Happy Feast Day of St. Valentinus.  The story behind this Martyr of the Church is pretty much unknown, save that sometime around 270AD he was he was put in prison for marrying Christians, which I guess was a “no-no” under Claudius II of Rome.  Valentine was stoned, with rocks, and still hanging on they carried him outside the Flaminian Gate and removed his head from his body.  How this event became the holiday, which is known to many as “Singles awareness day”, I really don’t know.  It’s amazing what a little capitalism can do with a beheaded priest.  Tonight we celebrate love, but not the ‘falling in love’ kind of love.  Tonight we explore the ‘maintainance of love’ in a service of worship called: ‘The Anatomy of an Apology’

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now… this whole apology thing, mostly because I get a lot of opportunities to apologize… and I need the practice.  Bonnie can vouch for that.  But recently I’ve been thinking: “I really want to take this thing a part, dissect it, put it under a microscope, see how it works and what it’s made of… and then try to put it back together in real life.”

And here’s why I think Apology is important:  As the baptized, as followers of Jesus, God gives us a common purpose together, a ‘misseo dei’ and it’s called reconciliation.  These are some of the tools of reconciliation that we have to work with: repentance  and grace, confession and absolution, apology and forgiveness.  Here’s how St. Paul talks about it in his letter the Church at Corinth:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.

This is our life’s work – This is the work of the church.  We hear a lot about the forgiveness side of reconciliation… as we should – forgiving is like oxygen.  But being on the forgiving side of reconciliation often times feels like it has the most power.  We equally need to learn how to apologize, which is not something that comes naturally to us, so tonight’s service will be something like a ‘How to Apologize for Dummies’ in five easy installments.

1. SORROW

There’s no such thing as an apology without some level of sorrow. All apologies begin with the feeling in your gut that says, “I’m sad I hurt you.” That’s what “I’m sorry means – “I’m sorrow-ful” = “I’m full of sorrow”  And the sorrow comes from sympathy.  Empathy is the ability to sense an other’s feelings as if they were your own.  Empathy says, “I know exactly how you feel.”  I don’t think that it’s possible to know how another person feels.  That type of dangerous presumption just leads us to emeshment.  But what we can do is have our own feelings about someone else’s suffering.  And that’s called sympathy.  That’s called compassion.  And an apology can only occur when I have compassion for the one I’ve injured.  Without sorrow, don’t even start to apologize.  Find the sorrow.  Ask the hard question, “How has this hurt you?”

2. OWNERSHIP
Then the next part is ownership: Owning my failure of love.  In the catholic tradition the confession in the mass says, “I have sinned through my fault, my own fault, my own most grievous fault.”  This is a confession packed full of ownership, heaping “my fault” three times in a row.  The opposite of ownership is defensiveness – which is the stance that says, “The problem isn’t me, it’s you.”  Relationship Researcher John Gottman lists blaming defensiveness as “one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse” – a sign that the end of a relationship draws nigh.  Ownership is not to say that other people might share in the responsibility for the problem.  The more I learn about Systems Theory, the more I am convinced that dysfunction is always fostered in a complex relationship without singular blame.  Yet I am only able to take responsibility for myself.  And what is within my power is to acknowledge the log in my own eye…  and with this log in my eye it’s impossible for me to judge accurately what anyone else’s responsibility is… because my vision is significantly impaired.  But what I do see most closely is what is blocking my view.  And I can own that.
The Psalmists teach us this so well… they love to live in transparency with God… they love to be seen by God… they sing it and pray it all the time, like in Psalm 32:

Blessed are you whose transgressions are forgiven

Blessed are you whose sins God covers.

God holds nothing against you

And we hold nothing back from God.

When I did keep silent, my bones turned to powder and my words to groans,

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;

My strength was sapped like in the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.

I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD “—

and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

I think it’s important to clarify here that what we are owning here is guilt for action, not shame for identity.  Guilt is attached to what we do, where shame is attached to who we are.  And what I’m talking about here is owning our actions.  Guilt is something that happens from within us.  It’s a matter of our own conscience, while shame is an external force.  It’s a matter of fearing other’s opinions.  And what I’m talking about here is fearless integrity.

3. RETRIBUTION
This sounds like a scary word.  It could be a good name for a metal band.  Retribution simply means the willingness to repay, to make right, to re-tribute what’s been taken.  And this is not always possible, but I can take the stance that says:  “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to repair things.  If an act of service can do it, I’ll do that.  If there is a money value on it, I’ll pay that.  If replacing something can do it, I’ll do that. Whatever it takes to help make things right, that’s what I want to do.” Of course, it’s impossible to completely give retribution, because the thing happened.  I can’t take back the fact that the thing happening.  And I can’t necessarily put a price on that.  But here I’m saying, “Whatever might help bring equality to this situation, I want to do that.”  This is the restoration part of the apology.  In the 12 step program this is step 8 & 9: “Make a list of the people we have harmed and make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”

4. PREVENTION
“I feel so sad about this, I know I’m responsible, I’m willing to restore what’s been lost if possible, and I don’t want to do this to you again.  So here’s my plan for prevention.”  Each part of the apology is a rebuilding of trust.  Each piece of the apology, when genuine, says to the apologizee, “you can trust me again”.  But flaggarant repeat offenses tears that trust down in an instant.  And repeat offense reveals our addiction, our inability to do otherwise.  But prevention says, “If you decide to trust me again.  I will make great efforts for this not to happen again.”

5. ASK
Here is the last part of the apology and maybe it’s the most anxiety producing part.  It’s the part that I have no control over what so ever.  I ask for your forgiveness:  “Will you forgive me of this?”  And then all I can do is wait…  the most perfect apology in the world does not entitle me to your forgiveness. I may have sorrow spilling out everywhere, owned every minute detail of the offence, paid back every possible last possible retribution, and created a detailed plan for prevention…  but that does not give me the right to forgiveness, because forgiveness is always a grace – forgiveness is always an unearned gift.  People are free to forgive, or not forgive… that is a choice and a responsibility.  But in the end, it’s not dependent upon how well I ask for it.  It will depend on whether they decide to forgive.  And that might take some time.
The 12 step journal says, “We need to be open to any response we get from people we’ve injured, and be ready to accept their response without becoming angry. We are not there to manipulate them into forgiving us. In order to have this come off smoothly, we should make every effort to purge our bad feelings toward the person or incident before we meet to speak. This will help us resist the temptation to point out to them what we felt they did to provoke us. We are only there to talk about our own behavior.”
In a way, it doesn’t matter what people do with our apologies… that is up to them.  We apologize because that is who we are, because we are cultivating a sense of honor and integrity within us.  And we apologize because we are a forgiven people that belong to a merciful God.
When it comes to real life, none of us are going to go through this rigid list when apologizing to someone… “okay, I am sorrowful, and I am responsible and” …run down the list.  But the idea is that if we have a clear understanding of the anatomy of an apology and if we are able to practice it and experience it, it will then become a natural part of our tools of reconciliation… we’ll know what it means to be a person who can humble themselves and thoroughly apologize… not in a PR, save face kind of way… but in a way that cultivates reconciliation, that restores relationships.    Not everyone is ready to be apologized to.  Don’t be surprized if initially it makes people seriously uncomfortable, “Hey, don’t worry about it.  You don’t have to say that.” I’m amazed at how ambivelant people are to receiving a sincere apology.  It’s a little too vulnerable.  But when you’ve heard a sincere apology, you know you’ve encountered something special.  You may only receive a handful in your lifetime.

What I hope for our community is that we can become rampant and confident apologizers… to God’s glory.