Some Thoughts on Forgiveness

This Sunday is Christ the King Sunday, which is the last Sunday of the liturgical year. The gospel lesson is Luke's account of the crucifixion

There are many things at work in the crucifixion story thematically. This week I have reflected on what the crucifixion story suggests about forgiveness--God's willingness to forgive us, and our willingness to forgive others. Notice in the crucifixion story that Christ forgave those around him that were responsible for the crucifixion, and offered forgiveness to one of the thieves crucified next to him.

Forgiveness is the process of concluding resentment, anger, and indignation at those that have harmed us. Forgiveness is an effort that we make within ourselves to move on from those actions that have brought us harm, to be at peace, and to return ourselves to the full time work of being God's people. We cannot hold onto resentment, anger, and indignation and be at peace with ourselves, with others, or with God.

In the crucifixion story, God reveals that as God's children, we have the power to forgive even when we are in extreme circumstances of pain. Through God's Spirit, God can give us the power to forgive those who have harmed us so that we can move on.

The world is full of those that hurt themselves and others. Whether they are held accountable here and now is a matter between themselves and our society's mechanisms of accountability. Whether they seek God's forgiveness is a matter between themselves and God, and whether God forgives them is in God's hands alone, not ours. Let's leave civil and criminal judgment in the hands of judges and civil authorities. Let's leave the only judgment that matters--God's judgment, in God's hands, and move beyond our resentment, anger, and indignation and be at peace.

Human cultures have a vivid shared memory of those events that reveal an absence of safety and security. In our own culture, the assassination of JFK became a central shared memory of the baby boom generation. September 11 has had a similar effect. Both events reminded our culture about how fleeting life is, and about how institutions, whether political or economic, can be damaged.

Ancient Israel's two most vivid cultural memories were the Babylonian captivity, when Israel was conquered by Babylon and carried off to a strange land, and the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem by Rome in the first century. These two cultural memories, like September 11, reminded ancient Israel of the absence of safety and security in their own institutions.

In Jesus' statements to the disciples in this week's gospel lesson, Luke 21.5-19, Jesus reveals to the disciples that their lives will not be safe and secure in the way that the disciples want their lives to be. Safety and security, although promised by Rome and Israel authorities, was an illusion. In fact, Jesus suggests that the disciples' lives would be characterized by an absence of what the world thinks of as safety and security. But only through the absence of such security could the disciples nurture the only thing that mattered--their relationship with God and the safety of their souls.

There is no safety and security in this world in the way that we yearn for, and in the ways that are implicitly promised by our cultural institutions. But there is a deeper security and safety that is real, that can only be found by letting go of the security that we think we need. It is in our relationship with God and in our soul.

Life, Not Death

Luke 20:27-38 is a story about a dialogue between Jesus and the Sadducees, a group of high ranking religious leaders in ancient Israel. In ancient Jewish culture, there were lots of different beliefs about life after death. Some Jews did not believe in any afterlife. Others believed in resurrection.

The Sadducees were characterized by their belief that there was no resurrection. Knowing that Jesus had a different perspective on this, the Sadducees present Jesus with an argument using a text from Deuteronomy. According to the Law of Moses, when a married man died without a male heir, it was considered the responsibility of the husband's brother to marry the widow. To a large extent, the purpose of this law was to ensure that the deceased's name would live on forever. The Sadducees present the following hypothetical: if a man dies childless, and a brother marries the widow, and then a succession of brothers die, which one (i.e. the original decedent or one of the brothers) is now the husband? In other words, if there were a resurrection, the Law of Moses would have specified the answer, and the absence of any reference in Deuteronomy to the resurrection creates this conundrum.

Jesus' responds to the Sadducees by arguing that they have completely misunderstood God's nature. God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living, for to God all are alive. For God, there is only life, and we will remain alive after death. Our life here on earth is very different from our life after we pass beyond this world. But it is still life. Death is just something that moves us from one form of life to another.

Ancient Israel was scared to death of death. Our culture is scared to death of death. We express our fears in different ways. In our society, we spend thousands of dollars to make ourselves look younger and we deify youth.

We don't have to be afraid of death if we live as God's people, because death has no power over us. If we live as God's people, we will not only live without fear of death, but we will live as people who have no reference to death. We will see only life.