THE PSALMS: A WORD OF FORGIVENESS
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
February 17, 2002 The First Sunday of Lent
Psalm 32
In Walker Percy’s novel, Love in the Ruins, we meet Dr. Thomas More, a descendant of the Renaissance saint whose name he bears. We discover that More is a physician who cannot heal himself. The death by cancer of his teenaged daughter, Samantha, has lead him into a life of despair, a life in which he has had little patience with what he sees as our culture’s secular and religious emptiness. But eventually an unwelcome truth breaks in upon him about his own life. He discovers that his faults are even worse that the culture’s. Feasting upon his own remorse and anger, he had refused to take his daughter to the shrine at Lourdes with its healing waters. He now realizes that it was his dread of deliverance rather than his fear of failure that kept him from doing so. In his words: “I was afraid she might be cured. What then? Suppose you ask God for a miracle and God says, yes. How do you live the rest of your life?”
An interesting question. Could it be that we hold onto our pain, our grief, our anger, resentment and guilt, that we resist God’s mercy and forgiveness, because such mercy and forgiveness can be downright terrifying? What if God forgives me, what if God frees me, what if God heals me, what if God enables me to forgive and free others…then what will I do? I’ve gotten so used to living with my pain and my guilt, its pretty comfortable. I’m not sure I would know what to do with myself without it. God’s terrifying mercy. Do we really want to let it in?
Many of you have asked about my recent trip to Phoenix to see my parents. And as always, it was good to see them, and as always, it was difficult to be with them. Mother is increasingly weak, suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. She is probably in bed 75% of the time. My father is her only caregiver and it seemed to me it is getting more and more difficult for him – he seemed more discouraged. He spends many long, lonely days in that house. But along with the illness and its many frustrations and challenges, which certainly many of you have known as well, there is something else in my parent’s home. It hangs in the air – you can almost taste it. I know it because I carry a measure of it in my heart each day. I’m talking about anger, grief, and guilt, mostly, guilt, I think. All related to my sister’s death, now almost six years ago. When I am with my parents it is as if time has stopped – all the emotions seem as strong as they were the day after Sheri died. There seems to have been no healing. The words of the Psalmist haunt me as I think about my family, especially my mother – “While I kept silent, my body wasted away.” Why can’t they let some of it go? Why so much silence? Why so little forgiveness? Why can’t they – I should include myself- why can’t we forgive ourselves? At times, our life together is poisoned by so much guilt. I should have made Sheri go to the doctor sooner. I should have gone to her house and physically taken her for another check-up. I should have visited more often. I should have ignored her excuses. I should have…I should have…. So damned hard to let it go…so hard to let it go, to forgive ourselves.
A number of years ago a man named Charles Cannon was sentenced to prison. At the time, he was calling himself the “Archbishop of the Church of the New Octave.” He was the only person who actually knew what that was! When the judge reminded him of his long-standing criminal record, Cannon insisted that he could remember none of it. God had forgiven him, he said, and erased every memory of the past.
Now that’s convenient! I suppose that is always a danger whenever we talk about forgiving ourselves. It can sound like a cheap trick to avoid responsibility, to avoid making things right between me and someone I have wronged. Not hard for self-forgiveness to quickly degenerate into making excuses for myself and my bad behavior. Again, very convenient, but hardly Biblical. Let’s return to the Psalmist, “Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity.” He knows the past cannot be rewritten, it cannot be changed; in that sense it cannot be wholly be forgotten. No cheap grace here. He knows he has messed up – has shattered a relationship, has hurt another, has been far less than the person God has called him to be. No excuses – no easy rationalizations. “I did not hide my iniquity.”
And my experience is that we are far more like the Psalmist than Mr. Charles Cannon. Forgiving ourselves does not come easily or cheaply. When thinking of something we did – or didn’t do – that we regret, how often do we begin with words such as – “I should have…I wish I had…Why didn’t I….” “If only I could have yesterday back, then things would be different.” Tomorrow is so often colored by our regrets for yesterday. I think of Kris Kristofferson singing about Bobbie McGee: “And I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday.” . But we never get yesterday back. Again, it cannot be rewritten, it cannot be changed. But it can sure eat us up – the guilt, the regret, the torment.
I’ve told you this story before; a man had this beautiful pear tree over the years he’d cared for it, nurtured it. It was a wonderful tree there in his front yard. And every year, late in the summer it rewarded his efforts with wonderful fruit. He loved it; the neighbors loved it, all sharing in the bounty of this beautiful tree. One night, late in the summer, there was a terrible storm. The man went out the next morning and there was his beloved tree flat on the ground. Neighbors came, everyone mourning the lose of this beautiful tree, knowing how upset the man must be. Finally someone said, “Now what are you going to do?” The man said simply, “What can I do? I am going to pick the good fruit and burn the rest.”
At times, that is all we can do. Pick the good fruit and let go of the rest. We need not remain locked in bondage to what was. The Psalmist again, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin…Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven.” The Psalmist comes to the realization of what that great old preacher Carlyle Marney used to call “original salvation”; not original sin, “original salvation”. Which is to say that from the very beginning we are loved and cared for by one who has the power to forgive us and even heal our memories, whose healing love we can take with us as we reflect back on all our painful struggles, who still speaks to us the word, “Neither do I condemn you…” And with an awareness of this original salvation, there is hope that we can begin to make peace with life, with the past – how incredibly good of God to still give me life after all I have done. Always God is trying to unravel us from our preoccupation with our grief and guilt and pain, inviting us to turn over to God all this difficult and excess baggage in our lives, so that we might be ready to travel more lightly, more hopefully, into the future.
But that brings us back to where I began. Do we want that? Are we ready for such a terrifying mercy, a mercy that allows us no escape? No excuses? Sometimes I think God’s condemnation is easier to deal with than God’s forgiveness. Liberating people, setting them free, giving them release from bondage are central themes throughout the Bible and indeed are at the very heart of what Jesus said and did. But do we want that? Do I want it? Does my family want it…that freedom, that release? Sometimes it is easier to hold on to the pain, the guilt, rather than to get on with that “wonderful, ordinary, business of living.” Sometimes we’d rather stay locked into yesterday, wasting away, “groaning all day long,” basically saying, “I don’t even want new life, I don’t deserve new life.” Finally, the choice is ours. But know this; no matter what, God still will not abandon us – we may wish God would, but he won’t. Always God is ready with the possibility of new life, new hope, right here on earth; ready with the offer of forgiveness and love…in spite of everything.
Recall that moment when Michelangelo saw, in a builder’s yard, a lump of marble, stained, misshapen, unattractive, cast aside. He said to the builder, “Take that to my workshop. There’s an angel imprisoned in that marble and I can set it free.” And he did. The angel was his heroic statue of David. And so it is that in every person there is an angel waiting to be set free. And if we are willing, we have a loving God who wants to do just that for each of us.
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