The Power of Forgiveness
Erev Yom Kippur 5772
Rabbi David Greenspoon
Adat Chaim Congregation
To the Reader: The introduction to this sermon is graphic. I purposefully introduced these remarks by recognizing that fact, and identifying the title of the sermon. That way, the listener knew to hear beyond the immediate story for the important theme. I offer the same advice to those who will be reading this sermon online.
Imagine standing outside, enjoying a nice spring day with friends when a bullet slams into your leg. In the next second, you see another bullet slam into the face of a friend, and then feel several bullets rip into your own chest for a total of up to 13 bullet hits to your body. Down on the ground out of the side of your eye, you see someone walk over and shoot yet someone else you know. In the panic that ensues, others run over you in their haste to escape the hail of deadly lead in the air. The horror of the immediate moment is exceeded over the months to come. You undergo a recovery that requires an initial hospital stay of two months, multiple surgeries, and the anguish of having tubes thrust down your throat and tubes placed in your side. You are 16 years old, your name is Mark Taylor, it is April 20, 1999 and you are a three-week new student at Columbine High School. Your school has just become a massacre site at the hands of your fellow students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
Over the years Taylor’s life would take some remarkable turns. At 22 he appeared in Michael Moore’s film, Bowling for Columbine. The result of the film in part is that K-Mart stopped selling handgun ammunition. That year he also wrote a book with the title I Asked, God Answered A Columbine Miracle. It is about forgiveness. He has forgiven shooters Harris and Dylan Klebold and their families. He has talked to gang members and Vietnam veterans about forgiveness. He said he especially remembers the Vietnam vets who have spent 30 years blaming the government for the friends they lost. It was his empathy for Eric Harris which led him to testify in Congress about the dangers of certain anti-depressant drugs for teens, which now must carry warnings not only about suicide ideation, but also homicidal ideation.
Let’s move a little closer to home with another story from Amish country in Nickel Mines, PA. Five years ago this week on October 2, 2006, Charles Carl Roberts IV entered an Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pa., and shot 10 girls — mortally wounding five — before killing himself. This quiet, rural community in Lancaster County suddenly became a place of jarring contrasts: violence amid peaceful people, hordes of satellite trucks in a place that prefers manual technology, outsiders invading a close-knit community.
L. Gregory Jones is a professor of theology at Duke Divinity School, and writes on the theme of forgiveness. He recently wrote about the impact of this horrific experience on the Amish community. Jones suggests that the most striking feature of the Amish community was the nearly immediate forgiveness they expressed to the Roberts family. Contrast that with a larger American society and its readiness to assign blame in an instant. This forgiveness was not offered in a prepared statement, delivered by lawyers or news crews, but forgiveness lived in person, from one human being to another. This was not cheap forgiveness offered as a form of pardon. Had the shooter lived, they would have advocated punishment for his actions, even as they offered forgiveness as a way of living into the future. But because of their commitment to acts of forgiveness they attended Mr. Roberts' funeral. Further, they have apportioned some of the approximately $4 million their community received from well-wishers as a gift for the Roberts family. This financial support is specifically underscored with a special concern for the shooter's children.
Jones writes that the specifics of the Amish response are rooted in their Christian faith, and the nature of their Amish community. Even so, the Amish offer universally applicable lessons I’d like for us to consider this evening.
First, they recognize that forgiveness is an ongoing process, not an event. The decision to offer forgiveness may have occurred immediately, but the emotional and healing processes that accompany that decision take time. One of the Amish fathers was recently reflecting over the last five years. He said, “I have learned that healing is possible. And that it is not yet finished.”
Second, forgiveness emerges most authentically out of a community's way of life. The whole Amish community expressed a commitment to forgiveness with such immediacy and completeness that it was shocking to those outside their community. This was not a contrived response mandated by some town meeting or edict. It was the authentic, ingrained, natural response of a community that values forgiveness, and knows how to live it on a daily basis.
Third, forgiveness and healing are discovered by reaching out to others. Amish families have discovered this in relationships forged with the Roberts family. Even more, members of the Nickel Mines community have engaged the wider world in new ways. They have welcomed delegations from around the world who are struggling to recover from their own tragedies. Surprisingly, given their rootedness, members of the Nickel Mines community have traveled to Virginia Tech and to a community in New Hampshire to offer support and encouragement in the wake of tragedies. On the trip to New Hampshire, Terri Roberts, the shooter's mother, accompanied the Amish parents to bear witness to the possibilities for new life and new relationships in the wake of a tragedy's brokenness and divisions.
Finally, laughter is healing. As time has passed, the Amish community has discovered that laughter heals and offers hope. It took one Amish couple almost two years to be able to find laughter again, but once they did they discovered they had made a significant turn in their healing.
The particularly Christian expression of the Amish community at Nickel Mines is affirmed by more secular experts as well. What follows is closely patterned after the writings of Dr. Sidney B. Simon and Suzanne Simon, in Forgiveness: How To Make Peace With Your Past And Get On With Your Life. Even so, much of it is purely my rabbinic take on the topic. With that caveat, let’s start with understanding what forgiveness is not.
Forgiveness is not forgetting. We are imbued with the power of memory. Sometimes it would be nice if there was a selective “erase” mechanism for it, but there isn’t. We cannot turn back the clock. While we cannot forget, we can learn; our painful experiences can become springboards for being better in the future.
Forgiveness is not condoning. When we forgive, we do not minimize the effect that someone has had on us. We must recognize we have been hurt; otherwise we cannot truly forgive someone for the pain or harm they have caused us.
Forgiveness is not absolution. Accountability and forgiveness are not the same things. One can commit crimes, serve jail time and have been held accountable, yet done nothing to warrant forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not a form of self-sacrifice. It is not gritting our teeth and tolerating harm from others. It’s not “playing nice” or being a martyr pretending all is well when in truth all might be hell. Forgiveness is absolute; either it happens all the way or it doesn’t. Being honest that we are not yet ready to forgive is far better for us than pretending to forgive.
Forgiveness is not a clear-cut, one-time decision. It is what happens naturally as a result of confronting painful past experiences and healing old wounds.
That having been said, let’s reframe our thoughts to examine what forgiveness is.
Forgiveness is a byproduct of an ongoing healing process. Many people grew up with the belief that forgiveness was an act to be performed, or an attitude to possess, and our inability to forgive was due to inadequate effort on our part. The reality is that we cannot forgive other people who have hurt us if we have not yet healed the wounds they have caused us. And here’s the real kicker. We only find that point when we can completely move beyond the need for retribution. Only when we don’t need for them to make it up to us is when we can forgive people for the hurt they have caused.
Forgiveness is a sign of positive self esteem. We can forgive only when we feel good about ourselves. We can do that only when we have moved past any sense of victimhood. We will never feel good about ourselves so long as we insist on being hurt. There is no room for both of those emotions. Either we’re whole (even if battered and maybe even badly bent), or we’re broken. When we can let go of the pain from our past and the anger, fear, bitterness and resentfulness that comes with it, then we can explore the option of forgiveness. What has happened to us in the past is only given an afterlife if we allow it. Our pasts do not have to dictate our futures. We can feel good about ourselves, despite what our pasts might hold.
Forgiveness is recognizing the need to avoid the toxicity of resentment. I was introduced to this phrase in the writings of Dr. Twersky. We can let go of our hatred and self-pity. We don’t need them to rationalize our failures, nor do we need them to hurt the people who have hurt us. We do not need our grudges to define us. In his article, Twersky cites a patient as follows: “I came to realize that hanging on to anger was not affecting the people who hurt me. They don’t have headaches, indigestion, or insomnia. I do. Why should I suffer because of their wrong behavior? So I just stopped thinking about them and my anger evaporated. Hanging onto resentment is akin to letting people you don’t like live rent-free inside your head without paying rent. I’m not the kind of person to let people do that, so I evicted them from my head.”
Forgiveness is no longer wanting to punish the people who hurt us. It’s no longer wanting to get even or to have them suffer as much as we did. It is realizing that we can never “even the score” and it is the inner peace we feel when we stop trying to.
Forgiveness is accepting that nothing we do to punish them will heal us. It is becoming aware of what we did because we were hurt, and how these attitudes and behaviors have also hurt us. It is deciding that we have simply done enough hiding and hurting and that we do not want to do those things any more.
Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is breaking the cycle of pain and abuse, ceasing to create new victims by hurting others as we ourselves were hurt.
Forgiveness is moving on. It is recognizing that we have better things to do with our life, and then do them.
For me it all comes down to this: It doesn’t matter if the bullets we take are literal or metaphorical, our willingness and efforts to forgive will always be life affirming. It is a truth modeled by Mark Taylor after Columbine, a truth lived on a daily basis by the Amish in Nickel Mines, and a truth that we can live in our own lives today.
I wish everyone a G’mar Tov, and an easy and meaningful fast.