Scripture says, “Let no root of bitterness grow up among Vou.” Yet we often see it. Parishioner against pastor. Husband against wife. Church splits. Long-time grievances. Sometimes it seems the log-jam can never be broken, that the wounds are too deep.
But the Holy/ Spirit works beyond?/olZd ourselves. Jamie Buckingham, in his book, Coping with Criticism, relates a heartening, story, one that shows God at work, even in tile bitterness of decades.
Two years ago I was invited to lead an interdenominational conference for missionaries in Thailand. Sponsored by an ad hoc committee, it was the first time the various Protestant and evangelical missionaries had ever come together with the Roman Catholic priests and nuns for a teaching retreat. The first day was tense as some of the evangelicals were forced to interface with the Roman Catholics. However, by the end of the second day the atmosphere had cleared, and it seemed the groups were actually going to be able to flow together in some kind of unity.
The final afternoon, meeting in a large, screened pavilion overlooking the gulf, I spoke on forgiveness. At the close of my teaching session, even before I left the speaker’s stand, a Roman Catholic nun stepped forward from the group. She was French, and had been a missionary to the Thai people for a number of years. She knelt before me and crossed herself.
“For many years I have held deep grudges against the Protestants who came into Thailand and built on the foundations laid by the Catholic church. I have been highly critical and I need forgiveness. Will you pray for me?”
I started to respond, for it was the very subject I had been teaching about. But as I stepped forward to pray for her, I felt checked. I stepped back and heard myself saying, “No, Sister, I am not the one to pray for you. You have made your confession and now you are absolved from your sin. I want to ask those here who have felt resentment or bitterness toward you to come and pray for you. In so doing, they will receive forgiveness themselves.”
I stepped to one side and left her kneeling on the concrete floor of the screened pavilion where we were meeting. At once several people got to their feet and came forward. Then several others. In all there were almost a dozen men and women who stood around the kneeling nun. It was a touching moment. There were very few dry eyes in the room.
When the prayer was over, those who had prayed for the Catholic sister embraced her and started back for their seats. I stepped forward to close the meeting with a prayer when a man on the front row stood up and spoke out.
“Before we leave, I have something I want to say. I have been in Thailand for eight years. During that time I felt our group was the only spiritual people in the nation. Like Sister Rene, I have been highly critical of others, not only the Catholics but the Pentecostals. I have been wrong. I ask forgiveness of all of you . “
His voice was choking as he sat down. Immediately there were three other people on their feet, all trying to speak at once, all confessing their bad attitudes and critical natures and asking forgiveness. They finally slowed down long enough to take turns, but by the time they had finished, others were standing. I stepped back to one side and let the meeting carry itself.
After forty-five minutes, it seemed we were fi nished. I stepped back up to the front to once again try to close the meeting. When I did, one other man, on the very back row, stood up. His face was hard, his lips white with anger.
“I have been sitting here for almost an hour,” he said, “while all this garbage has been going on. I have tried as hard as I could to keep my mouth shut. But I must speak. My father was an evangelical missionary in Colombia, South America. I was raised on the mission field. I can remember, as an eight-year-old boy, hiding with my parents behind a clump of bushes while a mob of Roman Catholics, led by the local priest, brought torches and set fire to the little church building my father had built with his own hands.
“The next year I was with my father in the mountains of Colombia. We were visiting an old man who was dying of tuberculosis. Just three weeks before, the man had accepted Christ as his Savior and allowed my father to pray with him. That afternoon, after we had walked three hours to reach his little hut, we were sitting beside his bed, and my father was reading the Bible to him.
“Suddenly the Roman Catholic priest burst into the hut. ‘If you do not renounce this false religion, he said sternly, ‘you will be excommunicated from the church and denied entrance into heaven when you die.’ I was too frightened to remain, and I ran from the hut in tears. My father stayed to argue, but was told he should leave if he valued his life. He had no business interfering with the affairs of the church.”
The man stopped speaking and looked around the room. A few heads had turned and were now looking at him. “That is the reason I cannot tolerate what has been taking place here this afternoon,” he said. “If you had been hurt by the Roman Catholics as deeply as I have, you would understand.”
There was not a sound. He stood, physically shaking, trying to recover his composure enough to sit down. Before he could, however, one of the old Catholic priests on the front row stood to his feet. He turned to the man and began to speak, slowly but deliberately.
“My son, many years ago I was just out of school and went as a missionary to Colombia. It is very possible I was there when you were there-for I am now an old man and you are still young. It matters not, for at that time I had been trained to believe that all evangelicals and Protestants were heretics. I do not know if I was the one who came into that old man’s house-but it could have very well been me, for I did many things like that.”
He paused, and looked around at the group. Every eye was on him as he spoke. “But many changes have taken place since then. There have been changes in the Roman Catholic church. Now we see you not as our enemies, but as our brothers. And not only has there been a change in the church, but there has been a change in me. Now I ask you, my son, to forgive. Forgive the Roman Catholic church. Forgive me.”
He pushed aside his chair and started back toward where the missionary was standing. But before he had gone through one row of chairs, the man came rushing to meet him, shoving aside chairs to grab him in a tight, tearful embrace. The other people in the group came rushing toward them to form a huge knot in the middle of the room-a mass of loving, forgiving, weeping, laughing believers.
-Jamie Bucking
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