Henrietta United Church of Christ

Luke 6:35-38 February 8, 2004

Rev. David Inglis

Last Monday’s reading in Our Daily Bread cited an article in USA Today that talked about studies that tried to find out what factors contributed the most to happiness. Marilyn Elias summarized the findings: The happiest people surround themselves with family and friends, don’t care about keeping up with the Joneses next door, lose themselves in daily activities, and most important, forgive easily. Forgive easily? Can anyone really claim to forgive easily? I figure they must have found a few people who hadn’t been seriously hurt by anyone recently and put them in the category of A forgiving easily, which they would quickly jump out of as soon as they lost a child to a drunk driver or lost their trust to an unfaithful spouse.

The fact of the matter is, when you’re really, betrayed, cheated, exploited, violated, damaged or humiliated by someone, forgiveness is very, very hard. We might even say it’s humanly impossible, because it certainly takes something more than our human nature to make it happen. University of Michigan psychologist Christopher Peterson agrees that the ability to forgive others is the trait most strongly linked to happiness. He calls it A the queen of all virtues, and he says it’s A probably the hardest to come by.

So here’s the question. If being able to forgive is the thing that is most surely linked to our happiness, why is it the hardest thing for us to do? Don’t we want to be happy? Why can’t we just forgive and get happily on with our lives?

If we look at what happens when someone hurts us, we’ll find a curious thing. We’ll find that our ego deliberately choose other things over our own happiness. Check it out. Think of a time when someone has hurt you. Let’s observe what goes on inside us.

Sometimes the first thing that happens is that we wonder if we did something to deserve it. Maybe it’s our fault. It’s a healthy thing when our higher self tries to step back and look at things objectively and see if there’s a lesson to be learned from this pain. If you can do that at this point, more power to you. But on another level, your ego is grappling with a more urgent question: Am I a bad person or a good person? Some of you know what it’s like to translate pain into shame, and live in the debilitating belief that there’s something inherently wrong with you. That sets you up for getting into bad relationships and bad situations that serve to reinforce this belief that you’re an unworthy person.

Why would we choose such unhappiness for ourselves? Our ego finds safety in certainty. Our ego feels in control if it knows who it is and what to expect, even if it’s miserable. It feels on dangerous ground if it hopes for too much and risks getting cut down in disappointment. So our ego will sometimes choose misery over happiness to make it feel in control and protected from even worse pain. This is nothing to be ashamed of. Our ego is just doing its best to protect us.

Or maybe our self esteem has survived the mistreatment, and our ego concludes that we didn’t deserve this garbage that got dumped on us. That usually provokes us to feel vengeful. If I’m hurting, I want to make the other person hurt. If I’m humiliated, I want them to feel humiliated. Now, I’m well socialized, and besides, I’m a pastor, so I don’t allow myself to indulge in such outlets as crashing into the driver’s door if someone cuts me off in traffic, or torching someone’s business if they cheat me. I would never do such a thing. But would I think about doing such a thingB or worse? I’d better plead the Fifth on that before you start suspecting that your pastor is just a regular human being. But you see, that’s what regular human beings are biologically programmed to do. When we’re hurt or threatened, our adrenal glands swing into action and start pumping all kinds of supercharged hormones into our bloodstream that prepare our bodies for counterattack and flood our minds with violent thoughts. It’s literally a physiological reaction that happens, and nature has put it there for our survival. Having violent thoughts doesn’t mean you’re a violent person. It just means you’re a person.

But then our ego gets into the act. If your ego is like mine, one of the things it hates most is feeling powerless over somebody hurting me. Long after the painful incident is over, my ego remembers very well that feeling of powerlessness. It hates that feeling. So it tries to regain its sense of power by imagining all kinds of ways to hurt or destroy the one who hurt me. Do these fantasies keep triggering the same hormones that pump me up for attack? Yes. Do they poison my mind with sadistic violence? Yes? Do they poison my body with toxins that put stress on my digestion, heart, and muscles? Yes. Does this make me happy? NoB it locks me into a tiny prison cell of unhappiness with the very person I most fear and hate. Why do I do this to myself? Because my ego keeps believing that’s the only way to regain power. There is a climax of sweet victory in the fantasies, but then it dissipates and I have to start all over againB with the feeling of powerlessness. It doesn’t mean we’re evil. It just means we’re human, mired in misery we can’t seem to extract ourselves from.

Now maybe we’re too mature to run these childish fantasies of destructive revenge. Maybe our A enlightened ego secretly says, A Fine. So you’re making me into an innocent victim? Then that’s just what I’ll be. I’ll silently suffer. I’ll bleed. I’ll nobly give until there’s nothing left to give. Then you’ll finally notice and look with horror at what you’ve done to meB a pure and innocent victim. I don’t know how you will ever live with yourself when you see how I’ve suffered because of you. But, just as you’re about to go completely insane with remorse, I’ll forgive you, because I am so virtuous. Ha! Then you’ll really see who’s good and who’s evil, won’t you? Do you see how holy and morally superior this is compared to plain old vengeance?

Would we consider forgiving them and moving on with our lives before they writhe in guilt and plead for forgiveness? Are you kiddingB and let them off the hook that easily? The more we suffer, the more they’re sure to suffer with remorse. . . if only they would wake up. So again, our ego chooses to wallow in misery. Does this make us happy and free? No. But we sure can rack up a lot of self righteousness points, and our ego gladly settles for that.

Now by this time, I’m sure everyone here has concluded that I truly am a man of God, because I’ve somehow peered into the deepest, darkest, most secret recesses of your soul. But don’t worryB I’ve just peered into my own. At this level, we’re all pretty much the same, because we’ve all been endowed with self-serving egos.

Now we need our ego to help us function in this world, and our ego will always try to protect us, vindicate us or avenge us when we’re hurt or threatened. I suppose it’s their job. But true happiness eludes us, not because we have an ego, but because we identify ourselves with it. When we believe that we ourselves are a shameful creature, or a righteous avenger, or a noble innocent victim, and we live out that script in our relationships or over and over in our minds, that’s when we get locked in our own prison of unhappiness..

So let me suggest some ways we can unlock the door and find the path to freedom and joy.

Sometimes the first thing you need to do is to take constructive protective action. If the abuse or exploitation or mistreatment is continuing, you need to take action to stop it or remove yourself from it. Moving towards forgiveness doesn’t mean vengeance, but neither does it mean being a passive doormat. If you find a way to act on your own behalf like you would act toward anyone else you care about, by setting healthy boundaries or taking yourself out of harm’s way, you’ll be on the right track.

The second step might be to work on a process of healing. A festering wound keeps generating pain signals that keep triggering the ego’s futile attempts to deal with the pain. A festering wound needs to be opened up so it can be healed, and that usually means talking to a compassionate listener who can create a safe enough space for the pain to move on through you, releasing the corrosive toxins of hate, fear and shame.

Another step back to life is to re-establish the principle of justice that got violated when you got hurt. Forgiveness is sometimes mistaken for a kind of passive tolerance of evil, and that’s a dangerous mistake. Sometimes the offending person needs to be addressed about the injury. I know how hard it can be to tell the offending person that they hurt you. Who likes to admit that they’re vulnerable and in pain? Who thinks it’s fun to set yourself up for being rebuffed? But unless the offense is addressed, the principle that was violated remains violated, and that violation might be repeated. To keep the other person from putting on their armor and attacking you, you have to keep off your armor and truly invite their perspective as you share yours. If they refuse to communicate constructively, just remember it’s not really about you. It’s about themB their guilt, their fear of attack, their own hidden inadequacies and pain. You don’t have to be dependent on them for your sense of worth or validation. That’s already assured by your Creator, Redeemer, and Eternal Friend. They can never touch that. Only if you believe that they can hurt you will you perceive that they hurt you.

And even if the offending party is dead or unavailable, you can still move towards healing by honoring the principle that was violated. For example, a victim of childhood abuse can begin breaking the chains of shame that have bound her for years by saying, A What happened to me was wrong. I didn’t deserve that. That honors the principle of fairness. After David Koon’s daughter was murdered, he entered local politics to help work toward a community where this wouldn’t happen. That also honors that principle.

And this upholding of violated principles is an important step towards self forgiveness. Colleen Smith is the 22-year-old college student who had a baby last March, and stuffed it into a plastic bag and put the body in a dumpster. She told the court,

If those words are sincere, then Colleen is moving towards self forgiveness for one of the most unspeakable crimes one could commit.

Another important step towards life and happiness is humility, even when you have been unjustly wronged. The moment we stop identifying with our ego, we realize that we and the person who hurt us and all of us are just imperfect human beings who are struggling to make our way through life with the same kinds of insecurities and fears and needs. A All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, as Paul put it. We all make mistakes, hurt other people, and stand in need of forgiving grace.

And thank God we receive amazing grace, literally moment by moment. With every unearned breath and heartbeat, we are invited to let go of the past and enter into life anew. Each moment we are given the abundance of creation to sustain us, our powers of perception to enjoy it, our mental and physical abilities to be co-creators in it, each other to learn to love and be loved with, our faith to guide and sustain us, the promise of eternity to remind who and Whose we truly are, and divine forgiveness from a God whose nature is a gracious love that is beyond human understanding. These are the gifts God freely offers us every moment.

If we are identified with our wounded ego, forgiveness feels impossible, and happiness seems unattainable. But if we can move beyond our ego and awaken to our God-created, God-loved, God-redeemed self, forgiveness becomes natural, and joy follows just as naturally.

Over and over again, Jesus said that giving forgiveness and receiving forgiveness go hand in hand. In today’s scripture reading, he said, A Do not judge, and you will not be judged....Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. And at the center of the Lord’s Prayer is this prayer: A Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Neil Douglas-Klotz says that Jesus’ language of Aramaic suggests that this line could be translated, A Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt. The two go hand-in-hand, because it is the same hand that holds both cords.

So in the end, forgiveness becomes a decision to release the cords of resentment, vengeance or shame that keep us bound to our egos, to the other person and to the past, and let ourselves go free. Lewis Smedes said, A When you forgive somebody, you begin to dance instead of wallow. . . . You set a prisoner free, and the prisoner is you.

So is there a wound, an insult or an injury that is holding you back from the fullness of freedom and joy? If you are a human being, there probably is. But if you are a child of God, you have the eyes to see that it is not really the injury that’s holding you back from freedom and joy after all. It is you. And it is you who can let go, let God, and live.

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