I discovered my revelations were not particularly original discoveries. I found that my struggle was the same as some of the authors I read. You’ll find the on the back of your Know, Grow, Go insert.  So, today, I want to share what I and others have learned about the process of forgiveness. I hope it will help you too.

I started my letter of forgiveness that day with something like, “dear so and so.  You have no idea how much you damaged me, how deeply you hurt me, how unfair and cruel you lies were…” does that sound like a letter of forgiveness to you?  NO, it didn’t to me either, so I crumpled it up and started again.

As I sat in my favorite little corner in the small chapel I snuggled into the pillows and wrote something like “Dear so and so, I forgive you for hurting me so badly, breaking my heart, lying about me, twisting the truth.”  I read it back to myself and realized that was not a letter of forgiveness either, it was a list of charges.  My pulse rate went up and I realized that I was trapped because I was STILL keeping that person and myself imprisoned in what had happened in the past.

 I turned my letter into a “dialogue prayer” in which God started answering me back. God starting asking questions like, “Do you understand how much they were hurting? Do you see how scared they were? Do you understand why they did that? Do you see that they are my beloved child?” 

 Slowly the first step in forgiveness dawned on me. The first step to forgiveness is REHUMANIZING the person who hurt us. We had to stop thinking of that person as a knife stuck in my back and start thinking of them once again as a beloved child of God.

The first step in forgiveness is to stop thinking of them as the enemy, the perpetrator, the animal they acted like. The first step is taking away whatever keep us from seeing them as a beloved child of God. 

The first step in forgiveness is rediscovering or recognizing the other person’s humanity. It does not diminish what they did. In fact, it affirms that they too are sinners just like us and acknowledges the sinfulness of their behavior. (We might also end up seeing our own humanity and acknowledging our own sinfulness as well.) It acknowledges that at the root we are all brothers and sisters even when we hurt one another.

The person who visits their loved one’s killer in prison and comes to know them as a human being is rehumanizing the one they previously thought should be put down like an animal.

I recently visited someone (who gave me permission to use their story anonymously) who was severely damaged by a relative.  The pain and hurt went to their very core.  After years of anger and hurt, there was a knock at the door and there on the step stood the person who has hurt them. The person with whom I was speaking had a choice to make.  Send them away like a stray dog, or treat them like a fellow human being. Thank goodness they decided to let them in the living room. They have now had two very nice visits-- human being to human being-- not bringing up the past.  Things are not as they once were. But seeing them as a human being is the first step in forgiveness.

If you turn to Matthew 5 you will see that the first thing Jesus says is “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies.” He doesn’t say LIKE them.  He says “agape” them. Love them as God loves us, unconditionally, no matter what they have done, love them enough to see them as a brother or a sister.

 As I went back to my prayer, I found myself softening and starting to see that person from God’s perspective.  But something was holding my back, if only they would apologize, if only they would promise to act differently in the future, if only they would promise never to do that again.  I would have liked some justice.  But expecting justice or anything else form the other person keeps us from forgiving.

Lewis Smeede says the second stage of forgiveness is “surrendering our right to get even.” I don’t think I wanted to get even as such, but maybe wanting an apology is a way of getting even. If we are to forgive, we have to give up any right we might think we have to expect an apology, repentance, punishment, or anything else of the other person.  The person might have consequences; like we may choose to no longer be friends, or they may spend some time in jail, but as far as our expectations, they are off the hook.

Jumping down to verse 45 we see Jesus says “so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

If we are both children of the same heavenly father, is it my job to deal with them? How often does it work to let one sibling punish the other? Not very often.  It is our job in forgiveness to give up any claim we have to justice… and in so doing we let them out of the prison of the past.

So, the second step in forgiveness is letting them out of prison, or giving up our right to justice.

We start by seeing them as human, then we give up our right to justice, 

 I finished my prayer by praying for the same things for the other person that I want for myself. I prayed for to fill me with love, and I prayed the same for them. I prayed for God to release me from this, and for God to release them. I prayed for God to repair the foundations of both our lives that had been shaken by this event. I prayed for God to heal both of us of our pain. I prayed for God to forgive both of us and fill us with joy and hope.

  And you know what… praying for blessings for that person started to change my attitude toward them.  I started to let myself out of the prison of the past. Looking back, I did what Jesus said here, I “prayed for those who persecuted me,” I decided if I can’t pray for them, the same blessings I want for myself, that I had not really forgiven them. So I did.

Our feelings. Feelings are quite different. Remember I said Notice, this is not changing “A decision we make to not imprison others - or ourselves - in the past.” Not a feeling… a decision. If we wait until we feel like it we will never forgive. I admit that my gut still gets knotted up when I see the person. Maybe our feelings will follow someday, but forgiveness is a matter of the head… making a decision. So, we decide to revise our attitude about the person, we change our thinking up here and here, and pray that our guts will eventually follow our head and heart.

It is said that You’ll know you have reached total forgiveness when you are able to ask God to bless those who have hurt you so deeply. This is indeed a high standard, so high that without God it is impossible.  All forgiveness, whether we are the forgiver or the forgivee, ultimately comes from God.

So three steps to forgiveness:

•            Humanizing the other person, seeing them as a child of God.

•            Letting go of your right for revenge, or your right to judge.

•            Finally revising our attitude until you can pray for God to bless them.

Let me end with another video.