I have lived in two areas of the country where there is stone work in fields and houses—upstate New York and here in Central Kentucky. One thing I have noticed is that the really old stone walls are quite interesting. They may be sagging where the ground had given way, or crooked, following the land as it settles into gravity or is pushed aside when a tree decides to sprout around it. The stones may be askew, not straight horizontally or in a perfect line. But even when the wall is falling down, it is still beautiful. While a newly constructed wall around a housing development may try to copy the old walls, it is just not the same—there is no ivy growing on it, it seems nearly too perfect to be real, and sometimes the new wall can even look fake. There is something about the integrity of the century old wall, something enduring when you know it was built to last a long time, even though it looks like you could pick up the stones from its rubble.
The integrity of a wall that has stood the test of time is much like people who have stood the test of forgiveness. Why do I call forgiveness a test? Because whether you are the recipient or the giver, it is not easy.
Being forgiven is our inheritance as Christians. We were forgiven before we even did anything to merit it. Forgiveness is the free gift of the loving God who sent his only son to forgive us. Accepting this forgiveness is not easy for us to do. We tend to believe we are not worthy, we have done too many unforgiveable things. Or on the contrary, we believe we are not as bad as some people we know who need forgiveness more than we do.
Whatever stance—feeling unworthy or not as in need as someone worse than us, we are playing God. God is the one who has given us forgiveness. Are we too proud, too narcissistic, too arrogant to believe we are God instead? God gives us this gift of forgiveness, not so we can go our merry way and say “Oh I’m not so bad if I am forgiven—God will love me no matter what.” This is self-congrulatory and not what God intends. God intends us to accept forgiveness, not by glossing over and trivializing our weaknesses, but by saying yes to them. To own up to them, be honest about them. Not in a humiliation, but in repentence. In this sense, God is asking us to accept forgiveness by getting the mind of God.
The new testament scholar Bill Countryman says that forgiveness of ourselves as God forgives us cannot be real without our stepping into our humanity with full knowledge of our frailities. When we acknowledge our frailties openly and honestly, not with guilt, but with truth, we begin to love as God loves us. God wants for us to be whole. This wholeness encompasses our human problems, our little lies about ourselves, our deceptions about how good or evil we are. Because once you really acknowledge these frailties, you cannot go back, you must go forward.
God’s forgiveness is not about wallowing in the past, what we did, what we left undone, it is about living a new future in God’s guidance and love. When we accept that we are forgiven, we no longer need to deceive ourselves about how much we miss the mark. We can without fear accept that we have these issues, whether big or small, and that God has taken us under the wing of love into new life.
New life involves taking our frailties and wanting to turn ourselves around—the meaning of the word repentence. It is not a duty, it is a gift. It is not because we may be punished, it is because we are already loved. When we get our minds around that love, we want to turn to God, the one who loves us so much, and turn our lives into lives of love too.
When we see a wall that has lived through a lot of life, it is sturdy but a little worse for the wear. If we live with integrity about being forgiven, we too will withstand the fear of being honest with ourselves. We will persevere in getting through those days when we said or did the wrong thing, or did not take action when we could have. By accepting God’s forgiveness we look at ourselves honestly and say God help me to do better next time. Because I know I am forgiven and am loved, I can become a healing force in the world, just as Christ was given as a healing force for the world.
The message of the good news in today’s gospel is not that we will be punished if we don’t forgive—how can punishment be good news? The good news is that God forgives us, and by accepting that gift of love, turning our minds toward the healing power of God, we can more easily forgive others as well.
Forgiving others is not simple—the same process is involved—honesty. First, honesty with ourselves about the hurt done to us by another. Then acting on that hurt and anger in ways that are healing, not more hurtful. It may mean writing a letter that is never sent, to tell someone exactly what their behavior, words, or lack of action had meant. It may mean having a heart to heart talk that does not glide over the problem, but allows both of you to hear the other. Forgiving other people does not involve simple answers that throw darkness over what has transpired, but throwing light and love on your relationship with others.
A chaplain visited some prisoners who were convicted of child abuse. As she was leaving she asked what message they had for people outside. They said, don’t forgive us too quickly. What they needed was not to have their frailty glossed over and treated as if it were nothing, but to be held to account to improve their frailty, as if what they did mattered.
What each of us does matters. What we have done or left undone matters, otherwise God would not have bothered to want to love us into wholeness through forgiving us before we even have messed up. This forgiveness opens a door for us to love ourselves so much that we say we matter and what we do matters. If we matter that much to God, then all our relationships matter that much too.
Like a stone wall that has weathered real environmental changes, we can stand with integrity in God’s love and forgiveness, forgiving others as we are forgiven and helping bring God’s kingdom to fruition now.
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