The Joy of Forgiveness

I was driving home from church this past Sunday when I was overcome by this wave of nostalgia.  I was suddenly reminded of all the times when I was a kid that my mom and I met my grandparents at the Park Diner for lunch after Sunday services.

Sometimes we went to church with my grandparents. 

Sometimes Mom lied and told them we had gone to an earlier service and then I quickly had to remember the priest rotation for that week because Grandma always quizzed us as to who had said the homily.

I remember the Park Diner for two things, for its view of the Susquehanna River and the rolling waterfall dam, and for its turkey club sandwiches.  My grandmother and I didn’t have a lot in common, but the turkey club was her go-to lunch and it quickly became mine too.

For most of my life my grandmother was not the stereotypical kind, loving, warm, hug-giving grandmother.  She was cold and aloof and her smiles—as they say—never reached her eyes. 

She looked, honestly, like someone who was in pain, her lips pressed thin, her eyes slightly narrowed.  And whether that pain was physical, from years of smoking, and a triple-bypass heart surgery, or whether it was emotional, she was a recovering alcoholic and suffered from depression, or whether it was spiritual—my grandmother prayed every night without fail, kneeling down by the bed and saying her rosary and taking her medicine—or whether it was a combination of all three, she was clearly a woman in constant pain.

She could be critical and harsh, especially to my mom and occasionally to me.  I wondered often if she loved me and then, as I got older and became a teenager, I began to wonder if I loved her, if I could love her after all the horrible things she had said and done.

Three months before she died, she had an operation on the varicose veins in her legs and she woke from the anesthesia a different person.

Her voice was softer.

Her eyes wider.

There were no more fake smiles—now there was just a little upturn at the corners of her mouth.

She was just different.

I can’t point to any one thing that she said or did, but I became convinced that this woman did love me, truly.  It was like those last few months before she died, we were all able to see her true self, the self, unencumbered with the pain of life, as if while she was under anesthesia, she had seen the face of God and He had washed all her pain and sin away.

I think in those last few months, she saw the world as it truly was and we saw her as she truly was, this beautiful soul that loved each and every breath she took in those final weeks and days.

The subtitle to today’s appointed psalm, Psalm 32, in the NRSV translation is “The Joy of Forgiveness.”

When we don’t acknowledge our sins, when we are embarrassed by them, when we are too afraid to speak the truth, the psalmist writes in verses 3 and 4, “…. my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.  For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”

But when we confess, when we allow God to enter our lives—when we let God forgive us, the joy we feel is clear, expressed later in verse 11 with these words: “Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.”

The weight of our sin and suffering is immense.  But to be forgiven is to be set free.

Sin and suffering are shackles.  But forgiveness is the key to freedom.

In Psalm 51:10, the psalmist writes, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right  spirit within me.”

This is what it means to be forgiven.  It means to invite God in and allow Him to make the changes necessary to save our lives, to save our souls, to bring us happiness and contentment, to allow us to become who we were born to be.

Create in me a clean heart.

In today’s Gospel reading from Luke 19:45-48, we see Jesus in a scene we are all familiar with.  This is Jesus clearing out the temple, driving out the money changers.  Luke’s version is short on specifics, but Matthew 21:12 tells us that Jesus entered and began flipping over tables.  And in John’s version 2:15, Jesus makes a whip of cords to drive out the people from the temple.

Jesus’ behavior here certainly doesn’t make him any friends.

In fact, Luke 19:47 says that the priests, scribes and leaders began looking for a way to kill him.

We can certainly read this passage literally and read it with a historical and cultural context, but today I want to look at this scene metaphorically.

What is Jesus doing here?

He is taking a place that is holy, but that has been corrupted by sin, and he is cleansing it.  He is driving out the darkness, he is making all things new.  We see God in Genesis as He creates the world and here is Jesus in a metaphorical and slightly smaller sense, re-creating the world.

What Jesus does in the temple is what we need him to do in our lives.  We need Jesus to move into our souls and drive all that darkness and pain and sin and suffering away.  Because let’s be honest … we can’t do it ourselves.

It’s like when I tell the physical therapist that I will do the exercises at home—that’s a complete lie.  I need a physical therapist because I need someone there to push me, to encourage me, to call me out, to not let me give up.

We need Jesus in the temple.

That is what I think happened to my grandmother all those years ago during her surgery.  God came in and cleaned up things for her, enough so that those last few months she could experience life, experience her family in the way that God always intended.

The last time I saw my grandmother—it wasn’t at the Park Diner, it was at another restaurant, but once again, it was a Sunday and it was lunch.

And as my mom and I said our goodbyes, I looked at my grandmother and told her I loved her.  I told her I loved her.  Actually, I’m not sure that really happened or if I’m remembering it the way I want to remember it.  Because I did—I did love her those last few months.  I was finally able to love her, to connect with her on that soul-level where true love lives.

She died roughly a week later.  She was sixty-nine years old, a number that seems younger and younger every year.

I want to believe I told her “I love you.”  I wish I could be sure.

But, I am sure that the last words I spoke to my grandfather a few years ago were “I love you.”

And I am sure the last words I spoke to my mom before she died were, “I love you.”

And I make sure that every time I visit my other grandmother these days that the last words I say to her are, “I love you.”

Here is what I have learned.

In order to love, we must forgive.

In order to be loved, we must be forgiven.

If we hold onto bitterness and resentment and pain from old wounds, there is no place for love.

If we hold onto our own shame and victimhood and sin, there is no room for love.

In order to love, there must be forgiveness.

And in order to forgive and to be forgiven, we must turn to God.

Amen.