Ancient Wisdom-Modern Prophet: Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu 9-28-14

Ancient Wisdom-Modern Prophet:  Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu   9-28-14

God, we’re on dangerous ground here.  Seeking and granting forgiveness is something that forces us to rely completely on your grace.  You call us to be whole.  Give us the courage today to say yes to your mercy.  Amen

            I had to put this sermon off for several weeks because I wasn’t ready to preach it.  I hope you know and trust that my sermons come from my heart as God leads.  Well, this is a sermon that wouldn’t go away; or rather, God wouldn’t go away.  So, here I am, a little bit peeved at God; and, relieved at the same time to know that God has prepared my heart in the intervening weeks to be able to share with you the wonderfully healing words of Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of South Africa. 
            I want to start with a story.  It happened sometime in 1984 or 85.  I was a student in NYC at Union Theological Seminary, bastion of liberal theology and human rights.  Apartheid had not been abolished in South Africa—that would not happen until 1991.  Then Bishop Desmond Tutu was visiting Union during one of his many trips to the UN.  I was attending a large dinner in our refectory in his honor.  People were sitting down in a somewhat random fashion.  There was no head table.  I, somehow, miraculously, ended up across the table from the Bishop.  He was lovely.  I told him of my work in women’s history.  He told me my work was important.  He talked about the women in his country and the long journey to full human rights made 100 times more difficult by the apartheid laws.  But this is not the story.  The story is that a much younger, still idealist, young woman minister came away knowing what it looked like and felt like to sit with someone so full of God’s presence that it literally poured across the table and spilled all over me.  Try as I might, I simply could not find any hatred in the man sitting across from me—only God’s pure, full, amazing, grace.  Even then, and his famous work in forgiveness was still ahead of him, he radiated the willingness to start anew, if only his people could be free.  There was no revenge desired; and, therefore, no hate.  This may well have been my first and one of my only experiences of being with someone who embodied God’s spirit to its fullest.  Yes, I was starstruck at the time, but, over time, came to realize that it was God’s spirit that drew me like a magnet.  God gives us these visions, I believe to show us, just as Jesus showed us, what it looks like to be a child of the almighty God.    

            Apartheid was abolished in 1991, but for Archbishop Tutu, a new work was beginning.  The Truth and Reconciliation Council was born as a way for the country to heal.  Story upon story was told by survivors, relatives, and perpetrators.  And, reconciliation was somehow achieved or at least begun.  This work fueled and clarified for Archbishop Tutu God’s call to reconciliation among God’s people—and all were God’s people—victim and perpetrator alike.  Evil was acknowledged and consequences were levied; but, most of all, a country learned to love again. 

            Archbishop Tutu’s recent book , written with his daughter Mpho A. Tutu, The Book of Forgiving: the Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World, uses many of the stories from the Council and elsewhere to illustrate the process of forgiveness.  It was not an easy book for me to read, and not just because of recent events here in this church.  Like everyone else, I carry hurts from my family and from my past that needs the healing that the Tutus speak about in this lovely, difficult book.  So, today, I want to speak to you about forgiveness and why I believe it is the single most important task, shall we say, facing this incarnation of the body of Christ. 

            The book begins with the question, “Why forgive?”  The answer:  “The only way to experience healing and peace is to forgive.  Until we can forgive, we remain locked in our pain and locked out of the possibility of experiencing healing and freedom, locked out of the possibility of being at peace. “  And, elsewhere he says, “When we forgive, we take back control of our own fate and our feelings.  We become our own liberators.”  Let me assure you, this is not an easy forgiveness for those who are being forgiven.  Evil and wrongdoing has consequences.  He says, “And those who shred the web of interconnectedness cannot escape the consequences of their actions.”  So, we learn that because of this interconnectedness which Tutu sees as primary, we cannot avoid the consequences of what we have done. 

            Our first reading today was from one of Paul’s many letters to new Christians.  It is not important who or what action, Paul is speaking of.  That is why I asked that you not jump to conclusions about why I chose this passage, or whom I was secretly addressing through the choice of this passage.  You see, I’m addressing all of us, myself included.  We are, none of us, exempt from needing forgiveness and reconciliation even in the relatively small incident that is the not so quiet elephant in the midst of almost all our interactions. 

            Paul sets us straight:  The focus of my letter wasn’t on punishing the offender but on getting you to take responsibility for the health of the church. … The fact is that I’m joining in with your forgiveness, as Christ is with us, guiding us. After all, we don’t want to unwittingly give Satan an opening for yet more mischief—we’re not oblivious to the evil one’s sly ways!”  I believe that Paul, like Archbishop Tutu, knows that, in one way or another, the lack of forgiveness—the continuation of mistrust and lack of reconciliation—lead us nowhere except down a path of more and more hurt and pain.  Tutu says, “When we ignore the pain, it grows bigger and bigger, and like an abscess that is never drained, eventually it will rupture. When that happens, it can reach into every area of our lives—our health, our families, our jobs, our friendships, our faith, and our very ability to feel joy may be diminished by the fallout from resentments, anger, and hurts that are never named.”   Tutu says that when we are hurt, and we will be hurt, we have two choices.  (Cue slide)  He draws it out for us in his book.  We can enter the Revenge Cycle which leads us from Pain to Choosing to Harm to Rejecting Shared responsibility to Revenge which leads to violence or cruelty and returns us to pain OR we can enter the Forgiveness Cycle. 

            Instead of choosing to harm, we choose to heal.  Before we look briefly at the Forgiveness Cycle I want to point out a fact that I had missed somewhere along the way of my six decades of life.  We cannot choose to harm and then go to choose to heal—if you look, you’ll see that there is no arrow from choose to harm to choose to heal.  Once we have chosen to harm, we are well on our way to revenge. 

            Once, however, we have made the choice to heal, there are four stops along the path.  All of these steps could be a workshop in itself and probably should be, so let’s consider this sermon a mere introduction to the topic of forgiveness.  Tutu says, first, tell your story.    Secondly, name the hurt.  Naming is important work.  It helps us clarify not only what has happened to us, but also the impact it has had on our lives.  For today, I want to focus just a bit on the third step—“granting forgiveness”.  You can only imagine the number of times any pastor hears the words, “I can’t forgive him, or her, or them, or, even God.”  No wonder we are wounded people.  And, for many reasons, LGBT folks and their families have been hurt a lot.  We have a lot to forgive and that doesn’t even touch the well of childhood hurts.  Tutu tells us, “We choose forgiveness because it is how we find freedom and keep from remaining trapped in an endless loop of telling our stories and naming our hurts.  It is how we move from victim to hero.  A victim is in a position of weakness and subject to the whims of others.  Heroes are people who determine their own fate and their own future.”  So, we, you and I, choose to grant forgiveness because it changes us. 

Secondly it is important that we understand that  forgiveness grows out of ‘shared humanity’.   We all are flawed and make mistakes or as Scripture tells us, “we all fall short of the glory of God.”  Tutu wants us to know that we all have the capacity for evil and acknowledging our shared humanity, both the less-than-perfect and the perfectness enable us to move forward in our granting forgiveness.    Whether it be in an intimate relationship or a fellowship of believers, we each, pastor included, at any moment, are capable of being the bearers or cause of hurt.  Once we get that embedded in our thoughts, it becomes much more difficult to refuse to choose forgiveness. 

Finally, we are at the point of knowing whether to renew or release the relationship.  Forgiveness does not mean that you choose to renew the relationship.  It may be that the healthiest thing you can do, once forgiveness has been experienced is to ‘walk away’, to release that relationship and continue on with your life.  Tutu believes that it is always preferable to renew the relationship, but he acknowledges that it is neither possible nor healthy, in some cases, to work to renew the relationship.  Nevertheless, forgiveness is necessary for your good, the good of the community, and, ultimately, the good of the world. 

We have merely begun to touch on the nature and process of forgiveness today.  But we have touched on it, and will continue to speak of it as a community.  I hope that when we are ready to begin our own process of reconciliation, that we will remember the words of this modern prophet.  May we all find the glow of peace and never shy away from the work it takes to get there.  Amen and amen and Namaste.