Frederick Buechner= , in his novel, The Final Beast, tel= ls the story of a young minister named Roy Nicolet, who is trying to figure out ho= w to be a minister. The most puzzling member of his church is a young woman named Rooney. He knows she has been involved in a brief and loveless extramarital affair, and he sees her wander into church from time to time for reasons she herself cannot explain.

Nicolet does not know how to approach her so h= e turns to a layperson, Lillian Flagg, who knows more about Rooney and more about f= aith than the preacher does. ”What can I tell Rooney?” Roy asks. Lil= lian says: “She doesn’t know God forgives her. That’s the only power you have – to tell her that. Not just that he forgives her poor little adultery. But the faces she can’t bear to look at now…Te= ll her he forgives her for being lonely and bored, for not being full of joy w= ith a houseful of children…Tell her that her sin is forgiven because whet= her she knows it or not, that’s what&nbs= p; she wants more than anything else – what all of us want. What = on earth do you think you were ordained for?”

We do not know, do we, that God forgives us for being bored with a job that wearies us for its lack of purpose, or at least= where we cannot express the purpose we would like to; a family that puzzles us an= d a church that often seems marginal to our needs. We join in a prayer for forgivenes= s, Sunday after Sunday. Do we have any expectation that forgiveness happens?

Anne Lamott, the w= ildly creative and deeply spiritual human being and writer, who manages to keep t= he sharp knife of justice ready to shape every word that she writes, wonders in one of her later books, Plan B, Fur= ther Thoughts on Faith, “What is there to do in the difficult and viol= ent times in which we live?” She confesses she doesn’t have the rig= ht personality for the human condition. Finally, she says: “I am going to pray that our soldiers come home soon. I am going to pray for the children = of America and Iraqi soldiers, for the innocent Iraqi people, for the POW’s, for humanitarian aid, and for our leaders…I am going to pray to forgive o= ne person today…maybe for the willingness to really forgive someone today – Bush for instance, who got us into this mess – even though I = do not expect it to go well. Forgiveness is not my strong suit.”

Out of a life-time spent in the Church, I wond= er how many times I have been a party to or witnessed gracious, honest, clear, straight forward forgiveness – that really covered the sin, or carried the sin away, which is what the Hebrew words for sin suggest, so that commu= nity can be redeemed and restored and people can live together again in joy and = in trust. I would have to say, sadly, hardly ever. For sin is not just individ= ual, it robs the whole community of trust, caring and love.

Look at what we witnessed in the Amish communi= ty recently. In the ghastliness of mass murder of young girls, they immediately ministered to the family of the person who murdered their children. It woul= d not be in their self interest, or the interest of their community to bring char= ges or law suits against that person, because that would perpetuate the violence and further violate the sense of community. They allowed the sin to be carr= ied away; they destroyed the school and they did not create some sort of lasting memorial to the violence. They restored community among themselves and with us. Who among us can do that? Wouldn’t that just be too difficult to do? I admit, forgiveness is not my strong suit.

Forgiveness was even difficult for Jesus! When Jesus healed the palsied man, he was shocking the religious establishment f= or they believed no one could forgive sin but God. And Jesus was saying, ̶= 0;I can do this also.” And later in his ministry he would say, “And= you can do this also.” But it was hard work for Jesus. It was difficult to buck the establishment. Mark doesn’t tell us what sin was associated = with the palsied man. But Jesus knew. And Jesus said, “It would be much ea= sier to say to the man, “Arise and walk!” than to say to him: “Your sins are forgiven you.” For you see, with forgiveness the= re are difficult and sometimes long processes that we have to walk through in order to get to forgiveness.

There has to be a naming of the sin; how it hu= rts people and destroys community and puts us in an awkward relationship with G= od. We may have to get by our dislike for the person we have injured or the one= who has injured us. We have to let the sin be carried away; let go of it, in or= der to let go of our feelings about the other. We have to take time to let God = in on our story. And we have to be honest about that, and that is painful. At = some point we need to develop the faith that God forgives us and the other, completely.

It is hard work. It may take a very long time. David Augsberger, whom I have long admired as a theologian, Christian and scholar, really challenges Christians in his writings about forgiveness. He writes a lot ab= out the need for us to restore community. He goes so far as to say that we need= to find ways to begin dialogue with those who have hurt us. There are different levels of forgiveness and the challenge is to go higher and higher until the situation is redeemed and we are redeemed in the process, and we are able to live together in community with mutual respect for one another, so that we cease making monuments to our hurts, and wearing our hurts in our eyes and = in the lines of our foreheads.

Time, respect, prayer, immersion in scripture; willingness to encounter the other; willingness to let pride fall away, tak= ing that difficult road, that difficult road that Jesus himself took, all the w= ay to the cross.