Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
November 1, 2015
Only days had passed since the news hit the wires: There’d been another shooting, this time in a church – Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, NC. Nine victims, ranging in age from 26 to 87. The accused shooter was 21 year old Dylan Roof, who had sat in Bible study with the group for nearly an hour before opening fire. At Roof’s bond hearing, Nadine Collier, the daughter of 70-year-old shooting victim Ethel Lance, addressed him directly. ‘I forgive you,’ Collier said, her voice breaking. ‘You took something very precious from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never, ever hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul.’”[1]
I wonder if these words stirred up any conversation in your household, as it did in mine? Whether you weighed the likelihood that you could have mustered such grace, or whether you felt like those expressions of forgiveness were premature, even unwarranted? Did Dylan deserve to be forgiven? Does that matter?
Forgiveness is a complicated thing, many layered, sometimes elusive. It may require a single conversation, and those oh so difficult words, “I’m sorry.” It can also be the work of a lifetime. It may be the hardest thing we do, and also the most necessary. Because the alternative to forgiving is not forgiving – or holding onto the hurt – and “Resentment [said South African President Nelson Mandela] is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”
So where to begin one brief reflection on forgiveness? … Perhaps we could start this way: by acknowledging that we all need it. We have all faltered and failed; we have all broken hearts and had our hearts broken. This is the human condition, part of the rich, maddening reality of living together on God’s precious planet. To live is to fail, to disappoint and to be disappointed, again and again.
To live is also to surprise, bless, inspire, love. And we’ll get back to that. But I want to linger here for a few minutes, in that place of hurt and disappointment, because I suspect it has everything to do with why we do (or don’t) go to church. I can’t tell you how often I have heard people say about the church: “Here, of all places, people should be nice to each other. After all, we’re Christian. Shouldn’t we be more loving, more forgiving, more compassionate?”
The trouble with that line of thinking is that it’s a set-up. Because really, we are all human. We all have our best days and our crummy days. We all carry with us the hurts that have piled up in our lives –buried deep, or healed over, or still fresh and tender to the touch. In the words of one poet, “There’s enough pain in any small town to chill the blood.” This is true wherever you go, including church. And yet, one of the most common accusations leveled against churches is that they contain hypocrites – people who say one thing and do another. Well, what did you expect?
Guests in our midst, let me clarify: This is an amazing community of faith. I feel privileged to serve among the people of Saugatuck Church – thoughtful, creative, dedicated, spirit-filled people. If you hang out here long enough, I trust you will witness all the goodness for yourselves – even be swept up in it: how we can toss balloons around and sport sun glasses in worship; how we embrace whimsy and also deep thinking; how we can join forces to construct a labyrinth on our front lawn; pray with our whole hearts; and feed each other and bear each other up! There is such love here. Such faith.
And we are just as human as the next community. A room full of people just as likely to show up at church worn out by parenting or bummed out by last night’s bad news; just as likely to be harried or hurried – and just as prone to worry. When we are short on sleep, or our body is giving out on us, or work is overwhelming, it can back up on us, until we find that we are bringing something less than our best selves to the table. This is normal. It’s also why we need forgiveness.
OK, you may say. “If folks here aren’t any different than folks anywhere else, then why come to church? Why trust this community with my heart, and with my hurt?” After all, there’s always yoga, and group therapy, and walks on the beach, and FaceTime, to help us process life’s pain and disappointment. What’s Church got to add? More guilt? A lot of finger-wagging? God forbid. Really. I mean it. God forbid. If that’s the view with which you were raised, if you were taught that being a Christian means feeling bad about yourself most of the time, or if you absorbed that outlook by osmosis; if you’ve come to believe – consciously or subconsciously – that you can’t ever live up to the expectations imposed by a God who demands perfection, then I’d like to apologize, on behalf of all Christendom, for completely distorting a faith which is actually entirely about grace and freedom and new beginnings.
The story goes like this: God lovingly created us all to be in relationship with God and with each other. Our ancestors kept getting it wrong, got distracted or self-absorbed and turned away from God (they had crummy days just like we do) but God remained steadfast, forgiving them again and again. Eventually, God sent Jesus to show us, first hand, what it looks like to love God and love your neighbor.
The Rev. Mary Luti recently wrote a reflection about this part of the story. She recalled a meeting between Jesus and a woman accused of adultery who was about to be stoned. After Jesus invited whichever person had never sinned to throw the first stone, he and the woman watched the entire crowd drift away. Then Jesus turned to the woman and said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” Here’s the twist: Rev Luti suggests that Jesus didn’t really mean it, that bit about sinning no more, ever again.
“He expected her to try, [she writes] and I think she did. But you know she sinned again. … Nobody resists the undertow of human weakness for long, not even people who’ve been personally rescued from judgmental stone throwers by Jesus. Jesus knew that. … Even as she, spared from death, resolved to be good, he knew. He knew then and he knows now just how soon after every rescue and every resolution we’ll need him to be impossibly kind to us again. And he will be, without fail.”[2] [unquote]
This then, is why I come to church: to hear again the promise that no matter how many times I succumb to the undertow of human weakness: God forgives me. Has already forgiven me. Forgiven, as in, set free to start over – every day, if necessary. In the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning.” We are not slaves to our past. That’s the gift of forgiveness.
The question is, what will we do with that new beginning? Can we learn from Jesus, and extend to others the same forgiveness that he extends to us? Can we cultivate communities that are, in fact, a little more loving, a little more compassionate? Can we acknowledge that we are all works in progress, and give one another the grace and the space to grow? It takes practice, for sure. It’s easier to label people (including ourselves) according to our past misdemeanors. “He’s the one who forgot my name. She’s the one who dismissed my idea.” So we come to church: to learn forgiveness. To practice letting go of resentment; to try on what it feels like to want healing more than revenge; to forge and re-forge relationships that are not chained to our past.
This may feel like a daunting task. Mpho Tutu, Desmond Tutu’s daughter, says, “Yes, it takes an extraordinary person to forgive, but we all have the capacity to be extraordinary.”[3] Just look at the thousands of South African women and men who forgave their White oppressors. Just look at the members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church who forgave Dylan Roof, just days after the shooting. Just look at the people in your own life, the ones you can name, who manage to choose hope over anger; grace over bitterness, every day. Yes: we have a staggering capacity to do harm; but we have an equal and opposite capacity to bless, inspire and love, a capacity that may just surprise us. And where we run out – that’s where God steps in.
I’ve shared this story before, but it bears repeating: The Rev. Nadine Boltz Weber is a Lutheran pastor out in Colorado at the Church of All Saints and Sinners. When she welcomes new members, she says this: “I’m glad you love it here, but at some point, I will disappoint you or the church will let you down. When that happens, please stay. Because if you leave, you will miss the way that God’s grace comes in and fills in the cracks of our brokenness. And that’s too beautiful to miss.”[4]
Sisters and brothers in Christ: This is the Good News: we don’t have to do this work alone. God stands by, ready to mend the gaps we cannot close alone, ready to walk with us through the steps of forgiving each other, as often as we need to do so – every day, even.
And what better place to practice, than in this community full of ordinary, extraordinary people, imperfect, growing, and always, forever, loved by a forgiving God.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/south-carolina-governor-urges-death-penalty-charges-in-church-slayings/2015/06/19/3c039722-1678-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html
[2]http://www.ucc.org/daily_devotional_sin_no_more?utm_campaign=dd_oct26_15&utm_medium=email&utm_source=unitedchurchofchrist
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfbX8AercJ4
[4] http://www.onbeing.org/program/nadia-bolz-weber-seeing-the-underside-and-seeing-god-tattoos-tradition-and-grace/5896/history