FORGIVENESS UNLIMITED

When I left the Isle of Man, I suspected that there would be a number of people who I had met who I would never hear of again. One of those was Robin Oake who for much of our time there was the Chief Constable of the Isle of Man Constabulary. Before you get excited about a possibly colourful past, I had better disabuse you. My dealings with Robin Oake were strictly on areas of Christian activity. During my first year in Kirk Michael he was involved in supporting a number of meetings at the Methodist Church which were organised by a Christian body to whom we let the church out. I also served with him on Walk Isle of Man. I can’t say that I was close to him but I appreciated that he was a very sincere man who was as straight as a dye.

It was whilst in Cambridge that I heard of a policeman who had been stabbed to death in Manchester. Even the name Stephen Oake failed to register with me but what caught my eye was reading of Robin who turned out to be Stephen’s father, in a tearful interview spoke of how he was praying that God would help him forgive his son’s killer. In subsequent interviews, Robin Oake has spoken of praying for the killer of his sin, a killer who is now serving a life sentence. Had I never met Robin Oake, the cynic in me could easily have thought that what I read was just words but I know enough of this man to know that he who has suffered a terrible loss, is sincere in his belief that following Christ leads him to express forgiveness even to one who has taken from him a much loved son.

Today is the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York. I guess that most of us can remember the moment when we heard what had happened. In my case I was popping into a shop to buy computer ink cartridges. My first instinct was to visit a nearby member of one of my churches and together we sat in silence watching as events unfurled.

In the years that have followed, there have been two wars, further terrorist outrages and we seem more ready to excuse torture than was the case in the past. Whilst there are those with whom it is difficult to envisage dialogue, I think that we are moving more and more to a polarised world in which polarisation are getting ever larger. A while ago I watched a short film which suggested that;

Terrorism is bred in
Fear
Anger
Hatred.

Terrorism creates in the people against whom it is aimed;
Fear
Anger
Hatred in otherwise peaceful people

Retaliation creates;
Fear
Anger
Hatred in innocent people who suffer from such retaliation

And of course terrorism is bred in such
Fear
Anger
Hatred

In other words, a cycle of hatred and violence is self perpetuating and it is an ever increasing circle in its scope. And I would add that what is true regarding nations is also true of families and communities.

No wonder Mahatma Gandhi expressed the view that “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” originally devised as a means of keeping conflict within proportionality, ultimately leads to a world of blind and toothless people.

And so we come to the words of Jesus. Jesus is clearly in favour of breaking the cycle. His disciples want to know how many times they should forgive those who wrong them. Is seven times enough? But Jesus isn’t into their numbers game. He comes up with the unbelievably high formula of seventy times seven. In other words, Jesus suggests that there is no limit but that there is a calling to go on and on forgiving. In a sense Jesus turns upside down all our notion of common sense and the expert’s view of statecraft.

But we all know that forgiveness is at times a tall order. I think of my mother’s cousin who was a prisoner in a Japanese prisoner of war camp for a lengthy period of time. I am told that when he returned home after the war, neither his mother or girl friend recognised him at first. Having never talked about the war with him, I do not know if he ever forgave his captors or even the nation that did such wrongs to him. I can’t but think it would have been asking a lot of him.

And then I think of Simon Wiesenthal the Jewish prisoner of the Nazis who later became famous for hunting down Nazi war criminals. He wrote a moving book entitled “ The Sunflower.” It tells of his time as a prisoner and of his encounter with a dying SS soldier. He was brought to this man who had but hours left to live and listened to the man’s story of having been involved in a massacre of Jews. The soldier knew he had done wrong and wished the forgiveness of a Jew. Wiesenthal listened patiently to the man and even provided him with water. However, the request for forgiveness was something that Wiesenthal could not respond positively to in part at least due to the Jewish understanding that one can only forgive what has been done against oneself as opposed to others. So in silence he rose and left the man.

Some might take another view. An example is Bud Welch. He lost his daughter in the Oklahoma bombing. For a time he was consumed with bitterness. But then he recalled how his daughter had so passionately opposed the death penalty and had told him before her death that it never solved things for the victims. So he began to speak out against executions and even visited the killer Timothy Mc Veigh’s father and did everything he could to oppose the execution which ultimately took place.

For indeed one of the problems with holding on to grudges is that they can consume us. Nelson Mandela served 27 years in gaol. Some time after his release, he met with the then President Clinton. Clinton had one big question which he wanted t put. It concerned a look on Mandela’s face as he walked to the gate of the prison. Clinton saw upon Mandela’s face a look of anger and hatred which he couldn’t reconcile with the Mandela who he was now meeting and who he knew had taken great steps for reconciliation. In response to the question, Mandela explained that he thought of all that had happened to his family and friends in those years before adding;
Then, I sensed an inner voice saying to me, "Nelson! For twenty seven years you were their prisoner but you were always a free man! Don’t allow them to make you into a free man, only to turn you into their prisoner."

And in a real way we can learn from those words. For bitterness can only enslave us and prevent us from being the people that God wishes us to be, the people who reflect his love and peace.

But it is inevitably hard. Corrie ten Boom knew how hard it was. She spent years in Ravensbruck Concentration camp where unspeakable horrors took place. There her own sister Betsy was among those who died. In 1947, whilst speaking in Munich, one of the cruellest guards at Ravensbruck approached her. He told her how he had become a Christian and that he knew he had God’s forgiveness but he wanted to hear hers as well. In that moment she just could not reach out to this man and so she prayed for God’s help and ultimately she was able to fully forgive this man who had done such wrong to her and so many others.

So are there limits to forgiveness. With God, the answer is No! But what of us? Well, surely forgiveness to be real has to be sought by the wrongdoer. It is not about our forgetting what has happened or our assuming that the person couldn’t have done better. It is about recognising the wrongdoer as someone capable of moral actions even if they have acted immorally. It is necessary that they sincerely seek forgiveness and it is that sincerity rather than the scope of the wrong done that should be the gate to forgiveness. For nations I suspect that what is needed is the resolve for reconciliation and an ability not to simply demonise as increasingly is being done against the wider community of Islam. We certainly need to desist from judging others by their worse moments or we might be judged harshly on the same basis.

More and more I sense that in our world there is a tendency to dehumanise others with all the horrible consequences that such involves. Against such a background, I suggest we need to treat seriously the countercultural teaching of Jesus.
AMEN

This sermon was preached at the evening service at Northam on September 11th