I just returned from providing emergency critical
incident services to a plant where its employees were told that their site was
closing and their jobs were moving out of state.
The initial response of the people was shock,
disbelief, anger and mistrust. Many of these highly skilled workers have served
their company for over 25 years, They are machinists and engineers who design,
mode and produce medical devices like heart pacemakers.
Jesus was no stranger to the fact that bad things
happen to good people. In fact, this often happens more than once. So what’s
should our response be? Initially, no matter how pious or unholy we think some
people deserve a watery grave. Nine times out of ten, we know the names of the
people who cause us the greatest hurts in life—most of the time they are also
people who at one time or another we called our friends and who we may well
call “friend” again in the future!
The probability that we will be hurt by one another
even in the community of faith is high and ongoing. Bummer!
But Jesus makes clear that it can never be for the
sake of revenge alone that we confront those who hurt us. Our hope is
restoration that the offender repents, but our next job is to get
off our high horse of confrontation and forgive this person, letting the
matter drop for good.
What’s more, that posture of forgiveness needs to be
true even for repeat offenders who do the same thing to you over and over and
over. And let’s be honest, the people whom we know and maybe even love
who hurt us tend to inflict the same hurt repeatedly across the years.
“Why is she ALWAYS like that?” we ask about a mother-in-law, a sister, a
friend, a coworker. And the little adverb “always” is apt: those who criticize
you for your weight, for your clothing, for the kind of car you drive, for your
work habits.
“Keep on forgiving," Jesus says. But the
disciples reply, “Fine, Lord. We can do that just as soon as you increase
our faith.” We know, I think, where that request came
from. There is more than a hint of an attitude of “Yeah right!”
behind this. Jesus was the Son of God in the flesh. Easy for HIM to
talk. As someone once said, God forgives wholesale but most of us
muddle through on the retail level of forgiveness. God is a five-star
general of forgiveness whereas the rest of us are mere lance corporals.
But Jesus doesn’t let it go at that. Instead
he reaches for a bit of good old gospel hyperbole—“the smallest faith in the
world can tell trees to walk." You’ve got more faith than that right now
so don’t go telling me that you don’t have enough in your faith tank to forgive
someone seven times in a row.”
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that we
realize that we already possess the seeds of forgiveness. So forgive corporate,
forgive your neighbors, forgive your in-laws and let your faith forgive those
who have hurt you as God has
forgiven us.
