by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given May 5, 2002

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Welcome! Welcome to one and all! The words of the poet Rumi: "Come, come, whoever you are, wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. This is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again, come." Come now and let us worship together.

In the immensely popular little book Tuesdays with Morrie, author Mitch Albom writes about his visits with his former professor Morrie Schwartz, as Morrie moves toward his inevitable death from Lou Gehrig’s disease. In one of these visits Mitch is there with the old man, massaging his ankles, helping to relieve the pain, and Morrie begins talking about forgiveness.

"Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others," he tells Mitch. "There’s no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things"—he sighed—"these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?"

Mitch wondered if Morrie felt a need to say "I’m sorry" before he died. Morrie nodded. "Do you see that sculpture?" He tilted his head toward a bust that sat high on a shelf . . . Cast in bronze, it was the face of a man in his early forties, wearing a necktie, a tuft of hair falling across his forehead.

"That’s me," Morrie said. "A friend of mine sculpted that maybe thirty years ago. His name was Norman. We used to spend so much time together—swimming, trips to New York. He sculpted that bust of me down in his basement. It took several weeks to do it, but he really wanted to get it right." Mitch studied the sculpture—how strange to see a Morrie so healthy, so young—even in bronze he had a whimsical look.

"Well, here’s the sad part of the story," Morrie said. "Norman and his wife moved to Chicago, and a little while later my wife, Charlotte, had a pretty serious operation. Norman and his wife never got in touch with us, though I knew they knew about it. I was very hurt, so I dropped the relationship. Over the years I met Norman a few times, and he always tried to reconcile, but I didn’t accept his explanation. I was prideful. I shrugged him off. Mitch . . . a few years ago . . . he died of cancer. I feel so sad. I never got to see him. I never got to forgive." The tears rolled off the side of his face, rolled down to his lips. "You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you. Forgive yourself, forgive others. Don’t wait, Mitch. Not everyone gets the time I’m getting. Not everyone is as lucky."

Forgive yourself, forgive others. A hard spiritual road to follow. What makes forgiveness so difficult? What makes us keep a hard heart, even as we suffer from the stony weight inside?

To begin with, I think that sometimes we misunderstand what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not denying or forgetting. We do not and cannot forget something that happened. Forgiveness is not condoning—"oh, what happened wasn’t all that bad, and it’ll probably never happen again." Don’t bet on it. Forgiveness is not excusing—"well, he really couldn’t help it, he did it because . . ." Forgiveness is not a kind of cheap grace in which people don’t have to be accountable for their wrongdoing. And forgiveness is not reconciliation. It may lead to reconciliation, but it does not necessarily have to. There are some people you may never want see again, and that’s okay. You do not have to open yourself up to new wounding from someone who is likely to hurt you yet again. You can forgive without a foolish trust in a person who has proved to be untrustworthy.

What, then, is forgiveness? When someone does something hurtful to us, it is natural to feel anger, to want to strike back, to hurt this person in return. At this point, we become the servant of Anger. Anger rules our life—we become reactive instead of proactive. As I see it, forgiveness is a different response, a spiritual response that requires humility and relinquishment, two qualities that, for me at least, are pretty hard to come by. Pride steps in and says, "I’m not going to take that! No way!" The judge in me comes to the fore and says, "Relinquishment? Ha! You owe me. Pay up." Forgiveness is getting beyond that impulse to judge and punish. It is the healing of your own heart, a softening, in response to pain or injustice. You become no longer willing to keep the power of this hurt and anger alive in your heart.

One of the most moving public statements I’ve ever heard was given at Pioneer Courthouse Square several years ago, at a rally against the death penalty. It was on the eve of the first execution that Oregon had carried out in a number of years. It was a mother who spoke. She told of a horrendous crime, the killing of her young daughter. She told us how enraged she had been for so long, and then one day she realized that she had to let go of that rage in order to honor her daughter’s life. Her daughter would have wanted her, she said, to do something positive with her energies, with her life. That thought gave her the courage to let go.

We know that holding onto anger hurts us. It’s interesting—you know, resentment comes from the root word ressentir, meaning "to feel again"—so we review, redo, rehearse our pain again and again. The result is that we become rigid and unyielding, not just in regard to the one who has hurt us, but often to the world in general. Our tenderness becomes hard, our judgment is clouded with distrust, and we cannot see love and joy when they’re right in front of us, knocking on the door, asking to be let in. Our energy is shifted from those who matter to us to those for whom we do not care at all.

There is a Tibetan Buddhist story that goes like this. Two monks encounter each other some years after being released from prison where they had been tortured by their captors. "Have you forgiven them?" asks the first. "I will never forgive them! Never!" replies the second. And the first answers, "Well, I guess they still have you in prison, don’t they?"

Why do we deaden our spirits this way? Why do we do it? Maybe part of it is a misguided concept of justice—we want a kind of "parity in pain." Tit for tat. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. That philosophy, said Gandhi, will end up with all of us blind and toothless. Maybe we hold on to anger, especially in a broken marriage or love affair, because the anger keeps us somehow bonded to that person we lost, and we don’t want to lose the bond. And we hold grudges, don’t we? Holding a grudge gives us a feeling of power, and we don’t want to feel vulnerable again. Perhaps we fear we will be weak if we forgive. To the contrary, it takes great strength to forgive.

One of my heroes is Nelson Mandela. Mandela was in prison for 27 years. When he finally was freed, an old man with gray hair, he said, "I always knew that deep down in every human heart there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin . . . People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love . . . Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going." Upon his release, Mandela began to broker the transfer of power, which was remarkably free of violence. He established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which brought to the surface pain and suffering that had long been denied. Mandela is the antithesis of weak—he is one of the strongest men I have ever heard of.

If we refuse to forgive, the poison stays in our system. One writer puts it this way: "It’s about pulling the knife out of our own gut." And why don’t we pull the knife out? Sometimes the pain becomes, as they say, adaptive. We can feel self-righteous. If our life isn’t going well, we can blame that on someone else—mother and father being prime candidates, of course. We can project our own failures onto another. So there are all kinds of reasons to hang in there and hold that resentment close.

But if we decide we are tired of living with the poison, then here are some ways we might proceed. Not that I have all the answers. For me, forgiveness is the most difficult spiritual discipline, and I struggle greatly with it. In fact, just this morning when I woke up, I thought about an old friend I need to reconcile with. Why have I postponed asking for forgiveness, I asked myself. It takes energy to go to that place of hurting, to feel the pain that she must have felt. And I would have to be reminded that I am not always the nice person that I think of myself as being.

But when we need to forgive another—let me say clearly that we cannot skip the anger and go directly to forgiveness. We have to acknowledge our anger, really feel it, and then we have to lift that big stone of anger, look underneath, and see what is there. Generally we will find hurt, sadness, feelings of loss, vulnerability. We have to stay with these more tender feelings to travel the path of forgiveness, and that is not easy—anger is so much clearer, cleaner. When we direct our feelings outward in anger, we don’t have to look inward, at ourselves, and do the work of restoration.

Meditation is helpful, in that our feelings will emerge during meditation, and we can notice them in a somewhat objective way, in an accepting way—oh, there is fear again; oh, there is anger. And then we let these feelings pass from us. We come to understand that our feelings are not equated with ourselves, that we are more than our feelings—and in meditation our more difficult feelings can be noted but not necessarily invited in as honored guests, to be catered to.

Much of the time, though not always, we ourselves need to own a part of the problem or situation that has made us angry, and when we do that instead of projecting the whole of the problem onto our "enemy," onto "the evil one," then some of our anger will subside. It’s freeing to own one’s personal part in a conflict—it begins to liberate us from rigidity and blame. It helps to try to see the problem from the other person’s perspective. We begin to realize the humanity of the other.

One thing I have done when I am really deeply angry with someone is to pray for them. I mean, after I rant and rave for a few days—or weeks. Now praying for the one who has hurt me is galling at first. I’m going to waste my time praying for this person I loathe? I don’t think so! Besides, if I pray for this person, I will let him back into my consciousness, and I want him out. But I go ahead and pray anyway. Sometimes I imagine that person as a young child, playful and open and joyful, and that makes the praying much easier. Now I don’t pray that this person will see the light and change their wicked ways—that’s between them and their God. I pray that this person will have what I myself want in life—love, happiness, hope.

I think forgiveness becomes easier for us in some ways as we age. It’s hard to stay angry with our parents when we become parents and see ourselves doing the very things we vowed we would never do. Judgment begins to shift to compassion. As we live our lives, we come to understand that we, too, have hurt people and have hurt them deeply, and we come to know that the nature of life is that we’ll all hurt and be hurt, even when we try our best not to. Our grief and loss, we find, are not unique—we have no entitlement for revenge, no special privilege to hate.

A person I very much needed to forgive was my father. He was an alcoholic who would binge drink and disappear from home for days at a time. When he was drinking, he would hang out with unsavory companions, violent men, and he was sometimes violent himself, though never with me, and I worried that he wouldn’t come home at all. The whole time when I was growing up, I was afraid. It was when he was drinking that he was the most expressive emotionally—that was when he would hug me and tell me he loved me. "I love you, Sis," he would say. But as he said those words, his body swayed unsteadily and his breath reeked of whiskey. I was confused. I thought, "How can you love me if you drink like this? How can you love me and hurt me so much?" And so I grew up to be a woman who could not believe the words "I love you," especially if they came from a man. The words simply didn’t compute. They were like a foreign language. What I have come to understand is that my father’s drinking was not about me. It was about his addiction to alcohol, and it was about his own fear and loneliness. Sometimes when somebody hurts us, we just have to not take it personally. Oftentimes, it’s not about us—it’s about who they are, or are not.

You know, we all have a story—we create a life narrative—and we have to decide what that story is. There are many ways of telling our story. For years, my story was that I was the child of an alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother—therefore, I couldn’t love or be loved. I was a victim. Well, after years of therapy, years of telling my story, I began to just become sick and tired of hearing it. I began to find friends who showed me love, and eventually I saw that I had a great capacity for love. My story, the theme of my life narrative, is different now, and this is how it goes: I have had some wonderful people happen into my life, and they have loved me well, and taught me well. I know that because of my early experiences I have developed a compassion that I would never have developed any other way. I am thankful for who I am, for the roots that hold me close, for the opportunities I have had to give to others, to create, and most of all, to love. I am not a victim. I celebrate the life I have been given. Grace. Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me.

This morning I have spoken of forgiving others; I have not spoken of asking for forgiveness nor of forgiving one’s self, and one small sermon will not allow me to say much about these other aspects of forgiveness. In terms of seeking forgiveness from another, we have to do two things: regret the pain we have caused another and say in all sincerity, "I’m sorry. I see what I have done and how much hurt I have caused. I promise you that I will never do this again."

I’m having a real problem with the Catholic hierarchy now, in that no one there seems to really have taken responsibility for the sexual abuse of the children who have now come forward as adults, still hurting—no one has resigned, no Bishop or Cardinal has said, "I allowed priests who were abusers to continue by transferring them from parish to parish, and I am deeply sorry for this behavior. I am no longer worthy to wear the robes of my office." Who will say, "I’m sorry"?

And how do we forgive ourselves? Once we understand just how flawed we are, just how flawed we all are, it’s easier to ask our God in all humility for forgiveness and to treat ourselves with kindness, as we try to go forward and practice kindness to others. Forgiveness of self is connected with forgiveness of others—the same humility and relinquishment are called for, the same softening of the heart. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Forgiveness is more than a spoken word or a deed or a feeling. At best, forgiveness is a way of living—living with kindness and compassion and largeness of heart. It is an intentional way of being in the world. It turns away a sharp remark with a soft response. It looks beyond a slight, a petty insult, and seeks to understand the confusion or ignorance that spawned it. It’s tough—it acknowledges bad behavior and doesn’t allow that behavior to continue. But whenever possible it looks for the good, and thinks on that. It surrenders to a larger knowing, a larger justice, that cannot be unraveled on this earth, that can only be trusted, in blind faith.

Forgiveness is about healing what is broken in ourselves. It’s about reconciliation with the nature of life itself. It’s about an ever-deepening friendship with the Holy, with the Divine spark within. It is there that we will find the courage to forgive. It is there that we will find the peace we seek. So be it. Amen.

 
PRAYER

Spirit of Life, we come this morning thankful for this day and for the beauty of these flowers. We’re thankful for this church community, where we are welcome as we are. We know you know our every hurt and fear, and we need your presence in our lives. We confess that anger overtakes us all too often and shuts down the love and tenderness within. We ask that you would bless us and partner with us as we go down the hard road of forgiveness, for we fear we cannot travel it alone. Give us gracious hearts, and let us be your people in the world. So be it. Amen.

BENEDICTION

May the Holy in you touch the Holy in all you meet, and may you see in their faces, the face of God. Go now in love and in peace. Amen.

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Copyright 2002, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.