Forgive & Remember

 St. Luke's Episcopal Chapel, Grambling, La.

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend who was going through a hard time. She has an adult daughter who suffers from bipolar disorder.

 

I have experienced mental illness in the family and it is a tough road to walk—a very tough road. Every member of the family is affected by it. You might say, accurately, in my view, that when one member of the family suffers from mental illness the entire family suffers.

 

 

 

My friend described some of her conversations with her daughter and some of the terribly hurtful things her daughter has said to her. Apparently the daughter views her mother as the source of all her problems, and she berates her mother in ways that break her mother’s heart.

 

So I said two things to my friend. First, and I know this doesn’t help very much, but first remember that it is the mental illness speaking, not your daughter per se. Expecting a mentally ill person to interact normally is like expecting a person with a broken leg to run a marathon.

 

Second, I said to my friend, get some help from a professional yourself who will help you set some healthy boundaries with your daughter. I went on to explain that her daughter was saying abusive things to her and nothing in the concept of parental love and nothing in the concept of Christian love requires us to accept abuse at the hands of family, friends or anyone else.

 

I sometimes think we are a bit simplistic in our approach to Jesus’ mandate that we love even our enemies and people who seek to do us harm. That particular friend is not the first or only person to interpret today’s Gospel lesson in ultimately self-destructive ways. 

 

 

 Of course the call to not judge or condemn others and to love our enemies is real and serious; Jesus was not joking when he said this. So our challenge is to find ways to love, on both individual and societal levels, that do not involve acquiescing to evil or to oppressive social systems and cultural norms, or to being a doormat to every abusive person in our social circles.

 

One such way—the best way I know—to love those who do us wrong is by being quick to forgive, unconditionally, and even when the other has not asked forgiveness. This is God’s way, and besides being God’s way, it is also good for us. We forgive for our own sake as much as or more than we forgive for the other’s sake.

 

Being stuck in unforgiveness will eat a person alive. It takes mental and emotional energy to hold on to and nurse our wounds, mental and emotional energy that is therefore unavailable for joy and wonder and gratitude.

 

Forgiveness is not an emotion we feel so much as a choice we make—a choice that liberates us from a shrunken, dreary world of bitterness and anger and fear.

 

Forgiveness also is NOT saying that the evil or hurt or abuse that happened is now suddenly “okay.” We have all heard, and probably have been admonished by someone, to “forgive and forget.” To which I say, “Nonsense.”

 

Back when I was in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, one of our sociology professors wrote a book titled “Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure.” I never read the book because I always felt that the title said it all.

 

Forgive, and remember.., because only by remembering can we establish and maintain healthy boundaries in our interpersonal relationships.

 

Forgive and remember because only by remembering can we learn from and overcome the evils of the past. 

 

Post World War II Germany is the best example I know of a society seeking to do that. Nazi concentration camps and the site of Hitler’s rise to power in Nuremburg have been converted into teaching museums that confront the evil that was the Holocaust with gut-wrenching honesty and lay out details of how and why it happened—all to the cause of making sure it never happens again.

 

These not-so-United States of America need to do the same. We need to confront and own the evils of our own past—the genocide of Native American peoples and the building of our country and economy on the backs of enslaved Africans.

 

We as a society have not done that. Far too many are still engaged in denial and in rejecting responsibility because the actual perpetrators are long dead. But we as a society will never heal from the divisions rooted in those evils until we have named them and claimed them, fully and with brutal honesty.

 

 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his priest daughter Mpho turned their own experience of and struggle against the evil of apartheid into a book called “The Book of Forgiving.” In it they write:

 

Forgiving does not require that we carry our suffering in silence or be martyrs on a cross of lies. Forgiveness does not mean that we pretend things are anything other than they are. Forgiving requires giving voice to the violations and naming the pains we have suffered.

 

So we love our enemies and those who hurt us by forgiving them because it is good for us and frees us from tending our pile of hurts. We forgive and love for our own sake.

 

We also love and forgive because mercy and forgiveness are God’s way, which we are committed to following. We forgive for God’s sake.

 

But finally we also forgive for the sake of those very enemies, the sake of those who have hurt us, for it is through forgiveness that we acknowledge their humanity. By forgiving, we set free those we are forgiving to change, to grow, to become more fully human.

 

Only in the context of forgiveness can transformation happen. It might be a long time coming. We might never live to see the transformation our forgiveness makes possible. But only in the context of forgiveness can transformation happen.

 

I will give the last word today again to Desmond and Mpho Tutu, who wrote:

 

Just as we take a leap of faith when we make a commitment to love someone and get married, we also take a leap of faith when we commit ourselves to a practice of forgiveness.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.

Go Deep

 5 Epiphany, Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.

I must begin with a bit of a confession that I think you folks here in proximity to a lovely lake might appreciate. My confession is that I’m not wild about “fishing” as a metaphor for evangelism. 

 

Of course, the soon-to-be disciples of Jesus were fishing with nets in the story we just heard. Nevertheless, I have done plenty of fishing in my life, and I associate fishing with a giant hook in the jaw and being rudely reeled in against the hapless critter’s will! 

 

 

 

Somehow, that’s not an imagine of evangelism that works today.  Nevertheless, this story has a lot to offer.  

 

The first thing I take from it is, don’t be scared off by failure. Simon Peter and his crew and partners had been fishing all night and had not caught a thing. So when Jesus says to put down the net, they were understandably reluctant. What’s the point? they were very probably thinking. And I can hardly blame them.

 

I’m reminded of my dear, deceased father. When it came to fishing, he had more patience, more persistence, than I thought humanly possible. He always loved it when I agreed to go fishing with him. And—another confession—I didn’t do it very often! Why? Because I knew that I would be stuck in that boat the entire day, sun up to sun set, whether the fish were biting or not.

 

My dad was undeterred. Me? After a few hours of fishing without a hit, I was more than ready to go home. My dad? No way. He was absolutely convinced that in spite of 5 hours without a bight, the very next cast would produce the big one—the fish of a lifetime. Maybe, actually it is entirely possible, my father was influenced by this story!

 

In any case, Simon Peter is reluctant to expend more energy on fishing that morning. You can hear it in his voice: Well, Jesus, if you say so… And he lets down the net and, indeed, hauls in the catch of a lifetime. Don’t be scared off by failure. Success really could be just around the corner.

 

Of course, the corner you must turn might not be the one you expect. This is the second thing I take from this story: Dare to think outside the box. Jesus doesn’t just say, put down the net. He says, put down the net into the deep water.

 

Again, I know from experience that deep water is not where you usually find the fish. If you’re fishing for bass, you put your boat over the deep water and cast back toward the shore, into the shallower water. If you’re bream fishing, you’re typically putting your bait into relatively shallow water.

 

But Jesus instructs them to think outside of the box. Go deep, he says. Try something different. Put your net into the deep water. 

 

This is a harder lesson. We humans really don’t like change, by and large. We are devoted to the comfort zone of doing things the way we have always done them. Even after those ways no longer produce the results they once did because of changing circumstances, we tend to keep doing them. We might even double down and do them with even greater energy and commitment—hoping against hope that we will get a different result.

 

And here, brothers and sisters, is where we encounter probably the hardest part of all: Of all the institutions of our society that need to think outside the box, try something different, cast our net into deeper waters… the church might well need to do it the most. Yes, the church.                                         

 

Our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry has written several books. I think it is in Crazy Christians that he talks frankly about the church and how desperately the church needs to change. See, the pews in our churches are not thinly populated today because people no longer need or want the church. More importantly, they are not thinly populated today because people no longer want or need Jesus!

 

Michael Curry says, and I agree, our churches are thinly populated today because people are no longer sure they will find Jesus here! Or, maybe it’s that the “Jesus” they will find here has been turned into a stay-in-my-own-lane, middle class rule follower!

 

That’s just not the Jesus of Holy Scripture. The Jesus of Holy Scripture argued with the religious leaders of his day about their devotion to rules, especially rules for “doing church,” rules for being devout followers of God, and he argued with them more about that than about anything else.

 

You’ve got it all wrong, he said to them. You follow the rules and totally miss the point. Love God and your neighbor as yourself,  he said; that’s what matters. Love even your enemies, he said, do good to those who persecute you. How much more subversive can you get than that?

 

 

See, I will accept that the death of a church is inevitable when there are no people left within walking or driving distance of that church who need Jesus. Because if they need Jesus, they should be able to find Jesus—the true, think-outside-of-the-box, go deep, rule-breaker Jesus—who defined the Kingdom of God over and over as the absolute subversion of the norms of religion and society... they should be welcome and able to find that Jesus here.

 

Our Bishop has said, “People come to church looking for Jesus and all they find is us.” I have also heard him say many, many times: “Go ahead and try stuff. Risk failure. I’d rather you step out of your comfort zone, take a risk, try something… and fail, than do nothing and die comfortable.”

 

Sadly, too many of our churches will not risk thinking outside the box, will not risk casting their net into the deep water. They would rather die comfortable than change. And, BTW, a church does not have to literally vote to die. But they do vote to die figuratively by declining to think outside the box, refusing to take risks, rejecting change.

 

Of course, one of the risks of casting your net into the deep water is that you can’t necessarily predict what all kinds of fish you might bring up! Your catch might not be limited to the fish you are accustomed to seeing in church. Some might be rather exotic looking, some might look dangerous to our eyes that are so comfortable with seeing other people in church who mostly look just like us!

 

So be it. That’s the kind of company Jesus kept, so he will be right at home in the midst of the mess.

 

Indeed, there’s a bottom line to what I’m saying, and it’s this: Ultimately, we cannot tame Jesus, no matter how hard we try. We can die trying, but Jesus cannot be contained inside our comfort zone. He cannot be contained inside our churches. He is already out there, in the world. To follow him, we must go out there. To know him, we must learn to see him in the face of every other human we meet.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son & Holy Spirit, AMEN.