Forgiveness and Mercy in a world devoid of both

Forgiveness and Mercy in a world utterly devoid of both

I can still vividly recall the first time we experienced Forgiveness Vespers and the rite of forgiveness that followed…at the time we were still very much still working through whether we wished to convert as a couple or not – I was convinced fairly early on, but as a couple and a family we were still working it out. The Rite of Forgiveness really struck us.  We really had no words to express what we experienced that evening – except to perhaps say: Wow, that was really amazing, we were deeply moved by it. As I recall, when we sat down into our car to leave we almost simultaneously asked each other: “Okay so when are we going to convert?”

The Church, in her wisdom – guided by the Holy Spirit – insists that we begin Lent with forgiveness. We must not discount the importance of this, just as surely as we must not discount the various other themes given to us on the other Sundays leading towards Lent. Now, it may seem initially that the service makes little sense: after all, many of us may feel we have not committed some offense against anyone else here at Holy Resurrection, why do I need to ask forgiveness? Or I hold no grudge against someone here for what they did or said to me – why do they need my forgiveness? Well, we’ll consider this as we go.

Forgiveness is a tough one, however as we heard in the Gospel this morning, we are commanded to forgive. And NOT just in today’s Gospel, but in many other places, our Lord makes it clear that your salvation is wrapped up with your ability to forgive. We’re told simply that if God can forgive, so can….so must you. Do we not affirm this each time we say the Lord’s Prayer: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In other words, if you don’t forgive; you aren’t forgiven. They go hand in hand. It’s plainly stated.

These days, in order for us Americans (with our sense of rugged individualism) to make sense of forgiveness, we turn to psychological health to suggest that only through forgiveness can we find freedom from the hurt someone has done to us….if we do not forgive, we go on suffering and hurting ourselves. And so you see, forgiveness frees YOU from a burden, it makes YOU feel better, it liberates YOU from the power of the bad person who wronged and who goes on wronging you as long as you let unforgiveness fester in your heart. There is truth to this, for sure, but is that really the motivation behind or the understanding of forgiveness as taught by our Lord? Is this what our Lord meant when He said to forgive our enemies…nay to LOVE our enemies, and to do good to those who wish us ill? Is this what our Lord meant when He prayed from the cross: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do?”

Now think about that for a moment – on the surface, it doesn’t even make sense: those people who spat on Him, who cursed Him, who scourged Him, beat Him, who killed Him – they knew they were torturing a man. And they weren’t stupid, they knew that this execution was largely political and unjust. So when Jesus asks the Father to forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing, I think this goes to something far deeper than that they just didn’t know who Jesus truly was. Rather, even us here and now likely have no idea how vast and weighted our actions are – even the smallest of them. A word spoken in anger, a simple kind gesture, an act of charity, offering forgiveness, withholding forgiveness – we cannot say what far reaching effects these may have, not only on other individuals but even the universe. On that Holy Friday 2000 years ago, those people who were crucifying our Lord: Could they have known the incredible and paradoxical role that they were playing in the salvation of the universe?

I liken it to “chaos theory” which is the concept that extremely complex systems can be radically influenced by very minor – seemingly insignificant – inputs. We popularly hear of the “Butterfly effect” which is drawn from a mathematician’s paper titled: “Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?” It may seem absurd, but we know there is truth to the idea and indeed I believe this is also true of our own actions and their role in the world around us. Fr. Stephen Freeman – whose blog I read regularly and I highly recommend -  wrote this: “ ‘You don’t know what you have or have not done. But it is commonly understood in Orthodoxy that “each person is responsible for the sins of the whole world.” Our lives are deeply connected—we are never uninvolved in the lives of others. What I have done and what I have not done both effect the lives of the whole world. A child dies on the other side of the world. I may have had no direct hand in the death, and yet I cannot excuse myself as if I have no share in what happens everywhere. The world is as we make it.”

And we bring either light or darkness into the world by our actions. We either contribute to the refuse that festers here and manifests all manner of horrors and suffering throughout the world, or by God’s grace, our acts serve to purify the refuse in this world and to manifest instead love and forgiveness. Joy, even.

In the same article Fr. Stephen writes: “Forgiveness and unforgiveness are not private matters….My refusal to forgive is a force for evil in this world – binding both myself and others around me. It may not be an intentional binding – but bind it will. In the same manner, forgiveness is the introduction of Paradise into this world – both for myself and for others around me. Whether I intend it or not, Paradise comes as a fruit of such love.”

Now beware – everything in this modern world is bent of dissuading you from this outlook, this mindset of forgiveness. I am reminded of CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters:  And I can almost hear the voice of Uncle Screwtape advising the demon in charge of your demise: “Yes, keep them looking outward….out at all the evil in the world. Keep them focused on all the media and internet content that perpetually parades the evils of ‘those people out there’ who we need to be diligently aware of and who we need to warn the rest of the world about…our family….our friends...keep them focused on all of those people who are trying to pervert the world….America…whatever you do, do not allow them time to contemplate their own interior life….their own failings….keep them convinced that all the evil to be worried about is ‘out there.’” But I must WAKE UP – it’s ME, it’s ME who is polluting this world….with every little snap of anger, with every little act of selfishness, with every failure to love and…. with every ignored opportunity to forgive and to ask for forgiveness….for every opportunity to show mercy that is left undone…we create a cascade of darkness that are like ripples in a pond, we do not know what tornado it may unleash.

As Fr. Stephen notes, forgiveness is the means of loosening the knot, of untangling the web, the snuffing out of at least one chain reaction of darkness cascading in the world around us.

The rite of forgiveness that we will be doing tonight is an opportunity for me to stand before all of you….opened arms…and to say: ”It’s me, here I am broken and sinful and *I* am responsible for darkness in this world….not “them” out there, but me.” And I NEED your forgiveness. Just as you need mine. Indeed, the whole world needs forgiveness. It is desperate for it, but unable to find it. For you see:

When the world is offended by whatever transgression it may consider as such, we have unending ways to cancel, to elicit “justice”, to exact revenge…to finger point and blame, but we have nothing….NOTHING in the public spehere that offers forgiveness and mercy There is no rite, no ceremony, no venue, no pathway for a person to find their way back into a culture, community or society whose moral principles have been transgressed. Further, in this world there is no sense of the deeper truth of our failings….of our sins…of our connectedness and the affects that both good and evil have upon all of creation. Put simply the world is a tyrant and has little to no mercy and healing to offer – only judgement. Isn’t that ironic.

 Tonight’s vespers and the rite of forgiveness that follows is an absolute treasure, brothers and sisters. It is a healing balm for this world which we have made so sick and infirm. It is a small lit candle in an oblivious darkness. It is a sliver of hope amid hopelessness. I would beg that we all make every effort to participate…to experience this taste of paradise.

In Dostevksy’s wonderful novel “The Brothers Karamazov” , he includes a portion in which the Elder Zosima tells a story about his brother Markel who is dying of tuberculosis as a teenager. His brother was an insufferable atheist, but as the elder relates, something changed in him and I wish to read it for you this morning:

Three days passed and Holy Week had come. And on Tuesday morning my brother began going to church. “I am doing this simply for your sake, mother, to please and comfort you,” he said. My mother wept with joy and grief. “His end must be near,” she thought, “if there's such a change in him.” But he was not able to go to church long, he took to his bed, so he had to confess and take the sacrament at home.

It was a late Easter, and the days were bright, fine, and full of fragrance. I remember he used to cough all night and sleep badly, but in the morning he dressed and tried to sit up in an arm-chair. That's how I remember him sitting, sweet and gentle, smiling, his face bright and joyous, in spite of his illness. A marvelous change passed over him, his spirit seemed transformed. The old nurse would come in and say, “Let me light the lamp before the holy image, my dear.” And once he would not have allowed it and would have blown it out.

“Light it, light it, dear, I was a wretch to have prevented you doing it. You are praying when you light the lamp, and I am praying when I rejoice seeing you. So we are praying to the same God.”

Those words seemed strange to us, and mother would go to her room and weep, but when she went in to him she wiped her eyes and looked cheerful. “Mother, don't weep, darling,” he would say, “I've long to live yet, long to rejoice with you, and life is glad and joyful.”

“Ah, dear boy, how can you talk of joy when you lie feverish at night, coughing as though you would tear yourself to pieces.”

“Don't cry, mother,” he would answer, “life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but refuse to see it, if we would, we should have heaven on earth the next day.”

Every one wondered at his words, he spoke so strangely and positively; we were all touched and wept. Friends came to see us. “Dear ones,” he would say to them, “what have I done that you should love me so, how can you love any one like me, and how was it I did not know, I did not appreciate it before?”

When the servants came in to him he would say continually, “Dear, kind people, why are you doing so much for me, do I deserve to be waited on? If it were God's will for me to live, I would wait on you, for all men should wait on one another.”

Mother shook her head as she listened. “My darling, it's your illness makes you talk like that.”

“Mother, darling,” he would say, “there must be servants and masters, but if so I will be the servant of my servants, the same as they are to me. And another thing, mother, every one of us has sinned against all men, and I more than any.”

Mother positively smiled at that, smiled through her tears. “Why, how could you have sinned against all men, more than all? Robbers and murderers have done that, but what sin have you committed yet, that you hold yourself more guilty than all?”

“Mother, little heart of mine,” he said (he had begun using such strange caressing words at that time), “little heart of mine, my joy, believe me, every one is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything. I don't know how to explain it to you, but I feel it is so, painfully even. And how is it we went on then living, getting angry and not knowing?”

So he would get up every day, more and more sweet and joyous and full of love. When the doctor, an old German called Eisenschmidt, came:

“Well, doctor, have I another day in this world?” he would ask, joking.

“You'll live many days yet,” the doctor would answer, “and months and years too.”

“Months and years!” he would exclaim. “Why reckon the days? One day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dear ones, why do we quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each other? Let's go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate, and kiss each other, and glorify life.”

“Your son cannot last long,” the doctor told my mother, as she accompanied him to the door. “The disease is affecting his brain.”

The windows of his room looked out into the garden, and our garden was a shady one, with old trees in it which were coming into bud. The first birds of spring were flitting in the branches, chirruping and singing at the windows. And looking at them and admiring them, he began suddenly begging their forgiveness too: “Birds of heaven, happy birds, forgive me, for I have sinned against you too.” None of us could understand that at the time, but he shed tears of joy. “Yes,” he said, “there was such a glory of God all about me: birds, trees, meadows, sky; only I lived in shame and dishonored it all and did not notice the beauty and glory.”

“You take too many sins on yourself,” mother used to say, weeping.

“Mother, darling, it's for joy, not for grief I am crying. Though I can't explain it to you, I like to humble myself before them, for I don't know how to love them enough. If I have sinned against every one, yet all forgive me, too, and that's heaven. Am I not in heaven now?”

Later Elder Zosima would explain further:

“My brother asked the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless, but it is right; for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be happier at your side -- a little happier, anyway -- and children and all animals, if you were nobler than you are now. It's all like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds too, consumed by an all-embracing love, in a sort of transport, and pray that they too will forgive you your sin. Treasure this ecstasy, however senseless it may seem to men.”

Whether you able or unable to be here for the rite of forgiveness tonight, for the Christian, forgiveness is more than just a single act….no….it is a way of life. A way of being. It is the recognition of our role in the spiritual pollution of this world. Markel’s mother told him that he took too much of the sins upon himself – and yes, let us be clear, we cannot allow this to result in despair – but the exact opposite. Markel is filled with joy, not grief. Yes, an awareness of our own sinfulness, but also a profound awareness of God’s incalculable mercy and that we too can participate in that mercy for ourselves and for the world around us. And it should fill us with joy – giving and receiving forgiveness….even the forgiveness of the birds who we do not know how to love enough. This madness, this act of rebellion, this revolution is what this world so desperately needs.

Glory to Jesus Christ.