I am not a war movie fan, but I have lasting memories of one that I saw in childhood… The Bridge Over The River Kwai. It chronicled the work of a group of World War II soldiers who had been imprisoned by the Japanese and forced to build a railway across a difficult mountain pass. I recently learned of an interesting epilogue to that movie, a story about one of the real-life survivors of that group of prisoners.

He is Eric Lomax, a British soldier who had been captured, starved, and beaten. When officers suspected that Lomax had a secret map of their camp, they broke both his arms with a pickaxe and threw him in a cage crawling with vermin. That kind of torment continued for three years, at which time the war ended.

But freedom did not bring peace for Eric. He suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, with all its nightmares and delusions. His marriage became another casualty of the whole nightmare. There was one particular Japanese officer Eric wrestled with in those nightmares most of all. This man had been an interpreter and had attended most of his interrogations. His name was Nagasi Takashi. Lomax learned his name through an American Army chaplain. He was determined to find him and make him pay for what he had done. He wanted his day of revenge.

Lomax learned that Takashi had spent his years since the war trying to make up for what he had done. He had build a Buddhist Temple of Peace and worked for many charities. One day, a friend brought Eric Lomax an article about this man’s journey. It revealed that Takashi remembered one man in particular whom he helped torture, and the terrible suffering of the prisoner. Lomax recognized his own hell played-out in the words of the Japanese man. Although Takashi was expressing deep remorse, Lomax could only respond with hatred. He wrote to Takashi and told him he would never forgive him! But Takashi wrote back a sad and gentle letter. As he read this and subsequent letters from his old enemy, gradually Eric Lomax found that he could no longer hold on to his anger and hatred. The two men finally met in 1989 at the old prison camp where they had first encountered one another. Takashi expressed his deep sorrow over his actions in the war, and Lomax was finally able to forgive him. Eric’s nightmares dwindled away after that. Both men had found peace.

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We know that forgiveness is central to living in Christian faith. We pray it in the Lord’s Prayer (…forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin AGAINST us…). And we recite it in the Apostles’ Creed (…I believe in the forgiveness of sins…). Did we ever think how in his command to forgive, Jesus was actually giving us a Success Strategy for Life! An old Chinese proverb goes, ‘He who seeks Revenge, digs TWO graves.’ Forgiveness is the key to a happy and faithful life. Those who know peace in life, deal with their grudges as quickly as possible and do not nurse resentment EVEN when they are right.

Bill Wilson, a Christian psychiatrist at Duke University, was treating a Vietnam Vet who was wracked with guilt over his participation in the famous Mai Lai massacre. His resulting mental illness left him virtually paralyzed and unable to function. One day, Dr. Wilson walked into this man’s room and shouted: “YOUR SINS ARE FORGIVEN!” “What did you say?” asked the veteran. “IN THE NAME OF JESUS, YOUR SINS ARE FORGIVEN.” And this marked the beginning of a steady recovery for the patient.

You and I have been gifted with that same authority and charged with that same responsibility …of discerning the need and pronouncing the forgiveness of others, in Jesus’ name. Christ came to build bridges over every chasm that separates people from one another and from God. His effects his work, through your forgiveness.

Baptized, like you, to forgive.