To Forgive or Not That is the Question

Most people focus on Thomas in our story, but I want to focus on what Jesus says to his disciples as he breaths his Holy Spirit upon them: If you retain the sins of any they are retained and if you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven. I came across this story that illustrates the dilemma we all must face when it comes to the question of whether we will forgive our neighbor or whether we will not, because all of us will be hurt by someone and what we do about that makes all the difference in the world in terms of our well being. Dr. Sharon Betcher, who calls herself an independent scholar, writer, theologian and farmer writes in her blog:

He and I had nothing in common, except my ritual bagel and coffee on my way to the library. It was a cold miserable day and I walked into his coffee shop to get my usual for the morning. The owner came forward to help with the long line of customers that had gathered. With my cane in hand I was moving slowing and taking up more body space than others in the line. So in his hurry the owner tells me in a frustrated voice just to go up to the counter.

I could find no way to make my way through the crowd, and shrugged. In an irritated voice he yells, “Just get up here!” I yell, “I’m trying, sir!” The crowd parts and I – now a spectacle – limp my way forward. His face reddens with embarrassment and he says in a cringing way: “I didn’t know, I couldn’t see. I mean, if I had known… I hope you don’t think that I usually treat people like this. I just…”

The apologies gush endlessly, while he pours the coffee, gathers the bagel, pleads with me to take them for free, and follows me to the door. I get in the car, then drop my shoulders, and let my chin sag. During the ensuing week, I stew.

In religious vocabulary, he needs and desires forgiveness. He landed his frustration precisely where he shouldn’t have, and it had hurt. But I decide to go back as was my habit, just to show him and myself that we both can withstand a little hurt.

Both of us know what has happened and both of us are in this awkward place of not knowing how to act around each other. Both of us hoping that it would all just go away and we’d all just forget, but I can tell by his quick turn to the wall to compose himself that neither of us would ever have chosen to deal with each other again.

But here we are again forced into a weird kind of intimacy by the fact that neither of us had quite planned on. When I get to the cash register, he leans forward and says, “I hope you still don’t hold what happened the other day that against me.” I retort, “I’m here, aren’t I? Let it go. Most people don’t even try to apologize.” Again I leave the coffee shop feeling worse than when I had come in.

Unbelievable! Even with the best intentions I could not muster the simple gesture by which we redeem the hope of the human community. Well aware of the gesture that could have caused a healing between us I nevertheless deliver a cyncial remark his way. I too had needed a way beyond my own hurt but instead, I based the entire story around my own wound rather than seeing it as part of a larger story in which I had a role to play and did not pick up my part.

Whether its refusing to forgive over something as simple as a gruff word or any human infraction that offends us we are becoming a human community that is closing ourselves off from one another by our pride, our cynicism and our long memory of hurts done unto us while forgetting the hurts we have done to others.

There are legitimate reasons why we have had to draw the line, to retain sins, as John’s gospel puts it, in order to insist on dignity in and from the human community. But what happens when we nurse the hurt and pain boiling it into vengeance and revenge? When did we become slaves of our own hurt, caught up in reactive and unending denouncements and condemnations of each other? We are eager to let relationships go, to be content with being right in our own minds without realizing that we are falling out of love with each other and with God. You can not love God and hate your neighbor 1 John says. And yet we do it all the time.

It’s a drama uncomfortably familiar, just look at the way we conduct our political discourse, or the way we discredit anyone who disagrees with us. We keep coming back at each other as if we can’t get enough. We must be right at all cost even if the cost is to the truth, the way and the life of the one we call our savior. Even in the best Christian communities we still sequester ourselves off from one another, holding grudges here, resigning there, wrapping our identities around our hurts, more concerned with saving face than saving ourselves or our relationships.

Straight people fearful of gay people, people of color fearful of white people, all of us afraid of Muslims and vice versa. If we are to ever heal and move beyond this stupidity, if we’re ever going to deepen in our understanding of one another on politics, gender, sexual identity, race or religious tradition then we are going to need to forgive, or we will end up sequestering our souls in an never ending ritual of continually posturing to confirm the rightness of our own prejudices, hurts and insecurities.

In those brief hours after Jesus death Jesus’ disciples and friends had locked themselves up into a room because of loss and fear then it is also true that they had locked themselves into that room over their own feelings of guilt and complicity in the face of their friend’s crucifixion. I imagine they are haunted by the thought of how they would present themselves if they ever saw him again. How would they cover their shame and embarrassment?

No way out, except that in the presence of the resurrected Lord there is a peace that holds them in its embrace. There, in those fearful human contradictions, the love and grace of God forgives them and breaths peace back into their fearful human frames without any cynicism or despair. There in that room the simple presence flesh encouraging flesh to do what was unthinkable: to open up to life again, to move beyond the reality of fear, hurt and pain.

Resurrection: the act of coming out of seclusion, whereby we are given the key to being in community with each other. It’s called the forgiveness of sins, which makes our life possible because it gives us breathing room, but we are also given another key called the retention of sins, which will destroy our lives because it sends us back into the past with all of its old hurts and greivances.

Dr. Betcher concluded her story this way: “I asked my 8 year old daughter what difference forgiveness made, a ritual now so regular between us, that it seems almost common place. She said in her profound simplicity: “Duh! Mom! If we didn’t forgive, we’d be separate; and you wouldn’t feel like hugging and kissing me so I could go to sleep.”

Could it be that that the key to eternal life is as simple as forgiveness, which packs no deterrent force and does not resist evil with evil? If that doesn’t convince you then ask yourselves, “How well have we been doing healing the world’s wounds by retaining all its sins?” Maybe it’s time to give forgiveness and peace a chance. Amen