Most
of you here know that I am very involved in the Kairos Prison Ministry of South
Carolina. That involvement includes both the inside weekends where we minister
to women at Leath Correctional and outside weekends where we minister to women
whose lives are impacted by incarceration at a retreat weekend at Table Rock.
At a Kairos Outside weekend, the guests and team get to participate in a
forgiveness service on Saturday evening. That service is candlelit and there is
often soft music playing in the background. When the women enter the chapel,
they see a table with photos of their loved ones on it, a bowl of water where
their forgiveness lists will be placed, and a wall of bricks near the cross. On
further inspection, one sees that the bricks have words on them: words such as,
anger, depression, fear, hatred, and unforgiveness. The forgiveness service
includes an opportunity for each of the guests and team members to hear a short
story called “The Wall,” and then to walk to the wall of bricks, choose one,
and take it and lay it at the foot of the cross. This action symbolizes the
need to lay down that burden with God’s help. At one weekend, when the service
had come to an end, I was walking out with a young woman, who looked
plaintively at me and said, “I didn’t get to put all my burdens at the foot of
the cross.” I, in turn, asked her if she would like to go back to the wall and
choose another brick. She indicated that she would, so I walked with her and
stood there as witness while she chose the brick of anger, the brick of fear,
and the brick of self-complacency to lay at the foot of the cross. As she
hugged me, tears were streaming from both our eyes, and I knew she was leaving
a lot of stuff there for God to deal with—and that she was walking away with a
new sense of freedom.
In today’s Gospel lesson, the lesson
for the last Sunday of Pentecost or Christ the King Sunday, we hear an echo of
the Old Testament verse from Jeremiah that says, “I will forgive their sins and
will no longer remember their wrongs.” Jesus says, “Forgive them for they know
not what they are doing.” Jesus has been through the major part of the Passion
by the time this scene comes—he has been tried before Pilate, whipped by Roman
soldiers, crowned with thorns, and made to carry his cross to the place of
execution. And now he hangs publically exposed and dying a slow, painful death.
And, yet, he offered forgiveness.
But exactly what is forgiveness? What
does it look like? Feel like? And what is it not like? It is a tremendously
important and essential part of the Christian life, and Jesus tells us that
without forgiveness of others, we will perish in our own sins.
So, here is what I think forgiveness
really boils down to. When you feel that someone is your enemy or when you
simply feel that you or someone you care about has been wronged, forgiveness
means that there’s really no revenge involved in the equation. That means not
returning evil for evil. It may also mean doing something good for this
so-called enemy—to grieve when they grieve and to pray for their welfare—and it
means coming to their aid when they are in distress. It also means praying that
their hearts will be turned. Most importantly, though it means that we seek
reconciliation in as much as we can.
When we forgive, we enter a new way of
relating with the person who has offended us. It can be risky doing this. It
requires becoming vulnerable to the other person, and when we become
vulnerable, we sometimes get hurt. This new relationship involves long-term work.
Please understand, however, that your first responsibility is to seek safety
for yourself and anyone else who is being harmed. You can defend and protect
yourself. Once you are safe, then and only then do you begin to work on
forgiveness.
Forgiving our Christian brothers and
sisters is hard—it smarts, so to speak, and tests our capacity for being full
of pride. Forgiving one’s own brothers or sisters may be even more difficult.
Perhaps like me, you had one of those pesky siblings who stole your toys when
you were younger, and attempted to steal the affection of your parents by
ratting you out when something went wrong between the two of you—I actually had
three of those pesky siblings!
It’s also not too unlike the famous
parable Jesus told of the Prodigal Son where the older brother could not bring
himself to forgive his younger brother for what happened between them even
while the father forgave the son and welcomed him back.
If you’ve ever wondered when and where
you should forgive someone, well here’s the answer: Jesus forgave from the
cross. Jesus forgave while in excruciating pain—he forgave those who put him
there as well as all humankind for our ignorance and lack of trust in a God who
puts our sins behind him and makes us new. In fact, “as far as the east is from
the west, so far does he remove our sins from us.”
If we look again at today’s Gospel
lesson, we see Jesus forgiving even a condemned criminal. Jesus is crucified
between two men who are thieves, and according to one of them, they are
“getting what they deserve.” But Jesus forgave them regardless of their
offenses. Like Jesus the Kairos prison ministry teaches forgiveness. It is an
international ministry that reaches out to men in eleven institutions in the
state of South Carolina, the women’s correctional facilities in Greenwood and
Columbia, and to “free” women whose lives are impacted by incarceration through
the Kairos Outside program.
Last month, I worked with a team of
other women who went inside the prison for a three-day weekend to take the
message of the Gospel to those women the chaplain had selected to attend the
weekend. She told us that she had selected a particularly difficult case load
for this weekend, so we didn’t really know what we were going to find when we
began the program. Regardless of any difficulties, one cannot go into a prison
to do this kind of ministry unless one is willing to bear the message of
forgiveness to the residents.
I was privileged to be able to give a
series of talks at this weekend on how I have experienced forgiveness in my own
life, and I was also privileged to represent you, my brothers and sisters, in
that role. I only wish you could have seen what I saw in the faces of women whose
lives were changed when they experienced God’s grace and learned the importance
of forgiveness.
Jesus forgave from the cross. He was
under great duress and was even being taunted by one of those hanging there
with him. And yet, he forgave. The cross is truth. Life is hard because love is
hard; yet, Jesus forgave from the cross.
But what are some things that
forgiveness does not include? First of all, forgiveness does not include a lack
of anger. If you spent your childhood in an abusive situation, you are not
expected to feel good about what happened. If you were in a marriage where you
struggled to get along with your partner, you are not expected to have
submitted to the rage and anger another expressed toward you. Anger against sin
and its horrible consequences is fitting up to a point. But you don’t need to
hold on to that anger in a vindictive way that desires harm for the one who
hurt you. There are actually two things you can do in this kind of tough
situation: you can hand the person over to God again and again, and you can
pray for that person’s transformation. Forgiveness does not mean feeling good
about horrible things.
Secondly, a lack of forgiveness does not
include a free emotional ride, so to speak. When forgiveness is not present
there are consequences. Perhaps you, too, have been deeply hurt by someone in
your family. Perhaps you have been hurt on a job or by someone you considered a
dear friend. Often the consequences of not forgiving mean a deep loss—a loss
that scars us for life. It is only through forgiveness that the wounds of such
relationships can be healed.
Imagine, if you will, what it is like
for some of the women who reside at Leath Correctional. While some of the women
have rather short sentences, there are those who have sentences as long as
forty-five years. The consequences of not forgiving—of holding on to the anger,
hate, and the feeling of being treated unjustly—only causes a sentence like
that one to be even more devastating.
On the other hand, once a woman in
prison has had a Kairos experience and comes to grips with forgiving herself
and others, she can become a disciple of Christ inside the walls of the
prison—a place that desperately needs people who are living a Christ-like life.
She has to put down those bricks at the foot of the cross, and let go of all
the anger and hate in order to be filled with the Spirit, just as we do on the
outside. For those women who have shorter sentences, there is a greater chance
of them making it on the outside since there is a 10% recidivism rate for
Kairos participants compared to as high as 38% for non-participants. They just
don’t return to prison like those who have not experienced Kairos.
The Kairos Outside which I just
participated in last weekend is like the Inside weekend in several ways. The
women who come to the Outside weekend could have a husband, a son, a father, a
daughter, or another kinsperson or friend in prison. They come to the weekend to
learn how their own involvement in the lives of the incarcerated has impacted
them and the ones they love. They also have an opportunity to forgive both the
incarcerated and to forgive themselves while at the weekend, all the time
experiencing the love of Jesus through the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Richard Rohr, Director of the Center
for Contemplation and Action, describes forgiveness as an act of letting go.
When we forgive, we do not forget the harm someone caused or say that it does
not matter. But we release bitterness and hatred, freeing ourselves to move on
and make choices grounded in our strength rather than victimization.
Forgiveness opens our closed hearts to give and receive love fully.
But if you’re thinking forgiveness is
too difficult, there really is some good news here. There are very concrete
steps one can take to reach forgiveness of another and to bring reconciliation
to a conflict with a brother or sister. Author and retreat leader, Jack
Kornfield, offers a wonderful meditative practice of forgiveness. By sitting
quietly and comfortably and breathing naturally, we can feel all the barriers
that have been erected and the emotions that we have carried because we have
not forgiven—not forgiven ourselves, not forgiven others. We can feel the pain
of keeping our hearts closed. But we can also ask and extend forgiveness through
times of meditation, letting the images and feelings that come up grow deeper
as we experience them.
Nadia Bolz-Weber says, “When I have to
forgive myself, I have to hear, and feel, and recognize my own pain.” Until we
forgive ourselves, we suffer emotionally, physically, and in other ways, but it
is that suffering that can fuel forgiveness. You are not the only one who feels
like the only one.
From the cross, Jesus said, “Forgive
them, for they know not what they are doing.” We are called to be Christ’s
body, to be a healing, forgiving community, to restore the brokenness of this
world. All we have to do is to show up, put down those bricks, receive that
forgiveness and live into it. This means to forgive those who have hurt us…, to
ask forgiveness from those whom we have hurt…, and to forgive ourselves as
well. Amen.
