Every so often, I click past a photo I have on my computer of me and another woman.  I only met her once, but every time I see the photo I am overcome with gratitude for the example of her life.  She came to speak at an event when I was serving in Findlay.  Her purpose was to argue against capital punishment.  Her story is powerful.  She is a person who has forgiven the man who murdered her daughter.  And so I think about this.  I have met her, and recall that she exuded a kind of peace and grace.  And in the same life, I’ve encountered co-workers who would punish with unkindness for a year if you mistakenly ate their last carton of yogurt out of the office refrigerator.

What is it about forgiveness that makes it possible for some and so very difficult for others?  What is forgiveness?  What is its nature?  Why do we need it?  And why do we need to give it?

When I invited you all to suggest topics for sermons in the Spring, the topic of forgiveness came up several times.  And so today, we begin a several week series talking about the nature of forgiveness, forgiveness and justice, how to deal with past mistakes, and how to make right choices.  In other words, we are going to talk about living in a world as the forgiven and forgiving people we pray to be every time we pray together “The Lord’s Prayer.”

Whenever we hear a reference to casting stones, we are hearing this reminder that Jesus issues in this story.  Interestingly, though it is one of the most oft referenced biblical texts, it is probably a late addition to the manuscript of the gospel, and scholars think it unlikely that it has its roots in the actual words and events of Jesus life.  But it does reflect the church’s later and developing understanding of why, among those who were living in relationship with one another through Jesus, the old standards of crime and punishment no longer governed community life.

So, somewhere, someone must have been asking the question, “why don’t Christians stone women to death when they are caught in adultery?”  And the answer is given in story form.  From the story we deduce a couple of things.  Christian community apparently recognized the relational nature of human life, including sin.  One could not live so as to be outside sin.  Everyone participates in sin; therefore none are qualified to throw stones.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said it this way, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them!  But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.  And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

In the story as John’s gospel tells it, a remarkable thing happens.  A woman whom the Scribes and Pharisees had every legal right to stone is sent back to her life and given a future by Jesus.  The Scribes and the Pharisees failure to cast stones at the woman suggests that they are set free from the responsibility both of maintaining a false sense of their own innocence and of participating in the cycle of violence that surely would be perpetuated by stoning a woman to death.

If we continue to insist that those who commit sin be punished, we are inviting the same kind of punishment upon ourselves.  We have the alternative opportunity to both extend and invite grace.  That is the way opened to us through Christ, and offered to us by this story.

Theologian Marjorie Suchocki has developed the idea that we all are caught in a cycle of violence, and it is this tendency to violence that drives us to abuse our power over and against others, causing harm to one another and to creation.  (The Fall to Violence, New York:  Continuum, 1994).  A failure to forgive therefore perpetuates a cycle of violence, and frees neither the violator nor the victim from the cycle.

So, why forgive?  Because we ourselves need forgiveness, and can hardly expect to receive it from others when we withhold it from them.

Forgiveness doesn’t just set free the person who has wronged us – it also sets us free when we have been wronged.

Harboring resentment and a desire for revenge over a single wrong has the capacity to poison our relationships with everyone around us and literally to destroy our life and our future.  Furthermore, it continues to give the one who wronged us an extraordinary amount of power over our future.  The wrong they committed against us continues to wrong us, to rob us of a hopeful future and to blind us the possibilities for new life and new hope that God is continually offering.

Some people argue that to forgive too easily is foolish and lets perpetrators of violence believe that it’s right to continue what they are doing.  But have you noticed that being outraged and unforgiving has not ended crime or violence or wrong doing?

Caught in this cycle, and using it to establish our sense of self is a deadly way to live.  Even so, our culture continues to harbor the myth that to forgive rather than to prevail over one’s enemy is a sign of weakness.  Gandhi knew better and is often quoted as having said “the weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.”

Even if we are convinced that it is right to forgive, how to forgive is another matter all together.

We often make a critical error here, assuming and believing that forgiveness is a matter of emotion; that we must “feel” a certain thing before we can forgive.

In fact, forgiveness is not a matter of emotion, but a matter of the will.

Forgiveness is a decision, and need not have anything to do with feeling.

“Our forgiveness may not take away our pain – it may not even be acknowledged or accepted – yet the act of offering it will keep us from being sucked into the downward spiral of resentment.  It will also guard us against the temptation of taking out our anger or hurt on someone else.”  (Johann Christoph Arnold, Why Forgive?, Farmington PA:  Plough Publishing House, 2007).

Neither is forgiveness the same thing as forgetfulness.  We need not forget in order to forgive.  In fact, it is potentially useful to remember.  We need not live in close proximity to the one who has wronged us.  In fact, it might be dangerous to do so.  We need not expect for them to change in order for us to decide to forgive – though forgiveness could change them; that is not required for us to forgive.  Forgiveness that is authentic need not diminish the violation that has occurred, but it does have the possibility of breaking the chain of retaliatory violence that is so often played out in our personal lives and in our culture.

Indeed, forgiveness transcends our personal need to be set free from bitterness and hurt and has cultural dimensions as well.  The cycle of violence is well woven into our culture and results in endless acts of retaliatory violence:  wars that are territorial, whether at the level of neighborhood gangs or multi-national alliances, and relationships that are poisoned over generations.  And of course, the most culturally accepted act of retaliatory violence is capital punishment.  Forgiveness sufficient to interrupt and transform this cycle must be robust in meaning and content.

If the content of not forgiving is bitterness and an ongoing cycle of revenge, what is the content of forgiveness?

Marjorie Suchocki suggests that forgiveness if fundamentally the act of willing the well being of both victim and violator “in the context of the fullest possible knowledge of the nature of the violation.”  No forgetting.  Remembering and knowing and choosing to will “well-being.”

Knowledge and remembrance takes courage.
Willing the well being of the violator is a deliberate choice.
Suchocki calls these actions memory and empathy.

Willing the well being of the other may very well mean willing that they honestly face the reality of their actions and deal with the consequences.  It does not forget the violation.  But it does set the victim free from the need to control the future of the violator.

It gives that future to God.

Some have suggested that Jesus condoned adultery by setting the woman free.  To assume that would be to miss the point of the story.

In the story, Jesus stands between the woman and those who would perpetuate violence by punishing her to death.  Jesus breaks the cycle and sends both the legalists and the supposed sinner free to live a different kind of future.

Two things to carry with you today as you approach this table where grace is baked into bread and squeezed out of the grapevine and offered to you.

1. If you are beset by a need for revenge, take a moment and put down that stone you’ve been waiting to throw.  It takes energy to carry it around, constantly looking and waiting for the chance to throw it.  Put it down.  Set yourself free.  Pray for the wellbeing of the one at whom you’ve been waiting to throw it.
2. If you are beset by guilt, take a moment to lift up your head and look around…no one here stands ready to throw a stone.  We wish for your well being, and if there are consequences to be faced, we’ll face them with you.

That’s the kind of community that Jesus created, and that told this story and that we are invited to create together by conscious acts of forgiving and being forgiven.

Victim and violator – and we are all both – and yet Jesus comes among us, inviting us into a new way of living, a gracious future transformed by grace.  That’s why we must learn and practice forgiveness, because it is the way into a gracious future.