A traveler came upon an old farmer working in his field beside the road. Eager to rest his feet, the wanderer hailed the farmer, who seemed happy enough to straighten his back and talk for a moment.
“What sort of people live in the next town?” asked the stranger.
“What were the people like where you’ve come from?” replied the farmer.
“They were a bad lot. Troublemakers all, and lazy too. The most selfish people in the world, and not a one of them to be trusted. I’m happy to be leaving the scoundrels.”
“Is that so?” replied the old farmer. “Well, I’m afraid that you’ll find the same sort in the next town.”
Disappointed, the traveler trudged on his way, and the farmer returned to his work.
Sometime later another stranger, coming from the same direction, hailed the farmer, and they stopped to talk. “What sort of people live in the next town?” he asked.
“What were the people like where you’ve come from?” replied the farmer once again.
“They were the best people in the world. Hardworking, honest, and friendly. I’m sorry to be leaving them.”
“Fear not,” said the farmer. “You’ll find the same sort in the next town.”[1]
Which traveler had the virtue of forgiveness?
Before I moved to Medina, I stopped and talked to a farmer. Well, not a farm as more of a therapist. I think everyone should go at least once a year for a mental health check up. I was mad at God because I had felt my call at my other church end. I was being called away from my home. I had to leave all these people I grew to love. I had to uproot my family. I had to sell a house that was just shaping up to where we wanted it after 6 years of working on it.
While in therapy, I found I had to forgive a lot. I had to forgive God for calling me away. I had to forgive the fact that the call had changed at the church, and they needed someone else. I had to forgive those who I felt had wronged me during my tenure there. Those who I felt hampered my mission, one of whom I thought of as a mentor. I still have some trouble with that one, but I’m learning to let go. Forgiveness is a process.
Most of all, I had to forgive myself. Of those things I failed to do, of not doing enough or being enough, of being petty and impatient and egotistical. It’s hard to walk through all of that. During this series, many of you have said, “Man, I haven’t thought of this stuff since high school.” One of you notably said, “I forgive you.”
“For what?”
“For making me think of stuff from decades ago I didn’t know I was carrying around.”
Just for the record, the purpose of this whole series is letting that stuff go.
I had to let stuff go to come here. I couldn’t walk around acting like y’all are just the same as the place I left. You’re not. I wanted to come expecting to meet good people. Hardworking, honest, respectable. That’s what I left and that’s what I’ve found.
I could have come in with LAW. New sheriff in town, time to tell you how this is going to go. Here’s the LAW when it comes doing church well together. There are three ethical stances we can choose from. There’s deontology which states “Just means is just ends.” If you act rightly, then you’ll produce good fruit. Yet we see in Jesus’ life how the Pharisees and the religious leaders became obsessed with living rightly and how it alienated and marginalized so many people. The very people who were called to heal, forgive, and reconcile people became the ones harming, resenting, and shunning others. This is what Paul is talking about today, we have rules, we face a new problem the rules don’t cover, and we get more rules.
Another type of ethics is teleology which states “The ends justify the means.” As long as you get to the place you wanted to go, then it’s all good. This is why we bomb for peace and kill people for killing people, but it hasn’t worked.
I have tried both ethical stances. Deontology made me a rigid, unyielding person and teleology made me feel like anything goes. What I’ve found is that it’s not strong to draw a line and then punish myself or those who cross the line. Everyone does that.
It’s harder to forgive. It’s harder to stop wishing we didn’t do a thing or a thing didn’t happen. It’s harder to have virtue ethics.
Virtue ethics is all about how we approach things. Like the two travelers, one had a negative set of virtues and expected others to have the same. The other traveler had a positive set of virtues and expected others to have the same. I think the second traveler had it right, and my bet is that they are a much more forgiving person.
Virtue ethics are harder to measure. Virtues deal with character, it’s not measurable, it’s only experienced. You can only tell you have a certain virtue when you’re around other people. I’m the most patient person I know, when I’m alone. Put me in a line or have me wait for the kids to get ready for bed… oh man. Not so patient! I want to have the virtues of patience, listening, and joy. I want to be approachable, interesting and interested. As the boy scout oath states, “To help other people at all times and keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”
I don’t want to be legalistic. Paul is writing that it doesn’t work. We tried the law thing and as wrongs increased, we just got more law. But grace… Wrongs increase and grace increases all the more, all the time. One guy, Jesus, took care of all that. Believe you are accepted!
Father Greg Boyle states that “A bad diagnosis is never neutral. It always puts you behind the eight ball. You have to play catch-up, and that wastes time, money, and resources. No treatment plan worth a damn was ever born of a bad diagnosis. Never. A good diagnosis is everything.”
He states how he was diagnosed with mono and was treated for a year when in fact he had leukemia. Mono treatments will never solve leukemia and vice versa.
He works with gangs in LA, and everyone wants to add in their two cents, or bad diagnosis, about how to deal with the gangs. “People only join a gang to belong. They join because they hope to live how the rappers on MTV do.”
Father Greg writes, “No hopeful kid has ever joined a gang. Never in the history of gangs, and never in the history of kids. Not once, not ever. Hopeful kids don’t join gangs. Gang involvement is about a lethal absence of hope. No kid is seeking anything when he joins a gang. He is always fleeing something. There are no exceptions. That is a good diagnosis.”[2]
As Father Greg has worked with gang members over the decades, he has learned to foster and celebrate mutuality, kinship. To feel gratitude for the history we share with one another. You can’t force gratitude, but you can watch it grow.
A trainee will see a gang member sign in at the front desk, presumably seeking to redirect his life, and the trainee will point and say, “See that guy? We have history together.” This is to say, it’s not a good history. There’s bad blood: he’s an enemy or rival who has either caused mischief or has been on the receiving end of it. But the hope is that they will not just show up to work, but to lift one another out of their languishing isolation and rekindle a determination to show up. Instead of having a history, they will make a new one.[3]
And that is why I show up at church. I want to make new history. A history beyond legalistic religion. Beyond expecting the worst of people. I want a history where gang members are reformed. Where church members are reformed. Where hungry people are fed. Where we each discover who we are and accept that as God has already accepted us.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him. Peter answers three times yes. Jesus says “Feed my sheep.” Three times Peter denies Christ, and three times Christ forgives and gives him the command to feed his sheep. You don’t give responsibility to people you don’t trust.
God’s love and grace are too unfathomable for me to understand. It is just who God is, it’s God’s virtue ethics, revealed to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and we experience it through the movement of the Spirit.
Forgiveness is part of who God is. Forgiveness is a process. Forgiveness is to stop wishing for a better past. Forgiveness opens up a third way, a way beyond tit-for-tat. Instead of more rules, more law, grace increases to cover the wrongs, to welcome back the prodigal and to soothe the jealous older sibling. Forgiveness is the invitation to life free from the burdens that dampen your light, that keep you from enjoying the goodness of God’s gift of the world and all the people in it.
I’ve read all sorts of “How to forgive in 5 steps” or “The best way to forgive” from various scholars and here’s what I’ve found. There is no way to forgiveness that’s a sure-fire way that works in every instance. Forgiveness is the way. If you want to get to it, start where you are. Expect that life can be different. That where you’re going is going to be better. That tomorrow will be better than today. That people can change, ourselves especially. Making the turn toward forgiveness means that you stop taking the poison and wishing the other person would die. We stop wishing the past had been different. Forgiveness means that you find yourself in a jail cell and that it’s been locked from the inside, and the key has been in your hand all along. Like Rob Bell says, “Not forgiving somebody is a form of torture. It doesn’t torture them. It tortures you.” Turn and believe a better life is possible. Or as Jesus put it, “Repent and believe the kingdom of God has come near.”
We religious folk can think we have to jump through all these hoops in order to forgive. Yet the original message is “It’s already done.” Accept that you’re accepted. You are a child of God. There are no hoops, there is only grace. Out of that grace, we are compelled to do things: feed the hungry, ask for justice, seek peace, read the Bible, pray for others. Out of grace, not to earn it because we can’t. That bank account is full and it can never be drawn down. If we’re writing checks out of our ego, absolutely! We go bankrupt because we don’t have enough, our ethical codes won’t meet every situation, but if we let that grace be a part of our virtue, part of who we are, then we can meet any situation, whatever comes our way.
Now there’s tragedy and loss and heartbreak. Absolutely. But as Rob Bell points on in his book How to Be Here, “How we respond to what happens to us… is a creative act. Who states cancer foundations? Usually people who have lost a love on to cancer. Who organizes recovery groups? Mostly people who have struggled with addiction. Who stands up for the rights of the oppressed? Often people who have been oppressed themselves.”[4]
There is nothing to fear. We are not accidents in an uncaring universe, but beloved children of the Creator. We have been forgiven, now it is time for us to get creative and start to create! Forgiveness opens up that space to put down the heavy load that’s weighing us down and get lighter and more creative with it. There’s nothing to fear, there’s life to be found! It is as Hafiz writes, “Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you in better living conditions,
For your mother and my mother were friends.
I know the Innkeeper in this part of the universe.
Get some rest tonight, come again to my verse tomorrow.
We’ll go and speak to the Friend together.
I should not make any promises right now,
But I know,
if you pray,
Somewhere in this world-
something good will happen.
God wants to see more love and playfulness in your eyes
For that is your greatest witness to God.
Your soul and my soul
once sat together in the Beloved’s womb
playing footsie.
Your heart and my heart, Are very, very old friends.[5]
[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/glennon-melton/quit-pointing-your-avocado-at-me_b_3492304.html
[2] Boyle, Greg. Barking to the Choir. Page 130-131.
[3] Ibid, Page 185.
[4] Bell, Page 21
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