Sermon: Forgiving Even When They’re Not Sorry

2015 September 20
by Rev Ana Levy-Lyons

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You gotta’ love the literary genre of apology notes by children. They’re so… real. Take this one, for example, from a kid whose mother stipulated that she had to write a four-sentence apology to her brother: “Dear Aaron, I’m sorry I kicked you. I’m sorry I kicked you. I’m sorry I kicked you. You’re the most annoying brother ever.”

 

Then there’s a note from a school kid named Liam: “Dear Brady, Miss P made me write you this note. All I want to say sorry for is not being sorry cause I tried to feel sorry but I don’t.”

 

We can only imagine what it was that Liam did to aggrieve Brady – probably slugged him or threw him in his locker. Whatever it was, he apparently felt justified in doing it, cause he is not sorry. But then, neither are most of the people in our lives who hurt us. They don’t know they’re doing it, they don’t understand why it should be hurtful, they don’t even know another way. Or they know it’s hurtful but feel like they have a right to do it anyway. They think you’re annoying. Or that you hurt them worse. Or that it’s really not that bad. They’re not sorry. The mother who can’t stop commenting on your weight. The friend who is suddenly unavailable after you get a scary diagnosis. The partner who isn’t really trying very hard to find a job because they’re following their bliss and meanwhile you’re struggling to support the family on your own. In some cases, especially in domestic abuse cases, the abuser really is sorry after the incident, but you know they’re going to do it again.

 

We are, right now, in the middle of the Jewish High Holidays – Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, was last week and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement – or at-one-ment – is this week. The ten-day period between the two is considered a special time when people have a special opportunity to transform themselves. It’s a time to think and pray and review the last year.  A time to get really real with yourself and consider how you have shown up and haven’t shown up for your loved ones, neighbors, and the world. During this time, it’s a mitzvah to make amends to people you’ve hurt. You seek them out, acknowledge that you hurt them, and say that you’re sorry. And when someone who has hurt you comes up to you and sincerely says that they’re sorry, your job is to forgive them. It’s a process of reconciliation with the people in one’s life and with God.

 

So that all sounds good in principle, you can go around and make your apologies, but what if others don’t come up to you and say that they’re sorry? What if you’re waiting for that call from the one person who really messed you up this year, and the phone never rings. This is a huge problem, not just for Jews during the High Holidays, but for all of us. What to do when the person we feel wronged by just isn’t apologizing like they clearly should. Oh, we would be magnanimous! Magnanimous with our forgiveness if only they would just see the light, realize their guilt, recognize our innocent suffering, and say, “I’m really, really sorry.” We long to hear that. We long to hear the other person’s admission of guilt when we’ve been badly hurt. It feels so good. In fact, sometimes we feel like we need it. We need them to validate our loss. We’re stuck in our pain and resentment and we feel like we need the other’s person’s “sorry” to clear a pathway to our forgiveness, like a snowplow clearing the way through the snowy anger of our heart. And yet sometimes, as we all know, that “sorry” just isn’t forthcoming.

 

Dylann Roof isn’t sorry. He committed one of the worst kinds of atrocities possible. He killed somebody’s mother, he killed somebody’s son, somebody’s pastor, somebody’s senator, somebody’s grandmother in the very place where they probably felt most safe and nurtured. In the place where they were probably most proud of their heritage and of who they were, he killed them precisely because of who they were. He killed them after they had welcomed him into that place with open arms. And he left one woman alive so she could tell the world what happened. He is decisively not sorry.

 

And yet, as well know from watching the story unfold, the families of the victims got into a room two days later with the stony-faced Dylann Roof on a teleconference screen, and several of them told him that they forgive him. Nadine Collier, daughter of victim Ethel Lance, said, “I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never get to talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you, and have mercy on your soul. … You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. If God forgives you, I forgive you.” Other family members followed suit. Some suggested that he might want to think about repenting, but that was as strong as the language ever got.

 

Roof was expressionless the whole time. The families’ words of forgiveness – their sincere intention to forgive – may or may not have humanized them to him in any way (we can never know). But it seemed to hyper-humanize them to the rest of the country. For one thing, it made it pretty much impossible for the Confederate flag to remain flying at the South Carolina capitol. Less than one month after the shooting, the South Carolina legislature voted to take it down, and in short order it was taken down to be displayed in a museum, where it belongs. The shooter’s intention to provoke a race war didn’t happen and instead, liberals and conservatives alike roundly repudiated the ideals that he represents. And there was a huge national outpouring of support, financial and emotional, for the Charleston families. They became spiritual heroes through their acts of forgiveness.

 

Another alternative for these families might have been pure anger. Expressions of holy rage. And there is a legitimate critique of their decision to go the forgiveness route. It has to do with a culture of what’s called “tone policing.” This concept got some notoriety recently when it was alluded to by the contemporary cultural theorist Nicki Minaj. This is a bit of an aside, but basically Miley Cyrus had criticized her, Minaj, for tweeting in a tone that was “angry.” At the recent Video Music Awards Ceremony, Minaj publicly called Cyrus out for this tone policing. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t either if it wasn’t part of my job to read up on this stuff.) As catty as the whole exchange was, Minaj was absolutely right. She had been “policed” by Miley Cyrus in the subtle, insidious way that such policing happens in our culture: if you’re a person of color, you’re supposed to be quiet and agreeable and forever turn the other cheek no matter what happens to you. You’re not allowed to be “angry.” If you do express anger, says the white language police, it just undermines your message. (Of course what really undermines the message is the public focusing on the anger rather than on what the anger is about.)

 

Be that as it may, were the Charleston families merely submitting to “tone policing,” when they spoke their forgiveness to Dylan Roof? Was it a sign of their collective disempowerment? In my opinion, it was exactly the opposite. They were claiming power, doing what they needed to do for themselves. This was not about Dylan Roof; it was not about the media; it was not about the Confederate flag or becoming heroes. It was about them. This forgiving was part of the families’ process of grieving. It was about their relationship with God. It was about their spiritual journeys and their response to evil in the world. That response included expressions of anger. One family member, Bethane Middleton-Brown, whose sister was killed, told Roof, “For me, I’m a work in progress and I acknowledge that I’m very angry. We have no room for hate. We have to forgive. I pray [to]God [for] your soul.” She made a vital distinction here between anger and hate. Anger which legitimately decries the injustice of a person’s wrongful act; hate which effaces his or her humanity.

 

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we’re not angry. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that the act was okay. When we forgive, we don’t forgive the act, we forgive the person. We allow just the tiniest sliver of daylight between the person and what they’ve done. We say, “I refuse to reduce you to the act that you committed. I won’t make you two-dimensional so that you are nothing but that act. I will strive to recognize you as complicated – as having more dimensions to you than just how you wronged me. I recognize your humanity. I won’t make you just a monster and nothing more.”

 

When we do that, we do ourselves a huge favor. Because then our world is no longer populated by monsters. Our world is no longer populated by larger-than-life figures, alien and malevolent. It becomes populated by people – sometimes flawed, bitter, angry, violent people. People who are works in progress. And we find that we don’t have to depend on them to evolve spiritually before we can evolve spiritually. The Charleston families didn’t wait for Dylann Roof to come in with his snowplow and make them feel right. They didn’t wait for the day when he would recognize their humanity before recognizing his; because that day was probably never gonna come. They didn’t wait for him to feel sorry before forgiving him, because he might never feel sorry. They wouldn’t give him that power.

 

Forgiveness is the mature recognition that the past cannot change, the other person’s timetable of personal change is not our business and not in our control. It is letting go of the other person; letting go of an outside focal point for our pain and instead turning inward to our own grieving process. It is recognizing the inherent worth and dignity of all, even in the face of profound disappointment. When we forgive someone, it’s for us. Whatever political or social consequences it may have, however it might benefit the person we forgive, is just gravy.

 

It is said that there are three people in our lives that we absolutely have to forgive if we want to be free: we have to forgive our parents for the wrongs they committed in our childhood through their presence and through their absence (that’s the hardest one for many of us). We have to forgive our ex-spouse or partner for the pain they caused us and maybe continue to cause us. And lastly, and maybe most importantly, we have to forgive ourselves. We have to forgive ourselves for the mistakes we’ve made, the opportunities missed. We have to forgive ourselves for hurting the people we love, because we all hurt the people we love. We even have to forgive ourselves for our resistance to forgiving others. We are works in progress.

 

But the spiritual, psychological work of forgiving, regardless of the state of the other, is worth that hard work. When we can pull our eyes away from the rearview mirror, we can see the road ahead more clearly. We can become our own snowplow. We can be free and openhearted again. Don’t wait for the apology note – sincere, childish, or otherwise. I wish you the blessing of a good heart opening during this holiday season.

One Response
  1. Rabbi Barry R. Baron permalink
    September 21, 2015

    I grew up down the street from FUUB, and, as a small child, attended the Brooklyn Heights Community Nursery School, which met in your building in the late ’50’s and early ’60’s. I enjoy Rev Levy-Lyons’ sermons and frequently turn to them or an extra measure of inspiration around Jewish holidays. Sunday’s sermon on forgiveness definitely did the trick. Thank you.

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