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pastordorry-blog · 6 years

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Forgiveness

Lord’s Prayer Week 5

Matthew 18:21-35

February 10, 2019

Some of the parables Jesus tells are hard to understand, but I think we’ve got a no-brainer on our hands today. Even without his words of warning at the end, we have no trouble getting the point: Since God has forgiven us of our debts, debts we could never repay on our own, we should forgive the debts of others. Easy, right? Ha! Forgiveness may be simple in theory, but it can be pretty complicated in practice.

Phil and I bought our first house back in the early 90’s in a little town called North Wales. It’s in Montgomery County, just off Route 202, about 8 miles north of Norristown. It was a cute little rancher with a cute little yard on a cute, quiet street. But even though the street was quiet, it could get crowded. Most of the houses either didn’t have a driveway or had a driveway that only fit one car. So there were a lot of cars parked on the street. We were only there a year or so when one morning when I was running late for work, I backed out the driveway and—you guessed it, bam! I backed right in to the car of the man who lived across the street and one house over from us.

I knocked on his door, apologized, gave him my insurance information, etc. Everything was fine…until about a year later, I backed out of the driveway with a different car and hit his car again! This time, I felt so much shame, for a few seconds I toyed with the idea of just driving away and pretending as if nothing had happened. But of course, something did happen. And this time it was worse. He had started working second shift, so when I knocked on his door at 7:30 in the morning, he had still been asleep. Again, I apologized and gave him my insurance information, and thankfully, he was pretty calm. But honestly, as I tell you this story, I can feel the shame rising up inside me once again—and this happened 25 years ago!

I don’t know why I feel so much shame about these backing up accidents, because I am in good company. About a year later, a different neighbor—the person who lived next door to the man whose car I hit twice—was leaving for work and backed in to our car, which was parked on the street. A few years after that, that house had changed hands, and the new person who bought it backed in to our car. Keep in mind, we tried most of the time to just put both of our cars in the narrow driveway, and if we had to park on the street, we tried not to park where it seemed someone would easily hit us! But despite all our strategery, the residents of Washington Avenue did their part to keep North Wales Auto Body in business!

I tell you this story because, no matter how old we are, we are people who still need to learn to say grace. I don’t mean we need to memorize a prayer to say before we eat our meals. Some people call that a blessing, the prayer you say before a meal, but we always called it “Saying Grace”. And in my house, both growing up myself and when our kids were growing up, we always said the same prayer: God is great, God is good, let us thank God for our food. By his hands we all are fed; grant us, Lord, our daily bread.

Do you know that prayer? That is how I said grace for most of my life. There’s nothing wrong with that. But we need to learn to “say grace” in situations besides meals. Last week Pastor Brad pointed out that most of us don’t rely on prayer for our daily bread. We have the resources to buy all the food we need and then some. So he rightly encouraged us to think about daily bread as not just physical food, but spiritual food. There is a whole menu of spiritual practices we could engage in to help us get to know God better and feast on God’s love.

I thought that was a great sermon. But I think Jesus knew that, no matter how good the sermon is, we might not seek spiritual daily bread unless something makes us realize how hungry we are. And so Jesus followed up the line, “Give us this day our daily bread” with, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” The practice of forgiveness is so important to Jesus that he goes on to say that we will not be forgiven our sins if we don’t forgive others (Matthew 6:14-15). For some people, getting enough food to eat is a matter of life and death. Few people in our neck of the woods have to worry about literally starving to death. But when it comes to spiritual bread, our ability—or inability—to forgive, that shows us just how hungry we really are. Learning to say grace is a matter of life and death for us!

And yet, even though learning to forgive is a matter of spiritual life and death, forgiveness is one of the most difficult subjects we ever have to talk about in church. Ask any pastor, they will tell you that they have sat with many hurt people who are struggling to forgive because they have been sinned against. It seems insensitive to tell people they have to forgive when, quite possibly, I cannot even begin to imagine the hell they have experienced. But I also think we have a hard time talking about forgiveness because we ourselves are sinners. Even though we are very happy to sing, “Amazing Grace” and name it as one of our all-time favorite hymns, there is a part to each of us that it still very reluctant to admit that we need grace.

At least, I know I am. When I first wrote this sermon, earlier this week, I had a different story at the beginning. A story about someone else’s mistake and their struggle to forgive themselves. I told myself I was using that story because no one wants to come to church and hear the pastor talk about herself or himself every week! But that wasn’t sitting right with me, and I felt God nudging me to tell you about my bad driving. I would like to point out, though, in my defense, and knock on wood, I haven’t hit anything with my car since 2011, so I’ve gotten better. Just don’t want you to be afraid to ride with me. Pastor Brad told me my driving is a lot better than Pastor Bob’s…

Okay, I need to get back on track. The point is, forgiving other people is not the only demanding aspect to forgiveness. Forgiving ourselves isn’t easy, either! Those car accidents were not sins—they were simply mistakes. I had intended no ill-will toward my neighbor. But afterwards, I struggled with ill-will toward myself. I was having trouble saying grace to myself. Instead of enjoying God’s grace, and feeling good about doing the right thing and knocking on his door and making things right with my neighbor, I have been feeling shame. Instead of God’s voice telling me I am a beloved child even if I dent the car, the voice that stuck inside my head was the man at the auto body shop. “Geez lady, when are you going to learn to use your mirrors?”

As I look back on it now, I think he needed to learn to say grace, too. And I have a feeling there’s not a single person in this room who isn’t hungry. We all need to learn to say grace to ourselves so we can then say it to others.

In our gospel lesson today, the servant who owed much to the king never learned to say grace. He was forgiven his debt and set free to start a new. We would think he would be so thankful for this second chance that he would have gladly forgiven the servant who owed him a little. But even though the debt of money was wiped clean, but his soul was still hurting. He was ashamed that he had amassed that much debt in the first place. He was sorry he had embarrassed himself. I think he felt like a failure for putting his family at risk. He was still a man in need of a savior.

And we are people in need of a savior, too. It would be so nice if the world were populated by perfect people. But that is not just wishful thinking, it’s actually a very harmful fantasy. Jesus said it is the truth, not fantasy, that will set us free. When we pray The Lord’s Prayer, we can accept the truth of our individual and collective brokenness. We all owe debts we could never begin to repay on our own, which is one of the reasons we call it the “good news” of the gospel. God’s love for us is so great, we don’t need to earn it, or buy it, or negotiate for it. It’s just grace, freely given. Thanks be to God!

But it seems to me there is a shadow side at work in us, too. If we are uncomfortable being regular human beings with foibles and limitations and bad driving records and at times a pretty lame batting average against the temptations pitched at us, the grace that is meant to free us instead makes us feel ashamed. It makes us angry and defensive. It can make us demanding and self-righteous. The king granted grace to the servant, but instead of making him happy, it made him mean. He could not accept his own sinfulness for having gotten so far in debt in the first place, so he projected his judgment on to his colleague who owned him something.

People are made in God’s image, and therefore, we are all able to love. But our ability to love ourselves and others is always limited by our unmet needs, by our brokenness, by our immaturity. God loves us with a perfect love. Roman Catholic priest Henri Nouwen calls this our “first love”. But people can only love with a “second” love. Even the people we love the most—our parents, our spouses, our children—they deserve our perfect love, but we do not have perfect love to give them. We don’t even have perfect love to give to ourselves.

That is why God sent Jesus to us: to hand deliver God’s first love to the human race. Jesus said, “I no longer call you servants, now I call you friends.” When is the last time you did something to deepen your friendship with God? It is friendship with God that helps us become more forgiving. It is receiving God’s unconditional love for ourselves allows us to offer it to others. This is why forgiveness has nothing to do with whether or not the offending person ever apologizes or changes. Forgiveness comes from having an encounter with God in our heart.

However, I must make this clear: being required to forgive does NOT mean it is holy to tolerate abuse. Forgiveness is like grease for our relationships—it lubricates things so we can live and work together productively and peacefully, in life-giving ways. It is never meant to keep a person bound in a structure or relationship that is intent on snuffing out or diminishing life. Forgive yes; allow yourself to be a victim, No! God does not want us to be separated from experiencing full and abundant life by our own sin—or someone else’s.

At my first appointment, there were two sisters in the congregation who hadn’t spoken to each other in years. Yet, even though the supposedly never spoke to each other, they had arranged a system so that they would never be in church together on the any given Sunday. One or the other of them was usually present, but not both. Even weirder was how, when I talked to a couple of the previous pastors, they noticed the same thing I did: that every time the sermon was about forgiveness, neither of the sisters were in church!

Can you imagine what a blessing it would have been to that family, and that congregation, if those sisters would have learned to say grace? I imagine if you could interview those sisters, each one would say, “Well if my sister would apologize, I would forgive her.” But forgiveness is a spiritual transaction that takes place in a person’s heart because they have encountered God’s grace. It is not dependent upon the circumstances or attitude or contrition of the other person. To be a Christian is to be a person who wears the name of Christ in the world. That means we do in the world the things Jesus did—and Jesus’ very last act on earth was to forgive the people who crucified him. God’s forgiveness is so passionately offered to the world that we might sum up Christianity in one word: grace.

So let’s learn to say grace. All we have to do is go back to the very first words of the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father. As we pray, we can take the entire weight of the world’s collective sin, “Our” sin, our brokenness, our poignant humanity—even my brokenness, my poignant humanity--and place it side by side with our Father. A Father so merciful and loving, He sent us his Son. Our Father. That is how we learn to say grace. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. Amen.

Benediction: Many of us grew up hearing that if we put our trust in Jesus and confess our sins and repent, God will forgive us. But the reality is, we are not forgiven because we repent. We are forgiven because we forgive. Go in peace, and serve your Lord. Amen.

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