Forgiveness Part 2: "if only..."

image: http://wise-grasshopper.blogspot.com/2011/02/monkey-and-coocnut-art-of-wanting-less.html

Shalom Mennonite Church

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Don't Forgive Too Soon—Part 3: Bargaining

Texts: Psalm 130:1-6, Genesis 32:1-18, 33:1-9

Eric Massanari

“if only”

If only you knew how much you hurt me...

If only you could feel that hurt...

If only you could suffer the pain that I have known...

If only you would pay back all you have taken from me...

If only you understood how angry I am

and how much I want to see you pay

for what you have done...

…then, maybe then, I might be able to forgive you.

One can imagine Esau thinking and saying

such things after being betrayed by

his brother Jacob, and being robbed

of his birthright and blessing from their father.

If only...

If only I could somehow take it back...

If only I could go back and have a “do over”

of that terrible moment...

If only there was some way to reverse things...

If only I could assume the suffering I have caused you...

If only you knew how sorry I am...

...then, maybe then, you could forgive me.

One can imagine Jacob thinking and saying

such things after betraying his brother,

after learning some difficult life lessons,

and after being wounded in his wrestling match with God.

But first the brothers have to move through,

twenty years of separation and struggle,

saying to themselves:

If only....

This is the language of bargaining

on the journey of forgiveness.

Bargaining, you might say, is an act of

placing certain conditions on the outflow

of our love toward our sister or brother.

Bargaining is also the act of placing constraints

on our capacity to receive the flow of love

coming from our sister or brother.

That may make it sound negative,

however, the process of bargaining

is very natural and understandable

when there has been hurt inflicted

in our human relationships.

Such constraints and conditions

may be necessary when deep wounding has happened.

Bargaining can have a healthy aspect to it.

• It is a way we can articulate what has hurt us...
  You shared something with someone that I told you in confidence. I can forgive you if I can hear you acknowledge how this violated my trust in you.
  
  
• Bargaining is way we express our needs...
  You were careless when you were caring for my cat while I was on vacation. You made a poor choice to feed it Snickers bars instead of cat food. I need you to take responsibility for what happened and to help make it right before I can trust you to care for my cat again. I need you to come help me clean up my house!

• Bargaining is a way we name our boundaries...
  You have abused me and I do not feel safe with you. I need distance from you and I need the abuse to stop immediately.

Bargaining can be a vital, healthy step.

However, because bargaining means

placing conditions and constraints

on our relationships and our

capacity to relate to others

it can sometimes become a barrier

to the unfolding journey of forgiveness.

Sometimes our “if only's” become ultimatums,

and sometimes we set conditions on forgiveness

that simply are not reasonable or possible.

Most of us live with a myriad of “if only's”

in our engagement with life and one another:

If only I had more money...

If only I had a better job...

If only you could see things my way...

If only this moment could be different than it is right now...

Our bargaining can eventually

hamstring us, trap us, and prevent us

from growing to a new place.

I once heard about a clever monkey trap

used in parts of East Asia.

A coconut is hollowed out, and a small

hole is cut in one end, just large enough

for a monkey's hand to reach in.

Inside the coconut they place a piece of candy.

The monkey reaches into the trap,

his empty hand easily fitting through the hole,

but once he grabs the candy

and makes a fist, he cannot remove his hand.

In the end, the thing that traps the monkey

is his own refusal to let go.

Our bargaining has something to teach us,

its own gift to offer, but in time,

and when we are ready, our conditions

and constraints must eventually be released.

In order for forgiveness to come to its fullness,

we must release the hold that the past

has on our lives; we must eventually let go.

Consider how Jacob and Esau

stand before one another at the end of their story:

They stand on the soil of their homeland,

with their possessions and the people

they treasure gathered around them,

but in the end they must stand

empty handed before one another,

wounded, weeping, yielded, open.

Jacob, the one who has wounded his brother,

is now limping and wounded from his

late night wrestling match with God.

He bows on the ground, seven times,

as a sign of his contrition.

He had first considered sending

all of his family and possessions

on ahead of him with a message of how sorry he was.

That would have been the choice of self-preservation,

not the choice that leads into the freedom of forgiveness.

That was the cowardly option.

Instead, Jacob's encounter with God

has changed him, freeing him to stand

before the brother he had betrayed,

willing to accept the consequences of his actions.

We don't know about what happened

to Esau during those twenty years of separation.

It is clear he has prospered.

It is also clear that over time his suffering and

his own bargaining has dissipated and fallen away.

Because he, too, stands before his

brother open, yielded and

able to forgive without condition or constraint.

In order to come to its fruition,

forgiveness requires us to release they other person

with whom we have become bound by hurt.

Otherwise we remain tied to them

and unable to be fully free.

Twenty years, and many challenges of life

were needed for Jacob and Esau to reach this point.

It is important for us to recognize that.

They were not ready for this meeting before then.

And, even then, in this moment

of forgiveness and freedom

shared by the two brothers,

it is important to recognize what happens next:

they go their separate ways.

The freedom that comes with forgiveness

can lead many different directions

and into other unfolding journeys:

reconciliation,

separation,

reunion,

dissolution...

When we receive the gift of forgiveness

we soon realize that it becomes yet another

new beginning.

Amen

Forgiveness Part 1 - "moving through denial"

photo by: Yolanda Kauffman

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past...

- Jack Kornfield

Shalom Mennonite Church

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Don't Forgive Too Soon – Part 1: Denial

Texts: Psalm 51 and John 21:15-19

Eric Massanari

“calling a spade a spade”

Forgiveness.

It lies at the heart of Christianity,

and yet it can be one of the more

difficult things to talk about in the church.

Forgive us our sins—our debts, our trespasses—

as we forgive those who sin against us, we pray

knowing from experience that

it is easier spoken of than done.

To be human is to experience wounds in relationships.

Such pain is compounded when

someone doesn't claim responsibility

for the hurt they have caused us.

We feel the sting of pseudo-apologies like,

"I'm really sorry that you feel I have hurt you."

We also live in a world where we

experience and witness hurts that

are unimaginably traumatic and terrible.

In the face of atrocity, one can be left

to wonder if it is even appropriate

or morally acceptable to speak of forgiveness.

Still, something in the human heart understands

that love and forgiveness have the power

to releases us from bondage to past hurts,

so that we might live into a life of greater

healing, wholeness and freedom.

Hannah Arendt, a 20^th century political theorist,

once wrote a book called The Human Condition,

in which she observed that human beings

are created with the power to remember the past,

but left powerless to change it.

We are created with the power to imagine the future,

but left powerless to control it.

She concludes that forgiveness is the only

effective response to the past.

Contemporary writer Jack Kornfield puts it this way:

"Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past."

We cannot make the past better. Nor can we make it worse.

However, we can transform

our relationship with the past,

and this is what forgiveness is about.

It is about making a journey from our past,

through the present moment,

toward a future of greater wholeness and freedom.

For the sake of these reflections this morning,

I want to make two basic assumptions

about the Christian practice of forgiveness.

First, I assume that forgiveness is a process—a journey.

It is a process that may have stages to it,

like the ones we will be reflecting on in

our worship series these next few weeks,

but they do not necessarily unfold

in a neat chronological or linear fashion.

As a process, forgiveness does not happen quickly.

It cannot move superficially over

what has happened in the past.

Forgiveness is a process of remembering, not forgetting.

It is a process of remembering, integrating, and transforming,

and this journey requires great courage.

The second assumption I will make

is that forgiveness is a journey into freedom.

Forgiveness is a process of liberation

and emancipation from the binding grip

that the wounds of our past can

sometimes have upon our lives.

In order for this journey of freedom to unfold

it is necessary for truth to be told.

Forgiveness requires truth telling

and a movement through the denial

that can sometimes grip us when

we are wounded or when we have wounded someone.

As Christians, we follow one who

did not shy away from telling the truth,

and speaking with sharp honesty

especially when he encountered

people who were in some way

denying their own pain or the pain of others.

Take for instance the resurrection story

from this morning's gospel reading.

Jesus' interaction with Peter is the

final vignette of this gospel

and it begins with some gentle but direct honesty.

Three times Jesus asks Peter:

"Peter, do you love me?”

The repetition might seem strange if we didn't

know what happens earlier in the story:

following Jesus' arrest, Peter adamantly

denies any association with Jesus, three times.

Three times he betrays his friend and teacher.

It is not hard to imagine that

Peter is meeting the risen Christ

and feeling ashamed of his betrayal.

I hear Jesus' three questions to Peter

as being a gentle way of calling

direct attention to the betrayal

but also providing Peter with a way

to repent, to confess and to

proclaim his love for Jesus once again.

"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Though words like “I'm so sorry”

and “I forgive you” are not spoken

in this exchange, the sense is that

denial has been released,

that forgiveness and restoration of relationship

have happened here, and that Peter

is once again prepared to respond to

the invitation Jesus extended to him

at the beginning of their journey together:

"Follow me.”

A second gospel story that illustrates 

the power of honest naming and truth-telling

is the story of Jesus going to

the land of the Gerasenes.

There, among the tombs, he encounters

a man who is tormented by an “unclean spirit.”

The people of the town have locked him up

out there, not knowing what else to do with him.

He is a menace, a threat to their lives.

There are probably all sorts of names that they call him,

and all manner of violations for which they have blamed him.

As I read this story I begin to

wonder if it is best understood

as a story more about the possession

of a whole village by the demons

of fear, hatred, and prejudice

than it is about one man's illness.

It's about a whole community's denial

much more than it is a story of

one man's brokenness.

Consider what happens in the story.

Do you remember what Jesus asks the man?

“What is your name?”

He responds,

“My name is Legion, for we are many”

This man bore the sins of

a whole community—a “legion” of sins.

The man is freed, his healing comes,

when the demons are honestly named

and the truth of his affliction is told in love.

And do you remember what happens then?

The entire town begs Jesus to leave.

They cannot bear to see what has happened.

The man's healing has confronted them.

Their denial had been more comfortable

than the truth Jesus exposes.

Sometimes we're like that crowd,

and like Peter, living with a sense

of shame, and denying

the extent to which we have hurt

or betrayed our neighbor.

Sometimes we are like the man

amongst the tombs, living alone with our wounds,

perhaps pretending we haven't been hurt so bad.

We might presume no one really cares anyway,

or even that we somehow deserve our pain.

Either way, as the wounded or the wounder,

we can be bound by our past

in ways that make it difficult

to grow free and become more whole.

That binding can be enforced by

our denial of the hurts we have experienced or inflicted.

As we see in Christ,

it is love that allows us to

move through denial

and it is love that gives us

courage to speak the truth

and call things by their true names.

It is love that allows us

to face what we have done

to hurt our sister or brother.

It is love that allows us to honestly

name and claim the ways we have been hurt.

May we know how much we are dearly loved.

We are loved enough to speak our stories of truth.

We are loved enough to forgive as we are forgiven.

Amen