Mid-Week Lent Series - When Church Hurts #5

(Part 4 was special guest David Milgaard.)

Today is five weeks since Ash Wednesday. For a little more than a month we have been learning to acknowledge that church is a place where leaders appointed by God have the power to hurt us, just as King David hurt Uriah and Bathsheba and the entire kingdom under his care. We learned that we have three responses to being hurt––fight, flight, and freeze, as we saw the disciples do after Judas betrayed Jesus, and that these responses can hurt others in turn. We heard from the prophet Ezekiel that we live within a long history of religious leaders who could not or would not meet our needs, who did not live according to our shared values, and whose neglect has caused suffering.

At the same time, we have heard that God does not desire that we hurt, and indeed judges those who inflict pain; God challenged David to see the hurt he had committed and to repent. We have heard that when we are betrayed, God takes all our brokenness into God’s self; when we have hurt others because we have ourselves been hurt, God holds all of our broken edges into God’s hands. And we have heard that when we are abandoned and in need, God searches for us and gathers us up, and gives us rest and and healing and feeds us with justice.

Over the last five weeks, we have acknowledged our pain, we have given our brokenness to God, we have reoriented ourselves to make God the one to whom we turn for our needs.

There is one more story of hurt to hear, though. This is the story of Joseph and his brothers. We know the hurt and betrayal pretty well––Joseph is the rather spoiled younger child of Jacob, and constantly brags to his older brothers about how special he is. His brothers get tired of his attitude, and kidnap him and sell him to slavers. Joseph ends up in jail in Egypt, and then rises to power to save Egypt from starving in a famine. And we know that Joseph’s brothers end up before him, on their knees just as he dreamt they would be, and that he helps them, and they all move down to Egypt to be with him.

The end of the story, however, doesn’t take place until decades later.

Genesis 50:15-21

What do you notice?

• the brothers are still afraid (the ones who do wrong are afraid of the one they wronged)
• They try to manipulate Joseph into forgiving them “your father said forgive us”
• there is a lot of weeping
• can be a sign of repentance
• Joseph repented of his youthful behaviour? that it caused that rift?
• can be a sign of mutual vulnerability
• the brothers finally ask for forgiveness and confess that they committed a “crime” (the first time they actually confess)

Some people find it easy to forgive - it seems to come naturally to them. You might know people who are quick to let bygones be bygones and they really do mean it. When a white supremacist killed nine African-Americans at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston in 2015, the daughter of one of the victims, Nadine Collier, said to the murderer in court, “I forgive you. You took something very precious from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never, ever hold her again. But I forgive you.” When another white supremacist killed fifty Muslims in New Zealand a few months ago, the husband of one of the victims, Farid Ahmed, said, “I lost my wife, but I don’t hate the killer. As a person I love him. .. I think somewhere along in his life maybe he was hurt but he could not translate that hurt into a positive manner. I have forgiven him and I’m praying for him that God will guide him.” These people know that forgiveness is what brings healing in the midst of pain. They know that not forgiving traps us in suffering, and so they actively choose healing.

But not everybody can do that. Some people have been hurt so deeply, or so often that forgiveness seems impossible. Sometimes the one who has hurt us is not in the least repentant, and we wonder how we can forgive. Doesn’t forgiveness require repentance? Isn’t forgiveness about reconciliation and justice, both of which need a proper apology?

Did you notice what Joseph said when his brothers fell before him? He said, “Am I in the place of God?” Ultimately, it is God who forgives. We know now that when we are betrayed, God is also betrayed. When our religious values and relationships are broken, God is also sinned against. We feel our own pain; God feels the combined pain of each one of us.

And yet God is the great forgiver. And God forgives where we cannot. In the crucifixion of Jesus, we hear him say, “Father, forgive them.” He doesn’t say, “I forgive you,” which he certainly could have done. I wonder if maybe in that moment, in the excruciating pain of dying, he was unable to forgive. But he knew that God would, and so he asked his Father to forgive on his behalf.

We are not compelled or obligated to forgive. God’s forgiveness of us does not rest on our forgiveness of others. God forgives us completely and God forgives us first. Certainly, Jesus calls us to forgive, because of the new life it gives us in the here and now, and if you are able to forgive, I encourage you to walk that path, for your own well-being. But if you aren’t able to forgive and you are troubled by that, know that God is the great forgiver, the one who forgives when we cannot. God is the only one who can truly balance both justice and mercy, the only one who can turn harm into healing.

And so, finally, for our last experience this Lent, I invite you — if the Holy Spirit moves you to — to take the white strip you got at the beginning of the service and use the marker to write down the name of someone who has caused hurt in church that you would like God to forgive. Maybe you’ve already forgiven this person, and you want to be clear with yourself about that. But maybe you haven’t forgiven this person, you find that you just can’t do that yet, but you know that you want God to forgive them. Write their name down. Whomever you would like God to forgive — and it’s possible that that person is yourself — write them down. As many names as you would like.

And if you are not in a place yet to even want forgiveness for a person who’s hurt you, that’s okay too. Forgiving someone, or even wanting God to forgive them, can sometimes take a very long time. It took decades for the brothers to seek out Joseph’s forgiveness. Take your strip home, and when you are ready, feel free to use it at home, whenever that may be.

After you’ve done that, when you’re ready (if you’re ready), I invite you to bring the names forward to the font. Take a moment to commend those people to God’s forgiveness, and then wash the strip in the waters of our baptism. Through baptism into Christ, God accomplishes complete forgiveness, especially where we cannot. I invite you to follow the lead of the Holy Spirit and let go of those who have caused hurt in the church and give them over to God, who is both merciful and just, and who promises Easter wholeness for all.

We are coming to the end of our walk through the darkness of Lent. I am thankful to God for the presence of the Holy Spirit among us these last five weeks. I pray that these weeks have been a time of blessing and healing for you, and that you have been able to experience that:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.