Sermon Central
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Forgiveness - Emanuel Ame Church And Renee Napier Stories
Contributed by Kerry Haynes on Aug 19, 2018 (message contributor)
Christians of all people should lead the way in forgiveness. And some do. On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof entered a Bible study group at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Even though he was white, he received a warm welcome from the all-black congregation. When the group closed its eyes in prayer, Roof pulled out a gun, murdered nine people, and injured several others. At his bail hearing a few days later, some of the surviving relatives expressed efforts to work through their anger and offered genuine forgiveness and prayers for the hate-filled white supremacist. Amazing!
I tell the story in my veteran groups of Renee Napier who lost her 20-year-old daughter Megan to a drunk driver. Eric Smallridge was advised by his lawyer to show absolutely no emotion in court. Bad advice! The jury did not like his apparent lack of remorse and quickly found him guilty of vehicular homicide. The judge likewise threw the book at him: an 18-year sentence as a message to others. But before he was locked up, Renee told him she had forgiven him. Her family eventually followed suit. She then began towing her daughter’s car to area high schools and speaking out against drunk driving. But she says she realized from the beginning that something was missing. She lobbied prison authorities and eventually the governor, and got permission for Eric Smallridge to accompany her. Eric, standing before a student body in his bright orange prison uniform and bound in shackles, spoke of the dangers of drunk driving. And Renee shared of the freeing power of forgiveness. In a news interview she said, “I could hate Eric Smallridge forever; that’s not going to bring Megan back...[When it comes to forgiveness], it doesn’t feel like it’s the right thing to do. It doesn’t match what you’re feeling on the inside, sometimes, but it is the right thing to do...We live in a world where there’s a lot of pain and heartache, and I want to promote love and forgiveness, and try to break that cycle of hatred” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKwktLBj-lo].
Renee appealed to Eric’s parole boards and eventually gained his release after serving half his sentence. Christian singer and songwriter Matthew West wrote a song based on Renee’s story, entitled, “Forgiveness.” In the song he borrowed a line from pastor and author Lewis B. Smedes, who said, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” God designed us to forgive, not to nurse our anger forever.
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