Diane Peterson
March 30, 2008
Peace be with you. As God has sent me, I am sending you. And with that Jesus breathed on them and said, Recieve the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.
Jesus bestows the power of forgiveness on the disciples. Sounds easy enough, but it is not-forgiveness can be a daunting, difficult undertaking. As I did research for this sermon, I found some advice on forgiveness in one of my books, "Women Who Run with the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. In the book Estes talks about four stages of forgiveness.
After someone or some event has caused you pain, the first stage is to forego or to leave it alone. Estes encourages taking a break from thinking about the person or event for awhile. Leaving thoughts of the event alone for awhile will help you detach from the issue. It sometimes can be easy to hang on to an issue instead of leaving it alone. Sometimes I even feed the issue instead of leaving it alone. Feeding an issue only serves to give it life. Detaching and letting go...not feeding an issue...can help the issue lose some weight.
The second stage of forgiveness is to forebear-to abstain from punishing. To forebear is to, in Estes words, "refrain from punitive uttering, muttering, from acting resentful, hostile." She encourages patience and practicing generosity in order to abstain from punishing. Estes goes on to say "this does not mean to go blind or dead and lose self-protective vigilance. It means to give a bit of grace to the situation and see how that assists." Stage three is to forget-to aver from memory, to refuse to dwell. She is not suggesting a complete erasure of the memory, but instead a letting go of the emotions surrounding the memory. So again, suggesting letting go-not feeding the memory-and instead creating some new experiences with new memories.
The last stage of forgiveness according to Estes is to forgive-to abandon the debt, to make a conscious decision to cease to harbor resentment.
...to make a conscious decision to cease to harbor resentment...
Again, this all sounds simple enough, but forgiveness is difficult. I have struggled with forgiveness over the years. One person I have recently struggled to forgive is my Dad's significant other. The story is too long and complicated to tell in this short time and really doesn't matter anyway. Just know that some of her actions prompted reactions in me ranging from hurt to rage. So let's walk through the stages laid out by Estes and how I went through the stages.
Stage 1, leave it alone. a, no...it was more of a keep the memories fresh by rehashing them regularly.
Stage 2, refrain from uttering, muttering and acting resentful. Again, no...I did not follow her plan. Instead I fed the hurt and anger.
Stage 3, let go of the emotions. Of course this was another no. I instead held them tight and sometimes even increased the flame under the emotions.
This had all been going on over the last year and a half or so. Around New Years of this year I finally started to wake up and realize that if I didn't work on forgiving her that my hurt and anger were going to eat away at me. Hanah More said it well, "A Christian will find it cheaper to pardon than to resent. Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred and the waste of spirit.î I did not want to continue to waste my spirit...it was time to let go. I started thinking about her less, decreased my uttering and muttering and then started to let go of some of the emotion. The last thing I did was to sit down one morning and reflect quietly on letting go. I then wrote on a piece of paper that I was going to let go. I lit one of those candles that come in a jar and put the piece of paper in the flame and watched the words slowly burn away. That was the start of my freedom...Forgiveness...
The other focus of the reading today is the one it is most famous forÖdoubt. Many churches today teach that to doubt is to lack faith. I disagree and think doubt is a healthy and necessary part of life. Doubt is much better than the blind faith many churches encourage. To me, blind faith equals lack of growth because if you believe your way is THE truth, there is no reason to study or learn from others.
As I researched doubt to find others views, I found a story on NPRís Speaking of Faith that was about doubt. Jennifer Hecht, author of The History of Doubt, was interviewed. From her I learned doubt has been around for many years...long before Doubting Thomas. Ancient Greek philosophers gave us words we still use today regarding doubt. Two words they gave us are cynicism and skepticism. In Ancient Greece the word cynic meant dog. Cynics encouraged life to be lived as a dog lives. They encouraged the rejection of the human world. They doubted the importance of gaining power and things.
Skepticism started with the thought that the mind was not meant to know things-to be able to find truths. A little later it grew into a study of probabilities. They argued that they could be convinced by each philosophy when they held the book in their hand. That led them to question that if each philosophy could convince them, how could any one philosophy hold real truth? The original meaning and thought behind both cynicism and skepticism has been changed. Now when one speaks of cynicism or skepticism, it is typical to mean something closer to a dismissal of everything. A dismissal of everything can be paralyzing-hard to accomplish much if you canít trust in anything.
So where do I stand on this continuum between paralyzing doubt and blind faith? As I prepared for this sermon I was caught in paralyzing doubt. I read the scriptures my first thought was oh no, the doubting Thomas story! I will never be able to come up with something new and fresh around that story! My thoughts became consumed with doubts which made it difficult to have a peaceful mind open to new learning and thoughts. To break past that I called Don to talk things through and then I decided I just had to push through and made myself just start writing. It still took awhile, but I finally got past my paralyzing doubt.
I have also experienced the other end of the continuum. I experienced blind faith of science starting in middle school and continuing through high school. I saw church as a place filled with hypocrites and felt that science had all the answers. I remember that thought process starting to change in high school as I observed a group of fellow students. They had morning Bible studies at school and as I watched them come out of the room I saw something in their faces and the way were interacting that made me think that perhaps I was missing something. Since high school I have been all over the continuum of doubt, but I try to stay away from the far edges and stick closer to the middle where there is faithful doubt.
In my study of doubt, I found an article written by Sean Gilbert, a minister with Uniting Church in Australia. He had this to say about faithful doubt: "According to the post-Easter Story, what was at stake for Thomas-and now for the contemporary church-is not a pure and watertight belief system, but a radically open heart and mind. An openness that gives rise to and sustains the spiritual virtues of inclusion, trust, wonderment and respect." These virtues are at the core of faithful doubt.
Over the years of struggling with my doubts and beliefs, I sometimes have felt like giving up the struggle because it seems too difficult. I have never been sorry that I kept up the struggle though because getting through the struggle opens my heart and mind to new thoughts and ideas. And as Gilbert states, on open heart and mind give rise to inclusion, trust, wonderment and respect. I want these virtues so I continue to doubt...a faithful doubt.
Whether you choose to believe or to doubt the reading today about Jesus rising from the dead and appearing to his disciples, the lessons within the reading are worthy of study. We learn we are to forgive and to have faithful doubt.
Forgiveness and doubt-go forth and use them wisely.
