Forgiveness and a Sermon in Seven Words

Béla Szigethy was for me a fascinating character, a man who, along with his young bride, fled first before the Nazis, then before the advancing Russians.  Having grown up in Transylvania, an ethnically Hungarian region now within the political borders of Rumania, the two lived for a time in a German refugee camp and ultimately emigrated to America at great cost.

Béla was by calling and education a Reformed Church pastor.  When I knew him he was far into retirement; I heard him preach only once.  He was an excellent speaker, though I recall little of the sermon he gave at Rolling Bay Presbyterian Church that Sunday, in part because I was mesmerized by his voice heavily laden with his Hungarian accent, by his countenance and by his long black clerical robe which trailed behind him as he walked and as he spoke from the pulpit.  His voice, his facial profile and his manner in the chancel called to my twisted mind another celebrity associated with Transylvania.  At home when my children were young, we sometimes referred to him simply but affectionately as “The Count.”  But we didn’t know him well.

It was an honor later to come to know Béla better, as well as his wife Maria, an outspoken, brilliant woman whose range of knowledge, had you known her only a little, you would never imagine.  Béla and Maria lived simply in an old house on Bainbridge Island, avid organic gardeners who raised as much of their own food as our northwest climate and their advancing age would permit.  They were voracious readers, the evidence of which was everywhere in their home.  The two of them were gracious and generous to share their deep knowledge of eastern European history, of the Polish Pope John Paul II and of the role of the church in the collapse of communism when our daughter Erin conducted a project for middle school history day.  Our admiration and awe before this extraordinary pair grew as it did for any and all who came to know them.  I’m only sorry that I didn’t give greater priority to building a true friendship with both Béla and Maria before their passing.

One Sunday morning as we lingered in the foyer after worship and talked with friends after most had gone home, I had the occasion to introduce Béla to a young couple that had only very recently announced their engagement to be married.  As Béla approached, I asked, “Béla, do you know Jonathan and Ashley?”  “Why, no, I don’t,” he replied as he smiled broadly and extended his hand in greeting.  “Jonathan and Ashley have just become engaged,” I announced, and Béla’s face again lit up, then slowly, gently, became more serious.  He lifted his right hand to his face with a bony index finger extended and resting on his cheek, his thumb supporting his chin, his right elbow supported by his left arm raised to his chest.  He thought for a moment, then, as his hand came away from his face, the bony finger still extended and pointing at a slight angle toward the ceiling, he looked at the couple and said, “You must forgive one another every day.”  Nothing more.

A silence ensued as we all were dumbfounded in the time it took for the wisdom from this humble man’s lips to take root.  In that brief moment, in those seven short words, I heard better marital counsel than I had ever heard or read before or have since.

C.S. Lewis has observed that we can’t live up even to our own standards of morality, let alone those of God, so we desperately need His salvation.  In any human relationships there are differences, affronts, misunderstandings, ego, personal agendas crowding out the welfare of the other.  The hurt of these slights is especially acute in a marital relationship, which is why marriage is hard.  In marriage, even in the best of them, we daily come face to face with our own shortcomings and, absent forgiveness, marriages stumble and fall.

“You must forgive one another every day.”