First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Recently, actor-philanthropist Brad Pitt was interviewed, and asked about his feelings about the BP oil spill. Pitt said he had never been for the death penalty, but he was thinking of making an exception for those responsible for the outpouring of oil into the Gulf. John Osterlyn on WRNO radio was outraged – how could Pitt be for the death penalty for this, and not for murderers? The answer is that each person’s unforgivable sin is different.
Sin is not an easy thing to talk about for UUs. Some say that we Unitarian Universalists don't have a concept of sin, but I don’t think that’s true. It might be fair to say that UUs are less interested in what Catholics call venial, personal, sins. Religious liberals tend to focus more on communal, institutional sins like war and violence. Are some sins more forgivable than others?
I was amazed when I learned about Holocaust survivor Edith Eger, who travels the country teaching forgiveness to former POWs. She says that those who forgive are freer. “Free from hatred, fear, the need for revenge,” she says, “[from] our own self-imposed prison.” Eger’s family was killed at Auschwitz. Eger says, “I have no time to hate because if I would hate today, I would give Hitler a posthumous victory, and I’m not about to do that.”
I was also amazed when I found out that the family of James Byrd, the black man dragged to death by white supremicists a decade ago, had publicly urged the jury not to impose the death penalty.
While I was serving in Chattanooga, the Journey of Hope, a group of activists (including musician Steve Earle), family members of murder victims, and of Death Row inmates, stayed overnight at the church. In that group, I met a man who blew me away when he told me that he was helping the teen-age girl who murdered his grandmother get an education while she was in prison. He visits her regularly – one of the few visitors she receives.
All of these people have discovered a secret – that hate keeps violence and cruelty going, but that forgiveness helps survivors to become whole. Turns out that refusing to forgive is a lot like carrying around rotten potatoes.
A teacher once told her students to bring a sack of potatoes to school. For every person in their life they refused to forgive, they put a potato into a plastic bag. Then they had to carry the bag with them for a week. The hassle of lugging it around made clear what a weight they were carrying inside. Over time, the potatoes rotted – a great metaphor for the price we pay for holding onto bitterness. Too often we think of forgiveness as a gift to the other person, but it’s really for ourselves.
What is an unforgivable sin? A Holocaust survivor teaches forgiveness. A family of a man viciously murdered begs for the lives of their loved one's killers. A man befriends his grandmother’s murderer. What is an unforgivable sin? I'll tell you – an unforgivable sin is one we choose NOT to forgive.
What old heavy rotting potatoes are we carrying, and why are we still carrying them? Yes, we’ve been hurt, betrayed, lied to, not been loved enough -- and the fact is, if we’re truthful, we’ll admit that we have hurt, betrayed, lied, and not given enough love too. Shouldn’t we choose to forgive?
The choice is ours to make. We can choose to be forgiving and forgiven people, or we can choose not to forgive, carry a bitter burden, and bear inside a burning need for retribution that ends, as all such internal fires do, in consuming our very essence, turning us into what we hate. Unlike the teacher in the story, no one is forcing us to carry those potatoes – we packed 'em our own selves and are choosing to carry ‘em around.
Yom Kippur, with its opportunity for new beginnings and healed relationships, has been recurring, according to the Jewish calendar, for the past, oh, 5,770 years. Christianity, with its message of forgiveness and love, has been around for nearly 2,000 years. So why isn’t the world a better place? Maybe it’s because we haven’t gotten the message.
In an adaptation of a traditional prayer of Yom Kippur, my colleague Mark Belletini writes:
We are free, not to promise to be good, but simply to get on with loving each other. We are free, not to vow great transformations, but to engage life with tenderness & understanding, & outpourings of kindness. We are free, not to swear oaths of everlasting loyalty & righteousness, but to continue to be generous to each other, to ourselves, & to the common good. At the start of a new year, we begin again in love.
So might this be! AMEN -- ASHE -- SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE -- BLESSED BE!
