Presented to AV Ministries, 20 March 2022; Original version presented to 614 Warehouse pm service, 22 October 2017 by Captain Michael Ramsay
Click here to read the original 2017 Toronto version: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2017/10/matthew-612-as-we-forgive-those-who.html
I don't know how much people remember the sermons I preach over the years but one theme to which I keep returning is forgiveness. It is central to Christianity, to following Christ, and it is the most powerful way for us to remove hate and fear from our lives. Hate and unforgiveness kill us and unforgiveness, as I have often said, is a self-inflicted wound. So-and-so may have hurt you when they did that terrible thing to you but you hurt yourself over and over again when you do not forgive them. They aren't necessarily hurt by your unforgiveness. They might not even know you are mad at them but if every time you think about that person if your heart hardens, your mind tightens, and you stomach and back ache, then your unforgiveness is killing you. We actually have the power to forgive and be released from the pain we are suffering but it is not easy.
It has been a difficult time in the world. It is interesting. When things are difficult it can really be an eye opener. I remember when I was just coming off of a very trying time personally, years ago now, we went to The Global Leadership Summit in Toronto. There were many good speakers.
One such speaker was Immaculee Ilibagiza. She is a favourite author of mine. She said, “Forgiveness is possible in every situation”; she said, “God is always right; whatever our Lord tells us to do is right. And God tells us to forgive.” Immaculee is a Rwandan and she is a Tutsi. Do we remember the Rwandan genocide?
In the late 20th Century people in Rwanda were required to carry ID cards – but instead of showing your vaccination status, these cards showed whether you were a Hutu, Tutsi, Pygmy, or another race. This is reminiscent of South African Apartied, American segregation, or the star European Jews had to wear during WWII. In 1994, the president of Rwanda's plane was shot down and this unleashed the brutality that had apparently been building up for years. She remembers now hearing radio programs promoting hatred and violence against the minority Tutsis by the majority Hutus for years before the genocide but she never thought much if it. We hear wakkos and even mainstream reporters and politicians spreading hate on our TVs, radios, and social media every day and every minute here now. We are encouraged to be Anti-This, Anti-That: Everybody seems to hate somebody for something. She didn't think much of it then - just a few Hutus publicly hating Tutsis. But then with the death of the president it unleashed a genocidal wave that wiped out about a million lives in about 90 days. The people on the radio were calling for Hutus to not merely malign their Tutsi neighbours on social or other media (like is happening to high-profile Russians and others here today); the people on the radio were not merely calling for Hutus to to turn people into the authorities to deal with (like so many of our anonymous call lines do here today); but then and there people on the radio were really encouraging the Hutus to actually hunt down their Tutsi neighbours and kill them… themselves. I remember reading the horror stories in the news at that time of neighbours hacking apart neighbours with machetes. There but for the grace of God go we. Really.
Immaculee remembers her mother, her father, and her brothers sent her away when this began. They wanted her to be safe. They sent her to hide in the house of a Hutu pastor. She remembers that she was put in a bathroom, 3ft by 4ft, and told not to leave the room and not to make any noise. She remembers saying or thinking, 'I can't stay here it is too small; Then two more girls came to live in that room and then two more and then more and then soon the room was jam-packed with girls and they couldn't leave in the daylight and they couldn’t make any noise at all - if anyone knew they were there they could, they would, be killed.
Immaculee remembers one day a death squad came to search the house. A chain of people surrounded the house so that if they found any Tutsi in the house they couldn't escape. Then the searchers came into the house. They searched in closets, they searched in the halls, they searched in the ceiling, they searched in the floor. They even searched in suitcases in case someone might be trying to hide a small child in one. They were looking for Tutsis and if they found one, even a child, they would kill her.
She remembers when searchers were close to their hiding place, a part of her wanted to run out and defy them and a part of her wanted to remain hidden. She is Catholic and she prayed, "God, if You are who You are, please don't let them look in this room" and then she fainted. When she came to, the evangelical Hutu pastor who was harbouring them said that they were by the door when one searcher said, ‘Mr. So-and-So, you are a good man, you wouldn't have anyone in your house’ and they left.
They stayed three months jam packed in that washroom. They had nothing to do so they asked that a radio be placed where they could hear it and on it they heard day after day the government inciting people to hate and kill them and day after day people were. One government official even encouraged the Hutu to kill Tutsi children saying, "the child of a snake is still a snake," Hate is powerful; When you hear people plotting to kill you and your loved ones it is easy to grab onto hate and try to get through this time by hating your enemies and plotting a real or imagined vengeance… at the expense your soul. Now to make her soul an even more fertile ground for hate to grow, on her first night of the 90 nights she spent in that washroom, pressed up against all of the others, she heard the news that her mother, and father, and brothers, were hacked to death.
Whether in that room or afterwards I do not remember, she had her Rosary beads with her. When God answered her prayer and the searchers did not come in her room she knew God was real more than she ever knew before and so she would pray her Rosary prayers all the more. One of the prayers on the Rosary is the Lord's Prayer. She would pray it regularly but then she would get to the part that says please forgive our trespasses (our sins) as we forgive those who trespass (sin) against us. But surely God didn't mean me? How can I forgive the sins of what has been done to me? How can I forgive my enemies – when they killed my mother, my father, my brothers, and my family? She got to the point where because she knows God is real and He knows everything, she wouldn't even say those words in the Lord's Prayer – forgive us our sins as we forgive others - she would skip them over because she didn’t want to forgive them but then, of course, all-knowing God knows she is skipping those words. She came to realize this and so she opened her Bible to find some relief from this conviction to forgive her enemies. She opened her Bible and it said:
· Pray for your enemies, so she closed it and opened it again,
· Pray for those who persecute you, close,
· Forgive your enemies!
And then she remembered God, Jesus on Cross. It is almost Easter and it is almost Good Friday: do you remember what some Jesus' last recorded words are - about those who have put him up on that cross to die? Jesus said, "Father forgive them" and then Jesus said, "for they do not know what they do". Jesus forgave his enemies. Jesus says, "Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven." Jesus himself told us to forgive others as we want to be forgiven.
Immaculee says, “Forgiveness is possible in every situation and God is always right; whatever our Lord tells us to do is right. God tells us to forgive.”
And if Jesus forgives those who put him on a Cross to kill him and if Immaculee can forgive those who killed her family and extended family and the people she loves then surely we can forgive those who hurt us.
In the conference we were at, we were invited us to think of a person who has recently hurt us. We were invited to think of someone who when we think of them our muscles tighten and our hearts harden. We were asked to forgive them and free ourselves from the pain of unforgiveness. I know that is not easy but forgiveness is possible in every situation; God is always right; whatever our Lord tells us to do is right. God tells us to forgive. And only when we forgive can we possibly be free.
Let us pray
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