Forgiveness, Trauma, and Moving Forward: A Sermon for the Sunday Sunday after Easter

Acts 9:1-20
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19

St. Thomas's Anglican Church
Toronto, ON

+In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

The Denial of Saint Peter, an oil-on-canvas painting by Gerard Seghers

If there is a universal constant to human experience is that we all make mistakes. We all do things that we regret, hurt people that we care about, and hurt people we barely know. Sometimes we say or do something careless without thinking about the consequences. Sometimes we say or do something we think is funny or charming, and it blows up in our faces. Sometimes we try to be sneaky and get away with something only to get caught. Sometimes we might be greedy or rude, and in our haste, we run over someone. And sometimes, when we decide to give into the darker temptations of our hearts and minds, we hurt someone maliciously to make us feel good about ourselves, or just because we can.

Human nature is damaged, it is broken. Our capacity to do good is wounded and the qualities intrinsic to our nature given to us by God are distorted by ignorance, suffering, death, and sin. Culturally speaking, we see and think of the battle between good and evil to be acted out on a great and epic scale, but the true conflict between good and evil, sin and righteousness, are more often than not fought on a deeply personal level in the choices we make and the thought (or lack of thought) that go into them. Indeed, it is that very banality of evil that makes the greatest evils possible. “It is such a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it”* because to admit such a fall is to open the door to guilt and from that guilt pain arises over what was damaged and lost because of us. Guilt, pain, and regret hurt, they cut to the core because we see how our actions (or inactions) become two-edged swords. Just as we wound others, we wound ourselves. So, we bury the action rather than face it, and sometimes we keep repeating it because we believe there is nothing else to be done once a person is caught on a particular path.

It can take different things to wake us up from our stupor. Saul received a dramatic vision from Jesus and was blinded which led him to see the damage he was doing. For Peter, it was merely being in Jesus’ presence once again after he denied him to get him to see the error of his ways. The wounded nature of humanity can give us varying limits to both our capacity to do good, and our capacity to recognise evil. But in both cases, Jesus forgives Saul and Peter freely.

However, we inhabit a culture of extreme binary opposites. We live in a world of total depravity or total sanctification—there is no in-between. These ideas have been around for millennia in one form or another, but we best understand them from the European Christian religious reformations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but they now operate beyond Christian discourse, especially as the Church becomes less and less relevant to the North American society. There is a totality in which everything is brought to its extreme. We are cultured to present ourselves as being perpetually-right and perpetually-good. Wrongdoing, mistakes, and sins, whether or not they happen because of malice, are all rendered as instantly unforgivable and a mark of total moral failure on the person. This has been at the foundation of carceral systems throughout history in which the bodies, minds, and souls of people are destroyed not for the sake of rehabilitation, but to utterly destroy them. It feels good to condemn others because it makes us feel good and righteous, and yet the hammer of justice tends to fall the hardest on the most marginalised in society. Consider Jesus’ crucifixion, such a punishment was reserved for those like Jesus who were the poorest and at the margins of Roman society, a wealthy or privileged person would never be condemned to such bodily destruction.

In turn, if someone, particularly someone powerful, is caught doing wrong and apologises, the apology is not always genuine because to admit wrongdoing is to admit to that total moral failure. This is where we get the apologies of “I am sorry you feel that way,” or “I’m sorry you misunderstood that” and it turns the “failure” back onto the victim. Such a practice trickles down to us as well It is never our fault, it’s someone else’s fault. If there is ever a genuine apology, the penalty must be severe and the penance intense and public to demonstrate to others what happens to bad people.

In this mire, it is hard to understand and grasp the kind of forgiveness that Jesus offers and invites us to embody. As hard as it is to break ourselves from the cultural mould, we ought to remember what writers such as Ss. Augustine of Hippo, John Chrysostom, Athanasius, the Desert Mothers and Fathers, Julian of Norwich and many others say regarding humanity—human nature is not totally depraved but only wounded. We see in the Gospels Peter and the apostles doing good while struggling with his own failings. Saul said he was completely committed to the Law of Moses, including the moral and ethical dimensions of the Law, while also actively persecuting others. Jesus points out in the Sermon on the mount that gentiles and tax collectors are capable of doing compassion and mercy while still falling short of the mark he left for us.

I am reminded of what JRR Tolkien once wrote in a couple letters, “one must face the fact: the power of Evil in the world is not finally resistible by incarnate creatures [such as us], however 'good' [we are] … It is possible for the good, even the saintly, to be subjected to a power of evil which is too great for them to overcome – in themselves.” Though we resist evil, and strive to do good, even the best of us will fall short, but that struggle to do good is what is moral. We must however acknowledge the pain and the hurt we have caused, and the pain and hurt within us. We must not allow it to consume us until we lose control and fall apart because it is in that place, that place of recognising our limitations and failings that where the scales can fall from our eyes, and we see Jesus there. Jesus offers forgiveness to us freely, and then we can learn to forgive freely as well.

What is this forgiveness though, what does it mean, and what does it look like? In our totalising world, we misunderstand forgiveness. We think forgiveness is a return to the status quo, and brushing off of anything and all things, to accept the harm done without question. That’s not what forgiveness is. Too often people in positions of power demand victimised people or traumatised communities to to “forgive” the abuse done to them by their victimisers so as the violence against them can continue unchallenged and unabated. Additionally, there are indeed actions that are unacceptable. For example, violence, especially violence in all its forms motivated by racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia are unacceptable and people need to be held accountable for their actions. What forgiveness truly is however is the pathway to something new in which people are set free anger, hate, sorrow, pain, fear, and terror are let go. When we are forgiven, or when we forgive, nothing might not seem different, the heavens do not open up and sometimes things do not change dramatically. However, we open up ourselves to a new life and world of new possibilities.

Sculptural relief of the Ascension in Walsingham England.
Note the nail marks in Jesus' feet.

We see in the very resurrected body of Jesus the recognition of what forgiveness looks like. Yes, he died but now is risen from the dead. Though he is embodied in the same body as before, that body has changed because he now bears the marks and wounds of his betrayal and death. The damage that Judas, Peter, and all the disciples who abandoned him and denied him is still there. Jesus bears the wounds of his scourging, physical assault, and crucifixion and are visible to see. The ordeals and traumas he endured are still there. Indeed, he carries those scars and traumas physically into heaven, and the discordance of such trauma are now part of a greater harmony of a new creation. There is no going back to what was before, you can never go back. The damage that is done is done. Instead Jesus offers to Peter, to Paul, and to all of us a new vision of the world and how we can be in it: feed my sheep, feed my lambs, and follow me.

We might not always receive forgiveness from the people we have harmed, despite recognising our failures and genuinely apologising and repenting. That reality can indeed hurt, and we are not owed forgiveness from anyone. To expect it from those we have harmed is presumptuous and can retraumatise people. But we still have hope, “if any sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1-2). Jesus offers forgiveness freely through his resurrection which we can still embrace to help transform us not only so that we may resist evil more fully and completely, but so that we too can learn to forgive others freely. The victory that Christ won over sin has given us greater blessings than those which sin had taken from us: "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Rom 5:20). We can never go back to what was before, but we can go forward with a new sight and vision of the world remade, restored, and redeemed.

Amen.

*This is a quote from Kreia from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II.