9-15-17 - Forgiveness for Freedom

Lest we think this story Jesus told was hopelessly out of date, we should remember that we still have debtors’ prisons in this country. The Southern Poverty Law Center got one in Alabama closed down a few years ago. Threatening punishment for those who cannot pay is an old strategy. Jesus even seems to employ it in the end to his parable:  “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” 

Forgive, or else, is that Jesus’ message? I hope this is another of his hyperbolic turns, where he drives home a point by exaggerating it. However, whether motivated by fear or love, the call to Christ followers to excel at forgiving others is clear. In fact, it is necessary if that living water of God’s transforming power and love are going to flow through us unimpeded. Unforgiveness creates blockages, debris that can – like plaque in our blood vessels – create clots. This is why forgiveness and healing are so intertwined.

I was privileged to know Canon Jim Glennon, an Anglican clergyman from Australia who had an extraordinary gift and ministry of healing. His notion of God’s healing was simple: It is God’s desire that we be whole, so we pray, planting the seed of faith in Christ; give thanks for God’s activity, even before you see it, and don’t be afraid to test it. Jim and I corresponded quite a bit before he died, and he came to New York to lead a healing mission I organized at my church.

He did some teaching and then, to demonstrate, he asked if someone with severe back pain would come up for prayer. A man did. He’d been injured at his workplace 15 years earlier, and his pain was incessant. Jim prayed for him awhile, and then stopped and asked what the man was feeling or sensing. The man said, “It’s weird – ever since you began praying, I’ve had my old boss’s face in my mind.” This boss had denied him worker’s comp benefits he should have received, and the man bitterly resented him. Jim said, “Are you willing to forgive him?” He didn’t push, just invited. The man said, “Yes, I am,” and then began to sob and sob. After some more prayer, Jim asked him how his pain was now, and he said, “It’s gone! It’s been with me for 15 years, and it’s gone!”

If you have a sense of blessings blocked, either coming to you, or from you to others, ask God to show you if you’re holding onto anger or resentment toward someone. And release that debt as well as you’re able, asking the Spirit to do for you what you’re unable to do for yourself. And then test out your freedom, the way Jim asked the man to test his absence of pain by twisting around and moving. Pray for the person who hurt you. Go out and give to someone else. See what has changed. (If you’d like to pray a Litany of Forgiveness I developed, you can find it here.)

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free,” Paul wrote. (Galatians 5:1). Let’s spread it around.