The Forgiveness Of Conan

Many years ago, I was a feature reporter for a local TV news program. One day I was doing a story about a guy who was repairing the ceiling of a big Catholic church. We’ll call him John Smith. John Smith was on this rickety old platform, several stories up, repairing the ceiling. I tell you that story to tell you this story. A couple weeks ago I was at the Holland Tulip Time Festival, eating dinner that I bought at one of the vendors; something healthy, like a big old bratwurst sandwich with all the trimmings. A guy comes up to me and says, “Are you Bill Freeman?” Now, I hesitated to answer that, because sometimes I take controversial stands, preach about controversial topics, so I took a quick glance at his hands. He wasn’t carrying a gun or a knife, so I slowly said, “Yes.” He said, “Well I’m John Smith. You did a story about me years ago, repairing the ceiling of a Catholic church.” He said, “You began the story by saying ‘John Smith gets high at work.’” I said, “I’m sorry.” He said, “No, that was fine; I loved it!” Still, I felt like I should seek forgiveness from the god of bad puns.

What does it mean to forgive? How often do we forgive? How often don’t we forgive? When do we or don’t we forgive? I want to talk with you about forgiveness. Human to human forgiveness; not divine forgiveness of humans (for being – what? – human?). I want to talk with you about forgiveness, of others and of ourselves.

On Friday mornings some of you may know I co-host a radio show with Fred Wooden from Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids. The program is called, “Faith and Reason.” It’s on from 10 till Noon. This past Friday, Fred was all upset. He was angry because Grand Rapids city workers had torn up the street in front of his house to work on some water pipes. Since the water to his house was shutoff, he couldn’t take a shower before he came to the radio station, which would be fine, but he had a funeral to do at 1 o’clock. So he had to leave the radio show early, to go home and take a shower before the funeral, and he was angry about that. He wasn’t sure who to be angry at. He thought the city workers, who put out signs the day before, saying, “No Parking,” could have put notes on people’s doors telling them there water would be shutoff. But he wasn’t sure who to be angry at. He was just angry.

I think the first step toward not forgiving is anger. I think unforgiveness takes three steps: anger and then hatred and then unforgiveness.

Tony Campolo is an evangelical Christian, a preacher, a retired sociology professor at Eastern University in Philadelphia. He spoke this past week in Holland at the Summit on Racism at Hope College. He told of a time years ago when he got two groups together, Buddhists and Christians. He divided them up into theologians and mystics. He put the Buddhist and Christian theologians in one group and the Buddhist and Christian mystics in another group, for four days. At the end of that time, the Christian and Buddhist theologians were arguing with each other, as they had the whole time they were together. “We believe this.” “You believe that! How could you believe that!?” They hated each other. The mystics, who prayed and meditated together for four days, loved each other. They hated to see each other go. Perhaps the moral of the story is that when two or more faith traditions get together, they shouldn’t talk about theology, they should just pray and meditate.

I think the Christian and Buddhist theological types went through the three stages of unforgiveness. There seemed to be some anger between the two groups; perhaps also some hatred; and finally, maybe they even reached the point of unforgiveness. That’s not a good thing. Conan O’Brian seems to know this.

Conan O’Brian was promoted to host The Tonight Show. Jay Leno was promoted to his own prime time program. But the ratings for The Jay Leno Show weren’t very good and the ratings for The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brian weren’t very good, so NBC came up with a compromise. They would pull Jay Leno off the prime time schedule and put him at 11:35 and they would put Conan O’Brian at 12:05. But Conan didn’t want to do The Tonight Show…tomorrow, so he left NBC and he was forbidden from talking about leaving until a couple of weeks ago when he was on 60 Minutes. He talked about his feelings towards Jay Leno and NBC. Surprisingly he said, “You’re going to think this is crazy, but I wish them well.” In other words he, in some form or fashion, forgave the folks at NBC. Now maybe the fact that he walked away with 32 million dollars helped his forgiveness. There is that possibility. But I think he also knew about the importance of forgiveness, something that religious leaders have preached about for millennia.

Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, how many times must we forgive? Seven times?” Jesus said, “Seventy-seven times,” or depending on the translation, “Seventy times seven,” which, if my math is correct, is 490 times. Now who can blame Peter for asking the question of Jesus? You’ve got Jesus there. Perhaps you have somebody you have a hard time forgiving. So why not ask Jesus how many times you have to forgive this person? Perhaps he was thinking that Jesus would say, “Well, I said, ‘Turn the other cheek,’ but you only do that once, so you only have to forgive one time.” So maybe Peter thought he was being generous by suggesting seven times. Jesus instead said 490 times. Always and forever essentially, we must forgive. Maybe forgiving somebody is good for us.

The Dalai Lama says, “One’s enemy is the best teacher.” I think that’s true. Now, granted, I could have used fewer teachers over the years, but maybe the Dalai Lama has a point. At the very least, our enemy, if we do it right, will teach us to forgive, if we follow the precepts of Jesus, the Dalai Lama, and others.

Ram Dass, who used to be known as Richard Alpert, was a professor at Harvard, but then he got into Buddhism and Hinduism and became Ram Dass. Many years ago he wrote a book, “Be Here Now.” A very simple title, a very easy to understand point. How can you “be” anyplace other than right here, right now? And yet, when we refuse to forgive, we’re living in some previous time. When we’re not forgiving somebody, we’re living in the past, living in anger. The only way to “be here now” is to forgive back then.

Erich Segal wrote a very popular book a few years ago entitled, “Love Story.” The tag line from “Love Story,” the movie and the book, was, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” I don’t think that’s true. I think love means always having to say you’re sorry. At least, that’s what I have to do in my marriage. “Sorry, honey, I forgot to mow the lawn.” “Sorry, honey, I ate the rest of the chocolate ice cream.” I think love means always having to say you’re sorry, whenever you do something wrong and hope to be forgiven.

I remember two things from my tenth grade art class. One, our art teacher was rather pretty. Two, she had a painting on the wall of two people sinking in quicksand. You could see that there were some vines or something they could grab onto. Instead, they were each clutching clubs, and they were beating each other as they were sinking in the quicksand. How angry must we be with somebody, how much hatred must we have for somebody, how much unforgiveness must be in our heart, not to be able to save ourself at the very least? And to keep beating your opponent to death, literally, as he continues to beat you to death?

One of my favorite actors of all time is James Garner. I loved him when I was a kid and saw him in “Maverick,” I loved him as a young person, when he was in “The Rockford Files.” I loved him in, “The Americanization of Emily,” “Victor Victoria” and others. Many years ago James Garner was interviewed (in Playboy magazine, oh my). He was asked, since he was born in Norman, Oklahoma, whether he was prejudiced against people of color. He said, “No,” which you’d expect him to say. But he also said, “I can’t hate a group of people for any reason. But I can hate individuals real well.” I think I’m the same way.

I don’t want to burst anybody’s bubble if they think the chaplain of Interfaith Congregation should be perfectly pious and love everybody all the time. Sometimes, I admit, I don’t. I’m certainly better than I was years ago before I went into the ministry, but I haven’t yet reached perfection. (And I probably never will.) Sometimes the person I have the hardest time forgiving is myself.

Yesterday my daughter danced her last dance recital. She’s been dancing since she was three years old, for fourteen years. Yesterday watching her up onstage, doing a ballet, tears came to my eyes, because I pictured her at the age of three, when the teacher was off to the side, telling her what steps to take and what moves to make. Now here she was, fourteen years later, grace, beauty and, dare I say it as an “impartial” dad, perfection: Poetry in motion.

I got to thinking about her journey from three to seventeen and how back then she made all kinds of mistakes. But everybody laughed at them, just like we did yesterday when the three year olds were dancing, and it was no big deal. How similar is that to our own spiritual lives, when years ago we made mistakes, we committed what the religious call sins? Sin is just a word for missing the mark. Yet over the years we’ve stopped, hopefully, making those same mistakes. (Maybe we make new mistakes, but we’ve stopped making those same old mistakes.) Just like my daughter wouldn’t hold it against herself, and I certainly wouldn’t hold it against her -how she danced at the age of three, compared to how she danced at the age of seventeen - I don’t think we should hold it against ourselves, the way we were years ago in our spiritual life, compared to how we are now. We still aren't perfect, but hopefully we're better than we were.

The other day I was working on my sermon at JPs coffee shop. Somebody walked into JPs who I thought in the past had treated me unfairly. In a split second, I took those three steps: from anger to hatred to unforgiveness. I sat there thinking: What can I say or do to this person so that I’ll feel superior to him? Should I make some unkind remark? Should I make some nasty hand gesture? But then it dawned on me: I’M WRITING A SERMON ABOUT FORGIVENESS! So as he walked by, I said, “Hello.” Of course, an hour or two later I thought of all kinds of nicer things I could have also said, but maybe the first step on the road to forgiveness is sometimes simply saying, “Hello.”