Introduction
The front page of last week’s Stow Sentry included the headline, “Pandemic cools normal New Year’s spike in gym memberships” explaining that memberships and attendance at gyms and yoga studios have dropped significantly, all of it becoming evident in January when New Year’s resolutions to lose weight and get fit are not being carried out—at least not in gyms as is typical, and not with personal trainers and instructors.
And yet while gym memberships have gone down, sales of home fitness equipment has gone up, with sales of treadmills and free weights increasing exponentially.
All of this shows that more and more of us are bucking traditional physical fitness efforts—gyms, trainers, instructors, even workout buddy routines, and deciding to undertake the effort alone. But rarely is such successful.
Biology professor at Harvard, Daniel Lieberman, recently told NPR that studies show people are moving less than they did before the pandemic. I’m not sure we needed a Harvard professor to confirm such, but nonetheless, there it is.
But our physical fitness is not the only thing we should be focusing on in this New Year. Our spiritual fitness routine—like our physical fitness routine— has been altered, but we need to remind ourselves that tending to our spiritual fitness is just as critical, but it cannot be done alone.
Like a trainer or instructor will give us greater success in our physical fitness, Jesus and his instructions always make for the greatest spiritual success. And Lord knows we need spiritual success today.
So this week and next week we are going to address how we can have greater spiritual fitness and success—and today we are going to look at doing so through forgiveness fitness.
Move 1
Modern research has discovered that Jesus is right about the benefits of forgiveness.
Dr. Robert Enright is a developmental psychologist and also a Christian who was raised on the teachings of Jesus about acceptance and forgiveness. But he wondered if forgiveness could be proven to help patients in a hospital or therapy clinic. So he designed ways to include forgiveness in therapy sessions, and he studied its effects.
Enright developed therapies for helping elderly women to forgive the people who had wronged them in the past. He also tried to help the victims of abuse to understand the people who assaulted them, without justifying what the abusers had done.
He created two groups—one made up of women undergoing forgiveness therapy, and one made up of women receiving therapy for emotional wounds without a focus on forgiveness.
Enright found that the forgiveness therapy group showed greater improvement in emotional and psychological health than the group that did not focus on forgiveness. Enright’s study shows us that forgiveness helps people to regain their personal power.
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Similar work is being done by Dr. Frederic Luskin, a co-founder of the Stanford Forgiveness Project. Luskin has been teaching forgiveness to a variety of groups around the world, including war-ravaged populations in Northern Ireland and Sierra Leone. He discovered that anyone—from betrayed spouses to terrorism victims— can find healing through the practice of forgiveness.
Luskin offers a week of “forgiveness training,” delivered in a group setting. In it, he leads discussions and exercises designed for people like the unforgiving servant in the parable of Jesus we heard today.
So if we imagined the players of Jesus’ parable at such training, Luskin would sit down with those in the story and have them reflect on their relationships. Luskin would challenge the first servant to tell his “grievance story” about the second servant, asking him to vent about the servant who had caused problems for him by owing him money.
Then Luskin would say ask him, “Why are you taking the debt of your fellow servant so personally? It’s a few dollars. Why are you seeing yourself as a victim?”
At which the first servant might reply, “But he owes me money. I need it.”
“True,” the doctor would say, “and there is nothing wrong with holding him accountable. But why not give him the time he needs to make things right? After all, a lot of people fall into debt—didn’t you owe your boss a much larger sum of money?”
How differently the parable would have ended if the servant had realized he was both a debtor and a person who was owed money. If he had done so, he would not have seen himself as an isolated victim. He would have realized numerous people face similar offenses and disappointments. By seeing himself clearly, he could have let go of the pain and the blame, and found a way to forgive. But he didn’t. And because he failed to forgive, he remained stuck in his bitterness, his anger, his rage. He threw the other servant into debtor’s prison and continued to feel miserable.
This is true for us all. Our failure to forgive leaves us with a chemical reaction known as “the stress response” which is, according to Luskin, “when adrenaline, cortisol and norepinephrine enter the body. These chemicals limit creativity, they limit problem-solving… over time, they lead you to feel helpless and like a victim.”
But what many of us need to realize is that we are often victims of our own making. And when we stop making ourselves out to be victims, and start focusing on the opportunities to be released from such thinking through forgiveness then we have found how we can stop being stuck in miserable bitterness, anger, and rage.
Move 2
Now, to be clear…there are actual victims. And the lesson in forgiveness fitness certainly changes, but the end result can still be the same.
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Scarlett Lewis’ 6-year-old son Jesse was one of 20 children killed in the horrific 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting— an absolute nightmare come to life that left countless numbers of people devastated, broken, angry and filled with unimaginable rage. Lewis has told how her anger sapped all of her energy and strength while her rage was directed at the shooter and also at the mother who unwittingly armed him.
But she will further tell you how she eventually worked her way to making the choice to forgive. Lewis told The Forgiveness Project—a coalition that collects and shares stories from both victims/survivors and perpetrators of crime and conflict who have rebuilt their lives following hurt and trauma, saying, “Forgiveness felt like I was given a big pair of scissors. These scissors helped me to cut ties to the shooter and regain my personal power. It started with a choice, and then became a process.”
At her son’s funeral, she urged mourners to change their angry thoughts into loving ones. She saw this shift as a way to forgive, heal, and change the world.
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Forgiveness starts with a choice and then becomes a process.
Jesus urges us to make this choice for ourselves telling us such when Peter asks, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? Once … twice … three times… as many as seven times”?
“Not seven times,” says Jesus, “but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” Other translations of this verse say “seventy times seven times” totaling 490 times.
The emphasis is not on a certain number, but rather a limitless number. However you count it, Jesus is saying that our forgiveness should be countless. Numberless. He is like a personal trainer at the gym, urging us to increase our reps and get stronger every day. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… 77… 490.
Forgive a multitudinous number of times is what Jesus is saying. Make the choice to do it, and then turn it into a process—a process that yes will take time, that will likely require us to do it again and again and again until we finally achieve the success we want and need—but when we keep at it, we will succeed.
Jesus commands this from us because forgiveness is good for us. It’s not just for the person who perpetuated the need for such—because maybe they will never know they’ve been given it—but rather forgiving is for you.
Forgiveness can enable us to regain our personal power, just as it did for Scarlett Lewis.
Move 3
Preaching about forgiveness is not the easiest, nor is it the safest because I know forgiveness is never as simple as a sermon makes it out to be, and I know that misconducts and wrongs can be atrocious and heinous and that some people aren’t making themselves out to be victims—they are victims. I fully acknowledge this truth and I believe it.
What Jesus wants for all of us is for the misconducts and wrongs and atrocities to never define us or rule our hearts, and when we forgive we take away the power away for such to happen. When we forgive we change. When we forgive we heal. And our world, and the world around us, is made better.
All of the work being done by Enright and Luskin and coalitions like the The Forgiveness Project encapsulate the teaching of Jesus: “Forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
When we forgive we counteract the stress response along with its chemicals that make us feel like a helpless victim. It is as Dr. Luskin says, “When you forgive, you become empowered.”
Jesus demands we forgive as we have been forgiven—insisting we make the choice to forgive, day after day, and turn it into a process that empowers us to be stronger and bring forth healing and change.
Conclusion
Jesus wants us to get stronger and healthier by making the decision to forgive, and then turning that choice into a process. He acts as our forgiveness trainer, challenging us to make that choice repeatedly until it becomes a part of who we are.
Yes, forgiveness is difficult. Seeing ourselves as sinners who have received forgiveness from our loving Lord is also difficult. It is much easier to hold grudges than to feel compassion toward the people who have hurt us. But Jesus knows that forgiveness is good for us—body, mind and spirit—which is why he commands us to offer it to our brothers and sisters.
Sometimes we need to be challenged to forgive, just as we need to be pushed by those who encourage and inspire us to get healthy at the gym, rep after rep after rep.
We can wipe the slate clean by forgiving our brothers and sisters. That’s a choice that not only lowers stress and increases personal power—it’s a choice that brings forth spiritual fitness that can heal the world. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer, January 24, 2021
Holy God, through unconditional love and undeserved grace, you reach out to all of your children, and no matter what we have done or left undone, no matter how much or how little faith we have, you continue to forgive us and claim us as your own.
Elder: O God, why do you forgive us?
We sing praises to you in our worship, but with the same tongue we disparage others who are made in your image.
Elder: Why do you forgive us?
We say we love you, yet we continue in disobedience, embracing your love only when it serves our needs.
Elder: Why do you forgive us?
We thank you for your blessings, yet too often we refuse to bless others, choosing instead to give the judgment we ourselves have not received from you.
Elder: Why do you forgive us?
We might find a little time to read our Bibles, but we make a lot of time to look at our phones or watch television. We make work a priority, but neglect the invitation to step closer to you.
Elder: Why do you forgive us?
Why do you forgive us, O God? Is it because of your endless supply of grace and mercy? Is it because you see our weakness and neediness and have pity? Or is it because you know that forgiveness in the better way—the way that leads to new life?
Elder: We don’t understand why, but we rejoice that you forgive us.
We praise you and bless you, O God of all creation, for your unfathomable grace that restores us to fellowship with you.
Elder: We don’t understand why, but we rejoice that you forgive us.
And so we pray that as we embrace the forgiveness you give, you empower us to emulate your forgiveness toward others—seeing all people, even those who have harmed us, as you see them—deserving of grace, love, and forgiveness.
Elder: We don’t understand why, but we rejoice that you forgive us.
Forgiveness is difficult, but you show us the way. So help us to follow in this way that will lead to new life and the healing of the world.
Hear now, we ask, the prayers of our hearts as we lift them to you now in this time of Holy Silence.
All this we pray in the name of Christ Jesus, who taught us to pray saying, “Our…”