The Bearer of Forgiveness

Sermon by James W. Crawford

March 23, 1997, Palm Sunday

From Job 42

For the last six weeks we have been sitting with Job as he struggles with what he considers to be the ultimate unfairness of life. We have heard his fury at God, his catalog of social justice commitments, his impatience with shallow religion, his frustration with his so-called counselors. And this morning? This morning we discover in the very last chapter of this incredible drama a move by the poet to bridge the abyss separating Job from God, a move, as well, healing the breach evident between Job and those three infuriating counselors who came to console him.

In the passage we read just a moment ago, we find Job, at God's initiative, praying for those failed counselors. We see him first of all rediscovering his rootedness in his Creator, and as a consequence, offering forgiveness and restoration to those comforters, friends, as we have suggested, who in the course of his calamity become, if not enemies, then at least angry antagonists. Between Job and them no love is lost, and we witness bitterness and cynicism used as a weapon. Now we hear God saying, "My servant Job shall pray for you counselors, and I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. . . "

What is going on here? What is happening? Don't we see the restoration of broken relationships, the reconciliation of friends? Don't we witness  fragmented human and divine relationships reunited, a cosmic community reknitting from the broken pieces? Job prays for those friends who failed both him and God. He intercedes in behalf of those who assaulted his integrity, mocked his innocence, attacked his very being. He bears, in God's behalf, the presence of forgiveness.

I don't know how many of us this morning come to church either profoundly wounded by someone's misunderstanding of us, or harboring a grievance against another who has done us in or is doing us in. I don't know how many look out on their network of friends, family, colleagues with at least a touch of resentment, envy, anger, discouragement, fury. And if it is not just a grudge against someone we used to care for, work with, love very much, we may resent the God who set us in whatever precarious and troubled circumstances we live with now. Like Job, those closest to us can get us down, cast us aside, isolate us, leave us hurting, bleeding inside, maybe even praying for an opportunity to wreak our own little vengeance, or to see fate intervene and give them what they deserve. And as we "nurse our wrath" it may be true, as Sir Walter Scott says, that revenge is "the sweetest morsel to the mouth that was ever cooked in hell." Job's praying for his antagonists may be something some of us are not prepared to emulate this morning.

As we see the final release of Job from his resentments through the praying for others--and indeed as we enter this Holy Week, forgiveness and release being at its very heart--we need in our moments together today reflect on the roots and possibilities of forgiving one another. We will discover, I believe, that in forgiveness lies the most profound expression of the discipleship we would desire to live out in this world.

Where do we start? Let me start here: Personally. I want for a moment to introduce you to men and women who gave me a break when I did not deserve it. They offer a clue to our theme today. We have all had those experiences, I'm sure. And if you are like me, we never forget those moments.

 The first is what one might call, "college catastrophe lite." As many of you know, my father was an orthopedic surgeon and during my adolescent  years, we tacitly agreed I might go into medicine, too. I went to college as a pre-med, soaking up in my first year among other prerequisites, chemistry and calculus. Chemistry worked out OK--not stellar, but adequate.  Calculus, however, reared up and devoured me. I could not get it. The problems mystified me. Failure loomed. My freshman year headed down the tubes. Medicine hung like a dead duck. When the calculus final, in the dreaded blue book, came back, I saw scribbled on the cover, as I remember, a 42. Flunk! Bomb! Turkey! A totally busted course. No medicine. And then the professor invited me to his office. He sat me down. We chatted a moment. And he said something to me ringing in my ears yet: "Mr. Crawford," he said, "Mr. Crawford, if you promise never to take another mathematics course at Dartmouth College, I will give you a D minus."  Folks: talk about grade inflation! I cannot call it forgiveness, but it sure felt like it. That instructor's decision, from whatever motive, I have only interpreted as an undeserved mercy. His decision is partly why I am telling the story from up here this morning rather than making rounds in Brigham and Women's Orthopedic floor, manipulating broken femurs or assessing  pain in a thousand miserable backs. College catastrophe lite!

But my second story is different. Maybe "grammar school lite." It deals with a little guy who could not seem to sit still in those early grade school years. My kindergarten teacher was a woman named Grace Truax. My mother tells me she was a wonderful woman, and I do not doubt it. But I have to tell you, as I remember it, I spent most of my kindergarten year in a corner behind an upright piano, out of sight, out of mind of the rest of the class and Miss Truax. "James! Until you can behave, behind the piano!" My first steps to reform school.

But although I remember well Miss Truax, it is another person I remember best, who deep in my soul and heart I have never forgotten, to whom I shall be everlastingly grateful. Her name was Alice Foley. Alice Foley served as the principal of our grade school. And I was always in her office for what seemed to be some gross malfeasance. In these cases, the imperative from "whomever" was always, "James, to the principal's office." In the office I would pass the principal's secretary and both from her face and in her words came the expression: "you again!" I could hear the question in her mind, "I wonder how he'll do in Leavenworth?" And I would wait in public and humiliating view to be admitted to that inner sanctum: the warden's office of Alice Foley. The moment came. Her door opened. She directed me to a chair. She asked what brought me there this time. And then from behind a gigantic desk, came this tiny woman, with a wrinkled but puckish face. I don't remember a thing Alice Foley said to me. I remember only she was kind. Her face, her mood, her presence, her gentleness, her confidence, her capacity to see more in a 7-year-old than a bum or a felon over half a century later still lodges deep within the core of my being. The memory I hold of--what can I call it?--her unbounded grace, her unmerited kindness remains engraved on my soul. Through Alice Foley I caught a glimpse of the love of God.

I do not doubt for a minute many of you could tell similar stories of bailouts, kindness, surprises arising from those least expected-- thoughtfulness from your friends, your family, your boss, you name it.  Those moments we cherish always, and though we get our share of unfair treatment from other people, it is another kind of unfairness: the unfairness of forgiveness, the benefit of the doubt, the second mile, the third mile, the fourth and the fifth walked with us that, through all the other so-called unfairnesses, shapes our character and sustains our hope.

When Linda and I left Union Seminary in 1962, we went to Helena, New York, a little town, north of the Adirondacks up on the St. Lawrence Seaway, where we met a wonderful couple trying to save a small church in that country town. They had four children, and were deeply engaged in the life of the village. Not long after leaving we learned the father had led his children out to a secluded field, shot each of them and then took his own life. Why? How could this happen?

Well, such actions are mysteries beyond our ken, but we received a clue or two when we learned of his harsh and unloving childhood filled with parental vengeance for small slights and children's mistakes, punishment meted out for trumped up disobediences, birthday parties canceled to teach a lesson, coal in a stocking at Christmas time as justice for lost galoshes.  That may not be the answer to what took our friend to that covert killing field, believing death to be better than life, but it may provide a clue to what vengeance, unrequited anger, the refusal of the forgiveness we may crave, or we might grant, can wreak on ourselves or on others.

What a difference grace, undeserved, unsolicited, surprising, always makes in our lives! You know how it works. Let me offer an analogy that comes from one of the great hearts and souls of the 20th century, Erma Bombeck.  She helps us to understand grace, and frankly, she gives us a little window on the love of God. She died just a year ago next month, you may remember, and recently her estate published a compilation of her columns.  She entitled one of them, "Favorite Child." It is a revelation of grace, of forgiveness. Some of you will be familiar with it. Some of you may recognize yourselves. "Every mother," Erma Bombeck writes,

  Every mother has a favorite child.
She cannot help it. She is only human.
I have mine.
  That child for whom I feel a special closeness. The one I reach out to in a rare moment, to share a love that no one could possibly understand.
  My favorite child is the one who was too sick to eat the ice cream at his birthday party, had measles at Christmas and wore leg braces to bed because he toed in.
She was the fever in the middle of the night, the asthma attack, the child in my arms at the emergency ward.
  My favorite child spent Christmas alone away from the family, was stranded after the game with a gas tank on E, lost the money for his class ring.
My favorite child is the one who screwed up the piano recital, misspelled committee in a spelling bee, ran the wrong way with the football and had his bike stolen because he was careless.
  My favorite child is the one who fell asleep over an assignment on China that the teacher never bothered to grade, flunked her driver's test five times and told us she could hardly wait to get out of the house.
  My favorite child is the one I punished for lying, grounded for insensitivity to other people's feelings and informed he was a royal pain to the entire family.
  My favorite child slammed doors in frustration, cried when she didn't think I saw her, withdrew and said she could not talk to me.
  My favorite child always needed a haircut, had hair that wouldn't curl, had no date for Saturday night and a car that cost $600 to fix.
  My favorite child said dumb things for which there were no excuses. He was selfish, immature, bad-tempered and self-centered. He was vulnerable, lonely, unsure of what he was doing in this world. . . and quite wonderful.
  The one I've loved the most is the one whom I have watched struggle and--because the struggle was his--done nothing.
  All mothers have their favorite child. It is always the same one, the one who needs you at the moment for whatever reason--to cling to, to shout at, to hurt, to hug, to flatter, to reverse charges to, to unload on, to use--but mostly, to be there.

If she had never written anything else, that reflection by Erma Bombeck should put her in some spiritual hall of fame. Why? Because this little piece approaches an analogy for the divine love. As we enter Holy Week, we come face to face with One who knows a great deal about each and all of us. We encounter Someone this week who knows how we are torn up inside, how for all the serenity we may exude to others, the face we may put on, the OK, we may offer to the question, "So how are you?" There is an anxiety within: about our job, our friendships, our health, our family; there is a sense of "If only they knew." And on it goes, for all our success, or status, or apparent security, inside there is a troubled soul wondering, "Does anybody really love me?" "Does anybody in here--out there--really care?"

And it is not only disease on the inside, it is the difficulty with those  sometimes closest to us: our spouse, our kids, our colleagues, our fellow church members, our so-called best friends--static, love-hate, suspicion. Emmanual Kant observed, correctly perhaps, "There is something in the misfortune of our best friend which does not displease us." We are broken from one another. Separated. Distanced.

And surely, as we see our world swarming with refugees, disinherited, the victims of ideology, of power grabs and power vacuums, tyranny, and poverty; or the thirteen walls separating the neighborhoods of Belfast, the city of Holy Week itself, Jerusalem furiously divided, ours is a world broken, injured, wounded, seeking com-unity, yearning for communion with the source of our creation, the goal of our hope.

Let me say Holy week offers the clue to our healing. For here, again, at the foot of the Cross we see and are offered the only kind of love that can bind us up, heal us, restore us, forgive us. It is love that bleeds for the other. Love that risks taking it in the chin from the other. Love prepared to be rejected that healing might take place. Love ready for wounds from the very one to be welcomed and embraced. I want to tell you there is Someone who cares for you, who loves you to the extent that life itself is ready to be given for you. You do not have to earn it. You do not have to look good. You do not have to jump through hoops, run an obstacle course, prove your integrity, demonstrate you goodness, climb a moral ladder. You do not have to go to church, say your prayers, do penance. None of it! For apart from all of that, you are loved. You are accepted. You are the object of a divine outreach intent on granting you pardon, eager to welcome you and all of your brokenness into an extended family drawn together by the costly love  exposed for us in the crises of the coming week, ultimately on the tree bearing the dying Christ with words on his lips that are the hardest words any of us can say: Father, forgive them.

You are forgiven. Can you believe it? I beseech you: believe it. Receive it. Accept it. Be healed!