Shall we gather at the river of forgiveness?
Where the healing waters flow
Come together at the waters of love…
The river of forgiveness.
With the world, literally, on fire around us, and the virus still uncontained…with the fires of racism still burning…with democracy in our nation in danger of slipping away…
Is it really the river of forgiveness we need to visit? So much harm is being done. Won’t encouragement to simply forgive allow the injustice to continue …all the greed…all the lies…
Do we need to begin this church year with forgiveness…or do we need a prophetic call to justice…a demand that we put some stakes in the ground and finally get serious about the Beloved Community…or stop pretending that justice, equity and compassion are truly our dream?
I do believe it is a time for putting stakes in the ground. It is time for people of good faith to be clear about what we stand for and what we are not willing to accept.
These are rubber meets the road times…I do believe that.
But we are liberal religious people. We are people of faith. And so we cannot put aside our faith in love or our practice of compassion…promising that we will return to them just as soon as our point of view seems in the ascendance once more…
Somehow, we need to navigate these troubled and troubling times…without sacrificing all that we hope to be.
What we bring to these times, we will carryforward with us.
And because the harms that have been done are so flagrant and confidently justified… self-righteousness ever present….
There seems more need to visit the banks of that river of forgiveness than ever.
I think we all need to wade in that water. We have all harmed others and we know it. Not intentionally…most of us. There are no innocents among us. We are all in need of forgiveness.
And we have all been harmed…bruised or worse…been passed over, slighted, unfairly judged, excluded. We all have the choice and the chance to grant forgiveness as well…
To grant forgiveness or at least, somehow, prevent our lives from being
dominated by the harm done to us.
The banks of the river of forgiveness are not new spiritual territory for any of us.
I think most of us know something about how forgiveness works in our personal relationships. How the granting of forgiveness can liberate us, can free us.
In the words of our reading this morning: “Forgiveness is connected to memory and time. It asks us to engage our feelings about something in the past in order to change our experience in the present, and move into the future.”
To be able to move into a future not determined by harm done to us in the past. We let go of the power that harm could have, and perhaps has had, in our lives. We refuse to grant control of our future to that past harm.
Forgiving can be empowering.
When the mourners at Mother Bethel AME in Charleston forgave the shooter who killed their pastor and 8 others in that circle of prayer…
Or when the survivors of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh forgave the young man who open fire among them…
They were refusing to allow that harm to define their future…refusing to be imprisoned by the tragedy in their past.
As one survivor in Pittsburgh described it:
“if you don’t [express forgiveness], it [he harm] lives inside you, it eats you up… being able to forgive is [what] gives you the ability to move forward.”
They were choosing a future in which they could still believe in love.
(“Forgiveness is not so much a duty as a love we give ourselves.”)
You know, I could almost leave this sermon right here. Forgiveness of harm done as a pathway to liberation. It is a good sermon.
There is certainly wisdom to be found in how the victims of violence are somehow liberated by their forgiving…how their forgiving strips the power from that violence, denies power to the person who harmed them.
There is wisdom there.
But forgiveness is a complicated process. That is why we return to it again and again. So let me try to push a bit further. There is more here to acknowledge and more here, in fact, to work with.
Howard Thurman writes about “disciplines of the spirit.” Thurman was known as a mystic…his meditations can be a comfort…but he also calls for a challenging level of truth telling…of self-knowledge…
For Thurman, forgiveness, at the personal level, is a discipline of knowing the truth:
“If I have slandered, I must call it slander; if I have accused falsely, I must call it false accusation. … I must strip myself of all alibis and excuses. [My intentions do not matter. Only the outcome of harm I have done] …
Therefore, [true] forgiveness is possible … only when the offender is able to stand inside of the harm he has done and look out at himself as if he were the other person.”
To stand inside the harm done. This is a call for empathy. A call to walk in the other’s shoes, or roll in the other’s wheelchair…first.
And the same applies when we have been harmed. We need to stand inside the harm. Be present to it.
There is no call to forget the injury, to pretend that the wounds are not real, that there has been no loss…nothing to be angry about.
Thurman’s language…to stand inside the harm…requires the capacity to know ourselves…to know as much truth about ourselves as we can bear…to accept the responsibility that is ours directly and even the complicity that we may not have wished for…
To stand inside the harm is to engage in love’s toughest work…the work of self-knowledge and self-forgiveness.
Rev. Donna Schaper compares self-forgiveness to the process of stripping an old chair…right down to the bare wood. “[You] strip away all the years of grime, the garish coats of paint piled one on top of the other. [You] …try to find the solid, simple thing that’s underneath.
“I have to discover the original under all these coats I’ve added, strip away all the cynicism and anger I’ve build up,…defy my disappointments, [acknowledge the harm I’ve done], and find what is real again.”
The task of forgiveness is to stand inside the harm. And from that place of knowing…from that place of truth…with all of its pain…choose the path that can lead to love.
Forgiveness is possible ONLY , Thurman says, when the offender is able to stand inside the harm [they] have done…and know the truth of that harm.
What does this say to our deeply divided world?
How do we deal with harm, and violence, that is done when the offender believes their actions were…justified…
When the offender is not sorry…
When the offender believes their actions were even holy?
This is engaging forgiveness at the 201 level and it is neither simple nor straightforward.
How do we respond when the offender believes they have no need to be forgiven?
This was true of the shooters at Mother Bethel and at Tree of Life. It is true of many who are being violent on our own streets. It is true for politicians who make excuses for stripping support from the most marginalized among us. It is true for those who claim that climate change has nothing to do with a world on fire. It was true for the police officer who knelt on George Floyd’s neck, listening to him call for his Mama…waiting for him to die.
How do we respond when the offender has no intention of ending the violence.
How are we supposed to bring forgiveness to bear when our struggle is to find hope and sustain our faith in the power of love?
Author Toni Morrison, who deals with forgiveness for the unforgiveable in her novels, writes:
“There is a very big danger in being clutched by the past, and there is [also] a big danger in escaping it. The job is to look at the past and take from it what is useful to go forward. Not to ignore it, not to be entrapped by it, but to use [the past to create] progress.. And try not to repeat [the past] – you already know what [that result will be]…
Morrison points to the danger that forgiveness…at least the simple version of forgiveness…can function to restore the past…and therefore to maintain the harm.
“Forgive and remember is more my slogan,” she writes. She cites the South African Truth and Reconciliation Process….the whole notion of speaking directly to your torturer, of hearing them confess and then not requiring punishment…she sees as a brand new template for dealing with institutional violence and harm.
Like many of you I can critique the South African model. It certainly did not deliver the Promised Land. But it did prevent
that society from descending into violent chaos and retribution. And I wonder if we ourselves are not descending into chaos…at this very time.
To forgive and remember…perhaps that is the right mix for these days.
To forgive allows us not to center the harm. To remember allows us to learn from it.
This is a time for clarity…for some stakes in the ground…and any demand for simple forgiveness for all the harm that has been done…is a guarantee that that harm will continue.
Simple forgiveness is not enough. We’ve tried that, many of us. Rev. Kimberly Hampton argues that “Black people need to stop forgiving a system that is not repentant.” And she is right. There needs to be some acknowledgment…some confession before even forgiveness can be real.
Everyone who has any experience of abuse knows that the first priority…the outcome without which no hopeful progress is possible…
The first priority is to stop the harm.
Letetra Widman, Jacob Blake’s sister, said it so well:
“So many people have reached out to me saying they’re sorry that this has [has happened] to my family, … I’m not sad. I’m not sorry. I’m angry and I’m tired. I have been watching police murder people who look like me for years,” she said. “I don’t want your pity, I want change.”
First, and foremost, lets end the harm. Let’s plant our stake there.
Let’s end all of the harms.
But stay with me, because this is the 201 level.
Our Universalist roots tell us that we are all already lovable and already loved. That there are no surplus people and that none of us should or can be left behind.
As we navigate these days ahead, that is Good News we can hold onto. But it means that those folks who we disagree with so completely…they are already held in love too…and they can no more be left behind than can we…
I’ve said it before…Unitarian Universalism is not for the faint of heart.
Let me be clear, we cannot allow them to be in charge. But over time, we have to allow them..or their children…to change.
Prayer
I can argue that a big part of this dilemma is that the US has never given justice a chance. Didn’t fulfill the promise of Reconstruction. Allowed flight to the suburbs to defeat Brown v Board. Gutted the Voting Rights Act. Not protected Roe v Wade. Not passed an employment Nondiscrimination Act. I could go on.
Let’s finally make some real changes. And then, let’s give justice a decent chance before we give up on too many people.
And we can draw on our Unitarian roots…with their affirmation of human agency…our ability to shape our world. That truth grew out of privilege of the early Unitarians, it is true. But as the people we are today…not without our own privileges…we can certainly use the confidence we inherit from them.
Somewhere, here, holding Howard Thurman’s truth that empathy is central in the spiritual discipline of forgiveness…
And Toni Morrison’s truth that simple forgiveness runs the danger of restoring the past and maintain the harm…
Her truth that “forgive and remember” may come closer to a sustainable path forward…
Holding fast to our certainty that the harm must be stopped…first.
Held by our faith that refuses to cast any of us out…
And by trust that we have the power to make change…
Holding all of these truths and the truths of our individual lives…
Our task is simple…or at least it can be simply said:
We are called, as we move into and through the coming days, to help love live in our imperfect world…Because this is the only world we have been given.
And forgiveness can help us live in this world as we want to live.
Amen
Will you pray with me now?
Spirit of Life and of Love
Great mystery at the heart of things
Dear God of many names and beyond our naming
We gather for this homecoming
To reclaim our faith
To sustain our hope
And to renew our belief in the power of love.
This homecoming must be at a distance
But we can still hold one another in care.
Help us all be clear that the ways we have been living
are not the ways we have to live.
The need for change cannot be denied.
Help us hold fast to our vision of Beloved Community.
It is not an idle dream. It can be real.
But, Great Spirit, while we remain clear and even insistent
On change,
Help us also to be gentle with ourselves
And with one another…forgiving where we can,
Liberating ourselves from the mistakes of our past
Into a future which is only now beginning to be revealed.
Discovering what it feels like to move
Unfettered by old compromise and inherited fear.
Liberated. Bound by ties of our choosing,
Bound by ties of love.
Today in this virtual sanctuary
May we remember how we hope to live.
And discover a path forward, together.
May that be so.
And Amen.
Topics: Forgiveness