I was recently captured by a story told by Wendell Berry of two friends who live in a small community in Kentucky in the year 1912. Ben Feltner and Thad Coulter were part of a close-knit agrarian community with strong ties to each other, to the land and to hard work. Tragedy ensues when Thad invests in a risky business deal with his son and loses out. Humiliated and falling into despair, Thad drinks himself into a stupor and then heads over to ask his friend Ben for help. Ben does not want to discuss options with Thad in his condition, so refuses to talk with him until the next day when he is sober. However, Thad succumbs to the darkness creeping over him and returns home to get his gun, which he then uses to shoot Ben Feltner in a drunken rage.
The rest of the story is a beautiful tale of forgiveness and mercy offered by Ben’s family and the community. Sadly, Thad himself is unable to experience that forgiveness because he cannot bear to live knowing he has killed his best friend, so he ends his own life.
“People sometimes talk of God’s love as if it’s a pleasant thing. But it is terrible, in a way. Think of all it includes. It included Thad Coulter, drunk and mean and foolish, before he killed Mr. Feltner, and it included him afterwards.”
I have often been asked ‘Could not God have forgiven people without going through the pain and the violence of the cross?’ But, when is forgiveness not painful? True forgiveness cannot occur unless the hurt is acknowledged and called for what it is. When you look a wrong full in the face but choose to accept the hurt instead of returning it on the one who did it, that is always painful.
Jesus illustrates forgiveness by telling the story of a servant who owes his master more money than he could possibly repay. The master originally threatens to sell the servant’s family and possessions to get some return for the debt, but when the servant begs for mercy, the master is gracious and forgives the debt. The same servant not only refuses to forgive the debt of his fellow servant, but also has him locked in prison as punishment.
In discussions about justice and forgiveness, we sometimes fail to recognize the true alternatives. Perhaps we treat forgiveness and justice as though they are mutually exclusive. If we choose the way of justice, we think the options are reparations or retribution—either the guilty person makes up for a wrong or is punished for it. These are the only options the servant offered his peer. Since the second servant could not repay, he was punished. However, the master chose the way of mercy when he forgave the debt, neither requiring reparation nor inflicting retribution. If God has forgiven us like the master forgave the servant, we ask, why all the pain and death of the cross? Does the cross undermine God’s mercy? Is it merely an underhanded way for God to force repayment from humanity or exact punishment on us? But in asking these questions, we betray a misunderstanding of both justice and forgiveness. Justice can never be achieved by reparation or retribution alone, because true wrongs can never be repaid. The hurt and pain caused are not reversible. Punishing the guilty person does not remove the hurt either, even if it brings brief satisfaction to the victim, just as the first servant did not get his money back simply because the other man was in jail. Justice must be about much more than balancing out the wrongs of the world. It must be about making things right, about restoration. And just as wrongs cannot be erased by punishment or repayment, they cannot really be erased by simple forgiveness either. When the master forgives the servant’s debt, the debt does not simply disappear! The master takes the loss. He accepts the full brunt of the debt himself. Similarly, when a person forgives, she or he accepts the full brunt of the hurt or injustice rather than returning it on the one who caused it. That is why forgiveness is always painful, why great love is always terrible.
And think of all God’s love includes…..Us, with our best and our worst, with our failures and even our outright cruelty, the mess we have made of the world, our brokenness and despair, our rebellions and inadequacies – all included in and redeemed by the deep and wide love of God. Paul is astonished by this reality when he emphasizes that Christ died for us while we were still sinners.
The cross is not a vindictive God insisting on retribution for the guilty; the cross is the pain of God, accepting the loss and the hurt of forgiveness for the guilty. It is the terrible love of God that includes us with all of our destruction and betrayal.
The cross does not represent God’s mercy being tamed by God’s anger. The cross demonstrates that God’s mercy is much bigger than we think. God’s arms are outstretched so wide, we are able to nail them to a cross. Sin and death enter the very heart and life of God. Instead of demanding that we pay what we cannot, instead of punishing us for not paying what we cannot, this God accepts the loss, loving until the end even Jesus’ murderers. The embrace of God is bigger than our capacity to ruin the relationship. Think of what it includes….
