Sept 12, 1999
FORGIVENESS -
PASS IT ON! (Matthew 18:21-35)
The background of Jesus' story
about the forgiveness of a great debt is this: Peter is
worried about how much forgiveness is appropriate among
persons who follow Jesus. Peter is well aware of human
nature, and of our desire to hold grudges, nurse old
wounds, resent discipline. Peter is also familiar with
the rabbinic tradition which taught that an offender
should be forgiven three times; Peter more than doubles
that standard when he suggests to Jesus that "seven
times" might be the more generous Christian response to
one who has sinned against us.
Whether you read Jesus' response
as 77 times or seven times 70, Jesus is upping the ante
by giving a number which suggests that for him
forgiveness is not a quantitative practice but a basic
attitude of discipleship. We are called to be a forgiving
people at all times.
Jesus then uses a story to
illustrate his understanding of how forgiveness must
work.
The King in Jesus' story is a
good businessman who from time to time audits the books.
Calling together his accountants, he asks them for an
inventory of the grain, wine, cattle and slaves. The
inventory reveals that one of the king's chief servants
has borrowed from the master's assets without
replenishing the inventory. (This begins to sound like a
Hong Kong story!) This servants comes up l0,000 talents
short. Today's lottery winners with their spectacular
millions can hardly compare with the hyperbole of this
one man's debt. If he were make good on working off his
debt, he would have owed his king l64,000 years of labor,
or about 3,000 lifetimes - to discharge his debt.
The King decides to cut his
losses: "Auction the servant's property, then auction
him, his wife, and his children as slaves."
The servant goes to pieces:
falling on his knees, he weeps, begging his master to
have patience. "I'll pay you back every denarius - I
swear!"
The king knows there is no way
this can ever be done, but then he does what a King can
do - with a simple word and stroke of his pen he forgives
the servant his immense debt. The king cancels the debt
and takes away the penalty for the servant's trespasses
against him.
Jesus taught us to pray:
"Forgive us our debts. or sins, or trespasses, as we
forgive those who have debts with us, or who sin against
us." This is an extension of the Golden Rule, to treat
others as we want to be treated. We are comforted so that
we can comfort others; we are given gifts for the benefit
of all; we are loved so that we can love.
The story goes to the heart of
the divine: It is the nature of God to forgive and to
continue to lavish his love upon his creatures. This is
one of many stories from the teaching of Jesus which may
be read as encouraging a hope in universal salvation. If
God forgives without divine counting and seemingly
without human accountability, then there is salvation
hope for everyone, including the most sinful, indebted
human being. This is the theological hope noteworthy in
the Arminian and Wesleyan schools of theology.
Regretably, the experience of
complete forgiveness is something many do not experience
in the church. How many poor souls have come to one
church or another desperately needing forgiveness and not
found it. The Church, unlike Jesus, often raises up
conditions upon its forgiveness.
And how many, among even us this
morning, still cling to old hurts, not experiencing full
forgiveness, even though we may be on the far side of
baptism and therefore technically recreated with a
forgiving heart. You may need to forgive someone at this
very point. Perhaps a parent because you believe some bad
things of your past must still rule your life now.
Perhaps co-workers? Employment rage is a growing
phenomenon in our offices as employees believe they must
get even at any costs. Some among us need to forgive
society itself because we have believed that "no one
cares." Holding grudges traps us in a denial of our
responsibility while Jesus knew that forgiveness
liberates us.
Forgiveness is not the same as
universal liking. You probably know the l2 step prayer:
"God give me the courage to change the things I can; the
strength to endure those I cannot change; and the wisdom
to know the difference." A friend sent me a comforting
twist on that prayer: "God grant me the Senility to
forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune
to run into the ones I do like, and the eyesight to tell
the difference."
I like that form of the prayer
not only because I am getting older and thus have the
blessing of forgetting a lot of people who offended me
way back when; the story reminds me that I don't have to
like everyone. I do need to forgive them and that helps
me to forget those whom I never liked in the first
place!
********
The first part of Jesus' story
is challenging for we know forgiveness is something we
like to claim but fail to proclaim in our living. We too
often are like George Eliot's description in ADAM BEDE:
"We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none
ourselves." The embracing of the death penalty by many
Christians indicates how spiritually we are divided on
the practice of forgiveness. And the hesitancy of the
rich nations to forgive the debts owed them by the poor
nations, most of which can never repay debts, illustrates
how legalistic and contractual even when both charity and
common sense agree on the wisdom of forgiving what can
never be repaid.
The story goes on to be even
more disturbing to us. For Jesus suggests that divine
forgiveness, if not passed around and shared, can be
undone: that our forgiveness can be recalled. The theme
of universal salvation is sounded in the king's initial
forgiveness of the great debt; good news for the
optimistic view of human and divine nature in Wesleyan
and Arminian teachings on universal grace and universal
salvation. But the second part of the story gives comfort
to the more dark Calvinist doctrines of personal
accountability and the possibility of damnation for many.
For now the story focuses on
those who are able and willing to receive God's
forgiveness, but are unwilling to share that forgiveness
with others. The forgiven servant leaves the palace a
free and new man and runs into a lesser servant who owes
him only a pittance by comparison to the debt just
removed from the senior servant. Nonetheless, the
forgiven man is unable to share his forgiveness and has
the other man thrown into prison until the debt was
paid.
Other servants observing this
brutal exchange report it to the King who becomes
outraged and enraged and revokes his forgiveness, handing
the servant over not only to imprisonment but to being
tortured in prison. A sentence which in the context can
only be interpreted as the punishment of torture until
death. And then Jesus' strange admonition: SO MY
HEAVENLY FATHER WILL ALSO DO TO EVERONE ONE OF YOU, IF
YOU DO NOT FORGIVE YOUR BROTHER OR SISTER FROM YOUR
HEART.'
Are some false Christian
assumptions corrected in this conclusion? Do we believe
that once I am forgiven, it is permanent, and there is no
second jeopardy. Once I am saved I can do what I want to
do, and my salvation is in no way compromised? Can God
reimpose a debt or sin I have already been forgiven of?
Is it reasonable for God to expect a Christian to be a
person of patience, pity, and forgiveness.
On the latter question, I hope
God does so expect because to fall into the trap of
practising the emotions and actions of a hostile,
unforgiving heart is to invite early death through heart
disease, strokes, depression, and and through
self-destructive accidents and habits. It is really a
continuance of God's mercies that he insists we live what
Jesus preached: that we limit our very human inclinations
not to forgive and its related negative qualities of lack
of patience toward others, delays, and setbacks;
mistrust of co-workers, annoyance with the habits of
family members of friends, and a persistent need to have
the last word in arguments and to get even when wronged.
For if we persist in these unaltered moods we are
inviting early death.
"I want my heart to be in tune
with God,
In every stage of life may it
ring true;
I want my thoughts and words to
honor Him,
To lift Him up in everything I
do."
************
This matter of forgiveness we
can revisit at next weekend's retreat when on Saturday
afternoon we shall have an hour of healing ministry. A
requirement of the Holy Spirit in order to give us peace
is that we check out any unforgiven persons and memories
from our hearts.
Forgiveness is crucial to our
theology, for we need to understand what God both gives
and expects from us…forgiveness. When practised in
the church and in our lives, forgiveness open doors to
living.
No matter that forgiveness is at
times demanding, not to practice it is damning. We
certainly see that in the lives of ethnic groups who deny
the option of forgiveness in preference to clinging to
the injuries and hatreds of old and thereby dig their own
graves. Oh, that the Kosovars and Serbs could yet
forgive.
The contribution which Nelson
Mandela made as the first president of a liberated South
Africa shows how God uses individuals who practice
forgiveness. And just this past week I experienced a lift
to learn that my old friend, Demetrios of Athens, has
just been named Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church
of America. I go into this remarkable story of
turnaround fortunes in my current Pastor's page on our
web site.
The Demetrios I have known for
27 years was always the smartest, most liberal and most
kind leader in Greek Orthodoxy. But he never got to lead.
His very smarts, liberal outlook, and kindness meant that
he was several times passed over for higher office and
kept as a Bishop of nothing.
But as I explain in our web
site, "What goes around, does come around" and now,
finally, at the age of 7l, this kind and forgiving human
being has been elevated to lead the most affluent branch
of Orthodoxy and at a time when the Church in North
America desperately needs a forgiving person as its
spiritual shepherd.
Forgiveness empowers the
forgiven to in turn forgive and thereby to lead us.
Pastor Gene
Preston
Archives: Sermon
Texts
|