The Fifth Commandment: You Shall Forgive Yourself and Others, by Rev. Michael McGee, Jan. 9, 2011

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The Fifth Commandment: You Shall Forgive Yourself and Others

        Like all of you, I'm stunned by the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and sixteen others
yesterday in Tucson. We still don't know all the details, but I'm
deeply saddened and angry that someone could so blatantly take the
life of and injure so many innocent people. I admit that I'm
struggling with a part of me that is so angry at the perpetrator of
this crime as well as those who have used a rhetoric of hatred and
dehumanization in our media, that I want to see them hurt. But the
purpose of my sermon this morning is to move us away from that
retaliatory anger and towards a healing spirit of forgiveness.

        This is the fifth sermon in our monthly sermon series of "The Ten Commandments Renewed." This
ancient ethical statement is a vital source of inspiration for
many, but the Decalogue of the Abrahamic religions has lost
its relevance for others. And some of us, myself included, are
tired of them being misused and abused by those who don't
understand their complexity and nuances.

        So our choice is to either ignore or renew them, and I opt for renewal. The original Ten may
seem outdated to us, but we still need ethical guidelines that help
us keep our moral compass in this complicated world.

        The original fifth commandment in most Christian denominations is, "Thou shalt honor thy father
and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the
Lord thy God giveth thee." So, you may ask what this commandment
has to do with forgivingness. Certainly to honor our parents is a
worthy commandment in itself, but I believe that to truly respect
and love our parents requires more than anything else the act of
forgiveness -- of them and ourselves.

        We owe our very lives to our parents, and hopefully we were – or still are -- sustained by their
love. But to be human is to also blame our parents for everything
that is wrong with us. As someone said, "Everybody knows how to
raise children, except the people who have them." (P.J. O'Rourke)
No matter how loving and good we are as parents, we still make
myriad mistakes. And our children know it. They even think we make
more mistakes than we actually do.

        As our children age -- and especially once they become parents themselves (our ultimate
revenge) -- they begin to understand the bind all parents are in:
we have no idea what we're doing. Or let me put it this way: we are
not perfect; in fact, nowhere near perfect. And hopefully that
realization helps our children on their path to forgiving their
parents for being merely human. And let's not forget that parents
have some forgiving to do as well. One of our members told me that
on a recent Father's Day, his grown daughter gave him a card that
read, “I'm sorry Dad for everything I did between the ages of 13
and 18.”

        As we learn to forgive our parents -- and thus not blame them for every deficiency of
character we have -- we also learn to forgive ourselves, knowing
that we too, like our parents, will eventually be the cause of many
unknown calamities for our children or for others we love.

        The next big step in learning about forgiveness is be able to forgive the person we live with.
Ironically the most difficult people to forgive are those we love
the most, and that certainly is true for spouses and partners.
Terry and I went out to dinner last week to celebrate surviving 42
years of marriage -- which is hard for both of us to believe. We
mentioned our anniversary to our young waiter, and he came over
later and said that he had been married less than a year and was
wondering what our secret was to such a long marriage. Terry told
him that it was our learning to listen to each other, no matter how
difficult it was to do so. I ignored her and told him it was being
able to apologize and forgive.

        I confess that one of the most difficult lessons in my life has been learning to say "I'm sorry.”
There is something about human pride – ok, maybe it's male pride --
that makes those words stick in my throat. And yet what can make us
more human and loving than to say those two words with
authenticity. In the story this morning, "The Summer My Father Was
Ten“, the boy learns to say he's sorry and the man learns to
forgive, thus restoring and renewing a relationship that otherwise
would have been destroyed.

        Forgiveness is the process that reshapes our relationships from the straight line of anger and
retaliation to the curve of connection. But relationship is hard to
sustain when we are hurt. Think about it: when someone hurts us,
whether physically or emotionally, we get angry, and our immediate
response is we want to get even. We want to hurt them back.

        But what does that do to us? When we lash out in anger, we become someone who is a stranger to
ourselves, someone who we may not even recognize. And we are at the
mercy of that stranger, no longer able to make our own choices but
being controlled by our anger. When we react out of anger, it may
seem that we have no choice but to retaliate, but we always have
the choice to move towards forgiveness.

        And don't forget this: to choose to forgive does not mean that we can't be angry. In fact,
anger is a vital part of the process of forgiveness. A woman who
was a victim of incest came to her minister and said, "It's not
enough for me to say I have to forgive my father. I can't do that
until I experience the rage and the sadness … over how my childhood
was. And that's what I have been afraid to do." [Living in Communion]

        Too many times forgiveness is just a nice word for denying our pain and anger. But if the goal is
to heal the relationship and to make it as whole as possible, then
we must first of all claim our pain and anger. To say that we're
willing to forget that we've been wronged does not heal a
relationship. Only truth heals a relationship. Let me repeat that:
only truth heals a relationship.

        The only way to reshape a relationship into the curve of connection is to communicate our
hurt and yes, our anger. But -- and this is especially important --
the purpose of the anger must not be to hurt the perpetrator but to
bring balance back to the relationship. If our intent is to hurt
rather than heal then we have jumped onto that hell-bound
merry-go-round of retaliation that will eventually destroy our
spirit.

        There's a Buddhist story that tells of just such a situation. "A man is struck by an arrow from
an unknown assailant. Rather than tending to the wound, he refuses
to remove the arrow until the archer is found and punished. In the
meantime the wound festers until finally the poison kills him.
Which is the more responsible for this death: the archer's letting
go of the arrow or the victim's foolish holding on to his anger?"
["The Art of Return"]

        Isn't this what so often happens when we get angry? It may be someone we love very much. It
may be someone who is long ago dead, and yet we continue fighting
with them, holding onto our wrath, and thus keeping ourselves
trapped in the past. We lose our freedom by not letting go of past
injuries. As long as we are holding onto those age-old conflicts,
we will never be fully present in the here and now and we can never
be fully loving.

        Often, when a parent dies, we experience a devastating guilt that we did not honor him or her
enough during their lifetime. In some memorial services, I use
healing words written by A. Powell Davies, the famed Unitarian
minister, to help people deal with their guilt. He writes, “May no
heart be troubled by things left unsaid, or by past mistakes, for
the goodness of life is great enough to heal and to forgive. The
living owe the dead only loving remembrance, but not remorse, for
all human relationships are imperfect.” This guilt when a parent or
loved one dies is one of the most difficult of dragons many of us
must battle, and the only way to overcome it is through a process
of genuine forgiveness, forgiving them and ourselves for not being
perfect.

        I don't want to make this sound easy, because it's not. I like the way Norman Cousins describes it:
“Life is an adventure in forgiveness.” Forgiveness is an adventure
because it's one of the most difficult and yet rewarding acts in
our entire lives. To forgive requires that we have the courage to
communicate our anger to the person who has offended us, but in a
non-retaliatory fashion. Then we must listen from the heart to the
response, and enter into an honest dialogue, a deep conversation
that will renew our relationship and our life.

        It takes work, and it takes courage. And it takes a lifetime. This is one of the important
lessons in forgiveness: it's an ongoing and never-ending process.
We are hopefully moving towards forgiveness every day of our
lives.

         It's important to remember that forgiving someone doesn't excuse their actions, but it does
free you from stress and suffering. It takes strength to forgive.
You may notice that it's those who are afraid to look weak who are
often the ones seeking vengeance. When you embody peace and
reconciliation, you become an example for others to follow. And you
become the change you want to see in the world.

        But forgiveness doesn't always work. The person you are angry at may be insensitive to your pain
and disinterested in bringing about a resolution. All you can do
then is to communicate as best you can how you've been hurt or how
you have done the hurting, and then let go and do your best at
forgiving anyway.

        It’s not easy, but it's a lot harder to have to hang onto the anger and hurt and carry it around
like a sack of rotten potatoes for the rest of your life. The key
is not to let the anger into your heart because we want our heart
to be a sanctuary and not a battleground.

        It’s also important to remember that forgiveness does not require forgetfulness. We like to say
that we will forgive and forget, but in reality we need to forgive
and remember. We remember the hurt and pain, and yet we choose – we
choose – to try and forgive in spite of those memories.

        Sometimes we hurt others so badly that we must ask for forgiveness from a higher source. Only
by laying our soul bare, by being totally honest with ourselves
about how badly we've hurt another, can the grace of forgiveness be
received.

        And sometimes we need to forgive God – even if we don’t believe in God. A hospice volunteer
told me once that she was struggling with how to help two patients.
One, a young man in his 30s, was dying of AIDS and was wrestling
with the question, why me, why do I have to die so young? The other
patient was a 96 year old woman who had little quality of life and
was angry with God for not letting her die. I’m not sure what I
would tell them, but my hope is that they were able to forgive God
-- or Life -- for the anguish they endured. And through their
forgiveness perhaps they achieved peace.

        Not only is forgiveness good for us spiritually, moving us towards healing and wholeness, but
psychological research shows that being a forgiving person is
essential to happiness since we're able to let go of the anger and
hatred that causes our life to descend into misery and resentment.
And forgiveness is physically healthy for us as well: people who
won't forgive the wrongs committed against them tend to have
negative indicators of health and well-being: more stress-related
disorders, lower immune-system function, and worse rates of
cardiovascular disease. In effect, by failing to forgive we punish
ourselves spiritually, psychologically, and physically.

        So, whom do you need to forgive? That's the Question of the Month, and one we all need to
ask ourselves and each other. I encourage you to use that question
to get to know each other better by getting together with others
person in our church and taking three minutes each to answer the
question.

        This is one of the most important questions of our lives because when we open our hearts to
our pain and are able to express the sorrow and anger in a
non-retaliatory way, then we can give the gift of forgiveness to
another. And when we can see life as a circular web of connection
with all beings and that we are interwoven into that web, then
forgiveness comes to our hearts and we are home.

View the Sermon

Sermon Sources

• "The Art of Return" by Colin Berg, Parabola, Vol. XII
• Ask the Rabbi Index, Rabbi David Wolpe, BeliefNet.com
• Forgiveness Is Good for Your Health by Gregg Easterbrook, BeliefNet.com
• "Living in Communion: An Interview with Father Thomas Hopko" Parabola, Vol. XII
• "On Forgiveness" by Charles L. Griswold, NYT, Dec. 26, 2010

Covenant Group Questions

1. Whom do you need to forgive?
2. Who needs to forgive you?
3. Have you forgiven your parents?
4. Have your children forgiven you?
5. Whom do you have the most trouble forgiving?
6. Have you even asked someone to forgive you?
7. Have you forgiven God -- or Life?