“Forgiving”—Part I
Genesis 45:1-15; Matthew 18:21-22
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
January 31, 2016
In December, along with Temple members Rosanne Kates and Larry Yarmaloff, I co-led a Torah yoga class at Temple Beth Sholom. Four times a year, the synagogue offers “Sholomplex,” a Saturday morning service with multiple ways to experience the day’s Torah reading. One option is Yoga. Larry and Rosanne and I have fun each time figuring out how to embody the truths of the text through yoga poses.
The Torah portion for that week drew from the story of Joseph. Joseph, as we know from the famous musical if not from the Bible, is the favorite son of Jacob. His father gives him a coat of many colors, and he lords it over his brothers until they seize him and sell him into slavery. Joseph is taken to Egypt and ends up in prison. The Torah reading begins with Joseph in jail, where he develops a reputation for interpreting dreams. He is taken from prison to interpret the Pharaoh’s dream—seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Released from prison, he is placed in charge of a nation-wide effort to store grain in preparation for the famine.
The plot thickens when the famine hits and Joseph’s family, back in Canaan, is starving. His older brothers come to Egypt seeking grain. Joseph recognizes them, but they don’t know who he is.
I read on eagerly, thinking about yoga poses that could embody Joseph’s emotional struggle. He is all over the map—accusing his brothers of spying, inviting them for dinner, framing them as thieves. Finally, in the passage Chuck just read, he breaks down in tears and forgives them.
I imagined the glorious ending of our yoga session—child pose, sun salutation, postures of relief and peace as we read about a family reconciled and reunited.
And then I looked back at the text listed in the email Rabbi Bazer sent. The Torah reading for the day ends just before this passage about reconciliation—in the midst of Joseph’s internal struggle, as he falsely accuses his youngest brother of theft.
Larry, Rosanne and I debated telling the rest of the story anyway, so the class would end with positive resolution. We decided to stick with the text. At the end of the hour, we asked folks to move into chair pose—fierce pose—and hold it while we read the story of the false accusation. We encouraged people to stay in the pose even when it got uncomfortable. We closed by acknowledging that often, in our lives and relationships, forgiveness and reconciliation are still in process, awkward and unresolved.
I was worried the class would leave people dissatisfied, but it did not. Chair pose, for many, spoke to the realities of their lives. Forgiveness and reconciliation are awkward, uncomfortable, complicated processes.
A few weeks later, I picked up the November 23rd Time Magazine I had set aside and began reading the cover story: “Murder, Race and Mercy.” With thoughtfulness and insight, Time reporter David von Drehle told the stories of survivors and family members of the people murdered in the racist shooting at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17th of this year.
The mass murder shocked the nation—a horrifying story of a young white man who was welcomed into a Bible Study in a historic African American church who then pulled out his gun and shot indiscriminately. The response of several family members at his bail hearing two days later shocked the nation again—expressions of forgiveness from grieving family members. “I forgive you.” Nadine Collier spoke to the man who had just murdered her mother, Ethel Lance.
Five months later, von Drehle and his colleagues wrote about the aftermath of those momentous words. As I read the article, I found myself thinking about chair pose. We sometimes imagine that forgiveness makes everything peaceful again. The reality is more complicated—more of a fierce pose than a child’s pose. Awkward, painful.
Nadine Collier hadn’t planned to express forgiveness at that hearing; she didn’t even know she would have a chance to speak. When she walked up to the podium, she was angry. At the same time, she was thinking about lessons she had learned from church: “You have to forgive people and move on. When you keep that hatred, it hurts only you.”
And so she spoke: “I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never get to talk to her ever again—but I forgive you, and have mercy on your soul….You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. If God forgives you, I forgive you.”
Words of reconciliation– that tore her family apart. As Nadine Collier spoke, her sister, Sharon Risher, thought, “Who in the hell is she talking for? Because she’s not talking for me.”
Like her sister, Risher learned lessons about forgiveness. She interprets them differently. “I understand that forgiveness is a process. Some people with their beliefs can automatically forgive, but I’m not there yet.” Her sister’s words felt like a denial of the depth of their loss and the intensity of their outrage at this hateful act. The publicity Collier’s words engendered made it worse. The sisters no longer speak to each other.
Anthony Thompson, husband of Myra Thompson, came to the podium next. He repeated Collier’s words of forgiveness, but added what to him was a crucial piece: “But we would like him [Dylann Roof] to take this opportunity to repent. Repent. Confess. Give your life to the one who matters most, Christ, so that he can change him.”
For Collier, forgiveness was about her own healing, an approach described in the article in this way: “You have harmed me, but I refuse to respond in kind. Forgiveness,” the article continues, “is a kind of purifier that absorbs injury and returns love. It’s not really about the offender at all.”
Thompson spoke from that same need for personal healing. Forgiveness, he explained, “is like a Band-Aid that holds the edges of an open wound together long enough for the wound to heal.” His words, though, added another dimension, recognizing that forgiveness also involves the offender. Usually, though, we think of forgiveness as a response to an offender’s sincere repentance. In this case, Thompson started the process with an act of forgiveness, hoping it would prompt repentance.
Rose Simmons, daughter of Rev. Daniel Simmons, carried that hope a step further. “I believe there’s a day that will come, if he has to spend the rest of his life in prison, where he will have an opportunity for repentance. So that he can change other people’s lives. And what a great ending to this story that would be—for him to know beyond a shadow of a doubt the impact of what he did, and to know and see God himself.” She is sure she is not alone in her hope: “It is,” she says, “what our entire family believes.”
Other families, though, share Sharon Risher’s perspective. Malcolm Graham, brother of Cynthia Hurd, is disturbed by the assumption that all the families are united. For him the hate-filled intentions of the murderer and his lack of remorse make forgiveness a much more complicated process. He fears that the focus on forgiveness allows the wider community—especially the white community– to avoid facing the ways this event was part of a larger history of racism.
Rev. Waltrina Middleton, DePayne Middleton Doctor’s cousin and a UCC minister, agrees. While she honors the statements made at the hearing as genuine and faithful, she fears that the publicity around them short-circuits the outrage that is appropriate and necessary: “It took away our narrative to be rightfully hurt. I can’t turn off my pain.”
Rev. Middleton raises a larger question of how societal change happens. Does this focus on forgiveness awaken us to the horror of what happened—by contrasting the hatred of the shooter with the loving response of the families—and so inspire us to action? Or does it allow us to breathe a sigh of relief and pretend everything is now okay?
So many questions. Is forgiveness an act or a process? Is its purpose to give the forgiver peace or to reconcile with the offender? Does it require repentance from the offender, or is it an expression of being free from the power of the offender’s choices? Does it enable positive change, or does it keep us stuck in the past by letting us pretend nothing happened?
The Bible doesn’t answer these questions. Jesus talks a lot about forgiveness, but he never defines it. I suspect that is on purpose. All through the gospels Jesus makes bold statements and tells dramatic parables that leave us perplexed. He wants us to ask questions, to struggle, to look deep within and to talk amongst ourselves. He leads us into his own version of “fierce pose”—challenging us to live with awkward discomfort as we search for understanding.
Jesus doesn’t give us a simple definition of forgiveness. Neither does he let us off the hook. He is unequivocal in his insistence that we forgive one another. He is equally clear in his proclamation of the good news that makes forgiveness possible. God is love. God’s love—God’s grace and forgiveness—is greater than our human brokenness and sin. God will give us the strength and courage and wisdom we need to live into this calling, to walk the road that leads to forgiveness.
This is part I of a two-part sermon series. Next week I will explore these themes further and reflect on what they mean for our lives. In the meantime, I invite you to live with the questions. Hear Jesus’ promise of God’s forgiveness and Jesus’ challenge to us to forgive. Wonder and reflect and even argue about how to live them out. Don’t try to force the answers, just let the questions percolate in your life. Remember that behind the questions is the good news that is beyond question: God is love. God’s grace is poured out on us–giving us strength and courage and wisdom as we seek forgiveness and as we try to forgive. Amen.
David Von Drehle, Jay Newton-Small, Maya Rhodan, “Murder, Race and Mercy: Stories from Charleston,” Time Magazine, Nov. 23, 2015, pp. 42-68.