Let us join together in the spirit of meditation or prayer

Let us turn our hearts and minds to those in need of healing, those in need of justice, those in need of forgiveness.

As Christians the world over head into Holy Week, we pray for a world that contains as many Good Fridays as it does Easter Sundays. Our thoughts are with all those who suffer the violence of war and oppression – in the Sudan, in the Middle East, everywhere where people strive one against the other. Our thoughts are with the people of southeast Asia as they continue to try and rebuild their lives after nature’s unintentional violence. Our thoughts are with all the families affected by the decision handed down this week in the Air India tragedy - all the questions that remain, the search for truth and justice that is so elusive, the healing that becomes all but impossible in the face of unanswered questions.

In our own lives, bring comfort to those among us who suffer from illness, hardship or grief and mourning. Come to us in the warmth of community, the companionship of friends, the support of family, the blessing of a freely gathered religious community, the moments of peace and solace found in solitude.

Help us in our own lives to release that which does not give life, and turn toward the sunrise – whether it be a resurrection of spirit or simply the promise of spring hidden under the snow.

Make space for our own struggle if forgiveness comes hard, or not yet, or not at all – and give us the courage to live the life to which we are called. Amen. Now may be bring our own thoughts and prayers to rest in the welcoming silence… Amen.

Sermon

Forgiveness was already on my mind, when John Lewis phoned me about three months ago to tell me that he was doing the music for today’s service, and what subject did I have in mind. He likes to plan in advance, that John! I think he phoned me on a Thursday, and I remember saying to him "I don’t know what I’m talking about this Sunday, let alone in three months!" I asked him what w he was reading and thinking about and he said "forgiveness" and "Jesus" and I said "I can do that. It will be Palm Sunday, the week before Easter, and that’s when we usually talk about Jesus in this church. But I was already thinking about forgiveness.

In the fall I preached a sermon on the remarkable stories behind the Restorative Justice Movement – a movement that tries to bring families joined by violence - perpetrators and victims together – only by their own choice and after a very long process of preparation and counseling.

I have begun to see the remarkable capacity for healing and restoration that is contained within the human heart – and how rarely in human history (as individuals and as peoples) we have chosen to use it.

I have read and preached on the process of healing undertaken by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, absorbing pages and pages of the Commission’s Transcripts, looking and listening for acknowledgement, remorse, contrition, forgiveness, and healing.

Over Christmas, for some light holiday reading, I read Romeo Dallaire’s Shake Hands With The Devil about the genocide in Rwanda that he tried to prevent. I have along with all of you, for 3 ½ years now, been watching the world fallout from the vengeance sought after the attacks of September 11^th, and reflecting on where we are now in the struggle for world soul. So I was already thinking about forgiveness.

I have had a need for forgiveness in my own life – a need to offer it, and to ask for it, and I have not always been successful on either count. Some tasks still lie ahead of me. And so I was already thinking about forgiveness.

Then this week, the Air India decision came down, and thoughts were thrown into sharp relief again. What is the relationship of justice and forgiveness – of remembering and letting go?

Where does truth fall in painful continuum of compassion and retribution? How does one go on with one’s life, when no healing can be found, no questions answered, and there is no-one either to forgive or to blame in certainty? I turned to a resource I have used often.

Possibly one of the most well-known and complex books on forgiveness in our modern era is Simon Wiesenthal’s "The Sunflower" which I have shared with you before. In it, Wiesenthal tells the true life story of his encounter with a dying SS man when he was imprisoned in a concentration camp. He was summoned to the bedside of the SS man because the dying soldier wanted to confess his crimes and be forgiven by a Jew.

Wiesenthal listened to him, even showing him some compassion, although his heart was filled with emotions we can only imagine were present; bitterness, irony, anger, pity, hatred, fear, resentment and a thousand other feelings. In the end, he said nothing as the man poured out his litany of sins and what Wiesenthal said later was "genuine remorse." As it says in the introduction "Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal said nothing." He neither forgave nor condemned him.

Back in his bunk with his friends Arthur, Adam and Josek (none of whom survived the war) Wiesenthal struggled with the idea – can a person forgive on behalf of others? Jewish theology and teaching is similar to Unitarian in many ways – there are always at least 2 answers to every question! But it generally holds a fairly personal view of forgiveness – that it is only the wronged party who can offer forgiveness. The SS man had harmed others – surely it was not possible for him to forgive on their behalf?

But afterwards, even long after the war, he wondered if he had done the right thing. Perhaps as part of his answer, Wiesenthal went and visited the mother of the SS man. She was a widow and the SS man was her only son Karl. She told Wiesenthal that her son had been a "good boy" and in his compassion, Simon did not disavow her of this belief, but again left without saying anything.

The last part of the book, after he describes what happened to him and how he felt about it, are the answers that 53 other people of many different faiths give to his question, (from Desmond Tutu to the Dalai Lama) and they range from absolute refusal to absolute forgiveness, and everything in between. It remains, in my opinion, one of the deepest, most heartfelt and sophisticated collective reflections on the human problem of forgiveness I have ever encountered.

It raises questions of the deepest moral consideration – such as are there acts that are beyond forgiveness? What is the relationship of forgiveness and forgetting? Who is forgiveness for? How does it work? Who can accept or offer it? What does it do to forgiver and forgiven?

Here are just a few of their answers. Robert McAfee Brown, who taught theology at the Pacific School of Religion, where one of our theological schools is located…

"Perhaps there are situations where forgiveness can make a difference. And can even empower. One thinks of Nelson Mandela, released after 27 years in jail, patently entitled to wreak vengeance on his tormentors, and who responds by forgiving his jailers. Or one thinks of Tomas Borge, a Nicaraguan Sandinista fighter, captures by the contras and brutally tortured, confronting hi torturer after the war had ended. The court entitled him to name the punishment appropriate for hi torturer. Borge responded "My punishment is to forgive you." Thereby putting the moral weight of forgiveness back to the most unforgiving soul of all – the self.

Edward Flannery, Catholic Priest, reminds the reader that Jesus, "speaking out of his Jewish tradition" says, when asked how many times one must forgive… Seventy times seven" meaning always – not 490 times for those of you who are counting!

Elsewhere in Jesus’ teachings, he counsels us to "turn the other cheek, to love our neighbours and our enemies and to forgive others as we forgive ourselves. Sadly, we often do this. We forgive others as poorly and as rarely as we forgive ourselves.

Can we turn the other cheek, forgive the unforgivable, love our enemies although they conspire to hurt us? What do we do when forgiveness is so difficult, as to be almost impossible, or the person we would forgive is long gone from our lives, or has never acknowledged the pain they have caused? How then, can we forgive, or should we forgive?

Sister Jose Hobday, a Franciscan nun of Native ancestry speaks of the genocide inflicted on First Nations Peoples and she writes: "The words of my Seneca mother came to me when I was badly wronged and wanted revenge and retaliation… "Do not be so ignorant and stupid and inhuman as they are. Go to an elder and ask for the medicine that will turn your heart from bitterness to sweetness. You must learn the wisdom of how to let go of poison."

Another writer in the Sunflower says that the universal law of "do unto others" applies. "I am afraid not to forgive, because I fear not to be forgiven." And it’s true that we all stand in need of forgiveness at one time or another, for smaller or larger deeds.

When we come to Good Friday, things get even more complicated. The words attributed to Jesus on the cross "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do" are often held up as a supreme example of forgiveness, certainly in the Christian faith. That at the moment of death, he could forgive his executioners and ask God to do the same is seen as evidence of his moral perfection and compassion, and perhaps it is. How any of us would fare at such a time is something I pray we never have to consider.

But even on Palm Sunday, I am wary of the retelling of this tale as the archetypal model of forgiveness, because it’s also true that this story has been twisted into all sorts of shapes that have brought about anything other than healing and forgiveness. Anti-semitism, for one - woven into the story through the centuries in ways that have proved disastrous for the Jewish people; the deification of suffering, for another – in ways that have been used to justify violence – against women, slaves or whoever was at hand.

Dual Fellowshipped Methodist and Unitarian Universalist Minister Rebecca Parker, President of Starr King, our Unitarian Seminary in Berkeley, California, names this problem in her book "Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering and the Search for What Saves Us" Listen to this passage from 1^st Peter "If when you do right and suffer for it you take it patiently, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps… Rejoice in so far as you share in Christ’s sufferings."

She also shares the story of a woman named Lucia who says "Mostly my husband is a good man. But sometimes he becomes very angry and he hits me. He knocks me down. One time he broke my arm and I had to go to the hospital… I went to my priest twenty years ago. I’ve been trying to follow his advice. The priest said I should rejoice in my sufferings because they bring me closer to Jesus… He said, "If you love Jesus, accept the beatings and bear them gladly, as Jesus bore the cross."

These are only a few examples of the myriad ways that the story of Jesus’ suffering, forgiveness and death has been used in a negative way. Which is perhaps why Unitarians early on departed from Orthodox Christianity in focusing on the life and teachings of Jesus, rather than his death and resurrection. We see his offer of forgiveness on the cross as an amazing testimony to the human spirit, not (in Parker’s words) as "a story of Christian complicity with violence," "a story at the Center of Western Christianity which claims God the Father required the death of his son to save the world." This we soundly rejected as a faith.

For whatever else may turn out to be true, we understand forgiveness as a human problem. The story of Jesus’s last moments resonates so strongly because we know the need for forgiveness. Paradoxically, if we believe the story for a minute, he must have too. How is that possible?

Our Unitarian Christian spiritual ancestors – from the earliest Christians, to the Council of Nicea, Reformation Protestants to British Biblical Scholars to New England Transcendentalists differed in their understandings of some of the basic tenets of what became (and has remained) Orthodox Christianity. In rough order, they focused on the teachings rather than the identity of Jesus, believed that everyone would go to heaven, affirmed the unity of God and the humanity of Jesus, and questioned the supernatural basis of his miracles, virgin birth and bodily resurrection.

But of all these and other affirmations and doubts - which I share in trying to understand the mystery of the man Jesus of Nazareth - the one I find hardest to believe is that he was fully human and yet was without sin. How could he know about forgiveness, without ever needing it?

I find it difficult to imagine that a human being, no matter how imbued with God’s spirit he or she might be, could make it from birth to over 30 without ever doing something, committing some deed or act, that made them stand in need of forgiveness; the childhood lie, the teenage rebellion, the grown-up regrets or failings.

Indeed, there are apocryphal tales (so called because they come from the Apocrypha – which are like Biblical out-takes – writings from the same era and sources as the Gospels that for one reason or another, didn’t make it into the Bible) for example, tales of a teenage Jesus withering a teacher’s hand for punishing him and other deeds deemed not suitable for inclusion in the final version of the Gospels. If he was fully human, as all versions of Christianity claim, it stands to reason that he must have stood in need of forgiveness at some time or another.

It is part of our nature to fail, and to fail spectacularly at times. It is part of our nature to do what we want instead of what we know we should. It is part of our nature to make mistakes, as well as to intentionally choose wrong from time to time.

At one and the same time, almost all of us have a deeply moral centre that wants to do right and goes off like a sensor when we do wrong. It’s like an out of control car alarm, it gets louder the more we try to silence it. You who are parents know this; take just one look at the face of your child as she tries to tell a lie or he is caught doing something he knows is wrong. It’s all there, even from a fairly young age. We do wrong, we know it, we feel badly, and we stand in need of forgiveness.

And it gets only worse as time goes by and we have more opportunity to do even larger wrong, to really mess up big time. We have more complex lives, many relationships, myriad choices, high stakes and so we make colossal blunders. Sometimes life and love-altering errors, choices we would change in a heartbeat if we could only turn back the hands of time. But we can’t and so we stand in need of forgiveness. All our lives, some might say cumulatively so. So we need to learn how to do it, how to offer it to our fellow human beings, how to ask it of others, and how to find it in ourselves when the other can no longer offer or receive it.

We Unitarians do not hold one set of beliefs about what happens when you die. Maybe there’s a heaven; maybe there’s a hell – we don’t know – we’re still alive, so we think it’s kind of hard to tell! But if, like the old song says "That’s All there Is" then we need to learn how to live with our brokenness, and there’s no time like the present. We need to teach our children the spiritual value of forgiveness – and repentance and contrition while we’re at it. (otherwise known as feeling bad and being sorry!) Help them understand that they’re meant to grow a conscience as well as a healthy body and keen mind as they grow up. Teach them that feeling bad isn’t always a bad thing – sometimes it’s just the thing you need to point you back to where you need to go.

And finally, if the "heaven and hellers" have it right, then soul work is the only work that matters, and getting right with God, your fellow man and yourself is about the most important thing you can do. Either way – you know, and I know, and they know - that we all stand in need of forgiveness. So what are we waiting for?

For in the final reckoning, forgiveness is something that we do for ourselves. And we do it for many, many reasons. We do it because we no longer want to be bound by an inversion to someone who has hurt us. We do it because we want to let go of a past that affects the present - so we may have a future more abundant. We do it because we gain the strength and perspective to claim our own power and release the hold that hurt has on us - to say "I am writing my own story." We do it because we are tired of feeling badly and want to feel better. We do it because we realize that life is short, time is precious, and there will never be enough hours in the day to right all the wrongs or heal all the hurts, and yet we want to live. We want to feel joy, not bitterness. We want to face any man or woman living or dead, in our heart, our home or on the street and hold our head high and know that they do not hold power over who we are, how we feel, what we do.

We do it because we grow up, and realize that they did the best they could, even if it wasn’t very good at all; or because they grow up, and realize what they have done, and regret it. And sometimes, although there has been no change, no growth, no remorse and no regret, we do it just to be done with it all and put our energies to the life-giving purpose to which we are all called.

It’s not really about justice – some things will never be fair or just. Could one imprisoned Jewish man forgive the crimes of the Nazis? Could Jesus’s forgiveness ever make his execution all right? No and No. But in the world of heart and spirit, the world of meaning and soul and greater life than this old world has ever known – maybe, just maybe – we can free ourselves and others by the simple and complicated act of forgiveness. It’s worth all we are, and all we might become – to try. So may it be and Amen.