For more than a decade, I was much involved in “The Marriage Movement,” an effort to diminish divorce by helping couples learn communication and conflict resolution skills. One big part of that effort turned out to be skills for asking for and giving forgiveness. Often, the people we find hardest to give forgiveness to or ask forgiveness from are those in our families. The love we seek, need, and do not always find in families often makes forgiveness in families a hard, hard thing.
When I was working on a list of skill steps for forgiveness within the Relationship Enhancement® model which I use and teach, Ron McClain, a marriage education activist in Fresno, California, identified a critical step: fire the attorney in your head! He saw that there is a mental piece to forgiveness that is often overlooked. That step is the habit WE ALL HAVE when there is serious damage to a relationship of having a prosecuting or defense attorney in our head who argues and argues and argues our case for us, convincing us again and again of the wrong done to us (the prosecuting attorney) OR of the understandability of why we did what we did that offended the other (the defense attorney).
Today’s readings call us to forgive…and to ask to be forgiven. The necessity for forgiveness given and received is such a part of our humanity that God literally integrates it within the story of the human family all the way through Scriptures—beginning with Genesis 3.
Forgiveness stops evil in its tracks….but, oh my, it is hard to do! Today I will combine some information about HOW to practice forgiveness with a discussion of our readings.
Sirach 27:30-28:7
You might remember that Sirach is part of the Hebrew Wisdom Literature. Written in the 2nd century BCE, it focuses on WHY live by God’s ways and God’s Law. Today’s selection shows that Ben Sirach, the author, could have been a contemporary psychologist. He knows people well: “Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.” Yep, that’s what we humans do! That’s what keeps the wrong done in the past ready to inflict additional pain in the present and the future.
Sirach then says what Jesus says in his parable: if you want to be forgiven for the wrongs you do, forgive those who wrong you.
Before you stop reading because you don’t want to think about how Jesus asks the impossible, let’s talk about some definitions.
Forgive does not mean reconcile. Reconciliation is a part of what happens when God forgives us, because God is pure Love and thus is always able to forgive and be reconciled with us. But, us humans are not pure love, and so sometimes reconciliation is not possible. It could be dangerous, if we are forgiving someone who has done violence to us. Or the person we are forgiving or asking forgiveness from could have died. Or the other person is not willing to be reconciled with us.
By God’s standards, reconciliation (literally being very close again) is not necessary, but letting go of the desire to hurt the other person back and seeing it as justified to diminish him/her, talk to others about the wrong done, and/or deny the other person any goodness in life IS necessary.
WHY? There is a secret contained in Sirach that contemporary psychology sustains: “Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord?”
More than 30 years of doing family therapy shows me the wisdom in that: there are limits to how much you can heal from childhood trauma, sexual abuse, physical abuse, couple infidelity, or anything else UNTIL you stop the conversations in your head by “firing your attorney.” You have to SAY NO when the thoughts come.
Now, honestly, that typically can’t happen until you have told your story and someone has listened to it with caring. It can’t happen until you are safe from an offender. Sometimes much more work is required. Nonetheless, at some point, we all need to give the past hurt to God and take the attorney in our head off our emotional payroll.
Then, full healing can happen. Evil inflicted is stopped with you. Your willingness to TRY to forgive enables you to let go and let God heal you.
Matthew 18:21-35
It is Peter who triggers the parable today. Peter, who has already said “You are the Christ,” who has already heard, “Upon you I will build my church” now hears he must forgive “seventy-seven times.” Seven is considered a “perfect number” in Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus means: Peter, you must forgive without stopping. There is NEVER a reason to hold on to the evil done to you in your heart.
Note, too, that forgiveness does not mean freedom from consequences. Peter was also told he has the right to hold people accountable for their sins. That would include sins done to him. Forgiveness does not necessarily include mercy or wiping the slate clean to start over. That might happen. But, by God’s standards it doesn’t have to.
The person forgiving just has to stop “drinking poison and expecting the other person to die,” as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And stopping the endless dialogue of the attorney in your head is a relatively simple way to do that. When the thoughts come, stop yourself. Say to the part of yourself that is acting as that attorney, “You are fired. Go! I stop listening to you now.” Then say to God, “God, here are my thoughts. Take them, and heal me.” Do it and do it and do it and do it until one day you notice that attorney hasn’t been around for a day or two.
That’s when God can begin to heal you. How will he do it? There are probably as many ways as there are people in the world. God is infinitely creative in helping people turn from hurt or even hate to let love flow freely through them again.
Romans 14:7-9
Forgiveness does not require that you FEEL differently. Forgiveness is an act of the will, not the emotions or the intellect. It is a choice you make. Sometimes, in my life, it has been a choice I have made in my will maybe more than “seventy-seven times.” It may be a choice you make to speak in confession “seventy-seven times.”
Making the choice to say “I forgive” is a choice to do exactly what Paul admonishes us to do this week: “None of us lives fore oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we lie for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For this is why Christ died and came to life, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”
When we forgive, we are letting Christ live in us.
Often, we need to forgive someone who hurt us long ago and who has died. We cannot hurt them now. They cannot do some new awful thing and hurt us. We are ALL the Lord’s. Say to Jesus, “Lord, I choose to forgive. Take away the memories that cause me to keep this attorney in my head on my emotional payroll. I now choose to fire him. Come now to me. Heal me.”
And Jesus will.
Prayer
“Lord, I choose to forgive. Take away the memories that cause me to keep an attorney in my head around what happened when…….(fill in the hurt that was done to you). I choose with my will to forgive ….. (fill in the person’s name). Take away the memories that cause me to continue to think about what happened. I choose now to decide to dismiss the blaming thoughts that come whenever they come as soon as I notice them. I choose to either tell the story of what happened one final time, then stop talking about it to others—or to stop now. I choose to do no more damage to …..(fill in the person’s name) in my head or my heart or my actions.
Perhaps add, “I cannot quite imagine completely letting go, but I ask you to take away what I cannot give away. Help me, heal me, Lord.”
