Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost 
Mary Holmen

Matthew 18:15-20

This past Friday, September 11, the Free Press carried an article with the following headline: “Describing journey of forgiveness”. It’s about a new book by Wilma Derksen, a local advocate for the needs of both victims of crime and offenders, and for promoting restorative justice as a path toward healing and reconciliation. The book is called Dispelling the Clouds: a Desperate Social Experiment.

If you don’t live in Winnipeg, or if you’re new to this city, you may not be familiar with the Derksen family’s story. In 1984, Candace Derksen was 13 years old. She lived with her parents and two siblings in a family of deep faith. On a cold November day, she phoned her mom Wilma and asked her to pick her up from school. Wilma said she couldn’t, and that Candace would have to walk home. That was the last contact the Derksen family had with their daughter. Candace disappeared on her way home. Six weeks later, her body was found in an old shed, her hands and feet bound. Clearly, she had been abducted and forced into the shed. Her abductor had abandoned her there and she had frozen to death, unable to escape because her hands were tied behind her back. Twenty-two years later, someone was arrested, charged, tried, convicted of second-degree murder, and sentenced for Candace’s death. The verdict was appealed; the case went all the way to the Supreme Court and a new trial was ordered. The accused person was acquitted and in 2017, 33 years after Candace’s murder, the Crown announced they would not appeal the new verdict.

Well, you can imagine the welter of emotions the Derksen family experienced throughout this ordeal: grief, guilt, anger, bewilderment, betrayal, a radical sense of dislocation with the knowledge that someone in their community had intentionally brought about their daughter’s death. But here’s the grace in this awful story: the night Candace’s body was found, the Derksens went to bed resolved not to follow a path of anger, hate and vengeance, but a path of forgiveness.

The pushback to their decision was swift and strong. Forgiveness as a Christian principle is extremely counter-cultural. People accused the family of being “soft on crime”. Wilma replied that she believed strongly in accountability for one’ actions, but not in revenge. A poll published in the Globe and Mail after Wilma announced her decision to forgive her daughter’s killer stated that 80% of people who responded thought she was wrong. People said hateful things. They said the Derksens couldn’t have loved Candace because they forgave her unknown killer. It must have been a strange and lonely time. Out of it came a couple of books and Candace House, dedicated to supporting the families of murdered people through the court system and trial process. Wilma has become a well-known speaker and writer on the subject of forgiveness and truth-seeking. Interestingly, Friday was also the nineteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York City, Washington DC, and in the skies over Pennsylvania. The Free Press article didn’t make that connection because it was promoting the launch of Wilma Derksen’s book, but to me, the date of the article’s publication was not a coincidence.

And Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church offends me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” – seven being the number of perfection. If I can forgive seven times, thinks Peter, then I’m perfect. And Jesus says, “Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times” (or seventy times seven). In other words, forgive, and forgive again, and again, and again. Keep on forgiving. And then he tells the parable of the slave who owes an impossible debt that is forgiven when he pleads for patience, and then turns around and imprisons a fellow slave who owes him a pittance. And Jesus says, “Don’t be like that!” In her reflection last week, Shelagh put this parable in context for us. The goal of forgiveness is always reconciliation and restoration of community.

Does that mean forgiveness is easy? “Forgive and forget”, and everything will be fine? No, it does not. Forgiveness is a process, not an event, and it is hard, hard work. In explaining the subtitle of her book, “a Desperate Social Experiment”, Wilma says it was desperate because she didn’t know if it would work even though she so wanted it to. And in telling her story on the website www.theforgivenessproject.com, Wilma says, “Little did I know that the word forgiveness would haunt me for the next 30 years – prod me, guide me, heal me, label me, enlighten me, imprison me, free me and in the end define me. I was right out there in public – confessing to everyone the desire of my heart.” The Free Press article quotes Wilma: “I would not have been able to be so forgiving if I didn’t make it public. It helped keep me accountable.” And when Mark Grant was finally acquitted of Candace’s murder, Wilma says that, much to her surprise, she felt relieved, as all the burdens of Candace’s death and its aftermath lifted from her. Anger, hate, and vengeance are heavy burdens to bear. It takes a lot of energy to stay angry. Forgiveness frees both the offender and the one offended against from having to lug these burdens around for the rest of their lives.

Most of us will never have to experience the violent death of a child, thank God. But all of us will be brought low at some point. Bad things happen, and sometimes other people cause them to happen. I wonder if this pandemic hasn’t been such an occasion for many people, an occasion of being brought low. We have all lost a lot because of the pandemic and the precautions we now have to follow. Anger is a natural human response when something you value is taken away. I do see an increase of anger related to the pandemic. But where to direct that anger? You can’t really be angry at a strand of RNA. So people look for other targets for their anger and judgmentalism, whether it’s people who wear masks, or people who don’t, or people who attend large gatherings without observing physical distancing, or someone whose looks, beliefs, or way of life is different, or, or, or…so that our public health officials and government leaders need to remind us not only of the basics of good health practices, but also of the importance of kindness and empathy. As disciples of the one in whom all find forgiveness, we should be leading the way by our example. And perhaps if we reframe the things we temporarily can’t have and can’t do as sacrifices we are willing to make, rather than deprivations that are imposed on us, maybe we’ll feel a little less hard done by. And I’m speaking as much to myself as to anyone else.

Recently, the Public Television System in the US re-aired a documentary about the life and work of Fred Rogers – an ordained Presbyterian minister, by the way, who saw his ministry and mission in working with young children through the medium of television. Mr. Rogers wrote songs to help children process things that happen to them. One of them says, “What do you do with the mad that you feel, when you feel so mad you could bite?” The song goes on to teach children that they have choices about how to deal with their anger, and that “I can stop if I want to”. Forgiveness is both a process and a decision, a commitment to seek a path of reconciliation and restoration of relationship in community. We have choices.

Well, most of us need help to do this. Don’t for a minute think that the Derksen family heroically walked the path of forgiveness all by themselves with no other support. Wilma Derksen credits her strong Christian faith and Mennonite values of peacekeeping with helping her navigate this complex journey to healing. The ability to forgive is what we ask in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. It is perhaps the most important petition in the whole prayer. Or, as Jesus warns in the parable, “So will my heavenly Father do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” And with those words, “brother or sister”, I think Jesus expands the requirement to forgive beyond the church to the whole human family. We have to forgive, not because God sternly demands it but because we need to. If we can’t forgive, we can’t receive forgiveness. If we can’t forgive those who wrong us, we can’t be in relationship or community with them. If we can’t forgive ourselves – perhaps the hardest forgiveness of all – we can’t be at peace with ourselves or anyone else. If we can’t forgive, we can’t receive God’s forgiveness. It’s as if we put up a wall so that God can’t get through to us. We cannot see ourselves as a forgiven people, so we cannot forgive others. As the hymn we sang last week says, “How can your pardon reach and bless the unforgiving heart that broods on wrongs, and will not let old bitterness depart?”

Jesus said, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. Forgiveness is a process, not an event. And it is hard, hard work. But it is essential. Sometimes the best we can do is to pray that some day we will come to that place of forgiveness. Sometimes the best we can do is to say, “God, you’re going to have to forgive that person, because right now I can’t.” The question Jesus puts to us today is this: how may we behave toward others who have wronged us – not so we put them forever in our debt, not so we force them forever to grovel in gratitude for our magnanimity, but so both they and we can accept the wholeness of life God offers? It is perhaps the most difficult and challenging question of our deeply divided age. Its answer – forgive as you have been forgiven – is the hope of the human family. Amen.