Forgiveness is a subject Christians discuss often. When the Brief Order for Confession and Forgiveness is part of a worship service we are reminded that before God we are flawed and broken and in need of repair.

Our flaws and brokenness, however, manifest themselves not only in our relationship with God, but also in our relationships with each other. God wants us to have healthy relationships with family and friends and siblings in the faith. Jesus taught that love of neighbor is the second most important commandment. When our relationships with people are broken, we need forgiveness from them as well as from God. Jesus said we were to ask God for forgiveness “as we forgive.”

Recently while preparing to teach a study of Christian teaching about forgiveness, I discovered Ancient Faith Radio. At http://ancientfaith.com I found audio files of music and sermons in the Orthodox tradition. Among the many interesting subjects was a pair of sermons on forgiveness. In one of those sermons I heard about something new and intriguing: a ritual of mutual forgiveness.

Being Lutheran, I am accustomed to start the Lenten season on Ash Wednesday, but Orthodox Christians use a different calendar, and they start Lent on a Sunday evening. Listening to the sermon on forgiveness, I learned that the first service of the Lenten season in an Orthodox church concludes with a ritual unfamiliar to me. Each person in the congregation turns first to someone beside him and asks, “Will you forgive me?” to which the other person responds, “I forgive you.” They expect that every person will ask forgiveness of every other person in the congregation.

The speaker noted that congregants have asked him on numerous occasions why they must ask forgiveness of people they don’t even know. He answers by pointing out how the behavior of each person has repercussions none of us really follow. A cascade of troubling behavior in need of forgiveness might begin when I yelled at my child for not being dressed in time to catch the bus for school. At school my child is in a bad mood and mouths off to his teacher when she is lining up the class to go to lunch. That evening the teacher, frustrated by her chaotic day, flings plates on the table for supper, at which point her child stomps off to her room feeling tromped on. A lot of behavior by a lot of people contributed to that cascade, which is replicated millions of times each day. A lot of forgiveness needed here. I felt as if a light bulb had turned on. 

Inspired by the story of this Orthodox ritual, I decided to try it. During Lent, I was scheduled to lead a prayer service focused on self-examination. At the end of the service I asked my small group, about twenty people, to ask and receive forgiveness in the form of the Orthodox ritual. Each person was to turn to someone and say, “Will you forgive me?” to which I suggested the response, “I forgive you for Jesus’ sake.” I thought a few would try it, but I actually expected that some would simply slip away.

To my amazement, everyone participated, and even more amazing was the sight of people going beyond the scripted exchange of forgiveness to embrace each other. Some even had tears in their eyes as they walked from person to person receiving and granting forgiveness. It seems very clear to me that mutual forgiveness is a grace we all could use more of.

I don’t know what the long-term repercussions of this experience will be. I can’t guess what others in the group are thinking this morning. I can speak only for myself. This experience taught me something very important. When we speak of the ways Christians can help each other grow in the faith, we use the term support. We think of it the way athletic teams work together, each player encouraging others, even when they are struggling. From this time forward, my understanding of mutual encouragement will always include mutual forgiveness. All our relationships with family and friends are marked with moments when we hurt each other accidentally, and sometimes on purpose. We very much need to acknowledge that it has happened and to assure each other that our loving relationship is not destroyed or somehow lessened by those wounds. Forgiveness acknowledges the wounds and applies a healing balm to them. The teaching of the Lord’s Prayer that forgiving each other is as important as being forgiven by God truly came to life for me in a ritual of mutual forgiveness.

In the book The Shack, the author explores a question many of us ask when we realize that we are expected to forgive people. The central character, Mack, is consumed with grief over the abduction and death of his daughter, Missy. Confronted with the suggestion that he ought to forgive the person who harmed his daughter, he asks, “Is it fair to Missy if I don’t stay angry with him?” We humans think we want everything to be fair. In fact, that is not what we want at all.

Mack, for example, suffers not only from guilt due to his perception that he failed Missy, but he also suffers from guilt due to his fear that her abduction might be God’s judgment or punishment for a terrible sin from his childhood. He certainly wants to be fair to Missy, but if cosmic fairness means that Missy pays for his wrong-doing, he isn’t so sure that “fairness” is what he wants. Likewise, forgetting the past, Mack looks forward to the possibility that the perpetrator of this horrible crime might actually be caught, and then he wonders if forgiving that person means he shouldn’t want him to pay for his crime. would that be fair? 

Most of us are conflicted over the whole idea of forgiveness. We like being forgiven by others, but we are less eager to grant forgiveness, because deep inside we are pretty sure the person we resent does not deserve forgiveness. To forgive would be an affront to our sense of honor and justice. It is completely human to believe that other people deserve punishment while we ourselves deserve mercy.

There is a different way to look at the situation. When Jesus was with his disciples, he told them, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” [John 20:23]  Some people interpret this statement as if it meant the inadequacy of the death of Jesus on the cross. Some wonder if we humans can keep God from forgiving other people. We should not assume such a preposterous notion. This statement, coming from the One who told his disciples that they must forgive people, no matter how many times people sin against them, can hardly be understood to give them a license to reject forgiveness and condemn those bad people.

What really happens when one person refuses forgiveness to another? The Hatfields and the McCoys give us a comic example of a horrific reality: unforgiveness destroys the one who does not forgive. Jesus told his disciples the deep and frightening truth that if they chose not to forgive, unforgiveness would dwell within them. Shakespeare gave us a dramatic picture of the consequences of unforgiveness as he showed us how a family feud that would not die doomed a young and beautiful couple. The Balkan peninsula has become the image historians perennially call upon to show what happens when nations try to take vengeance for offenses hundreds of years in the past. The movement of some black people in the US to demand reparations for slavery, which has not existed in this country for more than a hundred years, is the expression of an unwillingness to forgive a wrong that is over and done with. Unforgiveness creates victims, and victims give birth to a communal malaise that destroys its victims for generations.

When Jesus taught us how to pray, he also was teaching us how to live. In the most important prayer we will ever learn, Jesus taught us to say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” This important petition embodies a cry for the healing of all people. We ask that our guilt for wrongs we have done be washed away and that the wounds we have received at the hands of others be healed. When we both request and grant forgiveness, we are engaged in what Martin Luther described as the daily drowning of our sins in the waters of baptism. All humanity is forgiven and broken relationships are healed as we pray this prayer.

Forgiveness is not a way to let wrong-doers “get by” with evil. If someone murders my daughter, and I forgive the murderer, my forgiveness does not excuse that person from paying the price of such a crime. The murderer does not “get by” with murder when I forgive him or her. However, we are both set free of the poison of that evil act when I grant and the murderer receives forgiveness. I will not spend endless days seething in anger and grief. I won’t shut myself down and deny all God’s goodness because of this crime. When I forgive the murderer, I make myself available to the healing and redemptive power of the Holy Spirit. What’s more, my forgiveness granted to the perpetrator of a horrible crime also crashes through one more barrier to the work of the Holy Spirit in that person’s life. If I refuse to forgive, the unforgiveness in my heart may well lead to two lives in a prison of the heart, a much more secure prison than any operated by the federal government.

Forgiveness is often seen as a hard task demanded by a cruel God. If we read the Bible prayerfully, we will soon come to realize that forgiveness is a beautiful gift to everyone from a loving God. It is more than fair; it is a blessing.

Give us this day our daily bread

 During a recent town hall meeting, a questioner asked the President of the United States when she would get a house and a car. The woman who asked this question in what is likely the one chance in her life to speak with the president was consumed by her own neediness. In a meeting about the best way to help our country through an economic crisis, the only thing she could think of was herself. Before you assume that I am crass and lacking in compassion, I must point out that I have great compassion for someone who has no place to live. Yet I observe that people who look at the problems of the USA and think only of themselves do not make life better for anyone.

The woman who asked the president for a house is very needy. She needs the attention of people. She needs to pull the President of the United States down from worrying about all the citizens and make him worry about only her. The house itself is much less important than the ego trip.

A lot of our needs are like that. I need food, but my neediness makes me feel slighted if my food is not filet mignon. I can’t be grateful for pizza, because I see someone else who has filet. I’m not hungry for filet so much as I need to have what someone else has. My need might even be so great that I can’t feel grateful until I can deprive the other person of what he has. If I had not seen that person eating a filet, I could have enjoyed the flavor of my pizza and I could have satisfied my hunger with the pizza. Seeing someone with a meal I could not afford kicked off a need that transcended my body’s need for food and my spirit’s need for food that looks appealing, smells delectable and tastes good. In fact, my yearning for the filet might even make me despise the person who is eating it. My neediness has not only made me unhappy, but it has also broken my relationship with the person eating the filet. I can’t love that person or respect that person or serve that person in the name of God, because I don’t have what that person has. I cannot be grateful to God for what he has given to me, because I think he should have given me exactly the same as he gave to someone else. My sense of injustice demands either that I get filet or the other guy is compelled to eat pizza.

If this image seems trivial, let’s ramp it up. The news lately has been full of diatribes against CEOs in general and the CEOs of financial companies in particular. In the world of corporations, a CEO has huge responsibilities, the greatest of which is to find ways to generate profit for the stockholders. It takes intellect and innovative thinking to do that job well. Historically, there have not been many people who could pull it off. The competition for the best CEO has resulted in high wages, big bonuses and generous severance plans for the talented CEOs. Many people lately complain that the CEOs do not deserve their wages, or their bonuses, or their severance plans, because their companies are failing. Without taking a position in regard to either the economic or political action required to fix failing companies, I listen to the rhetoric, and I hear the expression of profound neediness, growing out of profound personal emptiness. One would expect the stockholders in failing companies to hold a CEO accountable for producing a profit, and one would expect the board of directors to punish or dismiss a CEO who does not produce the profits he was hired to produce. However, it is hard for me to understand the neediness of a person who is neither a stockholder nor a board member who wants Congress to strip CEOs of their wages and benefits simply because that person is jealous of their earning power. It is even hard to imagine that someone who does not own stock in a company believes he or the government ought to control what the CEO or any other employee in that company is paid. That attitude expresses an inner emptiness that seemingly can’t be filled without consuming other people. I think it shows a world view that looks to people instead of looking to God for the provision of real needs. It demonstrates an outlook that demands other people be dragged down or destroyed in order to produce equality. Worst of all, it measures the concept of human equality before God in terms of money, not God’s currency at all. The public sense of injustice demands that either everyone get CEO pay and benefits, or that CEOs are paid what everyone else gets.

In the prayer Jesus taught us, we begin by acknowledging that every person is already equal before God in the act of worship. Every person owes to God worship and praise and obedience. We owe him respect. We put his will ahead of our own. We recognize that before him, everyone is in need. We all need some very basic things. Further, each of us is created with talents and dreams inspired by our divine creator. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us that the means of sustaining daily life and the means of achieving the dreams with which God invested us are all provided by God. We rely on God to heal our relationship with him and with each other, and we trust him to protect us from the power of Satan.

The Lord’s Prayer transcends our neediness, expressed as envy, jealousy, scorn and pure delight in the destruction of others. When we pray for our daily bread, we confess that we depend on God for everything. We also express our gratefulness that God does, indeed, care for us. The prayer does not ask that anything be taken from others in order to provide for us. The prayer does not even ask God to take anything from us to provide for others. Rather, the Lord’s Prayer speaks of a faith in God’s provision that allows us to be generous to others. It points us to an attitude of faith that God will always provide us enough to be gracious and generous.

When Moses said his good-byes to the ancient Israelites, he underscored his faith in God’s provision. He said,

When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings. When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. Deuteronomy 24:19-21

Moses lived long before Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer, but Moses would have understood the petition, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He knew that God’s provision is rich enough that each of us has something to share. In the horror of the Nazi concentration camps, people shared and helped each other. Our world is far from that nightmare, yet the attitudes we see in public life look more like a brawl among five children fighting over four quarters than like a people whose prosperity is a beacon to the world.

The Lord’s Prayer lifts us out of the mire of neediness. By pointing us first to the God who created everything, we are reminded that he is in charge and his work is very good. We can trust this God to care for our needs. We don’t have to depend on people, who are pretty unreliable most of the time. We don’t need to have all the answers ourselves, which is good, because we usually don’t have them. We trust in God to provide everything we need, and we share what he provides, because we know he will always provide. We express our needs, turning to God our creator and provider, rather than our neediness, which destroys our relationships with God and our neighbors. 

I am glad that I can turn to God at any time and pray “Give us this day our daily bread.” The God who created a universe can be trusted to give me everything I need.