Posts Tagged ‘Corrie Ten Boom’

Forgiving as God forgives – uprooting trees and replanting them

October 4, 2025

Pentecost 17 – 2025

Luke 17:1-10

Marian Free

In the name of God, who seeks out the lost and welcomes the sinner. Amen.

Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch woman, the daughter of a watchmaker, was transported to a concentration camp during WWII for sheltering a Jew in contravention of the Nazi policy. Her father was sent to a different camp, but Corrie and her sister Betsy were not separated. Throughout their ordeal Corrie and Betsy showed enormous courage, holding fast to and sharing their deep faith and finding the positives in the most awful of circumstances.  During their imprisonment they made a pledge that after the war, they would not be bitter or hold grudges against the perpetrators of their suffering but would establish centres of forgiveness and healing. Sadly, Betsy did not survive, but Connie spent her lifetime fulfilling their goal and travelling the world preaching forgiveness. 

Despite her deeply held belief that forgiveness was the only way to move forward from hurt and trauma, Connie tells two stories against herself that demonstrate that forgiveness requires much more than the conviction that it is the right thing to do. She discovered that while she had forgiven the corporate sin of the Nazis, there were still personal hurts that were more difficult to overcome.  

In one instance, after Connie had spoken to a large audience on the importance of forgiveness, she was approached by a man whom she immediately recognised as one of her former guards, someone who had humiliated her beloved sister Betsy. The man said to her: “I know God has forgiven me, but I would like to know that you have forgiven me.” He held out hand, but Connie, despite having spoken so passionately about forgiveness only moments before, found herself unable to move. It was only after pleading with God for help that Connie was able to take the man’s hand.

On another occasion Connie was deeply hurt by the actions of some friends. When asked by another friend if she had forgiven her offenders Connie insisted that yes she had. Then she pointed to a pile of letters. “It’s all there in black and white,” she said. In reality, by holding on to the letters and to the evidence of the offense, Connie was demonstrating that her forgiveness was only skin deep.

I tell these stories as a reminder that forgiveness is not a light superficial action but something that demands complete selflessness, and a willingness, despite all evidence to the contrary) to see others worthy of our love and compassion.  In other words, true forgiveness insists that we see the perpetrator of our hurt as God sees them – as the lost coin, the lost sheep or the lost coin – and that we ourselves are so confident of God’s love that we do not need affirmation from any other source.  Few of us are so self-assured!

It is no wonder then that when Jesus tells the disciples that they have to forgive an offender over and over again (even on the same day) that the disciples respond as one: “Increase our faith!”

“Increase our faith!”

In my bible, and I suspect in most translations verses 5 and 6 of chapter 17 stand alone, as if faith was unrelated to what precedes and what follows.  But, as I have just made clear, the disciples’ request and Jesus’ response follow directly from Jesus’ instruction on forgiveness, suggesting that in this instance at least, faith has a very specific meaning. That is, when Jesus replies: ““If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you,’” he is not necessarily saying: “If only you truly believed, you could do anything you put your mind to,” but rather, “the smallest amount of confidence in God’s love would allow you to love as God loves and to forgive as God forgives.”

Unfortunately, too often having enough faith has been seen as a prerequisite for healing or for other sorts of miracles. Too many good, faithful Christians have been made to feel lacking, been made to feel that in some way their faith was insufficient because they were unable to control the circumstances of their lives, unable to prevent their cancer from spreading, unable to pray hard enough to end their child’s addiction to drugs or gambling and so on. 

To interpret this verse as meaning that faith enables us to do anything, that faith is a power that can be used to our own benefit or that having sufficient faith enables us to do the impossible suggests that God needs us to prove our faith or to demonstrate our conviction or worth before God will intervene in our lives or in the lives of those whom we love. It assumes that the God who created the universe can be manipulated by our pleas or appeased by our obsequiousness. It assumes that “faith” in some way allows us (not God) to control our destiny. 

To suggest that if we have enough faith we can move mountains or uproot trees and replant them at will, is to forget that Jesus himself resisted the temptation to engage in dramatic, attention-getting stunts – turning stones into bread and jumping off cliffs. Nor did Jesus’ faith prevent him from being tortured and crucified.

No, faith is not a simple matter of trusting in God to put things right.

In this context, I suggest that to have faith is to so completely align oneself with God, that we cannot help but behave as God, that our lives cannot help but reveal the presence of God within us. To have faith, even if it is only the size of a mustard seed, would enable us to see with God’s eyes, to love with God’s heart and therefore to forgive as God forgives. To have the faith that Jesus speaks of here is to see, beyond the words and actions of the person who has hurt us, to the neglect that has formed them and to wounds that have been inflicted on them. To have faith is to see all people as God sees them – as children of God, who given love and acceptance, will find healing and wholeness and who will grow into their full potential. To have the faith that will forgive over and over and over again, is to acknowledge the hurts that our own insecurities and carelessness cause on a daily basis and to remember that, despite our own imperfections God loves us still.

“Increase our faith!” Help us to love as God loves – both ourselves and those who cause us harm.

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Forgiven and free

September 16, 2023

Pentecost 16 – 2023
Matthew 18:21-35
Marian Free

In the name of God who has overlooked all our sins and who wants only what is best for us. Amen.

Forgiveness is perhaps the most misunderstood of Christian teaching. This is a consequence of a number of things: we turn it into an instruction – You must forgive (or else), we fail to understand that ultimately forgiveness is something that God does, and finally, we forget that there is no sliding scale when it comes to being perfect which means that as none of us is perfect, all of us need forgiveness.

A lifetime’s experience tells me that turning forgiveness into a commandment is not helpful. This approach fails to capture the nuances of forgiveness – for example, forgiveness does not mean overlooking sin, it doesn’t mean condoning bad behaviour or that there are no consequences for causing hurt, breaking the law or doing the wrong thing. On the other side of this equation, forgiveness may mean stepping into another’s shoes and trying to understand what drives them to act the way they do. It may mean giving the other the resources – education, housing, employment – so that they can address those things that lie beneath the outward expression of confusion or pain . Turning forgiveness into a commandment not only ignores the subtleties of forgiveness, but creates a situation in which a person who has been deeply hurt and traumatised, is further traumatised by feelings of inadequacy and guilt when they cannot find a way to forgive and have to hand the situation over to God.

Forgiveness, like most of the things that God asks of us, is ultimately for our benefit – not God’s. God knows that our lives will be fuller and richer if we are able to let go past wrongs and hurts, rather than harbouring resentments which only serve to make us bitter and unhappy and do nothing to restore a damaged relationship. In fact, more often than not, the one who has caused offense is not affected at all as a consequence of our failure to forgive – we are only hurting ourselves. As Anne Lamont said in her memoir Traveling Mercies: withholding forgiveness is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die .

That said, there are some things that are almost impossible to forgive. Torture and sexual abuse for example, leave scars that are so deep and so painful that it may take years of recovery before the victim is able to move forward, let alone heal. In such cases the wounded may only have the strength to hand forgiveness over to God. Corrie ten Boom, an internee of some of the Nazi’s worst labour camps, spent a lifetime after the war preaching forgiveness. She tells the story of an evening when, after she had delivered her message, she was approached by a man whom she instantly recognised as a guard who had treated her beloved sister particularly badly. The man said to her, I know that God has forgiven me, but I would like to hear that you have too. In that moment Corrie froze. She simply could not reach out her hand to take his. All that she had said, all that she genuinely believed could not at that moment be put into action. In that moment the pain and hurt of her experience was still too raw. Corrie could only pray and as she prayed, she felt her arm move and her hand take that of her sister’s tormenter. In that moment it was God, not she who extended forgiveness .

In order to truly forgive, many of us need to be reminded of our own need for forgiveness, and to feel the sense of awe that we, who are so far from the glory of God have been forgiven and set free. It is this aspect of forgiveness that today’s parable addresses. A slave owes a king ten thousand talents – an amount of money few of us could imagine – well over one billion US dollars! Remember this is a parable – Jesus is not suggesting that the king or the slave would have that much money, but rather that the debt is beyond anyone’s ability to pay and that the forgiveness of such a debt is unbelievable! Certainly, the reaction of the slave indicates that he can’t believe it to be true. Instead of extending the king’s act of generosity of a fellow slave, he demands the repayment of the paltry amount of $430. (Of course, it is equally possible that the first slave felt he had earned/deserved forgiveness of the debt.) Either way, he appears not to have appreciated the enormity of the king’s generosity, it has taught him nothing about the nature of the king and has apparently left him fearful and insecure.

There are many among us who are like the first slave. We either think that we are so good, that we have done nothing that needs God’s forgiveness or that what we have done is so bad that God couldn’t possibly forgive us. The parable says otherwise. We are all in need of forgiveness and God is capable of forgiving the most outrageous of debts. When we truly understand that we (with all our imperfections) have been forgiven, we understand that others – more and less imperfect than ourselves, will also have been forgiven.

Forgiveness is a gift not a demand.
It is something God does – especially when we cannot do it ourselves.
We who are forgiven and free, cannot help but extend forgiveness to others.

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Ingratitude exposed

October 12, 2013

Pentecost 21

Luke 17:11-19

Marian Free

In the name of God, to whom we owe all that we have. Amen.

This morning I would like to share with you something of the story of CorrieTen Boom[1]. Corrie and her sister Betsie were the unmarried daughters of a Dutch watch-maker. During the Second World War the family provided refuge to a number of Jews. They were found out and sent to German prison camps. Towards the end of the war, as defeat loomed for the Germans, prisoners, including Betsie and Corrie, were sent to camps further and further to the east. At last the sisters found themselves at Ravensbruck. There, the conditions were absolutely appalling. Their new home, Barracks 28 seemed to have half its windows stuffed with rags where the glass had broken. “The place was filthy, the plumbing had backed up and the bedding was soiled and rancid. There were no individual beds, but great square piers stacked three high, and wedged side by side and end to end with only an occasional narrow aisle between.

When the sisters reached their beds they had to climb to a second tier, crawl across three other straw covered platforms to reach the one that they would share with who knew how many. The space between platforms was so narrow that they could not sit up and so they lay back on the rancid straw. Suddenly Corrie leaped up, bumping her head on the bed above. “Fleas!” she exclaimed. “The place is crawling with them. How can we live in such a place?” While Corrie wailed, Betsie calmly prayed: “Show us how.” She reminded Corrie of the Bible passage they had read that morning: ‘Rejoice always, pray constantly, in everything give thanks …’ (1 Thess 5). “We can start now, thanking God for everything in this new barracks, Betsie announced. “Such as?” was Corrie’s surprised reply.

“For being together, for being able to keep our Bible, for all the women who will meet God through these pages, for the overcrowding which means that they will hear us when we read,” began Betsie. “For the fleas” she continued. This last was too much for Corrie – thanking God for the fleas? But Betsie insisted: “for everything give thanks.” And so they stood between the tiers of beds, in that hell on earth, and said “Thankyou to God for the fleas.”

Ten lepers are healed, but only one gives thanks. It is the outsider, the Samaritan, who returns to glorify God. The antagonism between the Samaritans and the Jews went deep.  The Samaritans trace their ancestry to the Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh and are adherents of an Abrahamic faith.  They separated from the Jews when Eli the priest who built a new holy place, abandoning (so they thought) that which had been established by Joshua. One theory suggests that the Samaritans were left behind when the Judeans were taken into exile in Babylon. The Samaritans claim that theirs is the true expression of the faith of the ancient Israelites and that Judaism is a version of the faith which was corrupted and added to during the time in exile.

The Samaritans believed that Mount Gerizim, not Mount Zion was the holy mountain and their scripture consisted only of what we would identify as the first five books of the Old Testament. The resentment between the two groups depended, at least in part, on their competition for authenticity and historicity. As the New Testament suggests, the Jews despised the Samaritans. Leaders on both sides – Jewish and Samaritan – discouraged contact with the other which including travelling through their territories and even speaking to them.

According to today’s gospel Jesus heals ten men of their leprosy and only one returns to give thanks. That it is a Samaritan who returns is not only a surprise, it is an affront to Jesus’ Jewish audience. Surely it should be one of their own, not a reviled Samaritan who sets the example, who receives recognition from Jesus. A Samaritan would have been the last person whom they would expect to hear commended.

In the gospels the outsider if often used to show up the religious people of the day: the Samaritan, the Roman centurion, the Canaanite woman, the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet, Zaccheus the tax collector and the woman with the flow of blood are all presented as exemplars in one way or another. The actions or faith of these outsiders expose the false piety and arrogance of the scribes and Pharisees. In the gospels, faithfulness, trust and gratitude are more often shown, not by those who believe themselves to be the children of God, but by those whose occupation, race or condition put them on the outskirts of respectable society and lead them to be considered with contempt by the so-called religious people of the day.

I’m sure that we all know people who show us up, who expose our arrogance, our anxiety, our lack of faith – the person living with constant pain who still manages to be cheerful and content, the person who remains sanguine even though their business has failed and they have lost everything or the person who remains calm in the face of chaos. Most of us do not like to have our weaknesses revealed. We prefer the world to see the front that we choose to show. It is natural to want to protect ourselves from criticism and derision, however if we are to grow and mature, we have to learn to open ourselves for inspection, to allow a light to be shone into those parts of ourselves that we would rather not see. We have to be challenged and not threatened by those whose lives demonstrate a holiness, a contentment or a calm that is deeper or stronger than our own.

Giving thanks – for fleas of all things – in what was already an horrendous situation, a Samaritan – of all people – being the only one to return to give thanks – these are actions that have the potential to expose our own pettiness and ingratitude, to reveal our self-centredness and thoughtlessness. At the same time they provide opportunities to re-examine our own lives, to re-think how we respond to life’s challenges and to determine to live differently – grateful for the abundant goodness which God has showered and will continue to shower on us.

[1] Corrie Ten Boom. Her Story. New York: International  Press, 1995, p144-5.

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