Sunday, October 27, 2013

Forgiving Ourselves

Forgiveness Series 4
sermon by Torin Eikler
Matthew 27:3-5          John 21:15-17, 19b




“I would never have forgiven myself!”  Have you ever said those words?  I remember hearing them first when I was just a boy.  My brother had been left in the car with the engine running while the rest of us got the last few things together for a trip.  Somehow he managed to get his seat belt off, climb over the front seat, and move the gear shift in the car to reverse.  My grandfather chased the car across the parking lot, opened the door, jumped in, and got it stopped just in time.  My mother said those exact words awhile later … after all the hugging and the “thank yous” and the appropriate expressions of amazement at grandpa’s quick thinking and heroic actions.

I’m sure that I wouldn’t remember her words at all if it wasn’t for all the adrenaline that ingrained the whole event in my mind, but periodically … more often lately as I have my own close calls, the memory comes back to me, and the same words run through my mind as relief chills my body:  “I would never have forgiven myself!”

I understand now that while those are words may be an expression of fear at what might of happened, they are also words of joy – words of relief that something bad didn’t happen because of my own actions or my lack of attention – words of thanksgiving that the heart-sick suffering that could have been ours along with any one of those awful futures has passed us by … this time at least. 

But what happens when we are not so lucky – not so blessed?  What happens when something horrible happens because we failed to act?  Or worse … what happens when we are the ones who have done that horrible thing ourselves?  What happens when those words become “I will never forgive myself?”

 
We have talked about forgiveness for the past three weeks: God’s forgiveness, asking forgiveness, and forgiving others, and one thing that I have learned in that time is that I don’t know how forgiveness happens.  I couldn’t tell you how God forgives us or how I come to forgive others.  I certainly can’t tell you how to forgive.  It is a process that is unique to each person, and – I believe – it comes as a gift to us … a gift that we cannot understand through reason because it is a thing of the heart and the soul.  We must simply accept and embrace whether it involves forgiving others, accepting forgiveness in turn, or forgiving ourselves.

I think that really do need to embrace that gift because, as Hannah Arendt says, “Without being forgiven, [without being] released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to a single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever….”[1]  And that is a terrible thought … a terrible future.

Unfortunately, it’s not just that I cannot tell you how to embrace forgiveness.  Nobody can.  What we can do is tell stories: stories about forgiving, stories about being forgiven, and stories about times when we have forgiven ourselves.  That, in itself, will not teach us how to forgive, but it does inspire us to keep on struggling on through the process … at least it inspires me.  So, I’m going to tell you two stories….


John Plummer lives the quiet life of a Methodist pastor in a sleepy Virginia town these days, but things weren’t always so.  A helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War, he helped organize a napalm raid on the village of Trang Bang in 1972 – a bombing immortalized by the prize-winning photograph of one of its victims, Phan Thi Kim Phuc.

For the next twenty-four years, John was haunted by the photograph…: a naked and burned nine-year-old running toward the camera, with plumes of black smoke billowing in the sky behind her.

Then, in an almost unbelieveable coincidence, John met Kim during an event at the Vietnam War Memorial on Veterans Day, 1996….  John had come with a group of former pilots unable to come to terms with their shared past, but determined to stick together anyway….

Beside himself, John pushed through the crowds and managed to catch her attention before she was whisked away by a police escort.  He identified himself … and said that he felt responsible for the bombing of her village….  He says: Kim saw my grief, my pain, my sorrow …. She held out her arms to me and embraced me.  All I could say was “I’m sorry; I’m sorry” – over and over again.  And at the same time she was saying, “It’s all right, I forgive you.”

John says that … without having had the chance to get that off his chest, he is not sure he could have ever forgiven himself….  Reflecting on the way the incident changed his life, [he] maintains that forgiveness is “neither earned nor even deserved, but a gift.”  It is also a mystery.  He still can’t quite grasp how a short conversation could wipe away a twenty-four-year nightmare.[2]

 
Pat, another Vietnam veteran tells his story with these words:

Death is on my mind a lot.  The deaths I have caused- and wanting my own death – are with me every day.  I joke around a lot with the people I work with.  I have to, to hide the pain and to keep my mind from thinking.  I need to laugh.  Laughing keeps the blues away.

            But I cannot love.  Part of my soul is missing, and it seems I won’t ever get it back.  I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself for all of my wrongs.  I live day to day, but I am tired all the time – tired.  Will it ever end?  I don’t see how.  It’s been with me over twenty-five years now.[3]

 
I chose these two stories because they are more immediate than those Perry read for us this morning.  Peter and Judas lived so long ago, and they are such extreme examples that it is hard for us to take their stories to heart.  John and Pat live in our world and in this time, and their stories can fill the same role for us that those long ago apostles did for the early church.  There are two choices, the stories say: forgive ourselves or don’t. 
 

We can follow in the footsteps of Judas and Pat, and we will find ourselves stuck in the moment or moments of our guilt, holding on to pain and unable to love.  Or we can find a way to let go of the pride and the grief that lock us into the past and join Peter and John, embracing life and serving others and ourselves with joy and compassion.  Both ways have their own consequences, and we should choose carefully … choose wisely.

“The longer we hold on to the old, …” says Robert Benson in his book Living Prayer, “the longer it holds on to us, and the longer it keeps us from hearing the Word that we so long to hear.  It becomes a matter of not being able to hear God’s voice because we are so full of our own.  We cannot hear the Word because our own words are in the way.

We cannot be filled with God until we are not so full of ourselves.  Our hearts and minds, wonderful as they are, are simply too small.  We cannot give our hearts to God, or anyone else for that matter, as long as they are too heavy for us to lift.”[4]
 

God has given us a marvelous gift in forgiveness.  It has the power free us from the failures of the past.  It has the power to heal the brokenness in our relationships.  It opens a clear space in the future before us so that only our own hopes, dreams, and creativity – ours and God’s – need shape what we do and who we may become.

But beyond all of that, forgiveness is the key to love.  Big or small, the moments that we hold onto … the mistakes that we hold ourselves accountable for – (going even beyond God’s judgment) – sap the joy and compassion from our living.  They build up leaving us dry husks wasting away in a spiritual desert, and only the water of life … only forgiveness can bring us back to life … and back to the love that gives life its meaning.

 
My prayer for you then … and for myself … is that we all will find the path to forgiveness.  That we all will hold onto the gift of love.  That we will choose life and joy and the peace that comes from letting go of the mistakes and struggles of our past.  That we will never let “I will never forgive myself” become the reality of our lives, and that in learning and growing from our experiences we will embrace the promise of a future lived in the light and love … the forgiveness of God.



[1] Arnold, Johann Christoph.  Why Forgive? (Orbis Books, Maryknoll) 2008.123.
[2] Arnold, Johann Christoph.  Why Forgive? (Orbis Books, Maryknoll) 2008.126-8.
[3] Ibid. 128.
[4] Benson, Robert.  Living Prayer (Jeremy P. Tarcher, New York) 1999. 26-7.

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