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Message of Forgiveness                        Luke 23: 34                   March 29, 2009

Forgiveness is really hard. Somehow it doesn't matter if the offense is serious or trivial; for most of us, forgiveness is a struggle. We seem to be hardwired to retaliate when we are hurt - whether it's a physical hurt - which, fortunately doesn't happen very often - or whether it's our pride or self-esteem that's involved.

Sometimes, I think we equate forgiveness with weakness. We find ourselves thinking that not forgiving somehow shows strength of character and conviction. So not only do we not forgive, but we remind ourselves to never let it happen again.

Contrast this natural human reaction to the familiar words of Jesus from the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

Think about it. Jesus had just been betrayed by one of his closest friends, arrested, found guilty in a sham of a trial, condemned by a judge who knew that he was innocent, brutally beaten and then nailed to a cross. He knew, beyond any doubt, that he was about to die. Yet still, he says, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

One scholar suggests that this statement from the cross is Jesus' greatest miracle - greater, even, than all the healings he performed.

It makes us shake our heads and ask, "how could he do such a thing?"

The most important question, though, is not the "how" question but the "who" question: not "how could Jesus have possibly forgiven?" but "who was Jesus referring to when he asked God to forgive those who didn't know what they were doing?"

Many Christians over the years have insisted that Jesus was talking about the Jews. Others have assumed he was referring to the Romans. Both of these assumptions fall short, however, because they focus Jesus' attention on someone else.

Episcopal priest and feminist author Carter Heyward suggests we assume that Jesus was perhaps also referring to his own friends and family who were standing at the foot of the cross when he said those remarkable words on that Good Friday.

I like that twist. I like the idea that we should assume he was talking to his own community - to a band of disciples, bonded together in this terrible moment by a shared sense of powerlessness.

"Let's imagine their friend Jesus glancing down at them," she writes, "then lifting his eyes and saying, "'Abba, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing.'"

This suggests, of course, that Jesus might have been thinking, when he said those words, of people just like us - not only the murderers, not only the executioners, not only the powerful ones - but us: the ones standing at the foot of the cross. It suggests that when he says, "Father forgive them," he might really be asking God to forgive - us.

"What on earth would Jesus have been forgiving his community, his friends and family, for?" Heyward goes on to ask. "What had his band of disciples done that needed forgiving? What had they not done?" Or, more importantly, "What have we done, and what have we not done?"

Actually, that list is pretty easy to assemble. Most of us have no trouble acknowledging that we are sinful. We regularly confess that, "The good that we knew to do we have not done; and ask forgiveness for what we have done, and what we have left undone."

The problem is that while we repeat those words of confession, week after week, and hear the words that always follow; words like "Thus says the Lord: I will forgive your iniquity and remember your sin no more," most of us still pack up our sins and regrets and worries and walk out with them.

We often let our guilt pile up so high that it eats us alive. In fact, that is why we find it so hard to forgive others.

The little drama we just saw and heard was an exaggeration - but not much of one. We too are guilty of talking about forgiveness but failing to either accept it or give it.

Perhaps the best modern example of forgiveness is one that was in the news a couple of years ago. I'm sure many of you will remember it.

1 The West Nickel Mines School was a one-room school for 26 children in grades kindergarten to eighth grade run by the Amish for their children. On October 2, 2006, Charles Roberts, who drove a milk tanker that picked up milk at the local Amish farms, left a suicide note for his family and drove his pickup truck to the Nickel Mines School near his home. When he arrived at the school he told the adults and the boys to leave. He then shot the ten remaining girls. Five survived their wounds. Five died.

When police charged the building Roberts shot himself. On the evening of the murders, a group of Amish men standing at the firehouse where the police command had been set up walked to the home of Amy Roberts, the widow of Charles Roberts. They talked with the Roberts family for about ten minutes and told them they didn't hold anything against them.

Another Amish man went to the killer's father, a retired police officer who often provided taxi service for the Amish. The Amish man held Roberts' father in his arms and said, "We forgive you."

Many Amish repeated that scene, over and over. When Charles Roberts was buried, more than half of the seventy-five people at the funeral were Amish. Several weeks after the funeral there was a gathering in the firehouse between Roberts' family and the Amish families who had lost children. They shared with one another, the Amish telling the Roberts family that they bore them no ill will. They all cried together and held one another. When people all over the country raised money for the Amish families of the victims, the Amish decided that some of these funds must go to the killer's widow, who now had no income.

The Roberts family said to the Amish community, "Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community and is holding up our world, and for this we sincerely thank you."

Those who studied this event say that the Amish grace at Nickel Mines was not a random event. It was part of a long tradition. It was a habit.

"Forgiveness, I believe, is the most fully divine capacity and attribute that we humans can experience," writes Carter Heyward. "To forgive and to be forgiven shapes us in the image of a God whose strongest yearning is for a future in which all tears will be washed away and all resentments healed by divine compassion."

This holy compassion is something that we experience every time there is forgiveness, whether we give it or receive it.

As Lent, 2009 draws to a close, may we live as an Easter people; open to forgiving others where we have been wronged; and ready to confess, repent and receive forgiveness where we have done wrong.

                                                                             AMEN

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1 This Nickel Mines story was extracted from a recent sermon delivered by Larry Reimer at The United Church of Gainesville, FL