Pray with me:
God,
surround us with your love. Give us wisdom to know you better. Speak through me
clearly, plainly, and with words of challenge, comfort and growth. Amen
Two households both alike in dignity in fair Toledo where
we lay our scene . . . it’s o.k., this isn’t a sermon on Romeo and Juliet. It’s a statement of the reality of my
life. After an interruption, which
caused me to be living elsewhere for a while, Linda and I have been
reconfiguring our house and merging two households back into one. As a result
of the merging, we have had to actively engage in purging. When I was living
independently, I needed to have all the things for a house that we already had
at home. So, it’s the surplus that is being eliminated, a.k.a. STUFF! So, I
missed church last Sunday because we were engaged in that great American
tradition known as the GARAGE SALE. And getting rid of STUFF! How is it that we
accumulate so much stuff? Twenty years ago, when I came to the States, I had
what I could carry on the plane . . . and now, SO MUCH STUFF! Can anyone
relate? Please tell me I am not the only accumulator in the house!
STUFF…
The physical footprint of things that you have been involved in… Hobbies that
you no longer participate in, activities that you have grown out of, the
exercise bike which was going to be the answer to your healthy goals of 2011, 2012,
2013, and has become a glorified clothes hanger … STUFF. Then there is the STUFF
that goes with it –the memorabilia: cards, knick-knacks, tickets, photos… memories
of the things we were involved with… When we are hurt, one of the first responses
we have is to get rid of the things that previously meant so much to us. We
want to be done with the pain that we are feeling and so we try to erase the
memories, and remove the physical evidence of our involvement. People tear up
photos and get rid of letters. And yet,
it’s not so easy to erase the emotional memories, or scars that are etched into
our being. We want to lash out at the one who hurt us; to try to make them feel
the same pain we are experiencing. Those feelings start to churn, and settle,
or fester inside. The emotional STUFF begins to take up room in our lives,
which means that we don’t have space to grow, because we’re being disabled by
that stuff.
Which
brings us to today’s bible story where a servant who is forgiven a great debt
(modern day equivalent would be millions of dollars) by the master. Leaving the
master’s house, relieved, another servant happens to be there, someone who owes
the equivalent of a few cents to the first servant. But, the first servant, instead
of showing the same mercy to the other, has the second servant thrown into
prison. What was the ‘stuff’ between these two, which means that there wasn’t a
‘paying it forward’ moment? It’s easy to self-righteously imagine that I would
never act like that, and to become incensed by the servant’s lack of compassion,
but then I remember that I can lack the same compassion when I don’t extend
mercy to those who have hurt me.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to say that it is
easy to forgive. Or that it is my favorite thing to do; rather, I am saying
that, if I acknowledge that God has extended to me outrageous, lavish, and
generous forgiveness, then it is important that I do the same. I believe that
God understands our struggle to forgive, and is able to lead us step-by-step
through the journey of forgiving . . . which is often a journey of letting go
of pain, rather than a single act of resolve.
And
this is where the sermon gets hard. I know that there are some who will bristle
at the word forgiveness, because they have been so brutally hurt at the hands
of others. Callous words, bitterness
that has been spat in their face. Please
understand that I am not trying today to gloss over the intense struggle that
this journey is for you. Also, I am not in any way trying to claim to be an
expert on forgiveness. In fact, I must be a slow learner, because I keep finding
myself needing to redo the lesson on forgiveness. However, I believe that
forgiveness is a necessary choice that we must make, if we are to rid ourselves
of the emotional STUFF that causes us to become bitter and broken and reactive
and angry. Forgiveness is the only way
to get through to joy and peace.
Recently, I picked up a book by one of my faith heroes. “The
Book of Forgiving” is by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his youngest daughter, Rev.
Mpho Tutu. Though it has come out of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation
commission in South Africa, it outlines the fourfold path to healing ourselves
and our world. This book identifies the challenge that forgiveness presents to
us: whether it is the atrocities of apartheid, the abandonment by a faith
community, or the more personal betrayal of a friend, forgiveness is tough.
Just after I started reading this book, my sister sent me a video clip through
Facebook. I’d like us to watch that now.
Prayer Before the Prayer
I want to be willing to
forgive
But I dare not ask for the
will to forgive
In case you give it to me
And I am not yet ready
I am not yet ready for my
heart to soften
I am not yet ready to be
vulnerable again
Not yet ready to see that
there is humanity in my tormentor's eyes
Or that the one who hurt me
may also have cried
I am not yet ready for the
journey
I am not interested in the
path
I am at the prayer before
the prayer of forgiveness
Grant me the will to want to
forgive
Grant it to me not yet but
soon
The text for this is the first stanza of a prayer in the
beginning of the book, and I think it beautifully captures the struggle that we
face with forgiveness. We want to forgive, but we aren’t always ready. In fact,
I believe there are some things that we are never READY to forgive, but as Lewis
Smedes wrote, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the
prisoner was you.”
In
the book, the Tutu’s identify four steps along the path for healing. They are:
Telling
the story
Naming
the hurt
Granting
forgiveness, and
Renewing
or releasing the relationship
Breaking
up into steps this challenging journey of forgiveness has been really helpful,
because I can see that I am at least moving along the path to forgiveness,
which is better than just resisting… (keeping secrets in silence, and suffering
in an ongoing manner) which is sometimes what happens when someone who is
abusive in our lives continues to be abusive.
Instead,
I can see that I am in the process of releasing the emotional STUFF that is
taking up space within, first, by telling the story of the hurt that I’ve
experienced. In order to know how I am hurt, I need to be able to identify the
hurt, rather than pretending that I am not. When we have been wronged, there
are so many different emotions: grief, loss, betrayal, anger, etc.… This is how
we can be sure that when we forgive, we are not simply letting someone off the
hook, but rather we are taking the courageous steps to feel those feelings and
then let them go. We no longer are allowing the wrongdoer to determine our
present or future feelings about ourselves, or the world. Indeed, Jack
Kornfield says "Forgiveness is
giving up all hope of a better past." When forgiveness is needed, we can’t change
what happened. We can only change how it
impacts us now.
The
church where I was a member when I first came to the States was my USA home. This
was where I made first friendships, the place where I lay down my spiritual
‘hat.’ It was where I first began to take root. In worshipping with this group
of people, I felt that we were a faith community that valued integrity: that
our goal was to have our outsides match our insides. So, when I realized that I
was, in fact, gay, I felt it was important, and an act of integrity, to reveal this
to the senior pastor. I knew that this would be a hard thing for the church to
accept, but I felt that there would be space for all of us to experience grace
as we struggled to understand this truth.
Imagine
my surprise then, when I was met with condemnation! I had to be present at two
meetings with the elders and pastors, who challenged me to participate in a
bible study so that I could understand where I was wrong. They expressed their
utter disappointment in me, especially when my response to their call was, “I
will if you will!” The way I saw it, if I was meant to discover that I was
wrong, maybe they should be open to the possibility that they were. They didn’t
understand what I was saying; after all, they WERE NOT WRONG! I was asked to
leave the church and not return. They later held a church meeting to inform
people about my departure, because there had been so much gossip and guessing as
to why I had gone. I was the youth pastor, so people knew me. People were counseled to stop being in
contact with me until I had realized the error of my ways. The final insult was
they contacted the church in England where I was from, to out me, and suggested
they check the young people for any gay cooties. This, even though I had been
in the states about eight years!
The
journey to healing took a long time to complete: much ‘telling of the story’
and ‘naming the hurt’ to frame it in Tutu’s model. However, it wasn’t until I
became a citizen that I realized that I had indeed completed the granting of
forgiveness and had released the relationship.
When
I became a citizen, I was asked to be one of two speakers, because we had a
group of social studies students from TSA who were going to be present to see
the ceremony. When I entered the judge’s chambers, I realized that I knew the other
person who was to speak, he was a member from the congregation where I was no
longer welcome. Instead of panicking because the sting of the rejection was welling
up again, I found myself giggling! “Of course!” God had promised to lead me
step-by-step when he brought me here, and God had faithfully brought me
through. I had moved on, and this situation no longer had any power over me. I
was able to stand up and speak, joyfully, about my life in the States, because
I had truly forgiven their decision and the actions that followed.
As
an ongoing act of grace, I have found myself getting reconnected with other
members of the church, who now realize that there was an injustice that
happened when I was asked to leave. Grace has continued to come to me as these
friends have become reconnected to me. In fact, I would have to say that these
events which started at a meeting that happened about 12 years ago, are
continuing to be redeemed. It gives me great hope to know that I have been able
to successfully work through a really painful experience with forgiveness,
because I have another, in many ways more challenging, situation to work
through at the moment. I don’t want to be like the unmerciful servant. As a
recipient of God’s full, free, and outrageously lavish love and forgiveness, I
believe he calls me to grant forgiveness to others who have hurt me.
What
about you? Do you relate to the idea of “stuff” clogging you? Are you in a
place of being reluctant to take a step on the journey towards healing? Have
you embraced the ‘need to forgive’ but feel stuck? Has this prompted you to
remember something for which you need forgiveness? As I pray, I want you to
imagine that whatever it is that is in your way is physically in your hands… to
imagine that it is flowing into your hands, and allow God to let you release
it. “God, we come to you as broken beings, sometimes so hurt we don’t know which
way to turn. We realize that holding
onto the anger, pain and hurt, clogs us up.
God, please be at work in our hearts, cleanse us, bring forth courage to
let go of the stuff that is getting in the way.”
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