“Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.” (v.34)
“I tell you the truth today, you will be with me in paradise.” (v.43)
Jesus on the cross, according to Luke, offered forgiveness to two groups of people, who did two different things. One was the person being executed for a capital offense. A criminal who deserved his sentence. The other: people who hurt Jesus personally. People who hurt people Jesus loved. People who killed – or were in the process of killing and/or having Jesus killed.
“HE HAD MANY WOUNDS.” She spoke with the precision of a coroner. “In the upper abdomen were five wounds. These wounds indicated that different weapons were used to stab him, or a group of people stabbed him.” Mrs. Mhlawuli continued her harrowing testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission [in South Africa]. She spoke about the disappearance and murder of her husband, Sicelo. “In the lower part, he also had wounds. In total, there were forty-three. They poured acid on his face. They chopped off his right hand just below the wrist. I don’t know what they did with that hand.” A wave of horror and nausea rose in me, writes Archbishop Desmund Tutu in “The Book of Forgiving” which he wrote with his daughter Mpho
Now it was nineteen-year-old Babalwa’s turn to speak. She was eight when her father died. Her brother was only three. She described the grief, police harassment, and hardship in the years since her father’s death. And then she said, “I would love to know who killed my father. So would my brother.” Her next words stunned me and left me breathless. “We want to forgive them. We want to forgive, but we don’t know who to forgive.”
As chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, [Archbishop Desmund Tutu writes] I have often been asked how the people of South Africa were able to forgive the atrocities and injustices they suffered under apartheid. Our journey in South Africa was quite long and treacherous. Today it is hard to believe that, up until our first democratic election in 1994, ours was a country that institutionalized racism, inequality, and oppression. In apartheid South Africa only white people could vote, earn a high-quality education, and expect advancement or opportunity. There were decades of protest and violence. Much blood was shed during our long march to freedom. When, at last, our leaders were released from prison, it was feared that our transition to democracy would become a bloodbath of revenge and retaliation. Miraculously we chose another future. We chose forgiveness. At the time, we knew that telling the truth and healing our history was the only way to save our country from certain destruction. We did not know where this choice would lead us. The process we embarked on through the TRC was, as all real growth proves to be, astoundingly painful and profoundly beautiful.”[i]
Most of my words in this sermon are not my own. Most of them are taken from “The Book of Forgiving”. I just found the stories Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho shared so powerful that I have left much of this sermon in their own voices.
Desmond Tutu writes, “I have also been asked what I learned about forgiveness from that experience and from the many places I have visited during my life where there has been conflict and suffering, from Northern Ireland to Rwanda… How do we forgive?
There are days when I wish I could erase from my mind all the horrors I have witnessed. It seems there is no end to the creative ways we humans can find to hurt each other, and no end to the reasons we feel justified in doing so. There is also no end to the human capacity for healing. In each of us, there is an innate ability to create joy out of suffering, to find hope in the most hopeless of situations, and to heal any relationship in need of healing.
I would like to share with you two simple truths:
1) there is nothing that cannot be forgiven, and
2) there is no one undeserving of forgiveness.
When you can see and understand that we are all bound to one another—whether by birth, by circumstance, or simply by our shared humanity—then you will know this to be true. I have often said that in South Africa there would have been no future without forgiveness. Our rage and our quest for revenge would have been our destruction. This is as true for us individually as it is for us globally.
There have been times when each and every one of us has needed to forgive. There have also been times when each and every one of us has needed to be forgiven. And there will be many times again. In our own ways, we are all broken. Out of that brokenness, we hurt others. Forgiveness is the journey we take toward healing the broken parts. It is how we become whole again."[ii]
"In South Africa, we chose to seek forgiveness rather than revenge. That choice averted a bloodbath. For every injustice, there is a choice. As we have said, you can choose forgiveness or revenge, but revenge is always costly. Choosing forgiveness rather than retaliation ultimately serves to make you a stronger and freer person. Peace always comes to those who choose to forgive. While both Mpho and I have seen the effects of drinking the bitter poison of anger and resentment—seen how it corrodes and destroys from the inside out—we have also seen the sweet balm of forgiveness soothe and transform even the most virulent situations. This is why we can say there is hope."[iii]
"In South Africa, Ubuntu is our way of making sense of the world. The word literally means “humanity.” It is the philosophy and belief that a person is only a person through other people. In other words, we are human only in relation to other humans. Our humanity is bound up in one another, and any tear in the fabric of connection between us must be repaired for us all to be made whole. This interconnectedness is the very root of who we are.
To walk the path of forgiveness is to recognize that your crimes harm you as they harm me. To walk the path of forgiveness is to recognize that my dignity is bound up in your dignity, and every wrongdoing hurts us all."[iv]
Tutu writes: "THERE WERE SO MANY NIGHTS when I, as a young boy, had to watch helplessly as my father verbally and physically abused my mother. I can still recall the smell of alcohol, see the fear in my mother’s eyes, and feel the hopeless despair that comes when we see people we love hurting each other in incomprehensible ways. I would not wish that experience on anyone, especially not a child. If I dwell in those memories, I can feel myself wanting to hurt my father back, in the same ways he hurt my mother, and in ways of which I was incapable as a small boy. I see my mother’s face and I see this gentle human being whom I loved so very much and who did nothing to deserve the pain inflicted upon her.
When I recall this story, I realize how difficult the process of forgiving truly is. Intellectually, I know my father caused pain because he was in pain. Spiritually, I know my faith tells me my father deserves to be forgiven as God forgives us all. But it is still difficult. The traumas we have witnessed or experienced live on in our memories. Even years later they can cause us fresh pain each time we recall them.
Are you hurt and suffering? Is the injury new, or is it an old unhealed wound? Know that what was done to you was wrong, unfair, and undeserved. You are right to be outraged. And it is perfectly normal to want to hurt back when you have been hurt. But hurting back rarely satisfies. We think it will, but it doesn’t. If I slap you after you slap me, it does not lessen the sting I feel on my own face, nor does it diminish my sadness as to the fact you have struck me. Retaliation gives, at best, only momentary respite from our pain. The only way to experience healing and peace is to forgive. Until we can forgive, we remain locked in our pain and locked out of the possibility of experiencing healing and freedom, locked out of the possibility of being at peace.
Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us. We are bound with chains of bitterness, tied together, trapped. Until we can forgive the person who harmed us, that person will hold the keys to our happiness; that person will be our jailor. When we forgive, we take back control of our own fate and our feelings. We become our own liberators. We don’t forgive to help the other person. We don’t forgive for others. We forgive for ourselves. Forgiveness, in other words, is the best form of self-interest."[v]
That is all fine and good but, you may ask, ‘why should I forgive so and so’; ‘does everyone deserve forgiveness?’ Is anyone beyond forgiveness?
“What about evil, you may ask? Aren’t some people just evil, just monsters, and aren’t such people just unforgivable? I do believe there are monstrous and evil acts, but I do not believe those who commit such acts are monsters or evil. To relegate someone to the level of monster is to deny that person’s ability to change and to take away that person’s accountability for his or her actions and behavior. In January 2012, in Modimolle, an agricultural town in Limpopo province, South Africa, a man named Johan Kotze committed acts of monstrous and evil proportions. Indeed, such was the horror of his acts, the newspapers and town dubbed him “The Monster of Modimolle.”
I was appalled at the story I read. We were all appalled. Johan Kotze was alleged to have forced three laborers at gunpoint to gang-rape and mutilate his estranged wife. He then tied her up and forced her to listen and watch as he shot and killed her son. Johan Kotze claimed he was driven to commit these horrific crimes because he saw his estranged wife with another man and, in his rage, he chose the path of revenge.
These are, without doubt, barbaric and dastardly deeds. They are acts so monstrous we are all quite right to condemn them. What shook me deeply as I read the media coverage of this case was that the righteous outrage at the alleged acts of Mr. Kotze had led journalists to call him a monster. In response, I wrote a letter to The Star newspaper. In it I argued that while he may indeed be guilty of inhuman, ghastly, and monstrous deeds, he is not a monster. We are actually letting him off lightly by calling him a monster, because monsters have no moral sense of right and wrong and therefore cannot be held morally culpable, cannot be regarded as morally blameworthy. This holds true for all those we wish to deem monsters. No, Mr. Johan Kotze remains a child of God with the capacity to become a saint.
This piece shocked many. But the world is filled with heartless sinners and criminals of all sorts who have transformed themselves and their lives. In the Christian tradition, we often recall the story of the repentant criminal who was crucified beside Jesus. He was a man who had committed crimes punishable by death. Jesus promised him that, because of his repentance, “…we will see each other in paradise.” He was forgiven. The Bible is full of stories of reckless, immoral, and criminal people who transformed their lives, who became saints. Peter, the disciple who betrayed a friendship and denied Jesus—not once, but three times— was forgiven and became the chief of the apostles. Paul, the violent persecutor of those faithful to the fledgling Christian faith, became the sower who planted Christian communities in the gentile world.
Let us condemn ghastly acts, but let us never relinquish the hope that the doers of the most heinous deeds can and may change. In many ways, that was the basis of our truth-and-reconciliation process. The stories we heard at the TRC were horrific, some were bloodcurdling, yet we witnessed extraordinary acts of forgiveness as perpetrator and victim embraced and did so publicly. We believed then, and I still believe now, that it is possible for people to change for the better. It is more than just possible; it is in our nature ... in each and every one of us.
In my plea for the people of Modimolle to stop calling Mr. Kotze a monster, I called on my Christian faith for the examples needed...our model of the ultimate example of forgiveness is Jesus Christ, who on the cross was able to ask for forgiveness for those who were torturing and ultimately killed him…
I have said before that given the same set of circumstances, under the same pressures and influences, I may have been a Hitler, or a Kotze. I would hope not. But I may have been. I will not label anyone beyond redemption, regardless of what that person has done. I have found that hope and goodness can sometimes emerge from even the unlikeliest of packages.
... So, when I am asked whether some people are beyond forgiveness, my answer is no. My heart has been broken a thousand times over at the cruelty and suffering I have seen human beings unjustly and mercilessly inflict upon one another. Yet still I know and believe that forgiveness is always called for, and reconciliation is always possible.
… True forgiveness is not superficial or glib… We all want to be free of the pain of living with a broken and unforgiving heart. We want to free ourselves of the corrosive emotions that threaten to burn away the love and joy [of Christ] residing in us. We want to heal our broken places. It would be wonderful if we lived in a world where there was no harm, no hurt, no violence, no cruelty. I have certainly not lived my life in such a world, but I do believe it to be possible. Surely he must be senile, you say. But these are not the fantastical beliefs of a man of advanced years. I know in my heart that peace is possible. I know it is possible in your life, and I know it is possible in mine. I know it is possible for our children, our grandchildren, and the generations that follow. But I also know that it is only possible if this peace begins with each of us. Peace is built with every small and large act of forgiveness.[vi]
I will likely speak more about this in the weeks to come. I want to conclude today by pointing out that Jesus’ last actions before he died was to forgive 2 people or groups of people – one, a criminal sentenced to the death penalty, like you would probably read about in a US or Chinese newspaper, as those two countries still torture and kill criminals. Jesus, however, forgave the man. And two: Jesus forgave those who hurt his family and himself by sentencing him to death and carrying out his execution. If Jesus can forgive them, surely we can forgive anyone that has been a part of actions done to us.
As Desmond Tutu has said many times in his speeches and writings,” there is no future without forgiveness.” If we aspire to live in the Kingdom of God now and forever, then we will forgive those who have harmed us, loving then as if they are own mothers and children – because in all likelihood they are. When we forgive we are set free. We are free of our attackers and we are free of sin and death. My wish today is that each and everyone of us will experience that true freedom in Christ that only comes as we allow Him to help us forgive others.
Let us pray.
[i] Tutu, Desmond and Mpho Tutu, The Book of Forgiving (HarperCollins, 2014), 1
[ii] Tutu, Desmond and Mpho Tutu, The Book of Forgiving (HarperCollins, 2014), 7
[iii] Tutu, Desmond and Mpho Tutu, The Book of Forgiving (HarperCollins, 2014), 1-3.
[iv] Tutu, Desmond and Mpho Tutu, The Book of Forgiving (HarperCollins, 2014), 1-3
[v] Tutu, Desmond and Mpho Tutu, The Book of Forgiving (HarperCollins, 2014), 32
[vi] [vi] Tutu, Desmond and Mpho Tutu, The Book of Forgiving (HarperCollins, 2014), 55-59
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