At our last Pastors, Priests and Guides retreat, we stumbled upon the seismic, nuclear power of a simple spiritual practice. It surprised, provoked and unlocked us, cracking open a door to the kind of healing that sits at the very center of our ability to engage the needs of the world. Will we harden into angry activists who add to the division, or will we allow Love to break us open into channels of blessing, through which justice can roll down like a mighty river?
I’m talking about the spiritual practice of forgiveness.
A couple months ago, I was having one of those truly terrible nights of sleep. I stumbled out onto the couch and tried to rest, but I was consumed by a very painful situation with someone close to me. I was angry, hurt, afraid, and I could feel it burning into bitterness.
At some point in the early dawn, in that place between sleep and awake, I heard a voice–not audibly, but clear as can be–gently say “Why don’t you just forgive them?” That was it. No convincing or persuasion. No pressure. Just a simple, loving, infuriating suggestion: “Why don’t you just forgive them?” So I fought it. No way. I’m not going to let them off the hook. What if they do it again? Where’s the justice? I filled up that living room with every kind of excuse. Until to my great surprise, like a fever burning up and breaking unexpectedly, I caught myself whispering Or what if I just forgive them? I want to be free. I don’t want to carry this any longer.
In our tiny apartment living room, I got down to my knees and asked God to forgive them for what they had done. No conditions. No hedging my bets. Just releasing my right to be angry into God’s infinite mercy. And cue every cliche’…but I felt the weight begin to fall off. I sensed the bitterness melting. I experienced a moment of lightness that I hadn’t known in a long time. And my exhausted, grateful heart simply named what was true: “Forgiveness is a miracle.” Forgiveness is a miracle.
In the gospel of Matthew, the verse directly following the Lord’s Prayer is “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” I’ve always struggled with this idea because it makes God sound vindictive and withholding. But then I heard Dallas Willard suggest that “Jesus’ teachings are not arbitrary laws to avoid God’s punishment, but simple observations about how the universe actually works.”
I wonder if Jesus’ simple observation about forgiveness is this: If we close the flow of grace to others, we are also closing the flow of grace back to ourselves. We cannot say “Just for me but not for them”. We either open the channel of mercy fully or close it all the way down.
To be clear, true forgiveness does not condone abuse or refuse to speak truth to power. Forgiveness is not opposed to the work of justice, it is opposed to vengeance. And in fact, a heart that has been unburdened by forgiveness is often the most free to courageously engage the people and systems that cause so much pain.
Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes:
“As we age we need to forgive— forgive those who hurt us, forgive ourselves for our own mistakes, forgive life for having been unfair, and then forgive God for seemingly not having protected us— all of this so that we do not die bitter and angry, which is perhaps the greatest religious imperative of all.”
Part of participating with God’s work of healing and restoring all things is the practice of forgiveness. Not just believing about forgiveness, but choosing to put it into practice, over and over.
With this in mind, at our last Pastors, Priests, and Guides retreat, a gifted Jesuit priest led us in a practice of forgiveness using the Ignatian Prayer of Imagination. Imagining ourselves to be in the presence of both Christ and the person who wounded us, we took four prayerful steps: (1) Naming the ways the person has hurt us with as much specificity as possible. (2) Naming the ways we have hurt them with equal honesty. (3) Asking God to forgive them completely and lead them to full healing. (4) Asking God to forgive us completely and lead us to full healing. It’s difficult to describe how moving this four-part-practice was for our community of church leaders, spiritual directors, and artists. But the bubbling sense of healing and hope that washed over us was undeniable.
Friend, do you sense an invitation to begin a process of forgiveness? With whom? (Let their face come into focus in your mind, even as you read this). In what ways did they hurt you, and what might it look like to begin to release them into the ocean of God’s mercy? It’s not too late. God is with you and for you — even as God is with and for them. Full reconciliation may or may not ever happen, but the pathway to the freedom of forgiveness can begin in this exact moment.
Of course, if you want to wander this pathway with a community, our next Pastors, Priests and Guides retreat is in Philadelphia on July 22-24th, 2024. Shane Claiborne, Rev Stephanie Spellers, Jonathan Merritt, and a team of gifted guides will lead us through the valley of dry bones and into a hope-filled re-imagination of what the Way of Jesus can look like for the sake of the world. You are more than invited to co-create this journey with us. https://www.pastorspriestsandguides.com
May the Creator’s healing mercy flow again today—in you and through you. In us and through us. For the sake of our lives and the sake of the world.
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Aaron Niequist is a liturgist who leads retreats for church leaders of any Christian tradition who have not given up on the broken but beautiful Church. Holy space for healing, solidarity, and re-imagination. https://www.pastorspriestsandguides.com
