May 17, 1998

We're talking this month about practical, down-to-earth ways of impacting the lives of others with the power of the resurrection of Jesus. How can we touch the hearts of the people we live with, and others, with the new life of Jesus Christ?

Today, I want to invite you to explore with me what I would describe as a third art of Christian practice. Over the last two Sundays, we've taken up the art of Christian friendship, and the art of Christian nurture. Today, our subject is the art of Christian forgiveness.

As I was doing some research on this subject of forgiveness, I ran an internet search on the word. In the first, preliminary pass, Alta Vista discovered more than 300,000 documents on this topic. Seems to me that forgiveness is a subject of great interest to people. Among the documents I found was an Associated Press article entitled "Families Of Unbearable Tragedies Turn To Forgiveness." Its a wonderful, hopeful piece that tells the true stories of a minister, a mother, a steelworker and an attorney whose lives were deeply injured and forever altered by the actions of others. The article refers to them as "...ordinary people who lived in unendurable pain. Until they stopped it with an extraordinary act: forgiveness."

And there are some of us, and there are people we know, and there are people we will meet in the months ahead, whose lives have been torn apart by the careless, irresponsible, and sometimes deliberate actions of others. People who live in the tragic shadow of sins committed against them. People whose only path to wholeness and health may well be through the gate of forgiveness.

But let me caution you. Among the same 300,000 documents I found was one with a fascinating title. It was called "The Sin of Forgiveness". This article caught my attention for two reasons. One was the clever turning of the phrase the forgiveness of sin into an entirely different meaning just by changing the position of the words. The sin of forgiveness. That caught my eye. Could there be such a thing as the sin...of forgiveness?

But what also struck me about the article was that I sort of know the author - a fellow by the name of Frank Fitzpatrick. Frank was the person who, over a period of many years, came to grips with the ugly reality of having been sexually abused as a child by Father James Porter, a priest at St. Mary's Church in North Attleboro, Massachusetts. And when Frank decided to do something about it, it turned out he wasn't alone. Dozens and dozens of other now-grown men from whom Father Porter had stolen the innocence of childhood, and in many cases, the chance of healthy lives in the future, stepped forward. Included among them were people Sandy and I knew from the fifteen years we spent in North Attleboro, including one very dear and close friend. And I understand why Frank Fitzpatrick used the title "The Sin of Forgiveness."

You see, everyone knew what was going on with Father Porter, including some of the parents of these children. But intimidated by the patriarchal authority of the church, and not wanting to make trouble or ruin Father Porter's life, they took a course that they thought was forgiveness. They simply asked that Father Porter be moved from the parish. So the Bishop removed him.

And sent him to another church. And there, Father Porter did the same thing to other children. When the new series of assaults were discovered, he was sent to a church-run center for sexual deviates. After undergoing the treatment program, Father Porter was released...and assigned to another parish where yet more children were abused.

Well, years later, through the efforts of Frank Fitzpatrick and others, the terrible reality of Father Porter's deeds became known, along with the tragic complicity of local parishes, parents, and Bishops. Charges were filed in Massachusetts and Father Porter was extradited to face trial. He was convicted on all counts, and now resides at Walpole State Prison - the state's maximum-security facility - where he will remain for the rest of his life.

But strangely enough, Frank Fitzpatrick still gets anonymous letters from people stating that, if he was truly a Christian, he would have found it in his heart to simply forgive Father Porter and not gone on to ruin the poor man's life.

And that's what led Frank Fitzpatrick to call his article what he called it. The sin of forgiveness. You see, believing they were acting out of Christian love, everyone along the way HAD forgiven Father Porter, and in so doing, they had unleashed and empowered a sexual predator who went on to destroy the lives of even more children.

The forgiveness of sins. The sin of forgiveness.

One can bring the power of resurrection and new life. The other can literally destroy people.

Do you know the difference between the two?

I think the first step in learning the art of Christian forgiveness is to root ourselves in Scripture and discover how God forgives. The little letter of First John is full of insight about this. Listen to verses 8 and 9 in Chapter 1:

This passage follows a familiar New Testament pattern in its teaching about forgiveness. There are three crucial elements. The first is accountability.

Contrary to secular belief, and perhaps even popular belief among Christians, forgiveness is not about excusing people for the bad things they do.

One night, when I was a child, we were sitting around the dinner table having supper when my father got very upset about something. I don't remember what it was about, but what I do remember is that, at one point, my father slammed his fist down on the table. The fork he was holding went airborne with the force of the blow and went whizzing right past my mother's head. It ended up stuck - prong first - in the window shade across the kitchen. Someone could have been killed or badly injured.

Now, the way we handled this in our family was to understand that dad had a bad temper. You just had to accept that about my dad, and learn to live with it. When he got mad, the best thing you could do was just get out of the way. It was just the way he was.

Many of us think that forgiveness means we have to excuse the irresponsible and hurtful behaviors of other people because "that's just the way they are." So a woman tolerates an abusive husband. A man accepts a racist friend. A parent overlooks the irresponsibility of a child. Or we sit there and just absorb it while professional critic Aunt Martha comes to visit and makes us feel like our lives are worth dirt, or even less. We even give her a kiss on the cheek when she leaves. After all, her thoughtless, destructive behavior is just the way she is.

Many of us feel that the Christian thing to do is to forgive these people and their actions, and the way we do it is by excusing their sin. We let them get away with it because it's just the way they are. But excusing sin is not forgiveness.

Neither is forgiveness minimizing the hurt inflicted upon us. How well I remember a woman whose husband had cheated on her. He'd been caught, and came back to her on bended knee, begging for forgiveness. Well, she took him back, but things quickly turned sour in the relationship. He became quite upset that she wasn't able to let go of her anger and mistrust of him. He insisted they go to counseling where he poured out his soul about how she needed to forgive and forget so they could get on with their lives. Fortunately, their highly skilled counselor was able to help them both see that what underlay this sad and conflicted relationship was a literal mountain of unresolved hurt that had been inflicted upon the woman by her husband's betrayal. And finally, in a moment of utter and transparent truth, she glared at her husband across the office and said with gut-wrenching emotion, "You have no idea what you did to me. You have no idea of how you hurt me! You have no idea of how much I hate you for what you did to me!" And it was here, where both she and he faced up to the depth of the wounds he'd inflicted, that the faint beginnings of forgiveness became possible, and healing eventually came.

You see, forgiveness is not telling another person that its okay they hurt you. Forgiveness is not ignoring the pain of inflicted sin or pretending that it will just go away. Forgiveness never minimizes the injuries suffered by people.

So, if forgiveness does not excuse the other person, and if forgiveness does not minimize the hurt, what does forgiveness do?

Well, forgiveness holds people accountable for their actions. First John says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us..."

So forgiveness can only begin when a person recognizes that what they've done is wrong, and that its hurt someone, and that the injury is real and has serious consequences that cannot be excused or minimized.

And you and I, in practicing the art of Christian forgiveness, need to learn to speak the truth in love. There are people we encounter over the course of our lives who struggle with relationships broken as a result of their own misdeeds. One of the greatest gifts a friend can give another is the gift of helping them become accountable for what they've done. And I'm not saying this is easy to do. I'm saying it's important to do.

The first element in the art of Christian forgiveness is accountability.

The second element is confession. First John teaches, "If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive our sins..."

If it is true that God forgives us when we sincerely confess our sins, then its important to learn that confession is vital to both our granting forgiveness to others, and our receiving forgiveness from others.

A woman named Kate - one of the subjects of the Associated Press article - became absolutely furious when her husband - without her knowledge - invited her estranged mother to stay with them over Christmas. When Kate was growing up in poverty in a small Canadian town, this alcoholic mother of hers used to beat Kate with regularity. No amount of bruises on Kate's face the next morning would elicit any remorse from her mother who simply accused Kate of lying when confronted with the truth.

When Kate left home at age 20 and started her own family, she never looked back. She left her mother forever. But now, after the birth of her fourth child, her husband Mike made this surprise Christmas-time attempt at reconciliation. And Kate was very angry.

It was a terribly strained time. Kate sensed that there were moments when her mother wanted to tell her something, but she was determined to not give her mother the opportunity. She just couldn't wait until her mother left. In fact, she even refused to accompany her mother to the airport when the day finally arrived.

It was just at the moment of her mother walking out the door that the woman suddenly turned to Kate and, with tears rolling down her cheeks, blurted out, "Can you ever forgive me for what I did to you over all those years?" And all at once, Kate's heart began to pound and her inner emotions began to churn, and Kate began to weep uncontrollably. "It was what I'd waited a lifetime to hear," says Kate. And she goes on to say, "That point was the beginning of a healing process that was an absolute miracle."

Forgiveness came slowly, Kate says. It took her years to trust her mother enough to let her be alone with her own children. But there was healing, and it began with her mother's admission that what she'd done was wrong, and her acknowledging of how deeply she'd hurt and injured her daughter.

You and I need to learn to say we're sorry. We need to learn to admit guilt. And you and I need to learn to gently encourage people whose lives are littered with broken relationships to admit where they're wrong. Christian forgiveness begins with accountability, and then it requires honest confession. Only then can the tiny first stages of healing begin.

And then, there's a third element of Christian forgiveness. We might call it spiritual change.

You see, Christian forgiveness is not just a relational tool. It is not just a psychological technique. Christian forgiveness is, ultimately, a miraculous act of healing that God carries out through us.

When a person becomes accountable for the harm they've done, and confesses their sin to the one who was injured, the third element in the art of Christian forgiveness is to seek God's grace to heal others of the wounds we've inflicted, and to change us into better people.

I don't want to leave the story of my father's anger and rage at the point where that old fork is still sticking in the window shade in the kitchen of our house on Calumet Avenue. The truth is that, some time later, my father opened his heart to Jesus Christ, and committed himself to the Christian Way. He became accountable for his inability to control his anger, and sought God's help to change him.

I'll always remember how my dad's temper tantrums used to get him thrown out of just about very basketball game he ever coached in. Oh, Bobby Knight is cool, calm and collected compared with my dad.

But neither will I forget the day after one of those games he'd been thrown out of. I could overhear him in the other room, making a telephone call. I heard him speak the name of the referee who'd thrown him out of the game. And, for the first time in my life, I heard my dad make an apology. And somehow I knew that, little by little by little, my dad was changing.

By the power of God.

And you see, that's the ultimate reality of Christian forgiveness. Through the power of the resurrection of Jesus, God is able to change people's lives. Those who have been injured can begin the journey toward healing. Those who inflict hurt can be transformed into better people who give life to others. And even though the relationship may never be reclaimed, at least the people involved can move ahead with their lives through the power of Jesus Christ.

But it takes accountability, confession, and trust in the power of God to change people's lives.

Both those who've been hurt. And those who've inflicted it.

As I look out at our world today, it seems to me that Frank Fitzpatrick is right. There is too much of the sin of forgiveness being practiced out there.

And there is such great need for the forgiveness of sin.

Dear friends, go this week to where you live, and ask God to help you practice the art of Christian forgiveness!