The Journey of Forgiving

 (To listen to this in audio, go to the 8000 Promises podcast for 3/18/24)

Thanks so much for joining me today as we look a bit at the idea of forgiveness and why it can be so darn difficult but is so very important for us to practice.

I listened to a sermon by Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber recently where she was looking at the text from Luke 2.  In it Mary and Joseph take the baby Jesus to the Temple to present and dedicate Jesus to God, as was the custom. They were surprised when they were there that a Spirit-filled man named Simeon declared as he held the child that he could finally die because he had seen the long-awaited Messiahû* in this little baby. He said amazing things about the promised Savior and Mary and Joseph were blown away. 

Simeon went on to say to Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed - and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (Luke 2:35, NRSV).

Nadia writes that Simeon was spot on in his prophecy. Throughout scripture and throughout history we see many rise and fall and oppose Jesus as they reveal their hearts, their inner thoughts: coming down on Jesus for eating with sinners, healing on the sabbath, and putting the Scribes and Pharisees in a bad light when he told his parables.  Their hearts revealed that the rituals and rules of the day and keeping their power were more important than truly caring for the people.

I’ve had my own moments when my ugly inner thoughts were revealed. Times when my selfishness and self interest outweighed the needs of a friend or loved one. Or when I withheld my attention towards someone because if I’m truly honest, they didn’t have anything of interest to offer me. Ugh, yuck. It feels gross just saying/typing that. What would your inner thoughts reveal about your actions?

I think this is why I love the time in worship for the prayer of confession that we practice in the Presbyterian church and many other denominations do as well. Because truth be told, I’m not always real diligent about including confession in my prayers. I love the prayers of confession because if we’re honest, both corporately and individually our inner thoughts can be just awful and our actions (or lack of action) even worse, and so what better way to be cleansed from all that yuck than to confess it, acknowledge it to God - literally “come clean” with God - and receive forgiveness. Such a simple thing…but not always easy.

At the Ash Wednesday service I attended recently the pastor talked about how we may be good at confessing but asked, “do we really receive the forgiveness we’re offered?” Most of us aren’t very good at receiving. We prefer being givers.

It’s funny because, as a pastor I preached often on the idea that in order to be able to fully love others, and fully experience all God has for us, we have to be able to receive the unconditional and limitless love that God has for each one of us and then in turn, love ourselves, fully realize our worth. In other words, we have to be good receivers before we can be good givers. But many a good, independent, pull yourself up by your bootstraps American struggles with receiving. We live in a country that is all about Independence with a capital “I.”  “I don’t need any help. I can do it myself,” we continue to tell ourselves (sounding just like a three year old). We are encouraged to not ask for help and our goals for our kids are to be happy and independent adults. We struggle to receive from others. We struggle to receive fully from God as well.

I recently became very intimately aware of this reality as I went through training to use a white cane. I have low vision that continues to deteriorate and so I thought it would not only be wise but helpful to learn how to use a white cane. But I hadn’t expected the mental and emotional turmoil that this process brought with it. Beyond having to think about and listen for so many different things at every traffic intersection, the reality that I was now committed to publicly proclaiming through the use of my cane (lovingly named “Jane the Cane”) I was advertising that I was legally blind and I might need help. It was a very vulnerable, very humbling feeling. I felt very exposed. I remember the first time I walked with my cane outside of my little neighborhood and tears started streaming down my face. I was committing to this. It was a big deal. And if I’m really honest, my pride (that strong streak of independence and non-reliance on others) was coming to the surface and making itself more known. I had to acknowledge that I’d been carrying around a lot more pride than I’d realized. As I said, it was a rough transition.  

In much the same way, if we want to be good forgivers, we need to be good at accepting the forgiveness that God and others offer us. Ugh. That’s not always easy either because I really believe that many times even  unbeknownst to ourselves, our pride keeps us from receiving or offering forgiveness…or both. But it’s oooohhhh sooooo necessary and important to figure this out! Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Or as we said it in seminary which for some reason I preferred, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.  Notice how God worded that for us?  We first need to BE forgiven, that is, accept the forgiveness offered to us, BEFORE we can truly forgive those who have sinned against us. Read that sentence again!

Once we are able to accept God’s forgiveness we are much more capable of forgiving others who have done us wrong.  And truthfully, it’s not so much about letting the other person off the hook and it’s much more about not carrying around the burden that you are owed some unpaid debt. Just think for a moment about how that feels…

Have you ever made a loan to someone that didn’t get paid back as expected? Or maybe you’ve done something generous and it went unacknowledged?  Maybe someone left something undone or didn’t hold up their end of a bargain and they’re not even acknowledging their wrong?  It’s a yucky feeling to carry around the burden of feeling “owed,” of feeling like you have been wronged and deserve at least an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and an apology, let alone some kind of restoration or justice. 

Forgiveness is more about releasing ourselves from the burden of that weight of being owed, that weight of debt. Because truthfully, if we had to pay back or account for every sin, every wrong thought or every wrong  action or inaction that we’ve done, we’d never see the light of day. 

Certainly, forgiveness is also a gift to the one who sinned against us - and then they have to be able to receive it. But it’s definitely more about releasing the debt from our own hearts and allowing the forgiving grace and nature of God’s love to take over instead of our insistence for justice.

Now I know I’m kind of making this sound like more of a 12-Step program…. Just do this and then that.  But truly, it is in giving that we receive.  It is in forgiving that we experience forgiveness. That is the very nature of the kingdom of God. It is grace. Feeling the freedom that comes with releasing debt - both as the one indebted and as the one in debt.

The concepts are simple. The reality is that we wrestle over and over again with our own feelings of justice and worth and pride and so many things! If we can just get over ourselves (and yes, this is me talking to myself here!), then we will easily be able to forgive those who sin against us.

It’s a journey, friends. None of us do it perfectly. We each just try to keep doing the next right thing.  God’s got you. God’s got me. We’ve got this.