Forgiveness

Lectionary reflections for the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany (C)

by Carter Heyward

Readings for Epiphany 7, Year C, Feb. 22, 2004

Genesis 45:3-11, 21-28

• Psalm 37:1-18
• I Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
• Luke 6:27-38

As I listened this week to the raging debate over same-sex marriage, a national and international “conversation” that is still young and building strength as a serious public issue, I felt alternately euphoric and furious. As a lesbian Christian priest who's been “out” for about 25 years and teaching theology courses on sexuality for even longer, the content of the debate is hardly new to me. Biblical, traditional, historical, psychological, personal, and political arguments all feel like old worn-out slippers, and yet I found this debate as riveting as ever. I was emotionally exhausted when it came to a temporary halt the other night so that Massachusetts legislators could go home to get some sleep.

What turns me on and shakes me up about the gay marriage conundrum, as well as the response to Gene Robinson's consecration [as Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire], is the depth of the passion stirred on all sides of “the gay issue,” a passion generated by real life experiences of love and joy, fear and confusion, violence and hatred, loss and grief. And it's no simple thing. It's not as if we queer Christians have all the love and joy and God on our side and those “others” have the fear and confusion and hatred. The making of justice-love (a term coined about a decade ago by Presbyterian ethicists Marvin M. Ellison and Sylvia Thorson-Smith) is always more complex than it appears to be to either the target group (in this case LGBT people) or the oppressor group (those struggling against gay marriage, gay ordination, gay civil rights, gay love, and gay justice).  

None of us on any side of any issue is a stranger to the sort of anger that festers into rage against forces we feel, or have come to assume, will hurt us, whether or not they will. Few of us, truth be known, are strangers to our own fear-based capacity to violate others if we think it will keep us safe from harm of whatever kind.

It's more complex than it seems because none of us, on any side of any issue, is a stranger to fear, which is often irrational and makes us crazy. None of us on any side of any issue is a stranger to the sort of anger that festers into rage against forces we feel, or have come to assume, will hurt us, whether or not they will. Few of us, truth be known, are strangers to our own fear-based capacity to violate others if we think it will keep us safe from harm of whatever kind. And we all – yes, even we queer folks –are violent, collectively and individually: We inflict physical wounds upon those we have come to fear or hate (remember that hatred is fear's first cousin). We exploit others economically. We batter one another, often those closest to us, emotionally. And we alienate, push away, and drive out those who are different from us spiritually. Churches – good old Episcopal parishes and countless other churches and spiritual communities – do this all the time. In short, we all sin, and we need forgiveness from one another, forgiveness in the Spirit of the One who forgives us before we ask, before we even know what we have done.

The gay/lesbian issue provides us an occasion to get a little spiritually clearer about our own sin – defined, let us be clear, not as sexual behavior (which, in gay and straight situations, may or may not be sinful) but as alienation from God. In the context of the struggle for gay rights, folks like me are the target group, and we have every reason to be angry at the fear and bashing, indeed the sin, that passes for love and justice. And we have good reason to be euphoric at the love and solidarity we tap among ourselves and friends and allies everywhere. But in a gazillion other contexts, white privileged folks like me and my people carry banners of sin – fear, exclusivity, indifference and exploitation – without batting an eye.  

This moral conundrum which we share on planet earth – often as the target/victim of injustice, often as the oppressor/perpetrator of violence – is the context in which Jesus invites us to practice forgiveness: “Judge not, and you will not be judged. Condemn not, and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven,” he tells his disciples in Luke 6:37.

In the story of Joseph (Genesis 45), we are met by a brother who forgives his brothers who earlier had sold him into slavery. In every situation, before we can understand what forgiveness involves, we must understand who has the social (political, economic, physical) power in the story, the power to direct the outcome of the story. In this case, Joseph is in the power-position when he encounters his brothers. He has power over them and can treat them as he wishes.

Throughout history, in all situations, this is an easier, privileged, position from which to forgive those who have wronged us – when we ourselves, at last, have the power no longer to be violated by them. In this power-position, not only does Joseph welcome his errant brothers back into his life; he tells them not to be angry at themselves. It's much like the story of the meeting in the 1980s between Sandinista Minister of the Interior Tomas Borge and his former torturer, when the Nicaraguan government minister came upon the torturer in prison. The prisoner is said to have trembled upon seeing Borge approach and asked, “What are you going to do to me? What is your revenge?” Borge is said to have offered the man his hand and said, “I forgive you. That is my revenge.”  

Such stories as these, about Joseph and Tomas Borge, convey a stunning spiritual strength. But they don't give us much help in understanding how we might forgive the leaders of a nation or a terrorist movement, or those who fight against making justice-love for queer people, or anyone who wields power over us and others. Whenever we are in a relatively powerless position – and gay people seeking the civil right to civil marriage is an example – our forgiveness requires several “steps”:

Like an alcoholic's willingness to be open to the possibility of not drinking today, our willingness to be open to forgiving those who someday may seek our forgiveness is often a stretch, psychologically and spiritually. It is also a major, critical step in the long process of learning to forgive our enemies.

• Humility : We are mindful of our own capacity to sin, to violate others, and of our actual ongoing participation in the sins of the world. Humility is what brings us down to earth and we see that we share the earth with all sorts and conditions of humans and other creatures.
• Willingness to forgive : This may be the hardest part for most of us because it requires us to imagine making right relation with those who are violating us and others. Like an alcoholic's willingness to be open to the possibility of not drinking today, our willingness to be open to forgiving those who someday may seek our forgiveness is often a stretch, psychologically and spiritually. It is also a major, critical step in the long process of learning to forgive our enemies.
• Patience : Dorothee Soelle spoke of “revolutionary patience” and that is certainly what we need in order to wait for the Spirit to soften the heart of the enemy and, if not in this generation, then in the next, or the next. We need the patience, willingness, and humility to be ready to welcome our brothers and sisters home.   However cruel they may have been, whatever violence they may have generated, they are our sisters and brothers in God and we are theirs.

The Rev. I. Carter Heyward is the Howard Chandler Robbins Professor of Theology at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. She is author of Saving Jesus from Those Who Are Right and God in the Balance: Christian Spirituality in Times of Terror , among other books. Heyward was a member of the “Philadelphia 11,” the first women ordained in the Episcopal Church. She has been a long-time contributor to The Witness , and may be reached by email at carterheyward@aol.com .