Forgiveness does not mean we suppress our anger - forgiveness means we give up our right to anger. Alone we cannot do this, it is far too hard. Every person is one for whom Christ died, and one whom God regards as a perfect, loving child. We need to recognize that each and every one of us is an immortal soul. Our actions and reactions will become part of the immortal record of our lives. We need to turn to God and ask for strength to tread this path, so that we may offer forgiveness, acceptance and love to others. Only God knows and understands others, so rather than trying to analyze their motives, we need only to be accepting and forgiving. In
Col 3: 12-14 Paul speaks of this. God has never refused forgiveness to any person, nor turned away from any.
There can be no peace without forgiveness. Forgiveness does not erase the past, nor can forgiveness change it. Instead forgiveness removes the power of the past to cause pain or anger; it provides permanent healing of those memories. Forgiveness empties the bitterness from our lives. Bitterness left to fester will erode our attitudes, our rationale and motives and our relationship with God. To be able to accept God's forgiveness we must be free in ourselves to offer forgiveness to others. We must be prepared to offer this forgiveness not only once, but should a memory of the offence be renewed we must offer forgiveness once again - continually. To offer forgiveness continually is to live forgiveness by accepting the rough and tumble of life, by turning disappointments into opportunities. While we still may not like the person(s), or may find a clash of lifestyle or philosophy to be a bit too much to say 'friend', we at least reach out to find the common ground and see if friendship, or at least the ability to work and live together, develops.
C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory speaks of the unconditional love we are asked to demonstrate:
"And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat -- the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden."
It is by forgiveness that we dissolve the bonds that tie us to those we forgive, as well as to our old thought patterns and beliefs. Without the willingness to forgive we perpetuate the pain, the abuse and the memories of those past traumas continuing in our present time. We have no need to confront that person(s) to offer forgiveness. We can ask God to wrap them in our forgiveness and love, or we can choose to visualize sending a cloud or blanket of love and forgiveness to them and having it enfold them. Those who use a pipe in prayer will also know how to send such blessings. There is no barrier to prevent us extending our forgiveness, save our own willfulness. Perhaps we don't choose to forgive today, or let go of those painful memories just yet. We want to hug them a little longer to our breasts, to feel the thorns again pierce our flesh. Why? Why in the name of the Risen Christ do we Christians choose this option? Christ has borne the cost of forgiveness, why must we punish ourselves by refusing forgiveness? Why do we choose to continue to live as the victims of rape, of verbal or emotional abuse, and of rejection when in an instant we can set ourselves and the perpetrators free? Do we not believe we deserve the peace and joy such forgiveness will secure? What is the fear which will not permit us to live as healed, whole, radiant people?
As a society, as a nation, as part of all creation we need communally to seek forgiveness from God. While a society cannot be ordered to don sackcloth en masse, we can gather publicly and commit to the change, and the Christians of our nations can (as individuals and as the Church) confess our sins before God and another (or many others) and seek God's forgiveness. Our society and our nations have practiced racism; we have been willing to destroy the mountains of food we have overproduced while millions in the world starve; we have not spoken out when we have seen the rights, the homes and the lives of others destroyed; we have created barriers of class, gender and sexuality. As members of our societies and our nations we must be prepared to seek forgiveness from those whom we wronged, and try to make restitution. Sometimes restitution is not possible, but our act of confession and sorrow allows the growth of roots of healing. And with this healing comes reconciliation.
Reconciliation is not easily achieved on either side, for each of us has been damaged by our own acts and by the acts of others. We have built defensive walls to protect us from further damage. God will need our permission to start demolishing these walls. But by the gift of unconditional love and forgiveness Jesus has moved to restore our relationship with God and our relationship with each other.
For this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.
Sometimes I believe we forget the price God paid so that we could be forgiven, so that no trace of those sins would ever remain to convict us in God's sight. Jesus was physically put to death, his body broken, spilled out for us. When we read the Ten Commandments and Jesus' commission for each of us, we cannot but note that God's directs our concern outward to others. It is our neighbours, our families, our enemies, and the untapped fields waiting to be reaped for Christ which are the focus of God's attention. When we share the Eucharist it is not a solitary meal, for even if we are celebrating it by ourselves, we do so within the entire universal family of believers, past, present and future. God's love and forgiveness pour out, as Christ's blood was poured out, for all. And that includes all from whom we have withheld our forgiveness. We can never be sure of the hidden compulsions which cause people to strike out, so how can we judge their words and actions justly? God does know, and God forgives.
Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven.
We are called to be a peculiar people, to view life differently and to live it differently. In some ways our walk may seem topsy-turvy to others; our values have changed from self to service. In
Matthew 5: 21-24 are recorded Jesus' words which challenged his hearers' previous thoughts about their relationship to each other and to God. Jesus not only overturned the tables at the Temple, but he overturned our responses to one another even to this day. When, after the war, Corrie ten Boom met a former guard who had been responsible for the torment of women in the concentration camp at Ravensbruck, try as she could, her hand would not extend to touch his ... until she put the matter in God's hands, and forgave. She could then clasp his hand and bless him. Topsy-turvy it could seem.
The words whose echoes still resound in the ether, continuing to challenge us to repudiate the reasons we use to justify withholding unconditional love and forgiveness, are those which Jesus spoke at Calvary:
Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.Can we do no less?
Bob
2 Chronicles 6:21 So listen to and heed the requests of Your servant and Your people Israel which they shall make facing this place. Hear from Your dwelling place, heaven; and when You hear, forgive.
