National Forgiveness Week
Rod Frohman Third
Presbyterian Church
September 3, 2006
Leviticus 6: 1-7
and Matthew 18: 21-35
An insurance company has published actual written statements
made by policyholders when the policyholders were reporting
their auto accident for claims purposes:
“As I approached the intersection, a stop sign suddenly
appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before.
I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.”
“The telephone pole was approaching fast. I was attempting
to swerve out of its path when it struck my front end.”
“I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at
my mother in law, and headed over the embankment.”
Whether in auto accidents or life in general, it is very difficult
to admit to being at fault. Self-defense is a human instinct,
physical or psychological. We most often assume that we are
right and others are wrong.
It is one thing to admit to being wrong, but it is much harder
to go the next step and say, "I was wrong, please for give
me”. We find it very hard to ask for forgiveness. We find
it hard to give forgiveness. And we find it very hard to receive
forgiveness, which may be the reason we don't ask for it. Asking,
giving and receiving forgiveness are all bound up together.
A pastor is standing at the bedside of a parishioner who is
about to undergo major surgery. At such a time, issues of life
and death come bubbling to the surface. Facing his own possible
death on the operating table, the man told the pastor of death
on the battlefield fifty years earlier. While serving in the
Korean War as a company commander, he had taken out a patrol
and a young soldier had volunteered to go with him. It was the
day before Christmas. This was the last day of the young man's
tour of duty before being sent home. On the way back to camp
the young man stepped on a land mine which blew off his leg.
The company commander had held the boy in his arms and did everything
he could to stop the bleeding, while others ran for help. The
boy died in the captain's arms with a plea to tell his mother
that he loved her. The man in the hospital bed was still guilt
stricken about it fifty years later. “I just couldn't
stop it. I tried to tie off the artery and it kept slipping
out of my hands. I just couldn't stop it. I did all I could,
will God forgive me?”
Approximately a month from today (October 2, 2006) our Jewish
friends will celebrate Yom Kippur, which is Hebrew for “Day
of Atonement,” or literally, “day of rubbing or
day of wiping.” (Interpreters’ Dictionary of the
Bible Vol. 1 p. 78) As told in idealistic form in our Leviticus
lesson, in Old Testament times, the annual Day of Atonement
was the one day of the year when the high priest went into the
holiest of inner rooms of the Jerusalem temple and offered an
animal sacrifice for the sins of the people of Israel. The blood
of the innocent animal was then used to rub on, that is, cover,
or wipe away the sins of the people. Then, as now, the impact
of the Hebrew day national forgiveness was the connection between
God's forgiveness of the people and their forgiveness of each
other. (Leviticus 6:1-7) In modern Judaism animals are not sacrificed.
God's forgiveness is sought, but it is also sought in seeking
to redress wrongs between opponents. As the Mishnah says, “For
the sins between humanity and God, the Day of Atonement effects
atonement. But for the sins between humanity and one's fellows,
the Day of Atonement will effect atonement only if we appease
our fellow human beings.” (IDB Vol. 1 p. 83) In other
words, there is a strong connection between being forgiven and
being forgiving.
I am becoming more and more convinced that we are a very unforgiving
culture. Mistakes today seem to have serious consequences, perhaps
more than they use to have. We see this in the schools where
the simple act of bumping into another student can provoke gunshots.
Hurt feelings on the highways can turn into shooting incidents
among motorists. Our criminal justice system is overburdened
with people who want to sue at the drop of a hat. Some law firms
should be named, “Dewy, Cheatham and Howe” because
hey are training us to hold onto our pain and convert it into
revenge. Certainly there are times when the court is our only
recourse, but too frequently an attorney is a surrogate for
our own lack of skill as communicators. Part of the reason for
the high cost for health care in the U.S. is that doctors are
afraid of being sued for malpractice so they order unnecessary
and expensive tests to cover themselves against suit.
This past June, Democrat and Chronicle columnist, Mark Hare,
Erica Vera, our RAIHN Director and twenty others, including
me, attended an all-day seminar sponsored by WXXI and the Michigan
based Fetzner Institute on applying forgiveness as a way to
break the cycle of violence. There were a number of ideas proposed
and the one adopted will focus on storytelling for healing much
in the way the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
is still using storytelling to help the larger community understand
how violence affects real lives.
Using the same storytelling method, during the first half of
September there will be a special forgiveness traveling art
display in our community. In a world where retaliation and revenge
grab all the headlines, “the f word” exhibition,
as it is called, tells the stories of people whose lives have
been shattered by violence, tragedy and injustice and who are
learning to forgive and move on. In today’s bulletin,
you can see the dates and locations of the exhibits.
On Wednesday November 15, Rev. Karyn Carter, the Program Director
for Families and Friends of Murder Victims, will be the keynote
speaker at an event to kick off a series of public hearings
to search for a community code of conduct. One of those hearings
is planned to be here at Third Presbyterian Church in late November
or early December.
Mark Hare followed up the WXXI conference with a column in
the D & C on August 8, 2006 which told the story of Lois
Einhorn who was horribly sexually abused as a child and how
forgiveness led to healing. “‘For years,’
Lois said, ‘I believed the word forgiveness implied condoning.
“Forgiveness,” concludes Hare, ”is essential
to breaking the cycle of violence—in abusive families,
and on our streets, where violence begets violence.” (D
& C Aug 8, 2006, “Forgiveness is the key to breaking
the cycle of violence.” Mark Hare)
Judaism has a day of forgiveness, Yom Kippur, so I would like
to propose, a “National Forgiveness Week.” It could
be a time of national, community, family and interpersonal healing.
Christians have resources for such a week.
The gospel lesson today is a parable about forgiveness, which
was stimulated by Peter's question. “How many times should
I forgive someone?” The parable is clearly and simply
drawn. It is a short drama in three quick acts.
In the first act a servant has a debt the equivalent of 10
million dollars which is owed to a monarch. The servant pleads
for time to repay the debt. The king, in a magnificent gesture
of magnanimity and grace, forgives the entire debt.
Then, in the second act, the newly forgiven man goes out into
the street and meets an equal who owes him just 30 or 40 thousand
dollars, a year’s wage. The newly forgiven man corals
the other debtor and demands immediate payment. The words of
the second debtor are the same as the words of the first, “Have
patience with me and I will repay you.” But the plea falls
on deaf ears and the lesser debtor is tossed into debtor’s
prison to rot until he pays.
Notice that in the third act of our little morality play,
the king finds out about the unforgiving servant and, enraged,
throws him in debtor’s prison and is tortured.
What has the unforgiving servant chosen? He did not choose
to live in a world where debts are forgiven. He chose the kind
of an ancient or medieval world where people who cannot pay
end up in jail. And so the king's actions say to him in effect,
“If you want to play that game, you must live by those
rules.” And the game is a terrible game of revenge and
torture, the kind of game played out on our city streets today
and in the war in Iraq.
What we see in the parable of the unforgiving servant is life
as it really is! But do we really want to live by those rules?
Obviously not.
Forgiveness is really a radical principle. It goes to the heart
of what is means to be human, life against itself. Can the Jews
forgive the Germans for the holocaust? (Notice that I said “forgive”
and not “forget.”) Can the Jews forgive the West
for closing its eyes to the holocaust? Can African Americans
forgive European Americans for slave trade and racism? Would
European Americans dare ask African Americans for forgiveness
of “300 years of unrequited toil?” Can someone infected
with the HIV virus forgive the transmitter?
So what about a national week of forgiveness? There are precedents.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has apologized for the treatment
of the Irish during the potato famine. Australia has apologized
to Aborigines. To its credit, the U.S. government has apologized
and paid a token award to Japanese Americans interned in camps
during WW II. In 1995, The Southern Baptist Convention adopted
a resolution renouncing its racist roots and apologizing for
its past defense of slavery. In 1998, President Bill Clinton
was roundly criticized for going on what many commentators dubbed
an “apology tour” of Africa in which he said, “Going
back to the time before we were a nation, European Americans
received the fruits of the slave trade. And we were wrong in
that.”
Christians, of all people, ought to understand forgiveness,
because at the heart of the Christian story is one who declares
WHILE he is being unjustly executed, “Father forgive them
for they know not what they do”. The Lord’s Prayer
commends us to “forgive our debtors.”
We find the whole business of forgiveness very strange to
our lives. It is strange because the human condition is one
of separation. As the great mid-twentieth century theologian,
Paul Tillich, has said, “It is not that we are separated
just from one another, but we are also separated from ourselves.
We are split within ourselves. Life moves against itself by
aggression, hate and despair. It is a kind of mixture of selfishness
and self hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us
from loving and forgiving others and loving and forgiving ourselves,
and from losing ourselves in the Love and forgiveness with which
we are loved and accepted eternally.” (Tillich, Paul “You
Are Accepted” in The Shaking of the Foundations, NY, Chas.
Scribners, 1948 p. 158)
The good news of the Gospel is, “You are accepted and
forgiven, just like you are. Simply accept the fact that you
are accepted. When we realize this we may not suddenly be a
better person than before, we may not believe more than before,
but we are transformed. When it dawns upon us that we are forgiven
and accepted by God then our estranged self is reunited with
its self, then we can say that grace has come upon us. Then
we are able to accept the lives of another, even it is hostile
and harmful to us, because we know that even that harmful person
belongs to God and is accepted by God.” (Ibid. p. 162)
So, what about a national week of forgiveness? During this
week, [which would be best to always come just before Yom Kippur,]
we would send cards, make phone calls, write letters, hold truth
and reconciliation hearings, and most importantly, when possible,
meet face to face with those whom we have wronged the most in
our lives. Inevitably, they tend to be those we also love the
most. And in these letters and encounters we would let down
our guard and express our regrets. Of course Congress would
have to pass a law saying, “Words expressed during this
week would not be subject to litigation at a later time.”
This would be kind of a spiritual Fifth Amendment, the amendment
protecting a person against double jeopardy.
Actually the idea of a National Forgiveness Week is not original
with me, but with a Minnesota man, Sylvester Jones, who wrote
an op ed piece in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune thirteen
years ago which I cut and saved. Mr. Jones concluded his op
ed piece with, “At first I thought a single day each year
would be enough to demonstrate the power of forgiveness to heal.
But after reflecting on all the misery I have caused others,
even a week seemed far too short.”
