The Rev. Canon Jan Naylor Cope: Forgiveness Doesn’t Happen By Default
Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our collective hearts be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
The gospel lesson you just heard is the fourth major teaching of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew: the first being the Sermon on the Mount, followed by mission activity, then the lessons in the parables, and today—everyone’s favorite—addressing conflict. Conflict, reconciliation, forgiveness—call me crazy, but I actually find it a hopeful note that conflict in the church and between one another is not a new phenomenon. Furthermore, Jesus is saying that it’s not just important for us to seek reconciliation, repentance, and forgiveness. It’s imperative.
Now, I want to be clear when I’m speaking this morning that I’m not talking about abusive relationships or those that truly are injurious to our physical, emotional, and mental well-being. Those are in a different category.
I’m talking about the church and our relationships one with another. The central mission of the church as understood in the teaching in our Episcopal Church, “is to unite all people to God and to each other in Christ”—to restore broken relationships. Can’t we all relate? When we have broken relationships, it’s hard. It’s hard to carry that pain, that guilt, that shame, if you will, with us. Frederick Buechner put it this way: “When somebody you’ve wronged forgives you, you’re spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience. When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you’re spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride. For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their own skins and to be glad in each other’s presence.”
Who wouldn’t want such resolution? Jesus instructs that it’s incumbent upon us, when appropriate, to take the initiative one-on-one. We know that’s not easy. It takes a lot of courage. In reading and remembering this gospel story, I was reminded of a time in my own life when I was faced with such a challenge, and it continues to teach me. I shared this story about ten years ago at the Cathedral, and some of you told me it was helpful to you, and you took action to bring a relationship that was broken back together. I can only hope that sharing this story again will have that effect on some of you.
Many years ago—long before I was ordained—I was in lay leadership at my home church. A member of the community who was very important to me came to me and asked, based on my position of authority in this church, if I could help to get this one thing done. I loved this man. He was a mentor and I respected him. Now, it was a reasonable request, but he knew, and I knew, that it was really going to be difficult given the personalities and the situation at hand. If it had been easy, he would not have asked me. Even though it was difficult, I committed to try. And as is my nature, I quietly, behind the scenes, tried to see if I could get this thing done. I was totally unsuccessful. So again, quietly, behind the scenes, I met with some of the people who had formerly been in lay leadership at the church and tried to enlist their support. To a person, each one tried and failed miserably. Time passed and more time passed.
Finally, my friend reached out to me and asked if he could meet with me and I said, of course. It had been about a year since he had first asked to meet with me and made the request that was so important to him. To my horror and shame, he proceeded to tell me how badly I had hurt him and how deeply disappointed in me he was. I was shocked. You see, my sin was one of omission. While what I thought was a way of proceeding that would spare him any hurt and pain during this process, I had neglected to provide him with any—let’s call them—status reports. What he experienced was a year of silence. He felt I hadn’t listened and worse, that I didn’t care. He took the initiative to tell me how badly I had hurt him, which gave me the opportunity to tell him what I had been trying to do, and for me to ask for forgiveness, and to receive it. He died three months later. If he had not come to me with a hurting heart to tell me that I had broken a relationship that mattered so much to both of us, I would never have known.
Most of the time, I think we’re painfully aware of when we’ve hurt another person, when we have breached a relationship. But there are times when we don’t know. Jesus invites us to take the initiative, to heal these broken relationships—when we can—so that we, as Buechner says, will have the freedom again to be at peace inside our own skin and to be glad in each other’s presence. You see, forgiveness doesn’t happen by default. It requires some action on our part. It’s important. You don’t need me to tell you about the conflict and broken relationships in the church writ large, in our country and in the global community. We have a lot of work to do. And it begins with you and with me.
In his landmark book, Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman put it this way about forgiveness, drawing on the gospel lesson we’ll hear next week. You know the story: Peter asks Jesus, how many times are we to forgive? Peter thinks he’s coming up with a big number when he offers seven. Yet Jesus replies with seventy times seven, essentially saying there is no quota that we ever hit on forgiveness. Thurman explained: “In Jesus’ insistence that we should forgive seventy times seven, there seems to be the assumption that forgiveness is mandatory for three reasons. First, God forgives again and again for what we do intentionally and unintentionally…Second, no evil deed represents the full intent of the doer. Third, the evildoer does not go unpunished. Life is its own restraint. In the wide sweep of the ebb and flow of moral law our deeds track us down, and doer and deed meet.”
My friends. I invite you today to pray about Jesus’ teaching and his imperative to address the broken relationships in our lives. And if this is the time, prayerfully for you to consider reaching out to do so. Remember, Jesus said, where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am in their midst. William Sloane Coffin summarizes: “We all belong to one another. That’s the way God made us. Christ died to keep us that way. Our sin is only and always that we put asunder what God has joined together.”
Remember, forgiveness doesn’t happen by default. Amen.