Forgive and be merciful

That may be your best gift on this Father’s Day weekend. Forgiveness is the only thing that is
new. The world contains only one thing that is truly novel, forgiveness. Everything else is an old
tape repeating itself endlessly over and over again. There is normally only one song that gets
sung: betrayal-hurt-resentment-non-forgiveness. That pattern never changes. There is an unbroken
chain of unforgiven resentment and anger stretching back to Adam and Eve.
We are all part of that chain. Everyone is wounded and everyone wounds. Everyone sins and
everyone is sinned against. Everyone needs to forgive and everyone needs to be forgiven.
Betrayal is an archetypal structure within the human soul, just as sin is innate within the
human condition. We, all of us, betray and sin. We betray ourselves, betray our loved ones, betray
our communities, and sin against our God. Everyone stands in need of forgiveness.
But we are also, each one of us, betrayed and sinned against. We are betrayed by our loved ones,
by our families, and, in a manner of speaking, even by our God. Hence, as badly as we need to be
forgiven, we also need to forgive.
We have hurt others and we have been hurt. We have sinned and we have been sinned against
and when we wake up to that we have a choice: Like Judas we can cleanse ourselves of this,
figuratively speaking, by taking what we have gained by our sin, the thirty pieces of silver, and
throwing it back into the temple and walking away, purified, but unforgiven, walking straight
towards suicide. Conversely, though, we can do like Peter, after his great betrayal, weep bitterly
and then return, humbled, compromised and scarred, but forgiven, walking solidly into life. In
forgiveness lies the difference between the choice for suicide and the choice for life. But
forgiveness is not easy. An old adage says: To err is human, to forgive is divine.