October 10, 2004
Rev. Dr. Frank Carpenter,
D.Min.
St. John's Unitarian Universalist Church, Cincinnati, OH
637
Last Sunday I shared a bit of my biography with you. I told about the time when my mother asked me if I wanted to go home to live with her after spending my 3rd through 10th years at a boys home.
After the service, several people came up and asked me what happened next. It seems that I took for granted that my mother was asking a meaningful question and that I never doubted for a moment she was offering me a real choice. I guess not all mothers are like that. Also, it seemed clear to me that with my description of the choice as one between love versus fear, my mother’s love for me versus the fear used at the school, I would choose to go home with my mother.
Lest there be any confusion, my mother offered me a real choice and I went home to be with her until she died when I was fifteen.
Talking about parents is a good place to start talking about forgiveness, our theme for the morning. Parents are on most people’s forgiveness list. It may be that we have abusive parents. Or it may be that as children we do not understand the reasons for our parents choices.
One of the long standing issues I had about my mother was why she put me in a boy’s home to begin with. I have many painful memories of being left behind as she dropped me off, abandoned me. It has taken reflection and years of understanding our American scene to grasp she did what she did even though she loved me. Part of it was her own personality. She was an educated, professional woman. Sometimes my resentments come back to bite me, and I describe her as having put me in a boy’s home so she could go back to get her Masters degree in Public Health from MIT. She did that to improve her standing in the job market.
I take some pride in her. I grew up with a reasonably liberated women and have taken some of the discussion over the years about that issue for granted. Finally, what I understand is that for her to work at the level she could take pride in, she could not also take care of me. There have been a number of books and discussions that have helped me see this, and I am grateful that my education continues. Next Sunday, Molly Tami will be leading a discussion on this issue at our First Family Forum at 9:30 AM. The topic is how work and family conflict with one another. Child care will be provided. I know work and care taking conflict from my own up bringing.
While I wish at times those years could have been different, I no longer have anger at my mother. I believe she did the best she could to be true to herself and love me. I have forgiven her, though perhaps it is enough to say I feel I have come to understand her.
If you are still able to have meaningful conversations with your parents, I urge you to talk with them about any resentments you still have against them. Of course, they may have a few resentments, too. Death is a final rupture and it is healing if we approach such times with a sense of completion, fulfillment. I have counseled people whose parents have already died, I have suggested that they might write a letter to their parent if there is still an outstanding painful issue. And it can be healing to go to their grave and read that letter. We cannot be whole if we cultivate resentments, if we have not forgiven others.
Forgiveness is a great spiritual, religious theme. We need to understand forgiveness. Forgiveness is essential for being human. As human beings we are imperfect. We make mistakes, we make a mess of things at times. Robert Fulghum tells the story of a troubled man who visited his Rabbi. He was a wise and good rabbi. “Rabbi,“ said the man wringing his hands, “I am a failure. More than half the time I do no succeed in doing what I must do.”
“Oh?” said the rabbi.
“Please say something wise, rabbi.” said the man.
After much pondering, the rabbi spoke as follows: “Ah, my son, I give you this wisdom: Go and look on page 930 of The New York Times Almanac for the year 1970. And you will find peace of mind maybe.”
“Ah,” said the man, and he went away and did that thing.
Now this is what he found: the listing of the life-time batting averages of all the greatest baseball players. Ty Cobb, the greatest slugger of them all, had a lifetime average of only .367. Even Babe Ruth didn’t do so good.
So the man went back to the rabbi and said in a questioning tone: “Ty Cobb – .367 – that’s it?”
“Right,” said the rabbi. “Ty Cobb – .367. He got a hit once out of every three times at bat. He didn’t ever bat .500 – so what can YOU expect already?”
“Ah,”said the man, who thought he was a wretched failure because only half the time he did not succeed at what he was doing.
Perhaps no people have explored and understood the fullness of forgiveness more than the Jews. Jews have known failure after failure. In synagogue they ask, the Egyptians defeated us, but where are the Egyptians? The Babylonians defeated us, but where are the Babylonians? The Assyrians defeated us, and where are the Assyrians. Each failure, each defeat the Jewish people sought to understand as God’s way of righting their relationship with him. It was a sign they needed to turn once again to the holy of holy and ask for forgiveness. Thus they have survived
The High Holy Days which Jews completed this past week are what they have learned. Forgiveness is the theme of the High Holy Days. And forgiveness is not easy. It requires a serious review of our lives. After reviewing our lives, we must go to those we have wronged and set those relationship back in order. Before asking forgiveness of God, Jews most approach those who they have wronged and ask their forgiveness.
According to the Jewish calender, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are now fulfilled and a New Year begun. According to Jewish tradition for the start of the New Year, there is in heaven a symbolic book in which all of a persons' deeds are written. One side are his good deeds and on the other, the bad. On Rosh Hashana, Jews believe, God begins to study each and every person's behavior for the past year. has he been a good person? Has he tried to be helpful? has he hurt someone without knowing it? God studies all of our actions. For the entire ten of the High Holy Days, the heavenly book is kept open. As the sun goes down on Yom Kippur, God writes down, or inscribes what the person's life will be like for the year to come.
Forgiveness is an abiding spiritual question. Upon it depends our deepest connections to others and the cosmos. This morning I want to consider that often forgiveness and love are not taken seriously in human relationships. This is the point of our reading from Jonathan Schell. As we consider so many social questions, all too often we think of power, strength, force, not forgiveness, not connecting. We think of violence, not hope. Hope is in the details. Our hope lies in our readiness to get over our resentments and be transformed through forgiveness.
This is as true in the larger relationships of society as well as in our personal stories of family and work. Schell’s book reminds us that coercion is not the only active ingredient in human affairs. How many nuclear bombs did it take to end the Soviet Union, or take down the Berlin Wall? It was not violence which brought down these oppressive institutions, but human beings building community with one another, one on one. In Eastern Europe, it was Solidarity which ended Soviet rule, not a guerilla army. You will remember the downfall of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. It was then that I first heard the expression, “people power.”
It seems to me there is a great lie that is perpetuated in human affairs. That lie may take the form of saying that forgiveness is not meaningful
That lie may take the form of saying that fear is greater than love.
That lie may take the form of saying “power comes out of the barrel of a gun.”
That lie may take the form of saying that boys with the most toys win.
That lie may take the form of saying that might makes right.
Fear, guns are great realities. But for me, people power trumps fire power. In the words of Jonathan Schell from our reading, “The conviction that force was always the final arbiter [in human affairs] was not in truth so much an intellectual conclusion as a tacit assumption on all sides – not the product of a question asked and answered but of one unasked.” ( 105)
There are two major strategies for building a common identify among people. We could call one the fear strategy, the other the love strategy. The fear strategy seeks to draw the line between friend and foe. It builds common identity by constructing a common enemy. The love strategy accepts the natural level of difference and tension in human affairs and turns to forgiveness to resolve them and create a commonality.
One of the great illustrations of the excellence of the power of forgiveness versus the power of violence is the transition in South African from a racist regime to the present regime. It was Nelson Mandela’s lack of bitterness and his capacity for forgiving those who had injured him that showed the way. Jonathan Schell comments on Mandela that “the ability to forgive is a spiritual quality.” (253)
As forgiveness is not a luxury for family living, nor for our larger social arrangements, so it is needed for us to be in community here in a church. In part, it is the movement needed in the midst of diversity to forge a beloved community out of the individualisms of each of us. We are ourselves and part of something larger. And it is never for sure which is the case at any time. Thus do we need our faith and hope. Here our Chalice Groups play a large role in the strategy of forgiveness here at St. John’s, a path of listening and respect.
In order to make the one community out of your many gifts, you need to participate in two actions. You ever need to be ready to forgive one another, and ever ready to take that opportunity to begin again by making promises.
In his book on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, Desmond Tutu tells us:
Harmony, friendliness, community are great goods. Social harmony is for us the summum bonum – the greatest good. Anything that subverts, that undermines this sought-after good, is to be avoided like the plague. Anger, resentment, lust for revenge, even success through aggressive competitiveness, are corrosive of this good. To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest. What dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me. It gives people resilience, enables them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them. (31)
The church was always meant to be the agent of reconciliation in society. Thus did Jesus, Paul and the early disciples labor. The church as the beloved community was something radically new. That it losses its way only makes manifest its humanity. Yet the reconciliation which the can church bring into the lives of individuals and society lays the foundation for both personal and social transformation.
I am here reminded of one church I served. I was called there to help deal with the divisions arising form the sexual mis-conduct of their previous minister. The animosities had been so pronounced that as they had struggled for a course of action, different sides wore different colored arm bands at coffee hour.
My first step was to identify someone trusted and beloved by most in the congregation. I spoke to many, and one person was clearly identified. I met with her, and we invited an other person into our deliberations. He also was compassionate and highly regarded. Both had some preference regarding the previous minister, yet both were seen as caring about the whole congregation, not just one side or the other. They identified with the interests of the entire congregation, not just one faction.
We talked about what needed to be done, and found that just honest sharing was initiating healing transformation. We then invited the Board President to our discussion, with the idea that we might ask him about meeting with the Executive committee of the Board. Our listening to one another had the same transforming experience and we met with the Executive Committee.
We decided that the next board retreat would be on building trust amongst the board members. At that Board retreat, what did we do? I light the chalice, and said why we where there, to renew our trust in ourselves and one another after a painful time. We then sat in silence for a while. I then talked briefly about the importance of building trust, and listening to one another. Each person would speak, but none one would respond
We went around the room, each describing how it felt to be together with each other, some of whom had had bitter confrontations. All were church leaders and had bitter memories and resentments towards others in the room The discussion was direct and honest, the tone was trusting and caring. Listening, readiness to hear the experience of one another was the act of forgiveness.
It is hard to say what was the outcome of such a moment. After deep sharing a silence can descend, a space opens up that is big enough for all. We make that space through listening, through being hospitable, through forgiving both others and ourselves.
Forgiveness is a great spiritual quality. It is greater than fear and hatred. But we have to welcome it in. It will not break down doors to help us. But it will lead us if we open our hearts.