Sunday, March 4, 2018

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.


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