Baraka

Using words far greater than my own, and experiences I have not lived, this is all I could takeaway.  “Remember the old timey scales where there were two plates on either side and when you put something on one, it creates an imbalance and needs a counterbalance on the other side, like a teeter totter. The idea was that if one person wrongs another in a relationship, an imbalance is created and balance must be restored. The concept Lex Talionis, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is based on this. You took my eye, that is, you did something to me, I must retaliate and do something to you to restore balance. It seems ancient, but listen to our own language. If I do something to you that you thought was wrong you might say, “I’m going to get even with you;” or “I owe you one;” “I’ve got a score to settle with you.” The Bible starts out with a justification of an eye for an eye, but soon it recognizes that forgiveness is necessary for survival. Gandhi said an eye for an eye world will soon go blind. Forgiving is to acknowledge that the scales are out of balance but to just reset them without retaliating in kind. Forgiveness isn’t a feeling, it isn’t saying something that was wrong is right and “okay.” Forgiveness isn’t forgetting—magically scrubbing the hurt from your mind or your heart. No, forgiveness isn’t any of those things. What it is, is a decision to not retaliate, to not try to settle the score. It acknowledges the wrong and says I’m not out for revenge. You owe me a debt but I’m going to let it go. Forgiveness doesn’t mean we go on as if nothing happened. Something bad did happen and I may never trust you again, if I ever do, trust has to be something that is earned over time not automatically granted. Forgiveness is hard. If it were easy, the world wouldn’t be so screwed up. Deciding to let it go is just hard and it’s often a process that takes time. Deciding to let go of revenge fantasies is hard, stuff you spend your time thinking about doing but know you never would do because you are too good of a person, or you don’t want to face the consequences of what you have in mind. Forgiveness is to acknowledge those impulses and to choose not to act upon them, not to dwell on them. Like a boat sailing away, you just unload the thought and let it go. There has been a wrong and you want them to pay the price of having wronged you. I remember hearing a preacher once quote the passage, “Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord,” are you willing to let God deal with your enemies instead of you, will you trust God with that much? It came at a time when I was really upset about an injustice that had come to me and they hadn’t yet paid a price so I thought, “No, I’m not ready to leave their justice to God because I know God. God is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and ready to relent from punishing. God will forgive instead of destroying them.” And I wanted them to hurt, to make them feel as wounded as they made me feel so they’d learn their lesson and not treat people that way again. I didn’t trust God to do justice, I knew that God would show mercy, the same kind of mercy I hoped God would give to me. And that’s when I heard it. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Uh, oh. I wanted, relied on God’s grace but was not willing to extend it. Jesus told a parable about the unforgiving servant who was forgiven a great debt but then went around extracting miniscule payments from everyone else. He was trying to get us to see that if we want God’s grace, we have to let it flow through us and stop seeking revenge. The Lord’s Prayer really offers a jarring way of praying because when it talks about forgiveness it has a conditional clause. In effect it is saying, “God I pray for your forgiveness, but only give me the amount of forgiveness that I’m giving to other people.” Have you ever thought about how radical that is? Lord, limit the forgiveness you give me to the same proportion that I forgive others. If I decide to hold on to it, don’t forgive me at all. Again, the Lord’s Prayer is no anemic prayer. Every time we pray it, we can be reminded that we need to practice the art of forgiveness. One of the great stories about Jesus’ forgiveness is the woman caught in adultery. The Pharisees who were no fans of Jesus tried to trap him. They bring this woman to him and charge her and even remind him that the Old Testament’s punishment was stoning her to death. The Pharisees figured Jesus would go soft on her, and therefore prove that he was willing to defy the Bible and was making up his own new thing. If he did that, they could have Jesus brought up on charges—and have him crucified—something they eventually did. But Jesus wasn’t falling for the trap. He confounded the accusers. Instead of responding to their inquiries, Jesus squatted down and wrote something in the dirt. The Bible doesn’t say what he wrote. I always assumed that it was sins of the Pharisees or names of other dudes that had slept with this woman. One unsurprising thing about this story is that to convict the woman on the charges she was accused of, they were also supposed to bring an unimpeachable witness who was only bringing it up as a matter of justice (not a trap against someone else) and they were also supposed to charge the man. But just like it is now, people tend to impugn the “stormy” woman, demonizing her while letting the man go Scott Free. One by one, the elders dropped their stones and walked away. I like the little detail about one by one. It gives the sense of each man struggling with his own conscience, his own heart, his own ability to pray, Forgive us our sin as we forgive those who have sinned against us. They weren’t harmed by her, they were only shaming and humiliating this poor woman to try to catch Jesus in a gotcha’ moment. It was disgusting. They used her. Their actions and abuse of this woman were not without sin and they knew it so they dropped their stones and walked away. Suddenly it’s just Jesus and the woman alone and Jesus says, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.” He’s forgiving and gracious to a fault. This is the one who tells us to pray for forgiveness and to extend it to others. So today we’ve given everyone a stone. It can represent some grudge, some wrong that’s been done to you. You want to throw it at least figuratively if not literally. A symbol of your desire to get back at someone, to even the score or to have them on the bottom so they will know what it feels like. I’m sure if you search your heart you can find a way that the stone represents something real for you. Maybe it’s some slight, or betrayal, or disappointment or attack. The thing about stones is it’s hard to let them drop. We’d rather throw them and inflict damage. For our own growth beyond where we are, our own sense of spiritual peace, we need to learn to let them go. Or maybe you just aren’t there, quite yet and need to hang on to your stone. Like I said, forgiveness is a process and it takes some time, but it’s something to work toward. If so, keep your stone and keep working toward it. And when you are ready someday you can set the stone somewhere else that’s meaningful to you and let it go. Lord, forgive us our debts only to the extent we are willing to forgive others.”