Vicar’s View: January 2008 “White as Snow”

At this time of year I dream of snow. By now we have usually experienced a damp if mild Christmas with little prospect of snow, at least here in the south. Waking up to a blanket of pure white snow smothering everything, untouched, unblemished, in the stillness of the morning air, still takes my breath away and I become a child again. If only we could capture it.

A clean start. That is what we need at the beginning of a new year. I suspect that is what you long for too. The prophecy of Isaiah, recited at Christmas, about a virgin who would give birth to a child who would be called Emmanuel, or ‘God with us’, also contains this invitation,

"Come now, let us reason together," says the Lord. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18)

This is a good time, not just to make a few New Year resolutions to ourselves, but to reason with God, about our need to forgive and be forgiven. Forgiveness is the central truth of the Christian faith. God forgave us for the things we have done wrong because Jesus died in our place. There is nothing more needed in this broken world than the good news of that forgiveness. What do you do when you forgive somebody?

The Bible uses wonderful metaphors for this act of God. My favourite one is "God washes our sin away." The metaphor describes how he removes the stain from us. He gets the outer layer of dirt off and says, "What a beautiful person you are inside.” When we forgive, we are acting like God. The first thing we do is rediscover the humanity of the person who hurt us. When somebody hurts me and I'm wounded, angry and bitter, I reduce that person's humanity to the size of what he did to me. "Fred? Who's Fred? He is the scum who did that to me. He is the louse who betrayed me." I totally define him in terms of what he did. When you forgive, however, you discover that the person who hurt you is a lot more than just what he or she did to you. She is a weak, fragile, fallible human being -- not all that different from you.

The second thing I think that he does and we do is this: He surrenders his right to get even. He takes this right that everybody feels after they've been hurt. "It's only right that we balance the score. It's only right that we get even." He puts it in his hands and looks at it and lets it drop like water, never to be collected again. He gives up that right to get even because Jesus took the punishment for our wrong doing. We forgive because we have been forgiven.

The third thing that happens -- and sometimes this takes a while -- is that we revise our feelings about the person who did us wrong. That's what the grace of God is all about. The ruler of the universe, the creative spirit behind all that lives, wishes you well. That's what happens when you forgive somebody. You rediscover their humanity. You surrender your right to get even with them, and you begin wishing them well.

How do we forgive? Firstly, forgive people for what they do. Never forgive them for what they are. Forgive concretely, specifically. "Forgive in verbs," somebody said, "not in nouns." God can forgive wholesale maybe, but you've got to be in the retail business of forgiving. Be concrete, specifically, what they did - that's as much as you can handle.

Secondly, try to engage the person in the experience of being forgiven. Somehow or other when you know that no matter what you've done in the past, God has rediscovered the beauty of your humanity, has surrendered every right to ever try to get even with you and wishes you well, it transforms you, and makes you whole. When you get that sense of God's forgiveness deep inside of you, it's like a river that just washes the anger away you may feel for others. You lose your energy to hate once you know you've been forgiven and are loved.

In this world where people do hurt each other and sometimes hurt us a lot, when you begin to forgive, you actually set a prisoner free. In forgiving, you discover that the prisoner you set free is yourself.

When you forgive, you ride the crest of God's great wave of love. When you forgive, you walk hand in hand with God. When you forgive, you begin to heal the wounds, and you start to live a little more sensitively once again. We may or may not see some snow this winter, but because of Jesus, we can more importantly begin this New Year as white as snow on the inside.

May God bless you and those you love,

Stephen