by Jennifer Schnayer, Intern Minister

A sermon given December 31, 2000

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good Morning! We welcome you this New Year's Eve morning. Let us take this time to set down our burdens and worries, be open to the love and peace in our midst, and let the hope and promise of this day flourish. Come, let us worship together.

On December 26^th I went to the mailbox and found a few stray Christmas cards sitting inside. When I pulled them out I noticed the return address on one of these cards was Carson, CA. The only person I know in Carson is my grandmother's old friend, Marian.

Our family and Marian's family have always been close, but during the last year or so of my grandmother's life, there were some misunderstandings between us, and our friendship broke down. My grandmother began to suffer from dementia and would tell her friends that her family -- me and my mother -- never came to see her. She would forget our visits even if we had been there just the day before.

I remember popping in for a visit with my grandma when Marian was there, and when my grandma was out of the room she laid into me. "How come you don't come visit your grandma? Why doesn't your mother ever come to see Vivien?"

Marian was cold to us for the rest of my grandma's life, and both her coldness and accusations hurt my mom and me. We each went to see my grandma a few times a week after work, [but after Marian confronted me on that visit, Mom developed a plan to write her visits down on grandma's calendar. Hopefully grandma would look at it and remember the visits.]

A little while after my grandma died my mom got a letter from Marian. She wrote that it had taken her a while to recognize grandma's dementia, and that she could see, looking back, that her friend had been declining, and that my mom loved her mother. My mother was so relieved and sent a note back. But she didn't hear from Marian again.

So back to the Christmas card -- it turned out to be from Marian's daughter Kathy. She congratulated me on my marriage and my new life. Then she wrote, "Sad news -- my ma died in May 1997. It is still hard for me to write about, sorry I'm just relaying the news. I miss her very much. Love, Kat - P.S. Please keep writing."

I shared the note with my mom. We both wondered why Kathy hadn't called us when Marian got sick. Kathy and my mother have known each other for 45 years. "Why don't you write her?" I said, and took out a piece of stationary. I don’t know how it will turn out for my mom and her old friend, but I know my mom has done what she can. Hopefully Kathy will reach back.

Reconciling with someone is tricky business. It is not easy to reach out across the hurts, and sometimes across the years, to begin again with someone. Yet there is something in us that calls out for wholeness -- that longs to be reconciled.

In our Unitarian Universalist tradition we honor the inherent worth and dignity of all people and see all of creation as a vast and interdependent web of existence. If we are to put our values into practice, then as religious people we must address the un-reconciled parts of our own lives, and the un-reconciled parts of the wider human family.

But what exactly is reconciliation?

You can be reunited with someone who has hurt you: whether by direct action or by absence -- but the coming together is not reconciliation; it is a reunion. And at the end of the Civil War the northern and southern states were reunified by a peace treaty -- but that treaty did not reconcile them, it united them.

Reconciliation is something else. It requires two things: the forgiveness of guilt and the healing of suffering. It requires that the parties involved are willing to lay themselves bare to one another, and to move past the hurt and guilt. All of this is risky -- for everyone involved. But in doing so, each can find restoration and a new life before them.

There is yet another complicating factor in this process of forgiveness, healing and reconciliation: time. It is a process that takes time. Guilt and hurt can outlive those originally involved, and move on into the next generation. This intergenerational dimension of our suffering suggests a more complicated solution. We may participate in the forgiveness and reconciliation process for injuries that we ourselves did not either cause or suffer directly from -- think of the racial and class struggles so alive in our country today. We continue to seek reconciliation for these deep wounds of our nation. This generational dimension can also be true on a personal level. Marian and my mother began the process of reconciling, but it was incomplete. And for whatever reason Kathy did not tell us when her mother died. Our wounds work their way throughout the fabric of the world around us and down through the generations.

In our lifetime relationships will be broken, things we have done or not done will hurt others, and we ourselves will suffer from the deeds or inaction of others. In the face of all this we can seek forgiveness for ourselves and offer our forgiveness to others. And healing can begin.

But, while this is true, no one is required to forgive. And if one forgives, they are not required to reconcile. Sometimes it is not yet safe to forgive or to reconcile. Sometimes we need our anger to survive. If a woman is being beaten in her home, that is not the time to forgive -- it is the time to get angry enough to get away. Forgiveness can come later. And there can be no reconciliation where there is no justice, no remorse or no willingness to change.

My relationship with my own father was broken for many years. He was a destructive force in my family. He was unable to control his rage and he demanded absolute perfection from me at all times. Those childhood wounds run deep in me. When he and my mother finally separated he refused to have any contact with me for over 5 years. That hurt so much. Then I started getting cards from him. He would sign a hallmark greeting and write on the bottom of the card something like: "I have forgiven myself, now you need to forgive me. Carrying the anger around is destructive. Love, Dad."

There was something fundamental missing from my father's call for forgiveness. He took no responsibility for the wrongs he had done. In order for forgiveness to be given there must be blame. Forgiveness comes after a wrong has been done to someone. If we do not dare to lay blame for the hurt, we dare not forgive. But, when we place blame we need to keep in mind that it is possible that the person we think is responsible is actually not. It is also possible that we may come to understand why we were wronged, in which case we excuse the person who wronged us instead of forgiving them. Forgiveness is for the deep and painful wounds in our lives that we cannot excuse. While it is true that we can be hurt by the small, unintended infractions of others, we can bear these hurts with the magnanimity of our spirit. It is the deep wounds that fester inside us that we save for forgiving.

I went to high school with a boy who, while drunk driving, struck and killed a four-year-old. That young man willfully drank, got behind the wheel of his own volition, lost control of the car and killed a child. He was to blame. It doesn’t matter if he had a bad day and was drinking away his sorrows, or if there was alcoholism in his family. He began it, did it and he is to blame.

But that young man never, in the years I knew him, was repentant for his actions. He drove like a wild man all the time still -- whether he was drunk or sober. So what do we do if the person that hurt us doesn't care?

Can we forgive in a situation like this? Yes. Forgiveness is a gift that we can give regardless of whether or not the person takes responsibility for their actions. But as I mentioned before, we are never required to forgive. However, forgiveness is one of the ways we can regain power over the powerlessness of being wounded. We do not need to be trapped by another person's continued disregard for us. The choice is ours to make.

But in order to ask for forgiveness we must accept the blame for the wrong we have done and be sorry for the hurt we caused.

Forgiveness is a mutual experience -- it includes both parties. At its best, sharing the act of forgiveness changes everyone involved. In forgiveness we are freed from the haunting legacies of the past and something new is born.

So after blame what do we do? Forgiveness is often a long process, but in his book The Art of Forgiving Lewis Smedes describes one of the many ways we might go about it.

First we rediscover the humanity of the person who wronged us.

Next we surrender the right to get even.

And finally we wish that person well.

Often when someone has caused us grave harm it is difficult to remember their humanity. I still remember an interview I saw in the 1970's with one of the Holocaust survivors. He was testifying during the war crimes trial of a German General, and fainted when the General was brought into the room. When he regained consciousness he was asked why he fainted. Was it the shock of seeing the man responsible for such evil after all these years? "No," he said, "When I saw him I realized he was just like me. I too share that capacity for evil." He saw the humanity of the other man.

The second step is to surrender the right to get even. That can be a tough one. Revenge -- and the thoughts of revenge -- can be seductive forces when we have been wronged. It can seem to give us back a sense of power over our lives. In forgiving we give up the right to seek revenge. But forgiveness never replaces justice. Justice is essential to our life together and to the standards of our relationships. We can forgive someone who commits a crime against us at the same time that we seek to incarcerate that person for their crime. Forgiveness changes the pain in our heart, not the reality of the injury.

The last step, wishing them well-- that was something I had never really considered before. But it was this step that was vital in my own effort to forgive my father. Wishing him well completed the reality of the relationship. It ended my longing for a childhood I didn't have and could never be and I was finally able to close that chapter of my life. My father and I are not reunited, but we are reconciled in as much as there is no suffering between us.

Reconciliation is a difficult process. It requires forgiveness of guilt and the healing of suffering and brings with it restoration. It takes time. Sometimes it takes so much time that the process lasts for generations, and repercussions are felt by many that weren't directly involved.

This is painfully evident when we consider the suffering in the former Yugoslavia. In 1989 then President Slobodan Milosevic led a celebration commemorating the 600^th anniversary of the Battle of the Kosovo. In 1389 the Serbs fought against the troops of the Ottoman Empire and lost. Their defeat meant years of serving their conquerors and helped to form the Serbian identity: heroic victims who needed to protect themselves. Those old wounds never healed, and this celebration 600 years later served as a reminder of those wounds and renewed the hate and the lust for revenge. The consequences were devastating.

Reconciliation and forgiveness are not just personal issues that help us find wholeness and peace with our circumstances. It is important to remember that human beings act or fail to act as individuals, families, groups and peoples. This being the case, forgiveness and reconciliation have a great deal to contribute to our understanding of power, politics, justice and world community.

Forgiveness and reconciliation cannot be imposed on anyone--not on you or I or a people or nation. [It rises from within us and we can invite it to be among us.]

It is precisely because forgiveness and reconciliation cannot be imposed on, or required of, anyone that both acts have such power. When we forgive or reconcile with one who has wounded us or one whom we have wounded we are transcending what is expected. It is the transcendent quality, the grace by which we offer our forgiveness and reach for reconciliation, that transforms us. It is here that our hope for a peaceful world can find its beginnings. If we want to go forward as a reconciled humanity, we must first walk through our histories with one another, and find new ways to come together again. May it be so.

May the Love which overcomes all differences,

Which heals all wounds,

Which reconciles all who are separated,

Be in us and among us

Now and Always. Go in love and go in peace.

Copyright 2000, by Jennifer Schnayer.  All rights reserved.