"The Power of Forgiveness"
April 15, 2007: 2nd Sunday of Easter, Year C
The Rev. John MacIver Gage, senior minister
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.unitedchurchonthegreen.org

Scripture:
John 20:19-23
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

"May God speak through these words and make from them a holy word for us today. Amen."

Sermon:
A couple of weeks ago, just two Mondays ago, in fact, during Holy Week, in fact, a new school was dedicated in rural Pennsylvania. Of course, there's nothing so very unusual about that. New schools are dedicated nearly every day across our country, I'm sure. But what made this particular event notable was the school's location in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, Amish country, a little more than 200 yards from the site of the old school house where last October 2nd, Charles Roberts shot and killed five little girls, aged just 7-13, and then killed himself.

Despite a near consensus that constant exposure has inured us to extreme violence, both real and make-believe, from Grand Theft Auto to Columbine to 9-11 to the daily death toll in Iraq, news of that tragedy rocked our nation back on its heels. "If it can happen among the Amish," fairly or unfairly the very epitome of the simple, peaceful life, the general thinking ran, "truly none of us are safe." Public outrage found outlets in newspaper letters to the editor and internet blogs, while the cable news coverage ran nearly 24-7, pouring over every facet of the crime and its aftermath. But among that flood of images, perhaps none was more powerful than that reported to CNN by a local pastor who described seeing the grandfather of one of the victims standing next to her body at the funeral, telling a group of young people gathered there to grieve, "We must not think evil of this man" (http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/04/amish.shooting/index.html)

What an awesome act of forgiveness, to stand over the body of one's own beloved flesh and blood and counsel compassion for her killer! But as Tom Shactman, a journalist who's written extensively about the Amish, remarked in a New York Times article later that week, "If anybody is going to turn the other cheek in our society, it's going to be the Amish... The Amish walk the walk as much as they talk the talk" (Oct. 10, 2006: A20). And the broader public reaction to the Amish community's insistence on forgiveness seemed to follow that same line, as though sure, forgiveness is a fine goal, but, like so much of the Amish way of life, impractical for everyday living in the modern world and down-right impossible for mere mortals in such terrible circumstances.

Some commentators carried their criticism further, though. In a piece that ran in the Boston Globe after the funerals, titled "Undeserved Forgiveness" columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote, "I wish [the Amish] well, but I would not want to be like them, reacting to terrible crimes with dispassion and absolution." "Hatred is not always wrong," he goes on to explain, "and forgiveness is not always deserved. I admire [their] resolve to live up to their Christian ideals even amid heartbreak, but how many of us would really want to live in a society in which no one gets angry when children are slaughtered? In which even the most horrific acts of cruelty were always and instantly forgiven? There is a time to love and a time to hate, Ecclesiastes teaches. If anything deserves to be hated, surely it is the pitiless murder of innocents."

As extreme as it may sound, I would be willing to bet that more people share Mr. Jacoby's point of view than would care to admit to it out loud, particularly in the Christian community, After all, as Christians, we have specific instructions from Jesus to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us and pray for those who abuse us (Luke 6:27-28). And when Peter asks him how many times we should forgive someone who sins against us, "as many as seven times?" Jesus answers him, "No, not seven times, but seventy-seven" (Matthew 18:21-22), or, as some older translations put it, even seven times seventy—in other words, always.

Alas, that's not where our natural inclinations lie, is it? No, I dare say, we are not generally so forgiving as all that in our daily lives, much less under duress. What's more, as much as we want to be forgiven ourselves, as much as we crave forgiveness, in fact, like Mr. Jacoby, we are not so sure that being forgiving is such a good idea. Being forgiving leaves us feeling wishy-washy, weak, and vulnerable to further exploitation. And so we go to great lengths to avoid it. Granted, not every simple social gaffe requires an act of full-blown forgiveness, but think about it: When was the last time you heard someone say, "I forgive you"? And when was the last time you yourself said it? No, no problem, no worries, it's okay, it's all good, don't even think about it, really don't give it another thought—these are just few of the circumlocutions we use every day to avoid those three other words: "I forgive you."

Which makes you wonder what we really think about Jesus, then? After all, it's Jesus who, from the cross, from the bloody wood of the cross, looked down on the very people would had betrayed him, arrested him, jailed him, tortured him, denied him, tried him and nailed him to that tree and said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 22:34). Was Jesus being weak? Was he a wimp? Did he let the world walk all over him? Again, according to Mr. Jacoby, "To voluntarily forgive those who have hurt you is beautiful and praiseworthy. That is what Jesus did on the cross... But to forgive those who have hurt—who have murdered—someone else? I cannot see how the world is made a better place by assuring someone who would do terrible things to others that he will be readily forgiven afterward, even if he shows no remorse." Which begs the question: What about God, who stands over the cross and forgives those remorseless bastards who did this to God's Only Begotten, and who continue to do it to countless others of God's beloved children on a daily basis, who forgives us?

"To err is human. To forgive, divine." That's that the old saying says, and it's true. True forgiveness, God's forgiveness, is powerful. It takes strength. For true forgiveness does not forget, despite that other old adage to the contrary. Divine forgiveness, God's forgiveness, stares sin square in the face. God challenges, God accuses, God remembers every detail, God rehearses every hurt... and then, in an act of grace powerful enough to turn the world inside out, God lets it all go. In the name of a love that is stronger than sin, stronger than hurt and pain and death, stronger than the cross and the tomb, God chooses grace, and that makes all the difference. For every act of forgiveness is essentially an act of resurrection, opening pathways through hurt and anger into a future that was simply not possible before. Easter is the drama of God's forgiveness for the world made flesh and bone in the body of Jesus, who was dead but is now alive.

But amazingly, friends, God doesn't stop there, but goes on to share the power of forgiveness with us. That's what Jesus is doing here in John, chapter 20, this morning. Jesus appears among the frightened and no doubt angry disciples, locked up tight in their upper room, and gives them to the power to forgive: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." And this not some saccharine-sweet slice of pie in the sky offered by a shining white heavenly Jesus but the meat-and-potatoes of our faith from a resurrected Jesus still bearing the marks of his suffering in his hands and feet and side. Jesus remembers. Jesus knows. And, by God's good grace, Jesus forgives us and gives us the power to forgive one another.

Again, we need not forget as we forgive. God calls us to be as wiley as serpents and as peaceful as doves, not the other way around. Even the Amish didn't forget. They tore the old school down to the ground, aware that the little world of their community had been changed forever by the terrible acts committed there. And their new school has more sophisticated locks and is reachable only by a private drive. But the power of their forgiveness has brought something new into the world: hope. And so they christened their new school just that: New Hope.

Impossible, you say. And you'd be right. In the world in which we live, forgiveness, true forgiveness, is not just hard, but impossible. But so is resurrection. And Christ's Easter resurrection is the sign, the guarantee for us who believe, that with God, all things are possible. In contrast to Mr. Jacoby, Rob Dreher, a columnist with the Dallas Morning News, put it so eloquently in his piece from that terrible week: "But sometimes, faith helps ordinary men and women do the humanly impossible: to forgive, to love, to heal and to redeem. It makes no sense. It is the most sensible thing in the world. The Amish have turned this occasion of spectacular evil into a bright witness to hope. Despite everything, a light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it" (Dallas Morning News: Oct. 6, 2006).

Christ has come to share this light of forgiveness, strength, and hope with us. In the words of the Apostle Paul, "All this is from God, who reconciled us to God's Own Self through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to God's Self, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us" (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). May we be so moved and so changed, and so change the world with this gift we have been given in Christ.