August 17, 2003
Forgiveness Can't Be Faked
Riley E. Jensen
When I was doing my scripture memory work as a youngster, learning Bible verses so that my team would win the contest which we had every year during daily vacation Bible school, we used to joke about how the shortest verse in the Bible was “Jesus wept”. It was a joke because for us there was no feeling behind those words.
Sure, kids cried when they got their feelings hurt, came out on the short end of a fight, or just couldn’t handle the frustrations of growing up. Sure, kids cried; that was taken for granted but grownups hardly ever cried, at least not within our line of sight. When a grownup cried, the very foundation of the world itself was shaken. And it scared us because we could not imagine anything so terrible which could achieve such a result.
Most of us here this morning are kids in grownup clothing. It still worries us to see other adults cry and some consider it to be a sign of weakness.
Now I will grant you that most of us think of Bible characters as ageless, sexless, and humanless. They are like the characters in Grimm’s Fairy Tales who provide a moral for the story. Any connection with someone living or dead is purely coincidental so we want to be careful not to mistake them for real people. But I want to suggest to you that only the most superficial reading of our scripture lesson could miss the emotion packed into the reunion of Jacob and Esau.
“And they wept.” Two adult brothers weeping in each other’s arms is the image which we have before us. The most Biblically illiterate person among us cannot hear that description without realizing that some sort of dramatic denouement has been reached. While the weeping could have been out of the pure sense of gratitude at the reunion itself, we know that it has to do with something deeper -- forgiveness.
I. One Must Be Positioned to Receive Forgiveness
In most versions Jacob is the one who needs to be forgiven because when he and Esau were much younger (hardly even teenagers), he used some fast talking and clever sleight-of-hand to fool Esau into trading away his rights as the primary heir of Isaac.
It makes one want to paraphrase that prayer of Jesus at the cross into “Father, forgive him for he did it on purpose.”
Some think of Jacob’s actions as clever opportunism. His was the kind of initiative which makes for success. Nevertheless, for most of his life he carried the name Jacob which means “cheater” and that is how he was thought of. He left the land long ago, driven away in fear of his life, but now he returns ready to face the music because he needs something that only his brother, Esau, can give him -- forgiveness.
I am sure you have heard that old popular song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree”. The song is about the return of an estranged person who is not sure of his welcome. If (when he returns) he sees the yellow ribbon around the old oak tree, he will know that he is welcome. The yellow ribbon has become a sign of welcome and in some cases of forgiveness. A number of years ago the yellow ribbon made another appearance around an old oak tree on a street where I lived. It must have been out there for at least a month and as I walked by it daily, I had to wonder if the person for whom it was intended ever saw it.
You see for reconciliation and forgiveness to happen you have to take some risks. Jacob had to return from his years of wandering. He had to return in order to position himself for that most frightening of all possible encounters -- an encounter with the person who had the power to humiliate through rejection.
Some people live with the scars of an inheritance battle, of custody fights, a church division either because they have never put themselves in the position of seeking forgiveness or granted themselves the privilege of offering forgiveness. It is axiomatic that if we are not being blessed, we may be standing on the hose.
A number of you have your roots in the Roman Catholic Church and like many who have made a move from one major religious persuasion to another, you can be highly critical of aspects of your upbringing that were not helpful. However, I was pleased in a recent inquirers’ class to hear one person say that one of the things she missed was the regular practice of confession accompanied by the assurance of forgiveness. Most certainly we do that in a corporate way but there is nothing like having a person hear one’s individual confession, and having heard that with conviction and sincerity and love, to grant the absolution. That is the nature of forgiveness. Sins are forgiven like the debts were forgiven in our New Testament lesson. They are wiped out. They are remembered no more. That, at least, is the nature of God’s forgiveness.
But, of course, we are not God. We may forgive but because we are human we don’t always forget. This last week at Family Camp we talked about wrongs done to us as misdemeanors and felonies. Certainly these are serious things that happen between people which causes anger and resentment. But the advice of the marriage counselor who says “never go to bed with your anger” is sound advice.
But there are other deep wrongs. Wrongs that may be called felonies against the human spirit and these are not so easy to put-to-bed. These wrongs can take years to work through. The story of Jacob shows us that forgiveness is not child’s play. It takes initiative and courage and the willingness to bury pride. For Jacob as for many of us forgiveness can be a very long journey.
II. Forgiveness Can’t Be Earned
A second point about forgiveness is that it can’t be earned. In the story Jacob came bearing gifts. Now gifts are a time-honored way of showing good will, but Jacob was nobody’s fool. He wasn’t known as “the clever one” for nothing. His gifts were there to grease the skids; it was a little payoff to this one from whom he had stolen so much.
Jacob’s attitude reminds me of a new piece of medical technology with which I became acquainted a few years ago when visiting the home of a parishioner who was on the mend from a very serious leg fracture. She had an electrical box attached to her leg, the purpose of which was to set up an electro magnetic field which would help heal the fracture. However, she reported to me that initially she had become very discouraged because it didn’t seem to be working, that is until she and the doctor realized that after he attached it, he had forgotten to turn it on.
That is the way in which I think of the attitude of Jacob as he returns to Esau. Here he is, already having gone 90 percent of the way but he is chickening out, unwilling to release himself to the moment in which he will experience forgiveness or rejection. He is hesitant to take that last step that will turn on the faucet of forgiveness.
Like many of us he is simply unable to grasp the reality that when forgiveness happens it happens without a tip. It happens without having been earned in any way.
If you were listening to our New Testament lesson from the Gospel of Matthew, you heard very clearly that forgiveness cannot be earned. It can only be passed on. The mistake of the man in that story is he thought he had done a deal and like any person who does deals, he thought that each one stood on its own merit. He saw himself as an astute businessman who had conned a creditor with his sincerity. But what he found out too late is that forgiveness is not an isolated deal -- some sort of negotiated settlement with God, but that forgiveness is a way of life and part of the deal is to pass it on. After all, isn’t that the meaning of The Lord’s Prayer -- “forgive us as we are forgiven”.
When I first began my doctoral work, my family was young, money was tight, and I wasn’t sure where the extra finances would come from. But then an angel appeared who gave me much needed assistance on the condition that the form of repayment not be to him personally, but to someone else whom I would find in similar circumstances.
You see, some of us like to be in someone else’s debt. But God’s direction is ‘forgive as you have been forgiven’ because forgiveness cannot be earned. Here Jacob (tearful and anxious) says of the presents he is offering “these are to find grace in the sight of my Lord”. But Esau waves them aside because he has enough and because Jacob is “my brother”.
Forgiveness cannot be earned. It can only be freely given. We forgive because we are forgiven and therein lies the spiritual kinship which we have with all people.
III. Forgiveness is Grace
When you think about it, forgiveness may be one of the great miracles of the universe for it cannot be explained in the terms of cause and effect. When someone slaps you in the face, the natural reaction is not to turn the other cheek. Forgiveness is not natural but revenge is and so from the code of Hammurabi onward our legal canons have tried to control the natural impulses of humankind toward vengeful actions.
Therefore, the only conclusion which can be rendered is that forgiveness is grace. Forgiveness is that which we receive but don’t deserve, which comes from the heart of God. God doesn’t love people because of who they are, but because of who God is.
We have such a tough time with forgiveness because it’s just not natural and it’s not natural simply because people aren’t very Godly. And so we have had to depend upon God to set the cycle of forgiveness in motion through Jesus Christ.
You hear the words of the Assurance of Pardon “in Jesus Christ we are forgiven”. Do you believe it? No! You don’t believe it. You don’t believe it even a little bit. You are constitutionally unable to believe it until you have experienced it for yourselves.
It was shortly after my 16th birthday (the age when manhood is awarded in the state of Washington with a driver’s license) when my dad purchased the first new car he had ever owned. It was a 1959 Tahiti Coral Studebaker Lark, complete with a hill holder for those treacherous Seattle inclines.
As the newest driver in the family I begged for the opportunity to take that car out for a spin to show it off to my friends. I was allowed to do that but was instructed not to go too far. Well I went no further than my girlfriend’s house and after seeing every sight in the city of Seattle that we could think up on such short notice, we returned to her house. I confidently turned the wheel over to her to allow her to practice her parallel parking in anticipation of her own driver’s test in a few weeks. However, her practice had not yet achieved a state of perfection, which meant that she caught the side of another car and ran a crease the entire length of my father’s new Tahiti Coral Studebaker Lark.
When I returned home, I felt that I was naked in the street. There was no defense attorney good enough to get me out of this one. My only hope was that the flogging would be just short of death because my dad was not known for forgiveness, and I had just violated his prize possession.
Well you know the end of the story because forgiveness is unnatural, particularly when punishment is so richly deserved. But I will never forget my dad looking at me and saying simply, “Son, we all make mistakes.”
That is when I learned that forgiveness is “Grace”. That is when I learned that while forgiveness may be an attribute of God’s, it is also a gift of God to the likes of us.
Not to forgive is to set yourself above God. Not to forgive is to allow a hidden cancer to eat away at your soul.
People who cannot forgive are sad people. They live in the past; they cultivate feelings which are relics; they relive events with the intensity and artificialness of a soap opera. All the while the world passes them by because other people do not understand.
My friends, believe the good news of the Gospel. “In Jesus Christ we are forgiven,” and so we are called to be God’s forgiving people. Be a forgiving people for God’s sake and for your sake. Amen.