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This course is one of the short non accredited Developing Discipleship courses available through Lindisfarne. This course handbook has been written and is owned by Stephen Cherry.
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July 2010
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Chapter 2 Forgiveness and God
To err is human, to forgive, divine. (Alexander Pope)
If you ask members of another faith what the main features of Christianity are, they will sooner or later, probably sooner, say ‘he taught the love of enemies, forgiveness and reconciliation’. George Soars-Prabhu, for instance, writes,
An Indian reader who leafs through the New Testament endeavouring to catch the specific savour of its spirituality will, I suspect be struck by two features in its teaching. He will be impressed by its repeated insistence on active concern for fellow human beings; and by its frequent invitation to forgive.[i]
This is undoubtedly true, and Christian people are constantly challenged to hear this teaching and put it into practice. However, it is wrong to give the impression that there was no forgiveness before Jesus or that it is unknown outside Christianity. Soars Prabhu says that his Indian reader, whether from the Buddhist or Hindu tradition, will be familiar with both the need for compassion and the importance of forgiveness. Indeed he goes on to quote a Buddhist story as the one in which he finds the lesson of forgiveness most forcefully taught. In the story, Prince Dighavu of Kosala has in his power the man who both murdered his family and usurped his kingdom. He spares him because he remembers his father’s dying advice: not to let hatred last long or to be quick to fall out with friends because ‘hatred is not appeased by hatred; hatred is appeased by non-hatred alone’. The thought is echoed in the ancient Chinese proverb which says, ‘whoever opts for revenge should dig two graves’. So when we come across a writer saying that Jesus of Nazareth was ’the discoverer of the role of forgiveness in human affairs’, as Hannah Arendt did in The Human Condition (p214f), we must not leap to the conclusion that forgiveness is something that Jesus somehow invented or that it only features in the Christian religion.[ii] What was startling about Jesus and forgiveness was not that he believed in it and taught it but that he did so with such a strong sense of authority and with such a radical commitment. As the Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf points out, the context in which Jesus lived was one where retaliation and revenge seemed the only way to deal with the daily indignities and worse that came from the Romans. ‘The climate of pervasive oppression in which {Jesus} preached was suffused with the desire for revenge’.[iii] It is in such contexts that forgiveness stands out so remarkably. This is why we are so impressed with the forgiveness that we see in the post-Apartheid South Africa. It is when the cry for vengeance seems natural that to seek the alternative path seems supernatural.
Forgiveness happens all over the world in all sorts of ways. It is not a special add-on to human living that makes Christians different or Christianity distinctive. That is not to say that it is not important or central in Christianity. I think it is both. In fact I think that forgiveness is absolutely central in Christian ethics and spirituality, and that it connects the two. It is a key Kingdom practice, a powerful form of generosity. But thinking all this does not make me wish to diminish the role of forgiveness in other philosophies or religions or in communities of families that are of other faiths or no faith at all. And yet, as Soars Prabhu has flagged up, there is something about forgiveness and the New Testament which stands out. It is often there at the heart of things. The word is used more sparingly than we might at first think but there can be no denying the fact that it is nonetheless central. It is worth just remembering some of the key moments when forgiveness surfaces in the New Testament. We find it at the heart of the Lord’s prayer (Matthew 6, Luke 9). We see it in the first miracle in Mark’s gospel (the healing of the paralytic, Mark 2). We learn about it in the pivotal parable in Luke’s gospel, (the Prodigal Son, Luke 15). We are warned that we will be judged by our willingness to forgive in Matthew’s gospel (the story of the unforgiving steward, Matthew 18). We hear Paul encouraging his readers to be tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you (Colossians 3). And we hear words of forgiveness not only from the lips of the dying Jesus (Luke 23.23) but also from Stephen the first martyr (Acts 9) . However, this great emphasis on forgiveness did not come from nowhere. It has its roots deep in the heart of God and in the human experience of God’s love. The truth is that Jesus was born into a religion with a long history and strong theology of forgiveness. In this chapter we will spend some time looking at that inheritance because the key theological point that underlies forgiveness is there. That is, God’s forgiveness is neither something that was added to God’s nature through the work of Jesus nor was it added to the Jewish understanding of Jesus through his teaching. I don’t mean to imply by this that the God of the Old Testament was not capable of vengeance. The point is rather that once the genie of forgiveness is out of the divine bottle there is no putting it back in. As soon as it becomes clear that God can and does forgive, it begins to dawn on us that God is both the ultimate and the original forgiver. This is what we discover when we read the Bible with care.
Exodus 32
We begin in the book of Exodus and meet Moses on the mountain. He has just received the words of the law and they are now inscribed on the tablets of stone. While Moses has been communing with the Lord, Aaron persuaded all the people to melt their jewellery and make a golden calf. The Lord knows this and sends Moses back down to the people. Before Moses leaves the mountain top, the Lord reveals his anger and says to Moses: ‘I have seen this people how stiff necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation’. On hearing this, Moses decides not to leave but to stay and argue. He pleads with God not to act out of his anger. In other words, he asks the Lord to be forgiving. What is especially interesting in Moses’ plea is that he invokes the covenant that the Lord has with his people: ‘Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel your servants, how you swore to them by your own self saying to them, “I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven…”’ The result was that, ‘the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people’. (Exodus 32.14)
Moses then goes down the mountain and on the way down he too hears the sounds of the people worshipping the golden calf. Like God, Moses is moved to anger by this. What happens next is really interesting and really important. Having implored with God to be forgiving on the basis of the covenant relationship that existed in the past, Moses now smashes the two stone tablets, the sign and symbol of the new covenant, the new relationship between God and God’s people. This does not satisfy his anger however and when he arrives he sets about the golden calf itself. ‘He took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it’. (Exodus 32. 20)
It cannot be denied that the righteous anger theme in this story is the predominant one. But what is interesting is that there is more to the story than that. Through Moses intercession God’s anger does not run its destructive course. Equally, although Moses pleaded with God to take a forgiving and pardoning attitude, this did not prevent Moses himself being angry or dealing with the situation in what some might feel was a rather heavy-handed way.
In the second half of this chapter we are going to look in some detail at one of the Psalms – Psalm 32. As we will see, it spells out the relationship between the forgiveness of God and human beings very carefully and helpfully. As we do so we should remember that the Psalms were written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus. There is no doubt that he inherited a profound understanding of forgiveness from the faith he was born into. Needless to say people did not live it out as well as they might have. The same is true in all generations, and he might well have found it hard to fit all the bits of the theological jigsaw that he picked up from the Bible, his family and by observing the practice of others. I sometimes wonder what it was that he was discussing in the Temple with the elders on the famous occasion when he got lost as a young boy. My own hunch is that he was asking about the forgiveness of God and how this relates to our relationship with God when we have sinned and also how it relates to our relationship with others when they sin against us. It would certainly have been a long and gripping conversation if he had got them going about that. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a transcript of that conversation!
Psalm 32
Psalm 32 was St Augustine’s favourite psalm. One can see why. It is the song of one who knows what it is to have been forgiven. It is a celebration of that blessed, joyful, happy state. The NRSV translates it like this:
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile.
However when we read this Psalm in the Book of Common Prayer, we notice something important.
Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven and whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth no sin and in whose spirit there is no guile.
The first two verses take the form of a pair of ‘beatitudes’. Christian people inevitably come to this literary form through the beatitudes voiced by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. Reading though the list reminds us of just how demanding Jesus’ beatitudes are. They are forward looking. They emphasise attitudes or qualities or passions that fit people for the Kingdom. They are paradoxical because they all express some form of deficiency or demand. The form is, ‘happy are those who are apparently not very happy, because things will be changed’. The Beatitudes in Psalm 32, on the other hand, are relatively passive – we are happy (blessed) if the Lord imputes no iniquity to us and if our sins are covered. They are also retrospective. We hear the voice of glad experience, not hopeful expectancy. This is what has been done for me, and so I rejoice. The form here is, ‘happy are those who have been in receipt of grace because they know things to have been transformed’.
It is important to hold this difference in our minds and appreciate it. But we must not make too much of it either. For it is an exaggeration to say that these two types of beatitude represent different religions or theologies or spiritualities. Rather they represent different moods or phases within a mature and holistic spirituality. Taken together they say that there is a time to rejoice in sin forgiven and iniquity covered and there is a time to say, ‘blessed are the merciful because in due course they will themselves receive mercy.’ It is not that mercy is the reward of mercy, we might add, recalling the argument of the last chapter, but that giving and receiving mercy are inextricably connected, so connected that they might indeed be one and the same.
I wonder whether a simple image might help to clarify this crucial point. When you open a window you make it possible for fresh air to come in and stale air to leave at the same time. You do not need two different windows for these two purposes. Moreover, you cannot, as you open the window to let out the stale air, prevent the fresh air coming in. So it is with mercy. Those who open their hearts to let mercy flow to others are the only people to whom the mercy of God can flow. It is impossible to create a ‘grace filter’ to the human soul. We cannot receive God’s love without passing it on. The windows, the curtains, the shutters are either open or closed. If they are open then mercy, grace, love and forgiveness will flow both ways. If they are closed, well, they are closed. Sometimes of course this happens. It is sad but true that there are times when the love of God is something we feel we have to shut out for a while. We will consider this more in another chapter. For now we will just let this metaphor play itself out by saying that, while it might be right sometimes to draw the curtains, close the windows or lock the shutters, we must be very careful when we do so not to let anyone paint the windows or throw away the key of the shutters. For one day we will want to wake from our misery and open the window that lets mercy and grace in and out. So, when you do decide to close the window of your soul, and you will, maybe you should do so gently, and ‘just for a while’.