I am going to do the virtually unthinkable today, read from the Christian Bible.  This is, for many Christians, the third-holiest day of the year, Palm Sunday. For some Unitarian Universalists, hearing the Bible is an occasion for MEGO, My Eyes Glaze Over, and for others outright objectionable.  A friend of mine stepped into this meeting room one Sunday (where the minister had lit incense) and dashed out; he nearly threw up, it so painfully reminded him of his childhood Catholic experiences. But I think we need to deal with Palm Sunday so that it is not just something we don’t know about or can’t interpret, but something we can own in our way. 

Matthew 21: 7-13

The disciples . . .brought the donkey and her foal; they laid their cloaks on them and Jesus mounted.  Cords of people carpeted the road with their cloaks, and some cut branches from the trees to spread in his path.  Then the crowd that went ahead and the others that came behind raised the shout: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessings on him who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the heavens!

            When he entered Jerusalem the whole city went wild with excitement.  ‘Who is this?” people asked, and the crowd replied, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.”

            Jesus then went into the temple and drove out all who were buying and selling in the temple precincts; he upset the tables of the money-changers and the seats of the dealers in pigeons; and said to them, “Scripture says, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a robbers’ cave.” --The New English Bible.

            One of the dirty little secrets of Protestant and Catholic clergy is that some parish clergy buy sermons from hotshots in the field to preach as if THEY wrote it.   This is fairly common practice and has been for a long time—as a famous Oxford cleric once said following a Sunday service he attended, “That was a pretty good sermon when I preached it last year.”  I happened to get a free Palm Sunday sermon sample from one of the big publishing companies and thought I’d at least contend with the best.  Dr. William Wilimon is Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry at Duke University.  He’s been recognized as one of the top twelve preachers in the English-speaking world and has authored over thirty books.  His sermon sets up Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as a prophet from the rural areas coming to claim his rightful place in the capitol as not only a prophet of God, not only King of the Jews, but God.  Wilimon says:

            “Jesus not only courageously, prophetically spoke the truth.  Our claim is that he IS the truth. He did not just talk about God, he IS God.   In him, in this sometimes comforting, often abrasive Jew of Nazareth, we claim that we have seen as much of God as we ever hope to see.”

            Further, “Jesus walks right down the street, hailed as prophet on Palm Sunday and walks right into the temple.  There, he was not just a distinguished visitor from out of town.  He became an earthquake that shook the place to its foundations.  He takes charge, turns over the tables of the moneychangers, tells them that they have made a mockery of his Father’s house. . . .it’s one thing for someone to prophetically preach   . . .it’s another thing for Jesus to swing in, take charge, and be king.”

            Jesus then leaves the city for the night, and (I quote):

            “As he was returning to the city in the early morning, he felt hungry.   Seeing a fig tree by the road he went up to it and found nothing on it but leaves.  And he said to it, ‘May you never bear fruit again,’ and at that instant the fig tree withered.”  I think this was particularly unconscionable, since figs were out of season—this being early spring—but Wilimon’s interpretation was “Whatever you pray for in faith, you will receive.”  This is not the opinion of a crank; Wilimon echoes an argument made by eminent theologians of many denominations. 

I feel sad and angry by both these versions.  In the biblical text, Jesus’ self-righteous arrogance and hubris are endangering Jesus’ central message, delivered on pivotal occasions, such as “do not contend with enemies, but pray for those who abuse you,” the Golden Rule: “Give unto others what you would have given unto you,” and The Lord’s Prayer: “forgive our sins as we have forgiven one another.”   Perhaps the frustrations of traveling and teaching for three years built up and he lost his sense of emotional balance.  He has entered Jerusalem to celebrate Passover—the deliverance of his people from bondage in Egypt—and they are once again in bondage. Perhaps the frustrations of oppression overwhelmed his emotional balance.  Perhaps all the adulation went to his head and he acted out his sense of entitlement as if he were godlike, a celebrity.  In any case, he spectacularly violated his own central values.  Wilimon’s interpretation turns Jesus into a cardboard divinity cutout, externalizing and trivializing Jesus’ message of internal, spiritual change.  Willimon’s effort at preserving a “perfection” interpretation deprives him of his human failings and thus deprives his message of relevance to human struggle.

On the other hand, as Unitarian Universalists we can respect Jesus as the flawed prophet he was, for the truth he spoke that went beyond his ability to live it perfectly.  He was a human with high ideals he failed occasionally.  We can, therefore, respect and identify with his struggle for forgiveness as helping us develop our ability to forgive him—and others—and ourselves.

I will now define forgiveness, mention two of the benefits of forgiveness, inject a strong note of realism and limitations into the pursuit of forgiveness, and Forgiveness is two-fold.  Forgiveness is, First, giving up the resentment and related responses to which we have a right.  Giving up resentment is paradoxical precisely because I am giving a gift to the one who injured me.   Second, Forgiveness is trying to respond to the one who wronged me on an over-arching, beneficent moral principle such as merciful restraint, generosity, and/or compassion.

           “Giving up resentment” refers to a forgiver who actively struggles with inner ambivalences that can last months and years.  “Resentment” refers to everything from feeling annoyance to hatred, judgments ranging from inadequacy to evil incarnate, and behaviors ranging from ignoring to assault.  “Beneficence” refers to a genuine sense of goodness in which people aid others without thought of what they have done or can do for them.  There are two paradoxes in this definition: 1) The forgiver gives up what one has a right to, such as resentment, judgment, and revenge, and 2) Gives to another that which is not deserved.

           Finally, forgiveness is an active, developmental process that takes time and occurs in many ways.  The pragmatic benefits of forgiving are most commonly alluded to.  For example, Richard Fiske was a Marine Corps bugler on the battleship West Virginia when Pearl Harbor was bombed.  The memories of the bombs and torpedoes, burning shipmates, and swimming through burning oil never left him.  But it was when he nearly died of a bleeding ulcer in the 1960’s that his doctor warned him that his hatred for the Japanese people was poisoning him, saying:”I can cure your stomach but not your head.”  Fiske burst into tears and began a slow process of forgiveness and reconciliation with the Japanese, a particularly useful one in his case because his daughter would marry a Japanese American.   For another example, Marietta Jaeger’s seven-year old daughter was kidnapped and murdered in Montana.  She was filled with rage and grief but resolved, with a weary willingness, to try to forgive.  Over the next year it took to find the perpetrator, Marietta remembered the kidnapper was a member of the human race, resolved not to speak of him in subhuman terms, and prayed for good things for him every day.  This was very hard.   It felt, at different times, disloyal to her daughter, false, mechanical, and relieving.  Relieving, because chronic resentment is a chronic stressor, and people who forgive suffer less anxiety and depression and have higher self-esteem.  Some studies say they enjoy better physical health.  Forgiveness for Marietta was both difficult and ambivalent, but it may have saved her from her husband’s fate; he became morose and depressed, sunk in helpless rage.  He died several years later of bleeding ulcers and a heart attack.

Forgiveness is not a simple, once-and-its-done   Forgiving is more than either a question of will-power or strategy.  The feelings of hurt, anger, sadness, unfairness, resentment, revenge, etc. must be uncovered, respected, and expressed, as they were in both cases above, and the measure taken of how this terrible wrong alters one’s worldview of being fairly treated and one’s view of the self as injured and thereby changed.  For example, my mother’s uncle used to spend his summers visiting various relatives, spending a week or two at each, and promised to bequeath his considerable—for that time and place—fortune of $750 to each host.  Soon after he died, it was discovered that he did not have any money, no $750, not even $7.50. My mother gave a minister $10 to bury him.  My mother’s brother, however, decided that she was unwilling to share a considerable estate and has yet, since 1936, to forgive her.  Another example: A husband and wife had been dissatisfied with each other for years, and fighting for a year in therapy, when one of them changed in an effort at compromise.  After several weeks, the still-aggrieved spouse acknowledged the change but became hostile and shouted:” Why should I forgive?  It has been years of hell, I’m still hurt, and I should forgive just because these are the changes I want?”  Therefore, I mention forgiveness to my clients after they have explored and vented their rage at, for example, childhood traumas such as sexual abuse, physical neglect and emotional trauma or the adult traumas of marital betrayal and financial ruin.  Their feelings are important, valid and understandable, but dwelling ONLY on the hurt and anger can eventually victimize them further.  Forgiveness is freedom.   Moreover, It is not just a therapeutically useful technique, but a process developing out of a moral sense of the other person’s goodness.  Only then can a decision to forgive be honestly considered.  That decision will be made and reconsidered many times, but signals a change in itself. 

The second half of forgiveness is about possibility, the possibility of compassion, empathy, and acceptance toward the offender developing into a greater meaning for self and others, insight into our deep human connections, and realization of a new purpose.  For example, Isabel Allende, niece of Chile’s former president, spoke this way about the dictator who had Salvador Allende murdered and ruled Chile in a bloody dictatorship:

“I feel no hatred for (General) Pinochet.  Hatred is a very heavy burden, one I shook off many years ago, when I started writing.  Writing has allowed me to exorcise most of my demons and transform my pain into strength.  I would like to see him face trial, so that the truth about his crimes is fully exposed.  But I don’t want the general to rot in prison, as so many of his victims did . . .I merely wish that in the winter of his life the general would ask forgiveness of all those whose lives he destroyed . . .Only then, with the recognition of past errors, will a true reconciliation among Chileans begin.”  For another example, “Susan,” (one of my clients) was sexually abused as a child--with nearly disastrous results.  She was well toward recovering from those multiple traumas when one of her clergy groped her.  She was enraged, appalled, depressed, and ashamed—in short, retraumatized.  When she said she could not confront his superior, I suggested she could ask his superior into a session and I would support her; he stonewalled her accusation, although time has shown she was certainly not the only one he had heard about or from.   Nevertheless, she managed eventually to forgive the offender and his superior, and pursued credentials for leadership in her religion.  She will support those who have been hurt and support limits on abuse.  Does that mean she is never ashamed or angry? No.  That would be inhuman.  But she is putting her energy into constructive uses from an inner position of peace. Her church is benefiting from her energy.

In sum, forgiveness is an active, developmental process of freeing oneself from the burden of injustice, gaining awareness of one’s own pain, developing the ability to make a difficult decision, and developing a greater compassion toward the offender and a greater meaning for oneself.   Forgiveness is a process, a paradox, and a possibility.  Forgiveness also has excellent press.  But because forgiveness is dependent upon a supportive social system and great moral strength, I am going to suggest some limitations to forgiveness in terms of the social usefulness of justice and the personal benefit of safety.

            The social benefits of vengeance and punishment are many.  Suppose you were running in a State Park and you were attacked and bitten badly by a dog not on a leash.  The dog’s owner is apprehended.  Do you prosecute?   The reasons for prosecuting, which will take your time and some of your money, include your fear that were you not the large adult you are but, say, a five-year old, the attack could have been very damaging, the hope that this will limit this unleashing behavior by this person—and possibly others—in the future, and the general desire to see that society’s reasonable rules are followed so that there is equality of public access to public lands.  There is a social good that comes from not-forgiving.

            There are personal and social limits on forgiveness, due to the effects of trauma on the brain and to cultural beliefs that have been passed down through the generations about social justice and safety.  We now know that trauma changes brain chemistry and structure.  As hard as you may try to forgive, if you have been badly frightened a part of your brain will be uncontrollably reactive.  Forgiveness will not be complete.  Further, I wouldn’t even try to sell forgiveness to Israelis and Palestinians for three generations.  Greek and Turkish Cypriots will take at least as long.  Where huge personal risk is closely connected to historic events that bear on future dangers, forgiveness looks foolhardy and disloyal to those around us.

            There is even a personal benefit to not forgiving too easily or too soon.   If it is possible to see any way in which you left yourself unduly vulnerable to attack, then taking responsibility for changing that naivete or vulnerability is personally responsible.  You may decide to run in that State Park but challenge dog owners who unleash their dogs, even if the dog shows no hostility.  You may look for ways to expand park police patrolling frequency and range.  In short, you may first attend to safety issues in a responsible way, and then forgive.

Let’s shift gears briefly, and reflect on our own lives.  Relax into your chairs, breathe deeply once or twice, and either concentrate on a point in front of yourself or close your eyes so you can reflect inwardly.   Can you think of resentments you carry in the wider community, here, or at home?  Remember others’ resentments with which you collaborate?  Consider ways you may have been hurt by resentments here or elsewhere?  Can you consider any forgiveness work you may need to do?   Pause for a moment, and then return to the issue of forgiveness in this room.

The “going on” of forgiveness is central to Passover.  The Passover seder commemorates the passage out of bondage, the passage to a better land in both an historical and an emotional sense.  The seder as a celebration of liberation reviews the oppression in Egypt and then frees us from concentrating on the miseries of slavery. Were we to concentrate our attention only on oppression it would merely serve to perpetuate our present slavery to resentment.  The seder service I find most moving says:

“Among peoples everywhere the sharing of bread forms a bond of fellowship.  This is the bread of affliction our fathers and mothers ate in the land of Egypt.  Let all who are hungry come and eat.  Let all who are needy celebrate with us, for our redemption is bound up with the deliverance from bondage of people everywhere.”

And after a place is made of Elijah:
            “ . . .where there is liberty, there is my country.  For were we sitting in Jerusalem we would still say, ‘Next year in Jerusalem, the city of peace.’  This year not only we but others are in slavery; next year we hope all humanity shall be free.”

In moving on we take from the best of the world’s religions and challenge ourselves to forgive. Forgiveness is a strength we do not all have and nobody has all the time.  We can go beyond particular examples, such as Jesus or Buddha, but take from them what they can give of the highest order and let the rest go.  We are free to identify with, and model on, such contemporary, far-flung prophets as Richard Fiske (who was so badly traumatized at Pearl Harbor), Marietta Jaeger in Montana, Isabel Allende of Chile, and “Susan” of Westchester.   Their examples will lead to our being examples.  Our example of forgiveness is the best we have to give ourselves, each other, and the world.  So let us discuss the issue of forgiveness as letting go of resentment to which we are entitled, letting go of self-righteousness, and moving on to a compassion manifest in our discussion. 

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