Last Tuesday, April 19th, this country observed a very difficult anniversary, and for most of us it passed by without a thought. It was April 19th 1995 that we suffered the atrocity of the Oklahoma City Bombing. As I was thinking about our sermon today I ran across a story from that event that I would like to share with you today.
Bud Welch lost his 23-year old daughter, Julie, in the blast that destroyed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people in all. In a story entitled, "Where Healing Begins" from a 1999 edition of Guideposts Magazine, he recounts the extraordinary personal journey to forgiveness that began for him on April 19, 1995. "From the moment I learned it was a bomb," Bud writes, "I survived on hate." His anger was focused on Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and like so many others, Bud wished for their speedy conviction and execution. When he saw McVeigh’s father on television a few months after the bombing, however, Bud’s emotions began to shift for the first time. He remembers thinking to himself, "this man has lost a child, too."
A second turning point in Bud’s journey came when he revisited the site of his daughter’s death in January 1996. Bud spotted an elm tree near the place where Julie had always parked her car. Despite damage from the blast, the tree had survived and even sprouted new branches. "The thought that came to me then seemed to have nothing to do with new life," he writes. "It was the sudden, certain knowledge that McVeigh’s execution would not end my pain." Bud’s advocacy of the death penalty for McVeigh ended soon after, and not without drawing notice. He began receiving invitations to speak about his evolving feelings, and one invitation arrived from Buffalo the home of McVeigh’s father. Bud knew it was time to meet.
On September 5, 1998, Bud Welch found himself in the home of Bill McVeigh, a "blue collar Joe" just like him. He also met Bill’s daughter, Jennifer, who reminded Bud of Julie’s friends. "We can’t change the past," Bud told Bill and Jennifer, "but we have a choice about the future."
When I read that story I thought it would be the perfect way to begin our discussion today of Forgiveness. But I know from my own life that forgiveness does not always come easily if it comes at all. Usually we respond more like the man who was on his death bed and afraid to go into that good night harboring a hatred for anyone.
He had his son go and find the man with whom he had a fierce feud for years and asked him to come to his home. When his enemy arrived the sick man quickly made overtures of peace and stretched out his hand. He enemy was so moved that he also made overtures of peace and accept the mans outstretched hand. They talked for 30 minutes of sorrow and forgiveness and feeling that it was finally over the visitor turned to leave the room. But before he made it out the door the sick man said, “Sir if I get over this the feud stands!
I wonder how do you handle volatile situations? Do you believe that your heart would be able to feel for the family of a man who did not feel for yours like Bud Welch, or does the feud still stand?
Remember last week when we talked about sins that we avoid and sins that we choose to gloss over. The sin of Unforgiveness is so often glossed over because we like the power that we feel we have when we refuse to forgive. But in reality the one who dies when forgiveness is refused is the one who refuses to forgive. When it comes to the issue of forgiveness we all have a choice. As a matter of fact we all make one of the following five choices.
I will not forgive
Now some of you might take exception with me and say it’s not a matter of I will not but it’s that I can not. But let me give you a gentle reminder that God does not require the impossible. We read in Mark 11:25-26
"And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your transgressions. "But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions."
I’m going to forgive you, but in the future I’m not going to have anything to do with you.
This is such a benevolent attitude carried by our modern martyrs. You are worthy of my forgiveness but if you were on fire and I had a glass of water well you better start rolling to put those flames out.
Paul writes in Ephesians 4:32 And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.
Is this the forgiveness that you have received from God?
I’ll do you a favor and forgive you
Actually, the reverse is true. Remember what we just read in Mark 11:26? if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.
You see if I offend you I can go to God and be forgiven of my trespass but you cannot be forgiven until you are willing to forgive me. So when you forgive someone you are actually doing yourself a favor.
I’m going to forgive you, but I’ll never forget it.
Charles Spurgeon once said, "Forgive and forget; when you bury a mad dog, don’t leave his tail above the ground."
Again I must remind us what God says in Hebrews 8:12 And I will forgive their wrongdoings, and I will never again remember their sins."
If God is willing to never again remember our sins then why do we believe that we can act any differently and be pleasing to our Lord.
Finally we can Offer Complete forgiveness
And I believe that what we are called to do. Lets look at a very familiar passage found in Matthew 6:14-15
One of the most important things you can do as a husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, brother, or sister is realize the importance and necessity of forgiving one another. So let’s look at what we are and are not called to do
Some Things Forgiveness Is Not
What is it that we do, exactly, when we forgive? We must start by understanding what forgiveness is not and then look at the three stages that are part of what forgiving is.
First, forgiving is not the same thing as excusing.
Excusing is what we do when we consider extenuating circumstances for our behavior. We excuse expectant fathers for driving fast because they are taxiing a woman in labor. We excuse clumsy skiers for bumping into us when we find out they’re beginners. We excuse eight year old boys for making bodily noises because they’re eight year old boys.
Forgiveness comes when there is no good rationale to explain away why someone did what they did. Forgiving does not mean tolerating bad behavior or pretending that what someone did was not so bad. Excusing is an end run around the crisis of forgiving. When an action is excusable, it doesn’t require forgiveness.
Second, Forgiving is not forgetting.
All that forgetting requires is a really bad memory. I forget where I parked my car or put my keys. This doesn’t mean I have an advanced soul, just some badly misfiring neurons. Sometimes, if a hurt is severe enough, it can be buried away out of fear or trauma. It is in some sense forgotten, but it hasn’t been forgiven. Scripture writers sometimes use the language of " ’forgetting" to describe how God deals with our sin, but this doesn’t mean that God has a memory problem. It means that our past sins become irrelevant to his dealings with us. Forgiving is required when we can’t forget.
Finally, Forgiving is not the same thing as reconciling.
People sometimes think that forgiving someone means we must reunite with them no matter what-that a wife must move back in with a man who cheated on her, or a businessman must take back a dishonest partner as many times as requested. Forgiveness and reconciliation are two separate things.
Forgiveness takes place within the heart of one human being. It can be granted even if the other person does not ask for it or deserve it. Reconciliation requires that the offender be sincerely repentant for the wrong he or she committed. Reconciliation requires the rebuilding of trust, and that means good faith on the part of both parties.
What Forgiveness Is
The first stage of forgiveness is the decision not to try to inflict an equal amount of pain on everyone who has caused hurt.
When I forgive you, I give up the right to hurt you back. Even though you may hurt me deliberately, personally, and deeply, I suspend the law of vengeance. I refrain from the instinctive response of retaliation. I don’t act on or indulge my desire to see you squirm. When I forgive you, I set you free from the little prison I have placed in my mind for holding you captive.
Forgiveness begins when we give up the quest to get even. This is difficult, because getting even is the natural obsession of the wounded soul.
But for deep hurts, the way of vengeance has not proved so successful. The problem with getting even is that no two people weigh pain on the same scale. Forgiving starts when we decide to stop trying to get even.
The next stage of forgiveness involves a new way of seeing and feeling.
One thing that happens when we get deeply hurt is that as we look at the one who hurt us, we don’t see a person, only the hurt. When we hold fast to unforgiveness toward another person, we tend to believe only bad things about them. We want to think of them only in terms of the hurt they have caused us. We want to forget their humanity.
When we forgive each other, we begin to see more clearly. We do not ignore the hurts, but we see beyond them. We rediscover the humanity of the one who hurt us. He is no longer just an uncollected debt of pain. He is the product of a mother and father; he is lonely or hurting or weak or nearsighted-just as I am. He is also a bearer of the image of God-just as I am.
The third stage of forgiving, the one that shows you have begun to make some real progress, is when you find yourself wishing the other person well.
You no longer hope that the only calls they get will be from telemarketers and the IRS. You hope for good things for them. You can hear someone say a kind word about them without inwardly screaming. You genuinely hope that things are well between them and God, and that their life is happy.
Of course, this does not happen all at once. And it usually doesn’t happen once for all; you will have moments when you would like to hear they’ve gotten bald or fat. But the trajectory of the heart is headed in the right direction. When you want good things for someone who hurt you badly, you can pretty much know that the Great Forgiver has been at work in your heart.
Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Is not a request but a direct command from the same God that commanded baptism, and remembrance of the Death of Jesus by taking the Lords Supper the first of every week. And, there are no nonessential commandments!
In the church we say that everything we do every tradition, every ritual, everything is bathed in a command or an example by Christ or the apostles. We follow Christ’s example in being baptized, in eating the Lord’s Supper, in attending worship services. So why do we struggle with following the examples we see in
Luke 23:34 While Jesus was on the cross he said "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."
And Acts 7:60 as Stephen was being stoned to death he said, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them!"
I want you to leave here today remembering that hatred, and bitterness, might harm the object, does far more harm to the hater.
True forgiveness must come from the heart. Do you remember the parable of the wicked servant in Matthew 18. The cliff note version is that a man who had amassed a large amount of debt, millions of dollars, was forgiven his debt, but then this servant went and found a man who owed him a small debt, hundreds of dollars, and showed no mercy.
At the end of this parable in verse 35 we read "So shall My heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart."
That’s why I believe unforgiveness is a disease of the heart. There are far to many of us who practice mere lip forgiveness while we continue to harbor malice and ill will in our hearts. Those who have Christ as their King are to always pursue forgiving people who have hurt us, even when the offenders don’t ask for or deserve it. God commands us to forgive because it is the best way to live.
He commands us to forgive others because he has forgiven us; he is the Great Forgiver.
He commands it because the only other way is to remain a prisoner of the hurt for as long as I live.
God commands forgiving because to refuse to forgive means I allow the one who hurt me to keep me chained in a prison of bitterness and resentment year after year. No human beings are more miserable than the unforgiving.
But when the miracle of forgiveness takes place in a best case scenario, it leads to the healing of a broken relationship. It leads to the reestablishment of community.
This demands the full cooperation of two partners: the forgiver and the forgivee. As a general rule, where there is hurt, I am both the victim of and the agent of wrongdoing. In most relationships where deep pain is involved, I must both forgive and seek forgiveness.
When reconciliation happens, it is a miracle and a mystery. It is hard to define, but it is unmistakable when we experience it.
* Some Ideas taken from John Ortberg’s Everyone’s Normal Till You Get To Know Them.
