Such As No One On Earth Could Bleach Them
Mark 9: 2-9
A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
(content differs from sermon preached)

A Spanish father decided to reconcile with his son who had run away to Madrid.  He took out an ad in the city newspaper:  “Paco, meet me at Hotel Montana at noon Tuesday.  All is forgiven. Papa.”  When the father went to the square he found eight hundred young men named Paco waiting for their fathers.

This is the beginning of a story by Ernest Hemingway, first published as “The Horns of the Bull” in 1936.  It is fiction but there could not be a more true expression of our human longing for forgiveness.

In his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace? Philip Yancey writes that “UNforgiveness is sadly our NATURAL human state... (UNforgiveness) plays like a background static of life for families, nations, and institutions. We nurse sores, go to elaborate length to rationalize our behavior, perpetuate family feuds, punish ourselves, punish others – all to avoid the most UNNATURAL act of forgiving.”

When I was about ten years old my Aunt Florence and Uncle Bert drove three thousand miles from Connecticut to California to visit our family and Florence’s only brother, my dad.  We prepared for their visit for weeks and were very excited.  They arrived on a Friday night but by Saturday morning they were gone!...They turned around and drove three thousand miles back... because of an argument sister and brother had that first night.  They did not speak for years afterwards...

UNforgiveness is our NATURAL human state.  Though perhaps not so dramatically – our longing for and distance from forgiveness is a powerful dynamic in human life.  Little hurts magnified, big pain held onto, guilt and shame keeping us from being fully alive to the present.

 Forgiveness is hard to give and receive.  And so we pray “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,”  Forgive us our sins, forgive us our debts.... as we forgive those...

I couldn’t get forgiveness out of my mind as I read and re-read the story of Jesus’ transfiguration ... and as I struggle with forgiveness in my own life.

Jesus’ full glory shone on a mountaintop, for a few people, for a moment.  That remarkable moment when Jesus appeared in such glory that his clothes shone dazzling white “such as no one on earth could bleach them.”  

Scholar Stanley Saunders wrote of this text, (Feast, p. 453) “The Boundary zones between human and divine is disorienting and revealing.”
 
The dazzling, disorienting and revealing truth of Jesus’ transfiguration is that the context, the construct, the reality of our lives is bigger and more glorious than we live.

Nowhere is that more glorious than in the disorienting, revealing, terrifying and transforming boundary zone of forgiveness.

Earlier in the service we watched a remarkable ABC News video clip of the reunion ... after 48 years ... of Congressman John Lewis and the man who beat him at a bus depot in South Carolina in 1951.  Confession, contrition, forgiveness, transformation.

Asking for forgiveness is not easy. Forgiving is not easy.  It can take a long time (Date tree – children’s story...)  Christian writer and teacher, C.S. Lewis, wrote to his friend, Mary Willis Shelbourne, “Last week in prayer, I discovered, or at least I think I did, that suddenly I was able to forgive someone that I had been trying to forgive for over thirty years.”

Forgiveness is not forgetting, excusing, condoning,... it is release for new life.

Bill had no problem when Paula, a teenager, was sentenced to death. She had killed his grandmother. Over time Bill began to think about who his grandmother, who she was, how she would have felt about this girl on death row.  He wrote, “At that time I had absolutely no love and compassion for Paula at all. My grandmother had been heinously murdered.  But I was convinced that my grandmother wanted someone to have love and compassion so I began to pray in tears, begging God to give me love and compassion for Paula on behalf of my grandmother.  After a time I no longer wanted Paula to die.  I began to correspond with Paula. ... Having compassion for Paula Cooper did more for me than it did for her. That’s the way forgiveness is.” (*Bill Pelke, Journey of Hope, 2003.)

In “Loving One’s Enemies” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Jesus was very serious when he gave this command.  He wasn’t playing.  He realized that it’s hard to love your enemies.  He realized that it’s difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you ... Discover the element of good in (the) enemy and every time you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there ... and see deep down within that person  ... the image of God.”

Dr. King went on to say, “... Yes, I can see Jesus walking around the hills and the valleys of Palestine.  And I can see him looking out at the Roman Empire with all its fascinating and intricate military machinery.  But in the midst of that I can hear him say, “I will not use this method.  Neither will I hate the Roman Empire.”

What does it take to choose freedom from the destructive cycles of hurt and retribution that only forgiveness can release?

Grace. God loves us first and always ... no matter what.  God invites us to love as we are loved ... to forgive as we are forgiven.  God calls us to live larger lives ... to forgive others when we just can’t ... to forgive ourselves when we just can’t.  To ask for forgiveness...

If we get stuck thinking about what has been done to us, we miss all that has been done for us. Unwillingness to forgive imprisons the person who will not let go of the anger or pain or desire to punish, compounding the injury with debilitating resentment. Hate distorts the hater. And so we pray for willingness. Even when we cannot pray to forgive, we pray for willingness.

Love has within it a redemptive power ... power that transforms our human state of UNforgiveness into a whole and holy reality.

Psychologist Frederic Luskin teaches forgiveness.  He founded Stanford University’s Forgiveness Project.  Dr. Luskin says, “The practice of forgiveness has been shown to reduce anger, hurt, depression, and stress.  Forgiveness leads to greater feelings of hope, peace, compassion and self-confidence.  Practicing forgiveness leads to healthy relationships as well as physical health.  It also influences our attitude which opens the heart to kindness, beauty, and love. Forgiveness changes lives.”

Transfiguration draws us to that boundary zone where ordinary human existence is illuminated by a dazzling transforming power of God’s grace and glory.  Forgiveness draws us into that boundary zone, on the mountaintop and in the deepest valley, where the stuck places of our pained lives can be released and restored.

Grace is at the heart of forgiveness, and by grace we will receive its freedom and extend its life changing power to others.  

*As Joya sang just moments ago, “We’ve always known that we must live by the love of what we may never see.”  AMEN.