Unimaginable Forgiveness?

Eliot's best friend is named James.  James sister Catherine is also a dear friend to Naomi.  I was at a play date with the kids when I heard this story.  James' Mom knew someone who was on the first plane that crashed into the Twin Towers on this day ten years ago.  She had recently had her first child, a girl, and had gone back to work after maternity leave.  Her flight that day was the first time she had flown for work since her baby girl had been born.  At the memorial service, towards the end of the service, because the little girl loved the song so much, all those gathered to remember the young woman who died and support the family after such a devastating loss, sang If you're happy and you know it.  Simple, sweet, focused on the family who had just lost so much, a song was offered to console this young girl who had just lost, forever, her mother.

This struck me in a particular way, surprisingly, in a hopeful way, I have asked several people here at Gethsemane what they wanted to hear from the pulpit about 9/11 and the resounding answers to that question has been "Nothing at all."  I don't blame them, we have been inundated with special after special about that day, we have been drowned in the sensationalist stories of new videos, and never before seen clips and first ever highlights of the experiences of people who saw some aspect of the events of that day.  It is crazy that in a world filled with brokenness, filled with need, filled with pain, our media can only find time to cover and re-cover issues that only spark political debates and accusations, or have only sentimental value and cannot help us face the questions of that day with strength and courage and grace..

The idea of singing if you are happy and you know it at the end of a funeral really got to me.  How will this girl, who lost her mother in an extreme act of violence, grow up to understand what forgiveness is?  How will this little girl forgive those who killed her mother?  How will she reconcile when she is able, her own brokenness about losing her mother and the need for all of us to live together in peace, and love and joy?  What would Jesus say to this little girl if she approached him and asked him about whether or not she should forgive those who committed such an atrocity against her?  Would Jesus say, forgive them?  Jesus never was all that pastoral, he rarely reached out in compassion, he always challenged and pushed people in their questioning.  What would he say to this little girl if she asked him about forgiveness?  If he said what he said in this Gospel we heard today, would she hear his words?  Do we hear his words?

Our country is in an out of control, violent and vicious cycle of blame, accusation and division.  We live in a culture that can barely grasp what this Gospel is proclaiming.  We do not listen well to one another, we do not challenge out of love, those people who are struggling with deep questions of faith, forgiveness and hope.  We do not support with care and generosity those who are in need.  Our country, our culture is focused on everything but compassion, everything but grace.  I wonder what we would hear from our politicians if we sat them down and gave them this Gospel text and asked them to discuss it, as politicians, not as private citizens. What would their conversation say about our current social crisis?  What would Al Franken say?  What would Michelle Bachman say?  What would President Obama say?  Very little they do as politicians in this country remotely emulates this Gospel.  As politicians they are still waging war, , they are still supporting torture, they are still creating unjust laws that put an inordinate amount of people in prisons.  As politicians there is little room in their agendas for an understanding of forgiveness.

But we elected these people, we provided them with the authority to wage war, to torture, to create unjust laws, to perpetuate the cycle of violence that threatens our schools, our communities, our lives.  We elected these people.  So it makes me wonder, does forgiveness begin with those on top, with the leaders of the countries that wage war against one another or does forgiveness begin with us, the people, the masses, the communities gathered together.  What would it take for me to forgive Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and others for what I see as their egregious and unethical use of manipulation and hatred to sow division and violence in our country?  What would it take for me to consider forgiveness of people like Christopher Hitchens and his crusade against Christianity?  What would it take for me to forgive myself for my own role in the divorce I am undertaking now?  

I have to confess, right now is not a good time for me to think about forgiveness, I don't want to think about it, I don't want to talk about it.  I don't want to have anything to do with forgiveness.  The last thing I want to do right now is forgive.  I want to yell, scream and call people that disagree with my political views bad names.  I want to stand up against politicians I think are sowing divisiveness in our country and take back with emphasis the values I understand our country to be founded upon.  I want to blame everyone but myself for my own divorce.  I don't want to forgive.  But then this Gospel comes along, and I see I have no choice.  I see the hurt and the despair that could grow and live in my heart, the anger it could become and the horrible person that would form because I chose not to forgive.  So I will forgive, I will forgive slowly, even though, again, this is not what the Gospel is compelling me to do.  Forgiving someone a little bit, I think is like being a little bit pregnant, right.  You either are pregnant, or you are not.  You either forgive someone or you do not.  

The kind of forgiveness exhibited in the parable of today's Gospel is atrociously exorbitant.  It is interesting when you look at the numbers behind this parable.  It says, the servant of the king owed him 10,000 talents.  One talent was 20.4 kg of silver.  That equalled 6,000 drachmas.  6,000 drachmas was the equivalent of the wages of a manual laborer for fifteen years.  Ten thousand is the largest possible number that could be imagined.  We are talking about 60,000 drachmas, or 900,000 years.  The servant could not possibly pay back what was owed.  And it was all forgiven him.  On the other hand the amount that was owed the servant by one of his own fellows was not insignificant, it was a large amount, about 100 days worth of wages.  Of the two debts, the reasonable one was actually the one owed the servant, not the one owed the king.  The numbers show that this was not an actual story, but rather a parable to make a point about forgiveness.  Imagining the worst and most crazy possible things we can, we are still forgiven by God.  We are still forgiven, we are still forgiven by God even though we may be horrible and terrible people.  

I had a seminary professor who always challenged us on the idea of heaven and hell and forgiveness.  He was Dutch, and his family was devastated in World War Two by Hitler and the Nazis.  Many of his family members were killed in gas chambers, buried in mass graves, never to be found for memorializing or putting bodies to rest, little closure was granted them.  He would always listen as someone in our theology class would get up and say they didn't believe in hell and gave evidence and support as to why they didn't.  He would then stand up and slowly, always gently, dismantle their argument and say, as the final statement of his own argument, "If Hitler is in heaven, then I would rather be in hell."  

These are very important questions for us to consider to hold gently in our hearts to weigh and process so that we can have meaningful conversations about forgiveness in our lives and what it looks like.  I am coming to believe more and more that it is not so much our good deeds that get us into heaven, it is not so much our actions or our words, or even what we believe, rather it might be the quality of our forgiveness that grants us access to the holy, that opens the doors to heaven for our entry.  It is also the quantity of our forgiveness that gives us the grace to walk through our days with integrity and dignity.  It is the quantity of our forgiveness that transforms our brokenness into wholeness, our pain into health, our sadness into joy.  The quantity and quality of our forgiveness is what allows to experience the holy and be happy all the way to our core.

If you are happy and you know it, clap your hands.  It's grace, it's hope, it's faith.  All of it is summed up in our ability to forgive, which leads us into our ability to love and to be loved.