A Clean Slate?
Even though I have a break from preaching next Sunday, I know the lessons from the Revised Common Lectionary touch on the theme of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a basic aspect of the Christian faith. One could make the case that forgiveness is THE basic aspect of the Christian faith.

Yet, it’s very difficult to deal with.

On the one hand, many of us have a real struggle believing we can be forgiven the things we do that offend or hurt someone, or that run counter to God’s will. Counselors spend a lot of time working with people who won’t forgive themselves and who can’t conceive of anyone else forgiving them, either. It all seems rather selfish, really, as if the things we do are so monumentally important that they matter to the point no one can get over them. “How can you ever forgive me??”

Jesus encouraged forgiveness and granted forgiveness. His death on the cross, we say, somehow assured God’s forgiveness of human sin. He also said, “Follow me,” and part of following Jesus entails forgiving others.

Several times in my career I have succeeded individuals who were fired from their positions. In one case, a couple of years after the fact, the fired individual sent a letter to the church asking their forgiveness for certain behaviors during his tenure as pastor. When I showed the letter to the woman who was chair of the Board, the color drained from her face. At the next meeting, as she tried to read the letter to the rest of the board members, she couldn’t get through it. She began to cry. I finished reading the letter to the group.

One of the members gathered his papers and brief case and stormed out of the meeting. I followed him into the church narthex. He kept saying, “No. No. No. I will never forgive him! No!” After we talked for a while he finally calmed down and I got him back into the meeting room.

There was a lot of suspicion of the person’s motives in asking for forgiveness. The outcome, as I recall it, was the writing of a vaguely-worded letter, basically acknowledging the man’s request, but tap-dancing around the matter of forgiveness. It was very disappointing.

The Power of Forgiveness is a film by Martin Doblmeier of Journey Films. Martin has traveled the country screening his film and holding discussions with diverse groups of folks. The film likely will be broadcast in some form on PBS in a few months.

One vignette in the film is especially haunting. Three women who lost sons (policemen and firefighters) in the 9/11 attacks honestly describe their struggles around the issue of forgiveness; not only of those who attacked the World Trade Center, but also the city of New York. Debris from Ground Zero containing unaccounted-for remains of victims, including the sons of these women, was trucked out and placed in a landfill. “They just put our sons out there with the garbage,” one of the women tearfully complains.

All of that was awful enough, but the real kicker comes when another mother finally admits that she and her firefighter son were not on speaking terms at the time of the attack. There was some disagreement over the son’s wedding plans. The son died without ever reconciling with his mother. In watching the film, it was clear that the hardest part of it all for her was the unresolved poor state of their relationship.

The power of forgiveness was unused.