Forgiveness Part 1

 

“Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about letting go of another person's throat. Forgiveness does not create a relationship. Unless people speak the truth about what they have done and change their mind and behavior, a relationship of trust is not possible. When you forgive someone, you certainly release them from judgment, but without true change, no real relationship can be established.  Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive. But should they finally confess and repent, you will discover a miracle in your own heart that allows you to reach out and begin to build between you a bridge of reconciliation. Forgiveness does not excuse anything.  You may have to declare your forgiveness a hundred times the first day and the second day, but the third day will be less and each day after, until one day you will realize that you have forgiven completely. And then one day you will pray for his wholeness......”  ― William P. Young, The Shack

 

On Sunday, July 27, we read Jesus’ call to forgive seventy times seven.  This doesn’t mean that when we forgive someone 490 times, we can finally stop because we reached the finish line!  Jesus isn’t asking us to keep a spreadsheet on each person with tally marks.  Jesus isn’t asking us to come up with some elaborate accounting scheme.  To forgive someone that many times means that you are connected, caught (twisted and tangled) in a web of mutuality.  I am not sure how many times my wife and kids have forgiven me, because we don’t keep track.  I am not sure how many times the church has forgiven me because I’ve said something at a meeting.  Part of what Jesus is inviting us into is to make forgiveness a prayer practice, so that it becomes part of our emotional, mental, spiritual, and relational operating system.  If I forgive someone almost five hundred times, chances are good I have woven a neuro pathway in my brain and created that space in my heart.  The popular phrase is that neurons that fire together in my mind wire together.  Forgiveness becomes a part of life.

 

But, I hear you saying right now, what about that person?  Oh, we all have that person who has a particular skill at pushing the nuclear codes of our emotional system to set off another Chernobyl.  We have that person whom we are so angry with for having the gall to breathe the same air we do!  We all have that person who has hurt and harmed us so much.  Notice the above quote doesn’t ask you to trust a person again.  There are relationship ruptures that are so broken, shattered into sharp shards like glass hitting a tile floor, that no amount of duct tape and super glue can repair that brokenness.  Some relationships will never heal ~ I mean this both individually and collectively. 

 

I invite you today to step back from the edge of the worst-case scenario to one.  Rather who is one person you want to forgive?  Just like you wouldn’t go out and run a marathon without building up the miles, you don’t have to forgive the Hitlers of the world just because you read the Bible verse.  We start softer with someone we truly love, where trust has been broken.  Today, hold that person in your heart.  With your left hand, hold the ache of the brokenness.  Acknowledge what she said and what you said in response ~ or what he did or left undone.  Name the pain.  Then, with your right hand, hold the ways this person’s love has made a difference in your life.  Name why you want reconciliation.  In the space between your left hand (the offense) and your right hand (the prayerful hope for healing) is where we invite God to enter and make amends.  You don’t have to call that person today or reach full forgiveness status (forgiveness is a process of one step forward, twenty-five steps back).  Today, we acknowledge that humans are holy and messy because that is true of each of us.  May God’s love meet us in the heartbreaks and soul aches that are part of every life right now.  Amen.