During these Lenten Sundays, we've been thinking together about the Christian meaning of forgiveness and about how we are called to respond both to our own need for forgiveness and to offenses against us on the part of others. But there is one category of forgiveness that needs further consideration, because it is, for most of us, the hardest one to cope with. How do we forgive the unforgivable? Now, to be sure, "unforgivable" is our term, not one that Jesus used. But most of us can identify with it, can't we? Some offenses and wrongs against us wound us so deeply or seem such a violation of our person that we may refer to them as "never forgive" matters: a best friend betrays our trust; a mate violates our marriage covenant; a business partner goes behind our back to undermine us; a criminal shoots down a loved one in cold blood. In cases like these, how can we be expected to forgive, we ask. Wrongs so monstrous or offensive seem beyond the pale of anything we should be expected to forgive-or even capable of forgiving. Yes, we know what Jesus said about loving our enemies and all that, but isn't there a point at which we have to draw a line and say that some wrongs really are unforgivable?

If anything would seem unforgivable, having the religious leaders of your faith trump up false charges against you in order to crucify you would certainly qualify. And yet, when Jesus is nailed to the cross as a common criminal, he says of all who conspired against him, "Father, forgive them." And if he's asking God to forgive them, he's clearly implying that he forgives them. Yes, Jesus understands that, in some way, his death is part of God's plan, but his agonized prayer to God in Gethsemane shows how much he abhorred his fate. To be crucified at the hands of his own people must have seemed the ultimate betrayal of his life and ministry. Yet, he says of them, "Father, forgive them." For Jesus, even that atrocity against him was not unforgivable.

But what, specifically, do we mean when we say that Jesus forgave those who had him crucified? Clearly, he is not denying what they had done to him. He's not saying it didn't matter. He's not excusing it, because, of course, it is not excusable-even if, as Jesus suggests, they didn't know what they were doing. And he's not saying he's just going to forget about it-as if he ever could forget something so monstrous. Forgiveness did not call him to do any of those things, and the same is true for us when we have been sinned against. The wrong has happened; the elephant is now in the room and won't go away, and we have to recognize that that's where we are! So what is Jesus saying when he forgives his enemies? He's saying, "I choose not to hold this against you. I let go of my feelings of animosity toward you and my desire to wreak retribution on you. I choose to do my part to end the alienation between us and to be at peace." In this way, Jesus is living out his teaching to "love your enemies" and "pray for those who persecute you." And he's also doing something important for himself. Rather than allowing his enemies' evil acts to bind him up in hatred and bitterness, he takes control of the situation to free himself from that prison. In forgiving them, he also releases himself from oppressive vengefulness. There's a Chinese proverb that says, "He who seeks revenge should dig two graves." Jesus chose not to dig those graves, but rather to meet his own death with a measure of peace.

But in no way should this kind of forgiveness be construed as easy or undemanding. It goes directly against our natural instincts to let go of our desire for revenge and our gut feeling that someone should have to pay for our pain. At one level, I think we know that stewing in our own juices is a form of bondage, but when we get hooked by our vengeful feelings, it's hard to let go of them. If we are to have a chance of growing to the place where we can forgive the unforgivable, we will need to take our own spirit-building very seriously. As Paul in Romans 12 puts it: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." The world tells us, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," but the Christian gospel points us to a higher way of being in the world, grounded in learning how to love one another. It is having this largeness of spirit that allows us to forgive when our base instincts say otherwise. But we get to that point only by a real transformation in our ways of thinking and feeling and acting. We need some significant reprogramming to be able to "bless those who persecute us" and to refrain from "avenging our-selves," as Paul instructs us. This is too much of a challenge for a spiritual weakling. To be trans-formed by the renewing of our minds calls for serious and sustained growth in our Christian under-standing, so that both our mind and heart begin to claim the life of love that Jesus proclaimed to us.

I know many of you were touched, as I was, by Dr. Vien Doan's testimony last Sunday of how he came to forgive his enemies in Vietnam for what they had done to him and his family in the Vietnam war. Surely, what he experienced could fit in the "never forgive" category by human standards, yet he did forgive. Dr. Doan had his own specifics that he said enabled him to finally make forgiveness real. But what struck me was that he is a man who takes his spiritual growth seriously. He has been growing as a Christian ever since he made his first commitment to Christ as a refugee some years ago, and today his spirit is large enough not only to forgive his past enemies, but to minister to many of them through his medical mission program in Vietnam.

Our spirits may not be as large as Dr. Doan's, and we may not yet be ready to practice the level of forgiveness that he has. But each of us can start where we find ourselves. We can be intentional about our own spirit-building, and we can keep pushing the envelope in trying to forgive what to us may seem unforgivable.

The writer Kent Nerburn tells of being present in a courtroom where a young man was on trial for murdering a girl he had seen walking down the street. He had not known her personally. Her crime was simply being alive and in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a killing just for the sake of killing. All through the trial with its grisly details, the father of the murdered girl sat impassively, watching the boy who had done it. When the trial concluded with a verdict of guilty, the father announced that he was going to visit the boy in jail and get to know him. Many people were appalled at this. Why would anyone who had suffered what he had suffered undertake such a thing? The father replied, "That boy and I are forever bound. We need to know each other. I do not know if I can forgive him. But perhaps if I know him I will not hate him. This is about healing and reconciliation."

That father was on the road to healing and forgiveness. We don't know where his road took him. But choosing to go down that road is the most important decision he or any of us could make if we truly care about being forgiving persons.

Today, as we partake of the sacrament of Holy Communion, we remember Jesus' giving his life at the hands of sinful humans. And even though some particular persons at that point in history caused him to be crucified, we know Jesus' death was so that all of us in the human family might know our forgiveness for the wrongs we commit that cause pain to one another and to God. This sacrament is a reminder of that divine reconciling love that has reached out to us. In knowing how much we are forgiven, may we find strength for sharing that forgiving love with others. Amen.