Cybercolumn by John Duncan: Forgiveness

Posted: 8/17/07

Cybercolumn: Forgiveness

By John Duncan

I’m sitting here under the old oak tree, looking for a quote. We live in the age of the sound bite, the dazzling quote, the striking quotation. We are a shorthand society that wants life minimized, shrunk down and sometimes summarized in a few short words or sentences. For these reasons. a quote helps once in a while. and I find myself looking for quotes.

I guess I could quote Hank Aaron, who after Barry Bonds hit his record-breaking home run, said, “My hope today… is that the achievement of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams.” Chase your dreams! Or I could quote a Crandall Canyon, Utah, miner who felt guilty and wondered if he should have turned back to help his fellow miners: “I think I did everything I could. It was like having your brights on in a fog.” Or I could quote, C. S. Lewis. After all, I just returned from Cambridge, England, where he once taught English. He said, “It is astonishing that sometimes we believe that we believe what, really, in our heart we do not believe.” He spoke of forgiveness and stated that for a long time he believed in forgiveness, but did not really believe it until he practiced forgiveness, finally forgiving a cruel school teacher from his youth.

The old oak tree here has lived through storms and hard Texas summers and winters, days when limbs have been chopped off. and days when the storms puts stress on the tree’s roots, days when life under this old tree delivers pain in the form of broken relationships and small sins under the seismic universe that grow into big battles. C.S. Lewis states the obvious, to live, to heal, and to grow, to enjoy the joy of life and of Christ; forgiveness in its simplest form requires surrender and humility, two of our most difficult human traits. Philip Yancey calls forgiveness a most “unnatural act.”

My very first preaching assignment was in a nursing home. I arrived on my first Sunday, sermon in hand, the gospel ready to be delivered in the context of the world as I knew it in 1979. Billy Graham once said something like, “When you prepare to preach, prepare with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” John Stott said that the preacher delivers the gospel “between two worlds,” so we must learn to know God’s word and know the times in which we live. Billy Graham aside and John Stott aside, I had my ready, aim, fire sermon ready to launch. I arrived, led the wheel-chaired crowd in a few hymns and launched my rocket of a sermon in their direction, a sermon from the Bible fitting for the times and the news of that day. It was my first encounter with preaching realities—people falling asleep, people looking around, faces smiling as if tuned in, and eyebrows furled as if to communicate, “I am not too sure I agree with this.” I cut my sermon short. My sermon on the gospel and the forgiveness of the cross seemed too heavy. I had not taken into account the preacher’s first rule of order—to consider the audience to whom you will speak. I launched a rocket when what the nursing home captives needed was the water of mercy, bandages to sustain life’s weariness, and comforting words for the life long battle through which most of them had lived.

After I realized my mistake and finished the sermon, I walked around and greeted the people. One lady latched to my arm and pleaded. Her gray hair and weather-wrinkled faced gloomily looked up at me from her wheel chair. She gritted her teeth and begged: “Will God forgive me? Will God forgive me? Will God forgive me?”

“Yes, God will forgive you,” I told her as she asked the question in repetitious rhythm. Each time I went to the nursing home, no matter what I preached, she asked me the same question after the short sermon. I can hear the echo of her words in my ear to this very day. I wondered if maybe, sometime, somewhere in her life, if maybe her subconscious had remembered a sin and the guilt associated with it and kept recalling it in association with the preaching of God’s word, triggering the repetitious words, “Will God forgive me?”

It took me years to realize she probably had a case of dementia. Still, I have often wondered if unforgiveness had hardened her heart or if some event, sin or broken relationship had never joined hands with the healing balm of Christ’s forgiveness.

While in Cambridge, I walked into the city. While walking, I passed Queen’s College by the River Cam. I walked over that bridge many times with no excitement, just the usual picture takers, the boaters below the bridge in the river, and the bikers whizzing by. On this day, a crowd had stopped and all eyes were fixed on a bicycle and a potential rider atop the bridge’s five-inch rail. A college student challenged his buddy: “Come on! Ride!”

“I am not sure I can,” the scared teenager replied while the crowd looked on. Had the young man been a bike rider on the bridge’s rail. he risked falling onto the stone street or falling headfirst into the river 15 feet below.

“OK, chicken, get down,” the challenger yelled. He took the bike from the fearful teenager, climbed aboard, held his hands up for the crowd, placed his hands on the handlebars, and proudly and promptly rode the bike across the thin rail. He did not fall and when to the other side of the bridge, still balanced with the bike’s pedals, the cheering crowd applauded as he jumped down to the pavement. He took the bike back to the other end of the rail and looked at the fearful teenage rider and exclaimed again, “Now ride!”

I left the scene unwilling to watch the fearful rider lest he fall. The metaphor for forgiveness here conjures up the same emotions—fear, risk and a longing to get past the present moment and to the other side. Genuine forgiveness may incite fear (“Why should I forgive? They do not deserve this!” Or “He will have to come to me crawling before I forgive him!”), but, ultimately, requires the risk of waltzing a thin rail called the cross of grace if we are to bridge the gap between friends and also between God.

If you are looking for another metaphor, the Apostle Paul says that the preaching of the cross is foolishness to some, but to those of us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18). The gospel, to some, may seem as foolish as riding a bike across a rail, but it has the power to transform those who live under the glory of the cross and practice forgiveness in their daily lives.

The cross of Jesus honors forgiveness. Practicing it may be hard, but necessary and vital to life in relationship with God, your spouse or your enemy.

Jesus cried on the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Paul charged the church at Ephesus to forgive even as Christ has forgiven you (Ephesians 4:32). And forgiveness hails as the one redeeming quality in us that cleanses us inside-out while replacing tears with smiles and the dark agony of sin with the glorious light of joy.

So here I am under the old oak tree. Chase your dreams and beware of earth-shattering events that blind you like lights on in the fog and circumstances that shock you on life’s journey, but to walk across life’s bridge of peace and joy and reconciliation and happiness, life’s most unnatural act, forgiveness, requires life’s most supernatural act, Christ’s forgiveness in you forgiving others as Christ has forgiven you.

C.S. Lewis recalls the day he forgave his old teacher after carrying the bitterness and a grudge for years: “But this time I feel it (forgiveness) is the real thing. And (like learning to swim or ride a bike) the moment it (forgiveness) does happen it seems so easy and you wonder why on earth you didn’t do it years ago.” Forgiveness sets us free. It frees us to swim in the joy, to glory in the peace of Jesus Christ, and to ride triumphantly on the thin rail of grace.

John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines. You can respond to his column by e-mailing him at jduncan@lakesidebc.org.