Giving and Receiving Forgiveness

Ann Beaty
Fellowship Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

July 10, 2011

Text: Matthew 18:21-35

When I was in seminary I worked part-time in a small church outside of Atlanta. After I had been there several months, I noticed a pattern in worship on Communion Sunday’s. There was a young man - husband and father - who came regularly to church with his family, but when the time for Communion came around on the first Sunday of the month, he sat silently in the pew. Others would excuse themselves as they passed in front of him, but he never moved.

I wasn’t sure if he refrained from communion because he came from a different tradition and wasn’t comfortable with our way of doing the sacrament, or if something else kept him from coming forward. One time, when he and I were working on a project together, I had the opportunity to ask him about it. I cautiously broached the subject – not wanting to intrude on his privacy, but curious to know why he chose not to partake of the sacrament in worship.

"I can't do it," he answered. "I can't come to the table. I’ve done some pretty bad things in my past. I don't think God could ever forgive me for them."

My heart ached for this young man He was a devoted and active Christian. Yet, unresolved issues involving forgiveness was getting in the way of his relationship with God and with the church. He did recognize that there was an important connection between his struggle with forgiveness and his faith;

BUT what he failed to see is that the practice of his faith through participating in the sacrament could be central in resolving the issues of forgiveness with which he struggled. He was allowing his inability to forgive himself to cut him off from fellowship in the body of Christ, the very community that should have been helping him work through and resolve his difficult issues.

This is what I believe to be true: God doesn’t invite just perfect people to come to the table for communion. God invites us – imperfect, ordinary human beings with all of our flaws and mistakes and struggles and pains to come to the table so we can be healed, so we can become closer to God…so that we can practice taking in the presence of the risen Christ so we can be in the process of forgiveness.

When we come to the table we are setting the intention that we want to practice, over and over again, being reconciled to God and one another. This meal is a sacred gift given for that very reason.

In our scripture today, Simon Peter asks Jesus just how far are we supposed to go with this forgiveness thing. Peter is part of a community. He knows it’s easy it is to hold a grudge, to become bitter, to offer forgiveness once, twice, maybe up to three times as his Jewish tradition permits. And wanting to be generous, Peter proudly steps forward to answer his own question. "As many as seven times?" he asks. He was willing to go the extra mile -- and then some.

But Jesus has something different in mind. Whether you read his answer to Peter as "77 times" or "70 times seven," the point is the same. Jesus answers Peter by telling him not to assume that you can count how many times you offer forgiveness and then be done with it.

It seems to me that forgiveness must become a practice -- a commitment -- that is to be sustained and renewed over and over again throughout our lives.

A wise teacher once told me that a “practice” is not something you do when you feel like it. A practice is an intention that you set and you show up whether you feel like it or not.

It seems to me that forgiving others and knowing forgiveness works that way too. It is most often not a single moment, feeling or thought, but one that takes shape and begins to fill us as we practice turning it over to God again and again. Forgiveness must become an embodied way of life in an ever-deepening friendship with God and with others.

Peter asks how generous he should be, yet he is still asking about limits. He's thinking quantitatively while Jesus answers qualitatively -- with the offer of limitless forgiveness. Jesus is telling us that because we have been abundantly forgiven by God, we are able to forgive others in turn.

There is a direct connection between forgiving others and being forgiven. Therefore, in the Lord's Prayer we pray "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." We practice saying thosewords until we believe them to be true. And then we practice saying them some more.

The parable of the unforgiving servant, which follows the exchange between Peter and Jesus, focuses on those who are willing to receive God's forgiveness but are unwilling to offer it to others. The servant has been forgiven a huge debt and yet is unwilling to forgive even a small debt owed to him.

Such unwillingness shows, though, that he really is not able to receive God's forgiveness. For truly to receive forgiveness is to recognize how extravagant God's gracious forgiving love is and, in response, to offer it to others.

Yet if we are honest, most of us would have to admit there are times when we find ourselves behaving like that unforgiving servant. We are pleased with the idea of a forgiving God, but not if it would require us to change our lives. Forgiveness becomes something we claim but sometimes fail to practice in our living.

Sister Helen Prejean, in her book Dead Man Walking, tells the story of Lloyd LeBlanc, a Roman Catholic layman, whose son was murdered. When he arrived in the field with the sheriff's deputies to identify his son, LeBlanc immediately knelt by his boy's body and prayed the Lord's Prayer. When he came to the words: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," he realized the depth of the commitment he was making. "Whoever did this, I must forgive them," he later told Prejean. Though it has been difficult not to be overcome by bitterness and feelings of revenge that well up from time to time, LeBlanc said that each day, for the rest of his life, forgiveness must be prayed for and struggled for and won.

There are a number of things that forgiving is NOT. Living as forgiven and forgiving people does not mean we forget in terms of erasing the event or the person from our memory. Remembering often helps us protect ourselves from being hurt again. Living as forgiven and forgiving people does not mean we become a door mat – letting people walk all over us when an injustice has been served. Living as forgiven and forgiving people does not always mean that reconciliation in relationships occurs in this lifetime as we might wish it would.

A woman in this church once told me that she knew she had come to a place she could call “forgiveness” with her ex-husband when after a long process and lots of prayerful practice, she could wish him well. Wishing him well meant she could move on. She didn’t need to forget what he had done to her or excuse his behavior as okay. But, through prayer and time and the love of this community, she could move on in her own life, wish him well and continue to practice the layers of forgiveness in her own life and being.

I heard someone say once: “The memories are like a place you visit and you still feel pain, but you no longer live there”. You don’t forget, but it’s in the past.

Christian communities are sustained by people who know what it means to discover the miracle of God's forgiveness, and who are thus committed to a way of life as forgiven and forgiving people. We do not abandon others, and refuse to be abandoned ourselves. In Christian community we cannot be content to settle for conflict or division or even with "conflict management". We experience those dynamics, of course, but we aim for the more difficult and more rewarding practice of forgiveness and reconciliation.

As we live in communities shaped by these practices, we will experience anew what it means to be forgiven -- and forgiving. It is in that spirit, with that knowledge, that when the invitation is offered to come to the table, all of us can come to the table joyfully.

From: Forgiveness; A Guide to Prayer

Let us pray:

Lord my God, when Your love spilled over into creation

You thought of me.

I am…from love…of love…for love.

Let my heart, O God, always recognize, cherish, and enjoy your goodness in all of creation.

Direct all that is me toward your praise.

Teach me reverence for every person, all things.

Energize me in your service.

Lord God – may nothing ever distract me from your love…

Neither wealth nor sickness

Wealth nor poverty

Honor nor dishonor

Long life nor short life.

May I never seek nor choose to be other than You intend or wish. Amen.

Resource: Susan Pendelton Jones, Director of Special Programs at Duke Divinity School. Article from Christian Century, Aug. 25-Sept. l, l999; copyright by the Christian Century Foundation and used by permission via The Text This Week.