On this weekend in which we remember and celebrate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the others who worked in the civil rights movement, work which is not yet done because we have not achieved the dream, and we might remember as well that Dr. King earned his Ph.D. at a Methodist University because it was the first predominantly white university to have a black dean of the chapel, I thought it appropriate as we think about forgiveness to hear some of the words of Dr. King, who had some things to say about forgiveness, and if anyone might have had a right to strike back against some of those who injured him, it would be Dr. King and his fellow workers. In a speech given to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, entitled “Where do we Go from Here”, which also happens to be the title of his last book, Dr. King said the following:
“I’m concerned about a better World. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood and sisterhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that. And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to humankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. And I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. [...] and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we aren’t moving wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who loves has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.”
This backpack represents our lives, and we’re going to look at what happens when we don’t forgive, and I took this illustration from Adam Hamilton. Every day we have little things that happen to us, that cause us small hurts. Maybe someone is rude to us, or we get yelled at by our boss, or we are running late and the line at Starbucks is too long for us to get our coffee, or the grocery store is out of the item we need and so we have to do without. Just those little irritations that happen every day. Now there are some days where these things will just wash off of us like water off a ducks back, and then there are those days where, for whatever reason, we just seem to feel everything that thrown at us. These little things don’t seem like much, they are just these little rocks, but if we even have just one of these things every other day, that’s 182 hurts every year, 1800 every ten years, and so let’s put some of them into our backpack.
Then there are those bigger wounds. Maybe we were cheated or lied to, or there was a betrayal of some sort, after ten years of work we expected to get that promotion and it was given to someone else. These are bigger and less common than the ordinary pains and so we collect several of these over our lives, and they get added into the backpacks. And then there are the bigger wounds. Statistics tell us that about 80% of us will be a victim of a violent crime in our lifetime, and that includes the 1 in 4 of women and 1 in 5 of men who will be the victim of sexual violence in their lifetime. So, by simply demographics that is something that many of us are carrying around with us every day. Or maybe there was a significant betrayal, your spouse cheated on you, or a family member was the victim of a violent crime. I worked once with a woman whose husband had been murdered. That was a major wound in her life. Most of us probably have something like this that gets added into our backpack, and we carry these things around with us our entire life. And perhaps there is something worse, and it feels like this rock which we can’t even pick up. This becomes our life.
Many of these hurts we carry with us because we honestly don’t want to forgive. We know we’re supposed to, but we don’t want to. We want justice, we want vengeance, we want restitution, we want our lives to be back to the way they were before, or the way we imagine they would be if this had never happened. We want something bad to happen to the other person. Even people who are opposed to this, still feel it, as maybe perhaps summed up by an essay written by Rev. Mary Lynn Tobin in response to September 11, called “Vengeance is the Lord’s (but something inside me wants to ‘bomb the hell out of them).’” We hear Jesus tells us that we have to forgive in order to be forgiven. That we are not to judge so that we are not judged, we are not to condemn so that we are not to condemn, but we are conflicted because we want vengeance and we also don’t really know how to forgive either. We are told that are to do it, but no one ever tells us how.
For all those who say that the Bible is life’s little instruction manual, this is one of those times which proves that it’s not. If your car manual said that you needed to check your oil, but never told you where the dipstick was, or even how to open the hood, you would probably be a little frustrated with it. But that is what the Bible does. It says that we are to forgive, but never tells us how to do that. As God said of the Israelites, we are a stubborn and a hard-hearted people, and so give us a step by step set of instructions about how we are to do this thing called forgiveness. Most of us don’t want to be carrying this weight around with us, but we simply don’t know how to get rid of it, or maybe we don’t want to get rid of it because we don’t really know what forgiveness means, or we think it means something that it doesn’t but because we don’t know that we can’t begin to proceed.
And it begins with a choice. As I said last week when we looked at what forgiveness is not, forgiveness is not required. It is a command given by God, and we are told that to be forgiven we must forgive, but forgiveness has to be taken on freely. No one, not even God, can make you forgive someone else for what they have done for us, because if you try and forgive grudgingly, you won’t be able to actually forgive. It just can’t happen. Now, you can choose to begin the forgiveness process and enter it with clenched teeth, but that’s not the same thing as only choosing to forgive because you’re being forced to, and we’ll talk about that more next week when we look at the steps to forgiveness. But if choosing to forgive is a choice, that means that choosing not to forgive is also a choice. And so those who say I can’t forgive, that’s not a requirement, it’s also a choice that you are making. And here is the most important part of that choice, and it’s so important I am going to say it twice. Choosing not to forgive someone only hurts you. And again. Choosing not to forgive someone only hurts you. When we choose to forgive it is us who are freed. Now there are certainly people who seek to be forgiven and not being forgiven does carry weight for them, but that’s not what I am talking about. When we choose not to forgive someone, often because we think that if we don’t forgive them that we are getting revenge on them in some perverse way, but it’s not true. Because who is carrying this weight of hurts around, not them. They can go on freely with their lives, while we remain stuck and hurt, and carrying all of this baggage around with us. It’s been said that not forgiving someone is like drinking poison and expecting it to hurt the other person.
Now Jesus does tell us that we are supposed to carry something around, and it’s not this, it’s to carry the cross, and forgiveness and the cross are entirely wrapped up in each other. Not only because of the forgiveness that we find in Christ, but also because of the fact that even on the cross Jesus was offering forgiveness. Not just to those who were crucifying him, but even to one of the criminals hanging beside him. and so, there are several pieces about this that come from the fact that forgiveness is much more about us than it is the perpetrator. The first is that as long as we continue to carry these hurts around, not only are they exhausting us, but it allows the perpetrator to continue to control our lives. We are giving them space in our heads rent free, and they continue to control our lives. As long as we refuse to let go and obsess about how they hurt us, then they are not only continuing to hurt us again and again, but they continue to control what we do and how we live. We become perpetual victims not in control of our lives. Forgiveness gets them out of our heads and allows us to take control of our lives again. Or, in the words of forgiveness researcher Fred Luskin, it allows us to become the hero of our own story rather than the victim. And not only can we stop them controlling us, the second and most important part is that we can simply choose to let all this baggage go and simply drop it, to stop it all from wearing us down.
Now many of you know, especially if you’ve been in my office, that I’m a star wars geek. And one of the things that’s visualized in Star Wars, and that Dr. King also knew, is that hate will eat us up. All those who follow the dark side not only have warped psychology, but their bodies become physically changed as well. Dr. King said that he knew the hate out there because, he said, “I know it does something to their faces and to their personalities.” That’s why he says that hate is too great a burden, not forgiving is too great a burden to carry. It will eventually destroy us. And this has even been proven in some studies about forgiveness. In one study a group of people were divided into two groups. One was asked to think about a time they forgave someone, and the other was asked to remember a time in which they held onto a grudge. Then they were asked to jump, without bending their knees, five times. Guess who had the highest jumps?
Those who remembered forgiving someone jumped, on average, 11.8 inches. Those who remembered a grudge jumped 8.5 inches. Not forgiving literally weighs us down. And so, we can choose to drop this weight and move forward into a new future, a future filled with hope and promises, of being the hero of our own story. And if there is one other thing that might help us to approach forgiveness and being willing to forgive others, and that is to remember and to know that there are others who are out in the world carrying around stones that have our names on them, hurts that we have given, and when we know that we too need to be forgiven, it should help us to choose to forgive.
And the choice is ours. But remember that, as Dr. King said, “darkness cannot drive our darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” Forgiveness is the process by which we choose to change the narrative and direction of the world. That we won’t strike back when we are struck, because that only leads to more violence, instead we forgive and live in love. And it is our decision, but the call is out there for us. As Paul tells us to let our love be genuine, to hold fast to what is good, and do not to repay evil for evil, but instead, as much as it is possible, so much as it depends on us, and so much depends on us, “live peaceably with all.” And that includes those who have hurt us, to bless them and not curse them, but love them. Or to return to the definition of forgiveness given by DR. Joanna North, which we will spend more time with next week, “When unjustly hurt by another, we forgive when we overcome the resentment toward the offender, not by denying our right to the resentment, but instead by trying to offer the wrongdoer compassion, benevolence and love.”
And so, this morning I’m going to give you a choice. When you can in the sanctuary this morning you were given a rock, and for those worshipping online you were encouraged to get a small rock. This rock represents a small hurt that we have received that we have held onto. Please note this is not the major wounds right, let’s start with something small. I want you to visualize that hurt, name why it hurt and how it has affected you, name the feelings around it and why you have resisted letting it go, and then make your choice to let it go or not. And then I’m going to ask you to come forward and to drop it in the bucket, and it’s going to make a loud noise, that’s part of the process to get lots of our senses going, and for those online you can drop it where you are, or maybe you want to go outside and throw it. But this is our choice moment of saying that we are ready to begin this journey of forgiveness, and if you’re not ready, that’s okay to. Hold onto this stone and think about what needs to happen for you to forgive, or maybe you need to move on to something else that’s easier to let go of, because we want to start on the small stuff and then move onto the big things.
We can either choose to continue carrying around this weight of hurts, or we can choose to forgive and let them go. I think, as Dr. King says, that the burden of carrying these things is just too much, and by working on forgiveness then we learn, as much as it is up to us, to live in love, live in forgiveness and live in peace with all. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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