Forgiveness: the most generous of loves
Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany, February 20, 2022
Genesis 45:3-11,15 • Luke 6:27-38
There is no way around it: being human is challenging. We both know too much and too little, as Adam and Eve discovered in the Garden of Eden. They knew enough to be afraid and ashamed. They knew enough to try to put the blame on someone else. But they didn’t know much else. They needed to go out into the world, and practice trying to get it right – and there really is only one way to do that, isn’t there? Who among us ever learnt anything important by getting it right first time? We get it wrong again and again, until we’ve learnt how to succeed.
It's certainly true with any sport: I think of all the early mornings watching Eleanor fall again and again on the ice trying to land a waltz jump. I also think of my own, far less painful experiences practicing a challenging passage in a piano piece, or with baking: trying again and again to achieve light and puffy roti prata. I’m sure you can all think of your own examples.
But today’s prayers and readings are talking about more than acquiring skills, aren’t they? They’re about our attempts to grow into being more evolved, aware, loving human beings. Both fortunately and unfortunately, depending on your perspective, the process is much the same as with learning any skill. Being human beings in relationship with others is both extraordinarily nourishing and extremely challenging: we need to practice getting it right by getting it wrong, again and again.
I always try to assume that whoever I’m interacting with is doing the very best they can, and indeed that I too am doing the best I can – even if it’s not good enough. However the process of trying not be either reactive or judgmental can be challenging. As a recovering Enneagram 1, the Judge, every day offers me opportunities to grow a little more: to be kinder, more loving, more forgiving both of others and to myself.
But to be human is to make mistakes. What is important is what we do next, both for us if it was us who got it less than right, or for others whose choices have impacted us negatively. We need to learn how to forgive.
In our reading from Genesis, we see Joseph, of technicolor dreamcoat fame, now in a position of great power in Egypt, revealing his identity to those same brothers who had almost left him in the desert to die, but instead had sold him to some traders many years previously. His family now is starving. Instead of shaming and punishing them for their past cruelty, Joseph reassures them that they can settle in Egypt and be provided for during the ongoing drought. He kisses them and weeps on them, he forgives them, and they talk together.
‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us’.
The words from the cross, ‘Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.’
It’s interesting isn’t it that on so many occasions, whether teaching or healing, Jesus first forgives sins. ‘Your sins are forgiven: pick up your mat and walk”.
Sins are whatever separate us from each other, from God, and from ourselves. They are a fracture in a relationship that needs healing with forgiveness.
But forgiveness is not easy. Forgiveness is not ‘making nice’. And neither is pretending that whatever it was didn’t really matter. Engaging in some kind of emotional manipulation to make ourselves feel better doesn’t work either.
William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during WW2, has some wise words for us. He talks about the need to get a new mind: to consider God’s viewpoint of us. The God who loves us, each one of us, and has forgiven us since the beginning of time. Temple writes:
“To repent is to adopt God’s viewpoint in place of your own. There need not be any sorrow about it. In itself, far from being sorrowful, it is the most joyful thing in the world, because when you have done it you have adopted the viewpoint of truth itself, and you are in fellowship with God.”
William Temple, Christian Faith and Life, p.67
As people of faith, we acknowledge the living, vibrant, incomprehensibly loving presence of God in all things. We acknowledge, but that does not mean we understand. How can we? We have our scriptures, wise words through the ages, our lived experiences, but it’s still almost impossible to understand a God who loves us all without exception. It can be hard to believe in a God who is so completely different to us. But we try.
What sin and forgiveness ask of us is that we try to let go of those things, those ways of doing things that obstruct the movement of God’s love through all things, and turn ourselves toward it, allowing it to flow freely through us. To be willing to allow God’s power to make all things new be revealed through us, and by extension, through others too. To be open to ’putting on the mind of God’. To accept the gift of God’s love and forgiveness.
As Jesus tells us in our Gospel passage,
...love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as..God.. is merciful. "Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.
Forgiveness is the most generous of loves. It is kind, it is merciful, it is just. It has the power to interrupt the ‘vicious cycles of resentment and revenge’ of this morning’s collect. And it is not easy.
God of kindness....teach us to walk the way of forgiveness beyond all accounting and to love the gift that has no measure; through Jesus Christ, who died for all. Amen