The Heart of the Matter: Forgiveness

Collect for the Friday in the Second Week of Lent

Grant, O Lord, that as your Son Jesus Christ prayed for his enemies on the cross, so we may have grace to forgive those who wrongfully or scornfully use us, that we ourselves may be able to receive your forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

I'm learning to live without you now
But I miss you sometimes

The more I know, the less I understand,

All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again

I've been tryin' to get down

To the heart of the matter

But my will gets weak

And my thoughts seem to scatter

But I think it's about forgiveness

Forgiveness. (Don Henley)

I've been a bit AWOL on blogging of late, even as the world keeps racing along. There has been much to ponder. Yet I've been silent. 

There are two main reasons for this. First is that I continue to work with the good people at All Saints Church in addition to my "day job" as Canon to the Ordinary in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts. So my days have been exceedingly long. They have been good, and rewarding but they have left too little time for writing, which is how I think and to some extent even how I pray.

But also it does feel like we are living through times that require more than memes and tweets. We need some depth of thinking, especially for those of us in the midst of Lent. We need repentance which is hard to come by in Facebook fights.

So it is not that I have not been ruminating. (A colleague made me laugh yesterday when he got my blog name wrong and commented on my "ramblings." Indeed...) In any case I've been doing my best ruminating on the Mass Pike, where I spend a fair amount of time, but it's hard to write a blog post from there.

I have also been a bit hesitant to speak into the midst of so much gun violence (and not just that, but a whacky religious sect blessing AR-15s in a church in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, not far from where I grew up) and of a White House in utter chaos (can we all agree with this statement regardless of our politics?) I feel that my ramblings or ruminations ought not to be knee-jerk or trite. When I write, I want at least some who disagree with my theology or politics to at least see something they can recognize as pointing to a way forward, and not just adding to further polarization. And yet we seem so polarized and preconditioned in our responses that I worry that this is almost folly.

So I've had a little writer's block, to be honest. But here goes...

The collect for today is short and sweet. It seeks to follow in the footsteps of Jesus: if he could forgive his enemies on the cross, perhaps we can in turn forgive those who wrongfully or scornfully use us. And then the circle is completed: we forgive others so that we might be able to receive God's forgiveness. This takes us right into the prayer that Jesus himself taught us, and therefore right to the heart of the Christian faith. (And while it's not the subject of this post, there is ample evidence that this prayer is really a very Jewish prayer rooted in first-century Judaism, and not unique to Jesus.)

We get stuck in cycles of violence. Gun violence leaves so many casualties, and not only those who lose their lives. There are also those countless friends and family members who love those who have lost their lives and who may never fully recover. I had a former parishioner who lost a son in Vietnam and every time I'd go to visit her this is what we talked about. She had another son, and grandchildren, and I'm sure she loved them all. But at least when I was in her presence, decades after her son's death, this was where she was stuck: in pain and grief and loss. It happens again and again: in divorce, in war, in politics. And the cycle of violence continues. The absent one looms large and I'm sure for a very long time, certainly after the reporters move on to the next thing, their absence will be felt - at school and at home.

A lot of us get stuck in much lesser experiences of grief and loss. And it's real. The way forward is through forgiveness, which opens up a doorway to the Divine. It takes us, always, to heart of the matter. It takes us to the heart of what Lent is all about because Jesus is always Giver and Forgiver. Again and again (even turning over the tables in the Temple) this is at the heart of the Incarnation: God so loved the world. God so loves the little children of the world. (And their parents and grandparents, too.)

God so loves that God forgives. In stretching out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross we are given an example. It is meant to inspire us to beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks and AR-15s into money for school supplies. Which is simply to say it is about way more than "thoughts and prayers." Thoughts and prayers lead to repentance and repentance leads to action and amendment of life.

We are meant, in much smaller but no less real ways, to take the hurt that others cause us when they use us wrongfully or even scornfully and to let it go. To release it. Not because they deserve it or even always because they are wise or compassionate enough to ask for it, but because holding it only begets more violence. And letting it go makes room for us to receive the love of God and know that we are forgiven.

I think this is empowering. I think those who are able to receive God's forgiveness are able to better see Jesus as Forgiver and then in some small ways to become forgivers in our daily lives. This is what  these forty days of Lent are for.

Alexander Schmemann reminds us that Sin is the experience of division, opposition, separation, and hatred. We all have some experience of Sin and it feels daunting. It feels like always winter, but never Christmas, as C.S. Lewis wrote.. But the first chink in the mighty fortress of Sin, Schmemman reminds us, is forgiveness, which opens a pathway to unity, solidarity, and love. It is a breakthrough to a new reality. It is a breakthrough to God's reality. "To forgive is to reject the hopeless dead-ends of human relations and refer them to Christ."

I have been privileged to lead a three-week study on some of the texts from the wilderness of the Old and New Testaments this Lent at All Saints Church in Worcester. It was a lively and faithful group. It was only three weeks because my "day job" responsibilities will take me this week to the Transition Ministry Conference and the following week to other responsibilities. But in three weeks we covered some ground as we reflected on what is learned in the wilderness. It was a faithful and eager group of a couple of dozen people who are themselves experiencing a wilderness time in their congregation - and so our texts felt less like "history" about some other people and more like a mirror that invites theological reflection. I had fun with them, and I think they had fun too. But we also put some things on the table and over homemade soups and bread we got a glimpse of authentic community. I pray those glimpses are enough to go on.