When I was fifteen years old, I decided that I would no longer say one particular line in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”
I attended a Catholic boarding school where morning assembly always included the Lord’s Prayer. I would faithfully ask for my daily bread, come to a hard stop at the forgiveness line, and then pick up again in time to ask not to be led into temptation. Here’s why.
As a teenager who was very serious about my decision to follow Jesus, it seemed to me that Jesus was asking us to ask God to forgive us the way we forgive other people. I knew I was in trouble right there. Forgiveness was simply not in my skill set.
Not only did I have great difficulty forgiving other people, I had great difficulty forgiving myself. When someone wronged or harmed me, I found it easier to work on forgetting the incident than forgiving them. And if I could not forget it, I would minimize the harm. I could talk myself into believing that what happened really wasn’t such a big deal. Truth be known, I had no idea what forgiveness meant. So my teenage self concluded that setting the standard for God’s forgiveness according to the quality of my own forgiveness would be a terrible mistake.
Here I am years later and miles away from my Loreto nuns, seminary education in my bag and I am still working on the spiritual discipline of forgiveness. I have learned from Reinhold Niebuhr that the final form of love is forgiveness. I have reflected on the wisdom of AA and its insistence that inability to forgive can imprison the one who carries it. I have even listened to neuroscientists describe growing evidence that the practice of forgiveness affects our brains, our bodies, and our well-being. Although I am still far from understanding forgiveness fully or practicing it easily, thus far, I have come to know this much: forgiveness is not forgetting; forgiveness is not minimizing; forgiveness is not pretending that something did not cause harm, harm that may have changed the entire trajectory of our lives.
This Sunday’s text, Matthew 18:15–20, offers us steps in the spiritual discipline of forgiveness. The passage is often called “The Rule of Christ.” Seems to me forgiveness is a journey we travel with others. For those of us who have been deeply harmed, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his daughter, Mpho Tutu, offer a beautiful prayer they call “Prayer Before the Prayer.” It is a prayer for those moments when we cannot yet pray, Help me forgive. Perhaps the prayer before that prayer is simply: Help me want to forgive. And perhaps, for some wounds, there is an even earlier prayer: Help me want to want to forgive.
As for me, I no longer skip that troublesome line of the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” I now hear something in that line that my fifteen-year-old self could not hear. Jesus did not teach me to pray, “Forgive me” but “Forgive us.” Forgiveness is not only my private spiritual project. It belongs to the life of a community. We pray these words together because some things we cannot carry by ourselves. And perhaps the line Jesus gives us is not a declaration that we have already mastered forgiveness, but an invitation to become willing to enter the journey.
Together on the journey of discipleship. Thus far, I have come to know this much: forgiveness is not forgetting; forgiveness is not minimizing; forgiveness is not pretending that something did not cause harm, harm that may have changed the entire trajectory of our lives.
Love, Grace