A Great Article on Forgiveness During Lent

from my friend and mentor, The Rev. Ed Middleton, the pastor of First Community UCC of Dallas, and the preacher at my installation at this church.

The days of Lent are passing quickly. Many flowers have bloomed, trees leafed, and the pollen…well, let’s just leave any further discussion of that alone. There are things I still haven’t done during Lent; things I had intended to do, promised myself that I would do, on Ash Wednesday. As the week of passion gets closer and closer, I now have begun to resign myself that I need to shorten the list and prioritize the work.

At the top of my short list will be a simple word, often shunned by the pundits and seldom practiced by the masses—forgiveness. To be able to forgive someone whom you perceive has done you wrong is a difficult thing. It can take decades for some folk and minutes for others. I’ve never quite figured out how that works for me; that is, why some wrongs are so easily forgiven and others require much time and great work. I get that it is about my vulnerabilities and brokenness more than the offender’s intent. Still, I scratch my head at how easily I forgive some big offenses and how reticent I am to forgive minor ones.

We can ponder such questions, discuss them with each other, delay the inevitable charge before us, but sooner or later, as people of faith, we must get to the heart of question. We must be willing to forgive the other for her or his sin against us. This is grace and not a theological option up for discussion. For what it’s worth, this means forgiveness of self, too.

I was recently reminded, while reading Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter, there are times when forgiveness is a process leading up to a revelation that the work is done. In the beginning of this wonderful book, Hannah Steadman is suffering the loss of her mother to the flu. She, her grandmother, and father continued trying to make a life on an old Kentucky farm. A year later he married Ivy Crutchlow, a widow with two sons. Hannah would describe her in the following way: “She was not a good wife to my father, and she lived up to the bad reputation of stepmothers.” Upon graduation from school, her grandmother arranged plans for Hannah to leave the farm and slowly begin to build her own life.

Years later Hannah would run into Ivy in a store. She had grown old; her joints were twisted by arthritis, and she was using two canes. Ivy spoke and raised the question as to whether or not Hannah knew her. It occurred to Hannah that Ivy “had perfectly forgot, or had never known, how much and how justly I had resented her.” Then came some startling revelations to Hannah:

But I knew at the same instant that my resentment was gone, just gone. And the fear of her that was once so big in me, where was it? And who was this poor sufferer who stood there with me? ‘Yes, Ivy, I know you,’ I said, and I sounded kind.

I didn’t understand exactly what had happened until the thought of her woke me up in the middle of the night, and I was saying to myself, ‘You have forgiven her.’ I had. My old hatred and contempt and fear, that I had kept so carefully so long, were gone, and I was free.

There it is, isn’t it? The power of forgiveness is not that the past injustice is made just, the wrong transformed into right, nor those memories of a sin erased. Rather, it is that by forgiving someone else we can be free. Forgiveness is a different kind of liberation theology.

Soon we will hear those words that sound so incongruous to us during the week of passion. Jesus will still be on the cross. The crowds will still be mocking. The Romans will still be doing the control-of-empire thing. Then the words will tumble from Jesus’ mouth, “Forgive them, they don’t know…”

So I’ve got work to do, and soon. I’m not talking about Easter egg hunts, choir rehearsals, or sermons to prepare. I’m talking about doing the work of forgiveness. Those whom I remember as the sinners may not even know how they hurt me or those whom I loved. They may not even care. No matter, it’s long since time for me to relinquish my resentments and let it go. Maybe then I can honestly pray, “And forgive me my sins, as I have forgiven those who have sinned against me.”