Just off the main state highway that runs south out of Abilene to San Angelo a rancher once maintained a field of grass that attracted deer by the dozen year round.  Knowing how tempting it looked to people who drove pickups with gun racks he’d also put up a “No Hunting” sign.  He shouldn’t have had to bother; it’s illegal to hunt deer from the highway anyway.  But, that didn’t stop one cowboy who one day, overcome by temptation, stopped his truck and, taking aim from the highway, picked off a deer across the fence in the rancher’s field.  At just that time, the rancher drove up and, leveling his own shotgun at the Bambi bandit told him, “You have two choices.  You can keep the deer and I call the game warden.  Or, you can go free but I get to shoot your pickup.” 

For those who’ve never been a cowboy it’s difficult to appreciate that shooting his pickup is second only to dancing with his girl without permission.  In some cases, I’ve heard, it can be worse than dancing with his girl if the truck is better looking.  But, it didn’t take the cowboy long to figure out that he didn’t want to wrangle with the warden so, he said, “I guess you can shoot my truck.”  So, the rancher leveled his shotgun at the driver’s side door, and blew a nice hole in it.  The cowboy got to go free because the rancher was willing to forgive and forget, as long as the score was even. 

The only problem is that the score is never really even, is it?  No matter who shoots first, it’s only natural to want to get in the parting shot.  Jesus is calling us to break this natural escalation in the cycle of evil by factoring forgiveness into the equation of our broken relationships.  “Love your enemies,” he said, and, “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”

Have you noticed that this is a subject to which Jesus continually brings us?  That’s so for a number of reasons.  It was the centerpiece of his teachings because it was at the center of his work to secure our forgiveness.  It is such the centerpiece of what it means to be like Christ that our emotional and spiritual health is directly related to our ability and willingness to forgive more than any other single factor.  The healthiest churches are the churches in which the people have matured to a high level of forgiving.  The healthiest families are, too.  A good question, for example, to ask people who are considering marriage is, “How good are you at practicing forgiveness?”  If you are not good at forgiving you won’t be good at marriage or at much else.  That’s because, as you go along, you will find yourself carrying an increasingly heavy load of unresolved anger and bitterness with you.  Just like being physically overweight can eventually undo your total health, so being spiritually overweight with the baggage of unresolved anger can undo your spiritual health, too. 

Our own Jana Young, in article published just a few months ago, wrote, “I have observed that many divorced people fall into two basic categories:  those who have learned to forgive and those who haven’t.”  (Jana Young, “Learning To Forgive,” Christian Single, August 2000)  Notice that she is not classifying those who have been divorced by the level of tragedy they experienced or by some kind of meter that determines who suffered more loss than others.  What she is saying is that whether or not you are able to move on in life once you’ve been that hurt has more to do with how good you are at forgiving than any other factor. 

Jesus said that how responsibly we handle forgiveness is also one of the single greatest characteristics that distinguishes us as Christian.  And, that is a very good place to begin in trying to understand exactly what Jesus wants us to do when he commands us to forgive those who have hurt us.  “‘If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners love those who love them,’” he said.  It takes nothing more than just being human to do that kind of loving because that kind of loving doesn’t have much to do with love.  Loving those who love you is nothing more than payback.  Transactional love isn’t love; it’s a kind of emotional and spiritual prostitution.  It’s favor for favor, deed for deed.  It’s not really love, or forgiveness, unless it costs you something. 

That’s one of the reasons it always bothers me when professional sports figures are called heroes.  It assigns an artificial nobleness to what they do and demeans those who, for example, died saving another life and were truly heroic because they gave sacrificially of themselves in ways for which they could never be repaid.  It puts a guy who fell across a goal line to score the game-winning touchdown on the same level as the guy who fell on the beach at Normandy.  When an athlete performs well he is demonstrating exceptional giftedness in what he does but when he cashes the paycheck he is also demonstrating that he is a professional, not a hero.  If there’s payback expected, it’s not heroism. 

The forgiveness to which Jesus calls us involves a love that has nothing to do with payback positively or negatively.  This is fundamental.  Let’s not rush by it. Listen closely.  “Love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return,” Jesus said.  When you factor Christian forgiveness into a broken relationship, not only do you choose not to pay back evil for evil in a score-evening tit for tat, you also give your forgiveness without calculating the potential positive payback.  In so many ways what we call forgiveness is nothing more than a loan.  A loan on which we are charging interest we expect to be paid at some point in the future when we need a favor.  “If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you?” Jesus asked.  If you forgive with any expectation that the one you have forgiven must ever repay you in kind you are not giving anything.  Like the athlete, no matter how good the performance, you’re just doing business.  And, you may also be setting yourself up for even more hurt.

I’ve found myself thinking a great deal lately about the family of the police officer slain by the seven convicts who broke out of their south Texas prison just before Christmas.  It wasn’t just a murder.  It was a brutal, cowardly ambush.  Think of the images that must replay themselves over and over in the minds of his loved ones.  Now, whether or not his murderers ever feel remorse only God may know.  But, even if they do, is there anything they could do to pay back the wife who lost a husband, the mother who lost a son or the little boy who lost his dad?  I cannot imagine what going on with life must be like for them.  All I do know is that if they can’t go on unless someone pays them back then they’ll likely never be able to go on.  If you live long enough, someone is going to take something irreplaceable from you someday.  If you can forgive only if they pay you back you will only find yourself with more to forgive.  Simone Weil wrote, “The source of evil can be broken only by one who is willing, in Christlike fashion, to absorb evil and suffering into himself, without yielding to the temptation of causing others to suffer.”  (Source unknown)

My guess is that, if you’ve ever attempted Christlike forgiveness, you’ve already learned that.  But, here is where the forgiveness factor gets really tough.  The forgiveness to which the Jesus who has forgiven us calls us demands that we not pay back evil for evil or expect good in return for good given.  But, it demands more than that.  To forgive like Christ forgives means that we are to seek justice for those who have treated us in unjust ways. 

One of the best books I’ve ever read in terms of being helped to understand how to actually do forgiveness is a book by Lewis Smedes, Forgive and Forget.  I love the book.  I hate the title.  To forgive is one terribly difficult thing.  But, short of having brain tissue removed from your head, forgetting an extremely painful event seems altogether impossible.  One of my favorite preachers even said that we should just erase the videotape that runs in our head replaying the moment when we were hurt.  How do you do that?

Well, long before video or DVD, Jesus was onto that.  And, here is his answer.  When someone hurts you, if you want to forgive them, then spend your energies doing something good for them.  Listen to the positive words he used to describe the behaviors we should employ in responding to injustice.  “Love . . . do good . . . bless . . . pray . . . give.”  And, he summed it all up by saying, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  It is nearly impossible to feel

your way to forgiveness.  But, you can behave your way there.  Depending on how deeply they hurt you, you may never feel good about someone who has caused you severe pain.  But, Jesus says nothing about how we feel as defining how we forgive.  His only words are about how we choose to behave.  Yet, because we almost always feel about others the way we treat them, it is nearly impossible to treat others in positively kind ways and not come to discover feelings of kindness for them.  Forgiveness is an illusive traveling companion that quietly comes alongside us somewhere down the road toward behaving in loving ways toward those who have broken our hearts.

So, here’s how it works, at least in my experience.  You haven’t gotten to forgiveness if you keep replaying the videotape in your mind of the time you were hurt and still feel anger and resentment.  You haven’t forgiven when something bad happens to the one who hurt you and it makes you feel good.  You haven’t forgiven when you speak of the one who hurt you in derogatory terms either to others or just under your breath to yourself.  You haven’t forgiven if you are still holding the one who hurt you accountable for the pain you feel.  That’s not an exhaustive list.  But, it’s a good place to start. 

There are also some positive signs that can indicate you are getting along well down the road toward forgiveness.  One sign is that you can revisit the place you were hurt (every hurt has a place and sometimes a song) without feeling anger or resentment toward those who hurt you.  You are moving toward forgiveness if you can honestly pray for the one who hurt you in ways that sincerely seek the blessings of God for them.  But, the best indicator that you are moving toward forgiveness is when you can surrender yourself to the power only the Spirit of God can give that enables you to do something good for the one who hurt you.

And, the only way that ever happens is not when you forget what happened but when you choose to redefine what hurt you in terms other than your hurt.  Do you remember the words of Jesus on the cross?  “‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’”  (Luke 23:34)  If he had only been interpreting what was happening that day in terms of the suffering others were causing him he would not have prayed that prayer.  It was only because he was able to redefine what was happening in terms other than his own personal pain that he was able to, as Weil said, “absorb evil and suffering into himself,” and thereby secure, of all things, our forgiveness.

As I was writing this sermon this week I realized that I have a videotape, literally, of a time when someone hurt me deeply.  It actually caught by the camera.  The thing that caused me pain is not that visible to anyone but me.  If you watched the tape, you wouldn’t see it.  But, I know it’s there.  And, because the tape has another very important event on it, I can’t just erase it.  But, for years, I haven’t been able to watch it because it’s too painful.  When I was getting ready to tell you what Jesus said about forgiveness, I realized that it’s time to watch the tape again.  But, this time, to watch it while looking for something more than just what hurt me.  This time, to factor some forgiveness into everything else I see.  Because, what hurts us is always about so much more than what you and I can see, isn’t it? 

It’s about a God we can’t see until he makes himself visible in those tender acts of mercy we extend to others who’ve broken our hearts, just like we broke his right before, no, even as he was in the process of forgiving us.  God “‘is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked,’” Jesus said.  That means that when he could have evened the score with you and me, he chose kindness instead.