Sermon for September 14, 2014- St. Christopher’s
Pentecost 14 Proper 19
Genesis 50:15-21
Psalm 103: [1-7]. 8-13
Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35
Forgive to Forget
One of the very first pastoral care calls I ever made was to a very
sweet elderly woman named Sally who was in hospice care with
terminal cancer. She graciously greeted me and we exchanged
warm words and hugs. I asked her how she was feeling and how
her Spiritual life was during this time of transitioning from this
life into the next. Answering in a very characteristic way for her
great faith she told me, “I am ready to die. I have lived a full and
happy life and I know that I will be going home when I leave
this place.” “That is wonderful.” I answered! “The most
important thing that I have ever learned—continued Sally—was
to forgive to forget. That changed everything for me.”
“Don’t you mean—forgive and forget?” I asked Sally. “Nope.—
she answered—I mean forgive to forget. I learned along time ago
that people seldom give you a change to actually forget what
you had to forgive them for. So, forgiveness let me move on even
when others wouldn’t.” Truly Sally had the truth of life— how
often have we heard the phrase “forgive and forget” only to
realize that forgiving people would be a whole lot easier if they
would stop doing the types of things that lead to the need of
forgiveness in the first place? For example, in my extended
family, we are sadly having to deal with a member who suffers
with substance addiction.
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She has recently shut my whole family out when we tried to
offer her help. We love her dearly and understand that her
reactions are caused by the many layers of complexity that can
come with addiction, but that doesn’t mean that her words and
actions don’t hurt— a lot. It has been a cycle of pain with this
family member—the pain of watching her hurt herself, the pain
of watching her say things and do things that break people
down when she is drinking, and the pain of watching it happen
again and again even when there have been moments of seeming
reconciliation. In fact, I would say those have been the most
painful times—the times when we have made amends and it
looks like we will be able to forgive and forget the hurt of the
past—only to see those ties broken anew when the drinking
starts again. That’s what it looks like with you try to forgive,
but the person you want to forgive won’t let you forget the pain,
the distance, the brokenness of the thing they need to be
forgiven for. Moving on and forgiveness seems a hard things to
come by in such a situation. So what are we to do? How are we
supposed to deal with a person or situation that never seems to
stop hurt or breaking us personally or the world in which we
live?
Thankfully, our readings for today have some wisdom for these
kinds of moments—specifically the passage from Genesis and
our Gospel reading taken from The Gospel of Matthew.
Let’s start with Genesis. In our first ever Rector’s Bible Study
this week, (Wednesday Nights at 6:30 following yoga at 5:30—
all welcome—shameless plug) at the Rector’s Bile study, we
explored these passages and agreed that though we normally
think of the Old Testament God’s tone as being very stern and
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perhaps unrelenting or even unforgiving, we have in this Joseph
story (and Psalm) the description of a very forgiving God and
one of his devoted followers—Joseph. You will not doubt
remember that this Joseph is the one that inspired the
musical—Joseph and the Amazing Technocoloered Dream coat
because of the beautiful coat that his Father, Jacob, had given
him to show that he was the favorite son out of all twelve of his
sons. As the story goes, his brothers did not take to kindly to
this distinction and went so far as plotting to kills Joseph before
settling on selling him into slavery instead and manipulating
their father into believe that Joseph is dead. Through many
exciting twists and turns, Joseph finds himself service a very
powerful Egyptian, only to be through into jail due to her false
accusation that he had tried to seduces her. After spending
years in jail, he manages to earn his freedom by interpreting
dreams that had been troubling Pharaoh. Because of his skill
and wisdom, Joseph was give the title of second of Pharaoh and
was in charge of storing food for the upcoming drought and
famine that it would cause. It is this role that actually reunites
Joseph with his brothers years later when they come to him to
ask him for food as they are the whole family are starving.
Well, by the end of the story, they have certainly changed
postures with Joseph— bowing before him instead of trying to
throw him in a well—but not much has changed about them in
general. They are still very conniving and manipulating here.
Worried that Joseph might still hold a grudge about that whole
“selling you to into slavery and telling father you were dead and
then leaving you to sit in jail for years” thing—they hatch a plan
to emotionally manipulate him into helping them instead of
harming them. They tell him that their father gave them
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instruction on his death bead that Joseph should forgive them
all their crimes against him. Now, Joseph could have said,
“Are you kidding me with this?! You haven’t changed in the
least! Still trying to put family member against family member
to get what you want! After all I have been through because of
you—I am going to send you to jail or even have you killed or
send you off to starve.” But that’s not what he does.
He says, “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even
though you intended to do me harm, God intended it for good…”
That’s forgiving to forget. That’s forgiving in such a way that
you do not let their actions—on going as they may be—steal
your peace or still your ability to life a full life.
And we see the same motif raised up in our Gospel lesson.
Peter, no doubt struggling with the same problem that we are
dealing with today—the problem of someone that keeps doing
the same thing over and over—never ending the cycle of
brokenness—Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the
church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as
seven times?” No doubt Peter was thinking he was being
generous in his estimation of how much forgiveness to give but
saying not one, or twice but seven. But Jesus said to him,
“Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times” in other
words—you just keep forgiving without keep a tally. There
should be no end to your forgiveness. He then goes on to
describe a slave who is very much like Joseph’s scheming
brothers. He is set free from his massive debt but this owner and
then refuses to show mercy to a fellow slave who owns him
money, throwing him into prison. He was forgiven and chose to
keep that forgiveness to himself in the never ending cycle of
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pain. His debt continued because he would not live into the
forgiveness that would have let the world forget what he owed
the irony being that if he had simply passed on forgiveness, the
slave’s owner would have been able to forget his debt entirely—
he wanted to in fact! As we can see from these stories—
forgiveness is a magic wand that will make everything suddenly
become perfect. Nor should it be thought of as an invitation to
being a door-mat. Jesus never says here to let yourself be abused
or to stay in abusive situation— Joseph and the slave owner
never say that what the brothers or the slaved did was totally
fine now and so nothing will be done to change the situation—
no-, rather what they did was forgive In order to change the
situation. Joseph forgave and told his brothers to bring their
families into Egypt so that he could be the head of the family
now—ensuring that the brother’s manipulative ways would no
longer dictate the future of Jacob’s linage. As the slave owner’s
objective in forgiving was seemingly that the slave he free
should go and do likewise for others—thus he was trying to
forgive as a way to spread forgiveness. There is no expectation
in either of these stories that things will stay the same—abuse is
not given a blind eye, power is not given to the vindictive, and
sin is never rewarded. All these things are indeed positive and
active responses to someone who continually hurts.
But perhaps the thing that changes the most are the hearts of
the ones that are doing the forgiving. Joseph replaces hurt with
hope in his heart. He could be bitter and vindictive, but instead
he is loving and seeks to heal his broken family—even when
they are stuck in their ways. The slave owner decides to free the
salve his debts because his heart if moved with pity. He chooses
to let what is owed him take a back seat to the mercy that he
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could share. Sally knew that if she held on to the pain and
brokenness that people had brought into her life, she would be
the poorer for it and would have been weighed down by the
inability to let go.
For my part, I take comfort in these stories. They show me that
there can indeed be hope of reconciliation with my family
member—ideally with her, but even if that cannot happen—
their can be reconciliation in my own heart about the
situation—there can be a letting go of fear, a letting go of pain, a
forgiveness that lets me forget that my pain is not the only pain
in the situation—that her pain is also real and needs to be let go
of.
That is a comfort indeed—even if it is not full forgetting—it can
be full forgiveness. Today, as we are reminded about the kind of
forgiveness that God offers us—the kind that let’s go of the
wrongs that we have committed—let us search for ways to let
forgiveness work on our own hearts even if we are in situations
that seem to have no end of forgetting in sight. Let us forgive as
we have been forgiven Let us forgive so we may fear not. Let us
forgive so we can let go and forget and let hope enter in.
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