GOOD FRIDAY 25th March 2106
SEVENTH ADDRESS: Forgive us our sins 1.30 p.m.
In the Christian tradition the Cross of Christ has always been seen as intimately bound up with the forgiveness of sins. In order to receive forgiveness we have to be prepared to give it. As Jesus put it so clearly and simply in the Lord’s Prayer – “ Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
We all know what it is to carry about within us an unforgiving heart – someone has said something or done something which has hurt us either slightly or profoundly and the wound we feel cuts off all sense of love for that person, all desire to understand them or be sympathetic. In our mind we strip them of any good qualities we might have thought they had, and we only see the negative, the dark. And indeed we may harbour the secret desire to wound them back, to make them realise how much they have hurt us.
There is a fine book on Anger by the Vietnamese Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh. He writes there – ‘When someone says or does something that makes us angry we suffer. We tend to say or do something back to make the other suffer, with the hope that we will suffer less. We think “ I want to punish you, I want to make you suffer because you have made me suffer. And when I see you suffer a lot, I will feel better” ’.
In the Egyptian desert we are told that ‘One of the brethren had been insulted by another and he wanted to take revenge. He came to Abba Sisois and told him what had taken place, saying: “ I am going to get even, Father.” But the elder besought him to leave the affairs in the hands of God. “ No said the brother, I will not give up until I have made that fellow pay for what he said. Then the elder stood and began to pray in these terms: “ O God, Thou art no longer necessary to us, and we no longer need Thee to take care of us since, as this brother says, we both can and will avenge ourselves. “ At this the brother promised to give up his idea of revenge.’
The Wisdom of the Desert p.37
The failure to forgive, or to want to forgive, is the inability to overcome or let go of, some hurt that has been done to us. No act of the rational will seems able to touch the raw wound. This inability to forgive is some form of anger that has been touched, some form of revenge seeking in the heart that cannot be let go of. We come to face perhaps one of life’s greatest struggles. Generally it is less difficult to forgive a stranger than someone we know and trust. That is why it is so hard to overcome betrayal by close friends or colleagues.
I have always felt it significant that every time we celebrate the Eucharist we are reminded that these events took place – “ on the night in which he was betrayed”. Somehow betrayal seems necessary to this story, it is has to touch this reality of the human condition that even those we love and trust betray us.
With time, with understanding, with the help of family and friends we may be able to forgive many hurts done to us but what of profound and radical hurts that seem unforgivable ? What if your peace of mind and heart has been shattered when your Police Constable husband is killed by a teenager, high on drugs in a high speed police chase ? What if the person you loved most was suddenly maimed for life in a bomb blast on the Brussels Metro ? What if you have seen your wife raped and killed in front of your eyes and the eyes of your children ? What if you have to watch your son being crucified in pain and humiliation ? The figure of Mary on our rood screen here in the Cathedral may look decorous or even serene but her presence takes us to the heart of what forgiveness may ask of us. Did she hear her son say: “ Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”
With the passage of time and some goodwill on our part many things can be forgiven and life can move on, but there are some acts of forgiveness that seems beyond us. Our heart has to be broken open to another level of reality which alone makes forgiveness possible. ‘ Something must happen that I cannot make happen.’
The Desert Fathers and Mothers show us how deep can be the struggle of the heart to live in the spirit of Christ. It may take years of struggle in solitude with the passions of the human heart that rear their heads like serpents, lashing us with the desire for revenge. I guess many of you will know the famous paintings of St. Anthony tormented by ugly beasts and reptiles pulling at his body and hair based on accounts of his life by St. Athanasius.
In the desert there were the silent struggles that each brother or sister had to face and carry – stay in your cell and your cell will teach you everything, even the things you don’t like about yourself. But they did not see themselves as lonely athletes, they needed each other, and they would go to another elder to reveal their struggles, to confess their failures, to seek God’s word of encouragement. What they called “the manifestation of thoughts” was crucial.
“ Nothing makes the enemy happier,” said John the Dwarf “than those who do not manifest their thoughts.”
Rowan: Silence and Honey Cakes p.50
The Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who lost his life in a nazi prison camp just before the end of World War II wrote that “ in the confession of concrete sins the old man dies a painful, shameful death before the eyes of a brother. Because this humiliation is so hard, we continually scheme to avoid it. Yet in the deep mental and physical pain of humiliation before a brother we experience…our rescue and salvation.”
The Lost Art of Forgiving p.122
As we sit quietly in the Cathedral today we can look at the Crucified One, at his Mother and St. John and we can contemplate the cost of forgiveness. The struggle of our hearts and minds is not just against flesh and blood, the problems of our human fallibility and possibilities of letting one another down, we are struggling with something much deeper and more ancient, against cosmic forces, superhuman forces of evil in the heavens, generational accumulations of the inability to forgive, seemingly unstoppable waves of hatred. Alone with our own resources there is no doubt but that we shall fail. So we need to pray today and always:
Lord Jesus Christ by thy parched lips ,
Curb our cruel speech,
By they closing eyes ,
Look on our sin no more.
Yea by this sweet and saving Sign,
Lord draw us to our peace and thine.
Hymn: There is a green hill far away ( EH 92)