MISSION SUNDAY

Theme: Forgiveness

During the communal riots in Calcutta, the year before Independence, Mahatma Gandhi decided to come to the city and live in the midst of the carnage. He received many visitors and listened to their tale of woe and loss. One day a Hindu came in, greatly distressed and shedding tears of sadness and anger. “Mahatmaji,” he blustered, “the Muslims have killed my little 8 year old son. I shall not rest till I have taken the life of a Muslim boy the same age!” Gandhiji replied, “Sit down my friend, and let me tell you that’s no way to get peace of mind. But what you must do is to look for a Muslim boy of 8 years whose parents have been killed. Take the boy home and bring him up as your own son, a member of your family, but allowing him to remain a Muslim and respecting the traditions of his parents. That will be the way of your peace of mind.” Mahatma Gandhi was inviting that Hindu to embrace what he hated most.
Let me recall our own dear Francis of Assisi. Before his conversion, Francis’ life was one of headlong pleasure and worldly enjoyment. One day he was out on horseback, and there blocking his path was a leper. The sight almost sickened him, but on divine impulse, he got off his high horse, took the leper’s hand and kissed it. It was Francis’ leprosy of spirit that was healed, because he embraced what he most hated.
Let me also tell you the story of a Dutch Christian girl, named Corie Ten-Boom, who died a few years ago. With her family Corie Ten-Boom had been sheltering Jews during the Second World War. They were caught and sent to Ravensbrook concentration camp in Germany. Her father and sister died there.  Corie was released by mistake, but not before she’d experienced what she called the “deepest hell that man can create” at the hands of the Nazis. After the war, she became a minister of the Word, and was preaching in Munich when she noticed in the congregation the Nazi guard from Ravensbrook. Somehow, she went on preaching, but her mind was filled with horror and anguish of her memories. Now the leader of the men who had killed her father and sister were here; and it filled her with loathing. After the bible service, he came up to her smiling, held out his hand and said, “Thank you for your message: Jesus has washed my sins away.” Corie looked at him, unable to take his bloodstained hand. She’d preached forgiveness, but how could she show it to him of all people?
Let’s break off the story to observe an interesting point. We Christians keep stressing the way that god always takes the initiative, and it’s right that we should. He loves us as his children, even though we turn our back on him. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, says St. Paul (Rom 5.8). We weren’t even born yet, still he did it for us. Yes, in God’s dealings with us, he always acts first. It’s a two-way relationship in which God takes the initiative.
We console ourselves by saying that God’s love is unconditional, that he loves us whether we’re good or bad. I find it rather odd therefore to find that one part of God’s love that has got a condition. We all know it. It’s in the Lord Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” But this is not an isolated saying that we can wriggle out of. It’s a theme that Jesus rams home to us. God, it seems, cannot forgive us if we cannot forgive others. In a deeper sense, if we have really experienced God’s forgiveness for us, we should not find it difficult to forgive others. If we have received that joy and consolation of being forgiven by God we shall in turn give that joy to others by forgiving them.
It is an important question. Because we can’t look at what is happening in so many parts of today’s world and in our own country without seeing hatred and revenge. And there are no easy political answers. Only against the background of forgiveness can any answer at all be found in those places. When we look at relationships between individuals and communities in every country, they’re strained and broken. A first blow leads to retaliation that develops into suspicion, ill-will, and rejection. There seems to be no way out. Only when somebody forgives will the vicious circle be broken.
Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness helps our human predicament as nations and as people. I think the core of it is in the story he told of the Prodigal Son. A better title would be the Parable of the Forgiving Father. When he saw his bedraggled son returning, he forgot the rights and wrongs of the situation, he absorbed the hurts that he had suffered, because his relationship to his son was more important than either of the other things. He grabbed his son and brought him right into the house. It was a matter of the heart, not the reasoning. And that, I suggest, is the heart of the whole thing.
Yes, there’s a good case to be made for having principles. Of course, there is. a good case to be made for having an ideology and commandments by which to live. But the message of Jesus is not about principles, ideologies and legalities. It’s about relationships and, above all, about restoring relationships. And it’s this truth that many Christians get wrong. We demand that people are penitent before we forgive them. We say, in effect, “Come on, admit it, that I’m right and you’re wrong, and then I’ll forgive you.” That’s the religion of the Pharisees, which creates censorious, cold, hard flinty Christians. No wonder we are sick with ourselves. Sick with rivalry and the mad rush to be superior to others. And that’s the opposite of what Jesus wants. For in the Kingdom of God there is one inescapable priority – that loving relationships reign supreme. And as only free forgiveness makes those relationships possible, that is part of the central priority.
So you see, if we will not accept that relationships come before meanings, we’ve rejected the central basis of the Kingdom, and we cannot receive God’s forgiveness either. So, I appeal to you, forgive. Accept the hurtful things that have been done, freely forgive, for the future relationship is more important than your pain. It’s worth agonising over it, over how to practise it in our personal and social life. Because forgiveness is a gloriously creative activity, it saves our future relationships, it liberates us from corrosive and self-destroying bitterness. For when you practise it, hard as it often is, you will feel as the forgiving father felt, you will feel as God feels when he freely forgives you.
So, let us come to my story of Corie Ten-Boom. We left Corie Ten-Boom looking at the extended hand of the Nazi guard who had persecuted her. For a long time she paused and prayed silently, “Lord Jesus, forgive me and help me to forgive him.” But she couldn’t move her hand, so she tried again: “Give me your forgiveness, for I cannot forgive him on my own.” And she took his hand. As she took it, Corie felt and amazing current pass between them and love filled here heart. So, as she said afterwards, “When God tells us to love our enemies, he gives us along with the command the love itself.”
So, dear friends, what did Jesus die for?  He died for-giving.

PRAYER: (Litany of Reconciliation. Coventry Cathedral)
The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,
Father, forgive.
The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,
Father, forgive.
The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth,
Father, forgive.
Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,
Father, forgive.
Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugees,
Father, forgive.
The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children,
Father, forgive.
The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves, not in God,
Father, forgive.
Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Paul to the Ephesians)