The First Word: Luke 23:34

Ecumenical Good Friday Service

March 25, 2005

The Word of Forgiveness

“Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’”

What did Jesus mean? And what did Jesus not mean?

Jesus did not mean, “Father, the vicious, cruel things these people are doing are O.K.,” because they weren’t.

Jesus did not mean, “Father, may you erase these deeds from your omnipotent memory,” because God the Father won’t.

Jesus did not mean, “There are no consequences from these vicious deeds,” because he was all-too painfully and personally aware of them. He was being crucified as a result of the deeds of the Roman soldiers and the intentions of his opponents of all sorts.

Jesus did mean, “Father, don’t wipe these people off the face of the earth, as you could so easily do. Don’t avenge me. Instead, Father, give these people, all these people, even these people, another chance. Don’t take vengeance. Instead, Father, stay open to having a saving relationship with these people, these people for whom I came to earth and for whom I am dying. Besides, they really don’t know what they are doing.”

Forgiveness doesn’t mean “it’s O.K.,” because it isn’t. If it was, forgiveness wouldn’t be needed.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean “Forget it,” because actually, you might not, and neither might the perpetrator.

Forgiveness does not mean, “There are no consequences for the wrong action,” because there are. In some cases, there are judicial consequences. In fact, a person can both “press charges” and consider forgiving the perpetrator spiritually.

Pressing charges could result in a dangerous person going to jail and not endangering other people (or oneself again). Pressing charges can be done to protect others as well as to seek to ensure that a person loses some freedom or money as just punishment for what the perpetrator has done.

Forgiveness, however, does mean that “I give up my right to seek revenge.” Seeking justice involves working through the legal system; seeking revenge could take many forms and be limitless in extent and in time. Devoting oneself to seeking revenge also, paradoxically, continues to place oneself in the power of the person who has harmed you. Forgiveness is profoundly liberating for the person doing the forgiving even if the person forgiven does not even know about the forgiveness.

Forgiveness also can mean that the person doing the forgiving is open to starting anew, to having a fresh relationship with the perpetrator OR people like the perpetrator. The alternative is to forever brand anyone resembling someone who has harmed us as people we cannot have a relationship with, being unforgiving to an entire large group of people to which the perpetrator happened to belong.

It sounds stupid to do that, put that way, but it has happened that people have sought revenge against people who in some non-behavioral way resemble the person or people who hurt them. Such an approach of “an eye for an eye” would soon leave the whole world blind, as indeed it sometimes seems we are.

Unforgiveness may sometimes have such a grip on us that our first step towards forgiveness may merely be limiting our unforgiveness. I heard an unforgettable example of that several years ago at the South Brunswick Community Center, when our community hosted the Anne Frank exhibit. A survivor of the Nazi concentration camps told us how he made a distinction between “the Germans” as a nationality and “those Germans” who had committed those atrocities.

If he can make such a distinction, so can all of us.

So, if you have been assaulted by a man or emotionally devastated by a woman, don’t take it out on all men or all women, or lash out at all blacks or all whites, all Catholics or all Protestants, and so on. Sounds basic and it is, but such “vengeance,” right down to the tribal and familial level, happens all the time. So the first step to forgiveness is to limit our unforgiveness.

Next step? Well, to me, it’s like the old question of “How do you eat an elephant?” Answer: “One bite at a time.” If someone has deeply wounded you, start by forgiving that person for something small, some little “bite-sized piece” of their offense, if the whole matter seems elephant-sized. Forgive even if the person does not apologize and ask for your forgiveness.

The Rt. Rev. Desmond Tutu, retired Anglican Archbishop of Southern Africa, says in his book No Future Without Forgiveness, “If the victim could forgive only when the culprit confessed, then the victim would be locked into the culprit’s whim, locked into victimhood, whatever his own attitude or intention.”

Archbishop Tutu gives the example of three ex-U.S. servicemen “standing in front of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. One asks, ‘Have you forgiven those who held you prisoner of war?’ ‘I will never forgive them,” replies the other. His mate says, ‘Then it seems they still have you in prison, don’t they?’”

“Forgiving,” Archbishop Tutu declares, “means abandoning your right to pay back the perpetrator in his own coin, but it is a loss that liberates the victim.”

Christ went to his death speaking words of forgiveness which liberated him even as they spared those who crucified him divine retribution.

Do you want to be free? Or do you want to be forever angry, forever seeking vengeance, forever a victim, forever a slave to someone else’s bad behavior?

Limit unforgiveness, forgive a bite-sized piece at a time, forgive for your own soul’s sake, and put your hurt in perspective. This last point comes home when reading Tutu’s book, which is based on his service as Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, which met after the fall of the apartheid regime and offered amnesty to perpetrators of crimes against humanity, whoever they were, if they told the whole truth about what they had done, and proved it.

In some cases, this meant former policemen leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to the places where they had buried the bodies of people they had tortured and murdered. Their families, who had only known that their loved ones had disappeared, were at last able to receive the bodies of their loved ones for burial, and after hearing the truth about their last hours.

Hearing the truth, including from some torture victims who had survived, was horrific. The stress on the commission members, and even more on their translators (who spoke the very words of the victims) as well as on the surviving victims, was enormous. But the process was cathartic, and truths were revealed that never would have come to light any other way.

South Africa was not a conquered nation, like Nazi Germany was, so the “victor’s justice” of the Nuremberg Trials was not an option, but just “turning the page” was equally unrealistic because no one had forgotten the atrocities of the apartheid era and without some process, the desire for vengeance would likely erupt like a volcano.

Amnesty was granted, “for a limited time and definite period and purpose” and “only to those who plead guilty, who accept responsibility for what they have done.” The goal, Tutu says, was “restorative justice.”

The result on the “macro” level is that South Africa, for all its very real problems, had an extraordinarily peaceful transition to a multi-racial democracy. Anyone who predicted a dozen years ago that we would be saying that in 2005 might well have been taken to a psychiatrist. The result on the “micro” level is that some people – not all, but some is miraculous enough – were able to forgive those who abused or tortured them or members of their families. They gave up the right to seek revenge, and even established some sort of a relationship with some former oppressors.

South Africa puts things in perspective. Maybe forgiveness is not impossible. Maybe forgiveness is not impractical. Maybe forgiveness is not “soft.” Maybe forgiveness is in fact courageous, muscular, visionary, life-giving. Maybe, in fact, there is “no future without forgiveness.”

May Christ’s words from the cross help us to forgive, and to accept his forgiveness of us.

The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, New Jersey