Breathing Under Water: Repairing What Was Broken
Let’s talk about apologies.
Some apologies ask too much of the person who has already been hurt.
You know the kind I mean – the apology that is really a request for reassurance: “Tell me we’re okay.”
The apology that comes wrapped in explanation or excuse: “I’m sorry, but here is why I did it.”
The apology that needs the other person to manage our guilt, soothe our anxiety, and thereby move faster than their own healing allows.
Most of us have offered some version of this apology at one point or another.
Not usually because we are trying to be cruel. Most often we make this kind of apology because discomfort makes us move quickly. We feel like we have told the truth. We have felt the sting of what we have done. We have seen, maybe more clearly than before, the way our actions have harmed someone else.
And once we see it and feel it, we want relief for ourselves.
We want to fix our own sense of discomfort.
We want to get to the part where everything feels less exposed.
We want to feel better.
But the spiritual work of making amends is not the same thing as finding relief for ourselves.
To make amends is to repair what has been broken.
And repair requires more from us than the words, “I’m sorry.”
And if we think back on our Lenten series on mending, we know that repair leaves something forever changed, even if it is in working order.
This week in our Breathing Under Water series, we turn toward Steps Eight and Nine of the traditional 12 steps of recovery.
Step Eight says: we made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Step Nine says: we made direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Make a list.
Don’t just spend time with a vague feeling of regret.
Don’t just spend time cultivating a general awareness that we have done wrong.
Don’t just sit with your private shame that leaves you stuck in your own head.
Make a list of those we’ve harmed.
I would venture to say that many of us are more practiced at remembering the harm done TO us than the harm done BY us. We can usually name an old wound, an unfair comment, a betrayal, a disappointment, the thing someone should have known better than to say or do.
I know that is true for me.
Those wounds that we carry may be real. They deserve care. But that is not what these steps are about.
Step Eight asks us to get really clear about our responsibility:
Who has been harmed by me?
By my failure to speak up about what is right and true?
By my need to be right?
By my indifference?
By my participation in systems that harmed others?
This examination isn’t meant to break us. It is meant open doors to repair. Real repair. And that might require us to shift some perspective.
Fr. Rohr says in his book Breathing Under Water that the amazing grace we sing about is not a way to avoid honest human relationships. It is intended to be a way to redo, remold and remake relationships anew, for the liberation of all parties.
That is a word for church people - people who seek to follow Jesus.
Because we can sometimes use God’s grace as a hiding place or even an eraser.
We can say, “God forgives me,” while avoiding the person we harmed.
We can say, “I’ve prayed about it,” while refusing to take responsibility.
We can say, “I’m only human,” while leaving someone else to carry the consequences of our humanity.
We can claim amazing grace without being changed at times.
But grace is not intended to excuse us from right relationship.
Grace is intended to restore us to right relationship.
Jesus says it pretty plainly in Matthew 5. If you are offering your gift at the altar and remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave the gift there. First be reconciled. Then come and offer your gift.
Jesus puts the act of repair right in the middle of worship. Jesus has repair interrupt worship.
He will not let us use our acts of devotion to avoid our neighbor.
Jesus teaches that worship cannot be a substitute for healing action. Prayer is not a substitute for repair. Forgiveness is not a substitute for accountability. Grace is not a shortcut around our relationship to another human being.
And then Luke's gospel narrates the story of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus is a chief tax collector. Not simply unpopular. Not merely misunderstood. He is wealthy because he benefits from a system that extracts money from his own people on behalf of Rome. His harm is not only personal. It is economic, public, and communal.
When Jesus looks up into the tree and calls him by name, the crowd grumbles. They know exactly what kind of man Zacchaeus is.
And still, Jesus goes to his house.
In this story, Zacchaeus does not fix what he has broken in order to get Jesus’ attention.
Jesus has already seen him.
Zacchaeus does not make amends in order to earn welcome.
Jesus has already entered his home.
Zacchaeus does not purchase mercy. Mercy has already come near.
The grace he receives changes Zacchaeus.
He stands there and says that he will give half his possessions to the poor, and if he has defrauded anyone, he will pay back four times as much.
That is not a vague apology.
That is not, “I’m sorry if people were offended.”
What Zacchaeus offers is concrete repair.
Money moved in the direction of harm, so now money will move in the direction of repair.
The wound was public and communal, so the amends are visible and material.
Zacchaeus does not dwell in self-loathing.
He changes his relationship to the people he has harmed.
That may be the heart of making amends: Amends happen when grace makes us honest enough to repair what we can, without using apology to manage our own discomfort or injure someone else again.
That last phrase belongs to Step Nine.
“Except when to do so would injure them or others.”
That is not a loophole for avoidance.
It is deep wisdom.
Because not every apology is harmless.
Not every confession belongs in every room.
Not every injured person needs our explanation.
Not everyone we have harmed is ready, willing, or safely able to receive us.
And we do not get to make our need for relief the center of someone else’s healing.
Sometimes direct contact would reopen a wound.
Sometimes the amends we owe is not a conversation, but our changed behavior demonstrated over time.
Sometimes the repair is financial.
Sometimes it is telling the truth after we have benefited from a lie.
Sometimes it is respecting a boundary.
Sometimes it is stepping back.
Sometimes it is doing the work privately with a sponsor, counselor, pastor, or trusted guide so that our apology does not become another burden for the person harmed.
(There’s that recommendation again that we might need a sponsor, counselor, pastor or trusted guide…we don’t have to do this work without support.)
The steps do not let us hide behind our private spirituality. But they also do not let us use emotional urgency as an excuse to do more harm.
These two steps teach us to ask better questions:
Who was harmed?
What responsibility is mine?
What repair is possible?
What approach would be safe?
What would honor the other person’s healing, and not just relieve my guilt?
That is close to the heart of restorative justice. Not only, “What rule was broken?” but, “Who was harmed, and what can be repaired?”
Not only, “How do I get punished or excused?” but, “How do I take responsibility in a way that honors the humanity of the one I harmed?”
And sometimes making amends reaches beyond one individual relationship.
Zacchaeus reminds us that harm can be economic, social, and systemic. Repair may involve a family system, a church system, a racial history, a community wound, or an unjust structure we have benefited from even if we did not create it.
Grace restores relationships, not just individuals.
And relationships are not repaired by good intentions alone.
They are repaired by truth, humility, changed behavior, and love willing to become concrete.
This is where we return to the title of the series again: Breathing Under Water.
When the water rises, when truth gets close, when discomfort surrounds us, our first instinct is often to escape.
We want the quickest way out. We talked about that last week. About sitting with our awareness of that discomfort.
But repair is not simply getting out of discomfort.
Repair is learning to move differently in the water.
It is learning not to thrash our way toward someone else and call that reconciliation.
It is learning to breathe in the chaos and deep water long enough to ask:
What is actually needed here?
Not, “How can I feel better?”
Not, “How can I make this go away?”
Not, “How can I get them to forgive me?”
But, “What does love require?”
What does repair require?
What would help to weave the fabric of this relationship back together?
Today our ritual action uses yarn.
A single strand of yarn may seem small and easy to overlook.
But yarn can be gathered, knotted, and woven into something strong.
When a relationship is torn, repair is not simply tying off a loose end. It is patiently reweaving what has been pulled apart.
The fabric may never look exactly as it did before, but with truth, accountability, and care, the new strands can become part of its story.
You will be invited to take a piece of yarn and weave it into a shared tapestry. Not as a promise that every relationship can or should be restored immediately. Not as a claim that the work is finished. But as a prayer that, strand by strand, the relationships entrusted to us may be rewoven with honesty, patience, and love.
As you weave your yarn into the tapestry,
You might hold a person in prayer.
You might hold a community.
You might hold a harm that you are a part of that you are only beginning to understand.
You might pray for discernment: God, show me what is mine to repair, and how to do that without causing more harm.
Amends are not magic.
They do not erase the past.
They do not guarantee forgiveness.
They do not undo every consequence.
But they can open a future.
They can interrupt an old pattern.
They can reveal grace.
They can help us become people who do not only confess the truth, but live differently because of it.
The invitation this week is not to fix everything, force reconciliation, or make a dramatic apology so we can feel better.
But begin honestly.
Ask God: Who have I harmed?
Ask God: What repair is possible?
Ask God: What would be safe?
Ask God: What would honor the person harmed and not just relieve me?
And then, with wisdom, support, and humility, take the next faithful step.
Zacchaeus received grace, and then his work became repair.
Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house.”
Not because Zacchaeus earned it.
But because he allowed grace to reach his whole life.
His money.
His relationships.
His past.
His future.
His neighbors.
His house.
May salvation come to our houses too.
May grace reach us in ways that compel us to repair what we’ve broken.
May we learn to make amends where possible, without injury, coercion, or performance.
May we become people who can leave the gift at the altar when love requires us to seek repair with our neighbor.
And may the yarn we weave today become prayers for the mending work of God.
God, meet us where we are,
and lead us toward wholeness.
Amen.
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