Sermon: Practicing Forgiveness

Kevin Block

Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

March 16, 2008

              For most of my life, I believed that I am one who forgives easily.  At times I have wondered if I was forgiving or simply forgetting.

              In his book, The Power of Kindness, Pierro Ferrucci sights scientific studies pertaining to the act of forgiving.  In the experiments the subjects were asked to remember past experiences of betrayal.  The subjects were being tested by various stress detecting machines that checked blood pressure, heart beat, muscle tension.  The people fell into two categories: either high or love forgivers.  The low forgivers had higher rates of stress and suffered more health problems.  The high forgivers suffered far few health-related illnesses and had much lower rates of anxiety and depression.

              In the past year and a half I have suffered from anxiety, depression and illness.  I have been sick three times more than any other year since childhood. When I focused on the cause of the depression, I could feel my body transforming…my blood pressure rising…tension.  You could see the sadness and anger emanating from my body.

              I asked to be here today to speak about forgiveness note because I feel as though I have the answers.  On the contrary.  I’m seeking.  My hope is that by reading and studying others’ experiences, I might find the gift I’m looking for.

              Dr. Martin Luther King said, “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.  Who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.  It is impossible even to begin the act of loving our enemies without the prior acceptance of necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us.  Only forgiveness could bring about lasting change.”  Was Dr. speaking only to the civil rights movement?  I think he is speaking to every one of us.

              There is an ancient eastern story that tells of a king who wanted everyone to call him “Luminous and Noble Divinity.”  He liked the name and wanted it.  One day he discovered there was one old man who refused to call him by that name.  The kind had the man brought before him and asked him “Why?”  The old man said, “Not out of rebellion or lack of respect, but simply because I do not see you that way.”  It would not be sincere.  For his sincerity, he paid a high price.  The king had the man locked in an awful prison for one year.  Then he brought the man before him one again: “Have you changed your mind?”  “I’m sorry, but I still don’t see you that way.”  Another year in the darkest prison and only bread and water.  He lost more weight but did not change his mind.

              The king was angry, yet also curious.  He decided to set the old man free and follow him in secret.  The man returned to his poor fisherman’s shack where he was greeted by his wife with great joy!  The two talked while the king listened in hiding.  The wife was furious with the king for taking her husband away for two years and for treating him so poorly.  But the old man was of a different mind.  “He is not as bad as you think,” he said.  “After all he is a good king.  He has looked after the poor, built roads and hospitals, made just laws…”  The king was impressed by the old man who bore him no grudge.  One the contrary, he could find the king’s virtues. 

The king felt a deep wave of bitter remorse.  Weeping, he came out of his hiding place and stood before the man and his wife: “I owe you a great apology.  Despite what I have done, you still do not hate me.”  The old man was surprised and said, “What I said was true, O Luminous and Noble Divinity.”  The king was astonished: “You called me ‘Luminous and Noble Divinity”; why?”  “Because you were able to ask for forgiveness,” said the old man.

These are two examples of wise and loving people.  But I’m not the leader of the civil rights movement, or a wise eastern philosopher.  But I’m still searching.

I have witnessed the negative aspects of my inability to forgive and to ask for forgiveness, as well as those close to me.

My younger brother died almost 10 years ago.  He had suffered kidney ailments his entire life.  He had three transplants and was on peritoneal dialysis at the time of his death.  My older brother and his wife were living with him at the time.  Both brothers were teachers, and it was the beginning of the school year.  My younger brother missed the first two days of school; he had just gotten out of the hospital with peritonitis, an extremely painful and dangerous infection.  My older brother went out with some co-workers for a bite to eat after work instead of heading right home.  We he returned home he found our brother unconscious on the floor.  He died in the hospital two days later.  The doctors said there was nothing anyone could have done.

My brother went into a deep depression that nearly destroyed his marriage.  It’s only been in the last two years that I’m able to speak Brian’s name with my older and to reminisce about old times.  For eight years my brother closed all his doors and drew his shades, unplugged the phone and refused to talk to anyone on the anniversary of Brian’s death.  All of this sadness because he blamed himself for not being there.  He is unable to forgive himself.

How is it that I’m able to see my bother’s need to forgive as well as my own, but I’m unable to achieve it?

Pierro Errucci said, “We cannot be kind while we carry the weight of our resentments nor while we remain too rigid to ask for forgiveness.  Nor if our emotions are colored by guilt or vindictiveness.”  He suggests that we try and look at the situation from a different perspective.  Imagine you’re walking down the street and someone comes up from behind you and knocks you down and then doesn’t stop to help.  Imagine how angry you would be.

But then imagine seeing the same scene from the top of a roof five stories up.  You see the accident, buildings, cars, trees…you see it all from a distance.  The accident looks different to you, maybe less serious.  We can do the same with our hurts, anxieties, obsessions.  We can learn to observe them from a distance.  Maybe that place is inside of us, our inner core where we are happy, healthy, strong…not weighed down by worry or weakened by fear. 

Each of us achieves finding this place in different ways: meditation, physical activity, helping the needy, prayer… I think every one of us has this inner core.  The difficulty I face is finding my way there when I’m sad or angry.  It’s difficult remembering that place does exist in me.

In the book The Power of Kindness, the author tells of a friend who used to ask people: “What is the most important thing in life?”  The answers fell within a predictable range—health, loving relationships, financial security—but they often came with an explanation, as if the person replying was not quite sure and wanted to justify the answer as well.

One day the author’s friend put the same question to her father.  They were in the kitchen.  He was making himself coffee.  The answer was simple, calm and spontaneous.  It needed no further comment.  “To forgive.”

The father was Jewish.  His entire family had been exterminated in the Holocaust.  The man later remarried and immigrated to Australia.  The only things he had left of his old life were photos that were stored in a tin box.  The photos were of people like you and me, completely unaware of the impending doom.

A photo of a little girl is most striking.  You look at it and you can imagine her going to school, playing, talking with her parents…a little girl who exists no more.  It’s difficult to understand how this man must have felt when he realized he had lost her, and with her his wife, his father, mother, brother, sister…his work, his home.  I have tried, but all I’ve managed in a blurred way is to imagine the horror of that time, the unbearable pain.

And yet this man is capable of forgiving.  Not only that, but he can single out forgiveness as the most important value in life.  More than the miracles of electronics, genetics, or any of the other responses from the author’s friends.  It is thanks to this man, to many others just like him, that we have not plunged totally into barbarism.