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NEW TESTAMENT READING—Luke 15: 11-32
In her book entitled Firstlight, the author Sue Monk Kidd recalls visiting a nursing home with her youth group when she was twelve years old. Kidd was not a willing participant. It was the last day of summer vacation, and while her friends were splashing around in the city’s swimming pool, she felt unjustly sentenced to an ostensible act of goodwill. With a bouquet of crepe paper flowers, Kidd stood before one of the residents of the nursing home. She describes the resident as an “ancient-looking woman” whose deteriorating physical condition and lopsided mouth saddened her. When Kidd thrust her bouquet forward as a gift, the woman gave Kidd a piercing look. She then said, “You didn’t want to come, did you, child?”
Kidd was stunned. Not wanting to reckon the truth of what had been said, she protested, “Oh yes, I wanted to come.”
The woman then smiled with one side of her mouth as she said, “It’s okay. You can’t force the heart.”
During Lent, I will confess that I sometimes feel similar to the way Kidd felt when she was 12-years old. I will read a scripture that encourages us to forgive others, and my heart just doesn’t want to budge. It would seem that forgiveness isn’t something that can be mandated. A heart filled with compassion isn’t something that can appear with the snap of the fingers and a compliant nod of the head. It would seem easier to be the older brother standing in the yard outside the party. Resentment tastes better than the fatted calf. The party inside doesn’t even seem to have much appeal. In fact, it is quite the opposite. If I were to go inside, I fear I might become even more resentful.
We might stop to think for a moment about who is inside that party. It might be different for each of us. For some, it might literally be a younger brother or sister. How many people out there have ever experienced sibling rivalry or parental favoritism? Not everyone I am sure, but there is a reason this story is timeless. Still, there might be others who are inside the party. It might be a former spouse. It might be a wayward child. It might be a teacher at your child’s school who fails to understand and meet your child’s needs. It might be that boss who decided to pass you over in promoting someone else. If we think about it long enough, that party might quickly become filled with all sorts of people who provoked us, insulted us, slighted us, or elbowed us in the gut while passing us on the way to the finish line.
The night of the party might be a night on which I would rather go read a book by myself or better yet go watch a heart-pounding action movie to take my mind off things. It would seem I’ve got better things to do than be around people who would just stick their fingers in wounds that are either fresh or old. Besides, is the world really going to be worse off if I don’t go to the party? Really, it is probably for the best. I don’t need to be more miserable and then make other people more miserable, so, perhaps, all this forgiveness stuff is overrated.
I think of myself as being rather fortunate anyway. Nothing super-bad has ever happened to me or someone I love. No drunk driver has ever run over one of my family members. For the most part, I often feel as if I have slid through life without forgiveness being a big issue. When I think of forgiveness, I think of really dramatic examples. Years ago I helped organize an event at which one of the speakers was a father who had not only forgiven the person who killed his son but had befriended him and ultimately presided over the man’s wedding. The other day I found my eyes welling up when I read a story about a victim of the Vietnam War. How many of you know the photograph of the small girl “running naked down the road…with her clothes burned off and her body scorched by napalm”? The girl in the picture survived, and her name is Pham Thi Kim Phuc. She had seventeen operations as a result of the injuries she sustained on the day of that photo.
Ultimately, she was relocated to Toronto, and occasionally, she has served as an ambassador of goodwill for UNESCO. One day she happened to have a speaking engagement in Washington, D.C., not far from the home of John Plummer. Plummer was the officer who coordinated the raid on Kim’s village. After seeing the photo in the newspaper the day after the raid, Plummer became filled with guilt that he silently held until the day Kim spoke. In her speech, Kim said, “If I could talk face to face with the pilot who dropped the bombs, I would tell him we cannot change history, but we should try to do good things for the present…” After the speech, Plummer had a note passed to Kim that said, “I am that man.” Plummer then pushed his way through the crowd until he was face to face with her. Kim opened her arms, and Plummer fell into them sobbing as he said, “I’m so sorry. I’m just so sorry.” Kim responded, “It’s all right. I forgive. I forgive.”
When I think of those awe-provoking, miraculous examples of forgiveness, forgiveness almost seems like a relative non-issue in my life. I might occasionally stand outside the party with an unmoved heart, but that doesn’t seem so bad. It would seem like I can skate by without it consuming much thought. And, yet forgiveness is a big part of the message in the Bible, so the question is how might that message be significant and relevant for those of us who haven’t had extraordinarily horrendous things happen to us?
One epiphany for me last week came while I was reading a book by a clinical psychologist named Robert Karen. In this book, he says something that immediately struck me as true. He says, “All sustained relationships depend to some extent on forgiveness.” He explains, “Successful marriage means an inevitable round of disappointment, anger, withdrawal, repair. People hurt each other no matter how much love they share, and it’s a truism that the greatest hurts are meted out by the closest of intimates. No friendship, no marriage, no family connections of any kind would last if the silent reparative force of forgiveness were not working almost constantly to counteract the incessant corrosive effects of resentment and bitterness, which would otherwise tear us apart.” When I read that, my thinking did a 360. Of course, Eunita never has do to much forgiving of me, but Karen’s observations seemed undeniable to me. What long-term friendship or relationship doesn’t have at least some degree of friction or conflict no matter how great and wonderful the persons involved are?
Not only is forgiveness about as relevant as it gets for our lives, but it is also theologically significant. This past week I was talking with someone about my views of theology, and I kept saying that my starting point for dealing with a lot of thorny theological issues is this idea of God being a God of unconditional love. For example, would a God of unconditional love require that we have to believe in certain hard-to-believe miracles in the Bible in order to be a true Christian? Would a God of unconditional love punish us for our sins? Would a God of unconditional love send our loved ones to hell after they die? Would this same God also demand that Jesus die for our sins? When I then thought about this God of unconditional love in relation to forgiveness, I realized why forgiveness is so central to the Bible. Forgiveness is essentially unconditional love in action, and at times, such as the instance of Kim and Plummer embracing amid tears, it can be love in its most extreme and difficult-to-achieve form.
So it was that I became convinced that forgiveness is definitely not overrated. It is more likely underrated. This still didn’t solve for me the problem of how forgiveness cannot be mandated or forced upon the heart. In our scripture, it says that the father was filled with compassion when he saw his son from a distance. In this parable, the father represents God, and it occurred to me that in all of our lives, we might sometimes be the younger son who gets the party thrown for him, and we might sometimes be the older son who stands outside, but I think all of us can ultimately strive to become like the father, to become god-like. At first, we might not be instantly filled with compassion when we see the younger son at a distance, but perhaps, over time, we can mature and develop until that compassion grows within us faster and faster, fuller and fuller. Sue Monk Kidd says, “Compassion, which is the very life of God within us, comes through a slow and often difficult metamorphosis deep within the human soul. It happens through a process. If we look closely at the workings of creation, we find that God nearly always works through process.” Think of the seed that grows, the flower that blooms, and the fruit that ripens. Think of the larva, the chrysalis, and the butterfly. Think of the cosmic dust and the star in the sky. Think of who each of us was when we were first in the womb. Kidd recalls going to a retreat center in South Carolina once. When she walked through the entrance, she saw a picture of a pregnant Mary accompanied by words that explained how each of us is trying to give birth to our true self, to the image of God that is within all of us. Kidd reflects on this saying, “When we seek compassion, we must remember that ultimately the heart cannot be forced. But it can become a womb where compassion is gestated and birthed.” May each of us become aware of the compassion that grows deep within us. Amen.