Love Forgives

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

September 14, 2008

Text: Matthew 18: 21-35

“Getting even” is such a powerful motivating force. Are we sure we want to give it up? When is the first time you heard this: “Don’t get mad. Get even!”

When I was in grade school, our elementary and middle grades were together in one school. We played other middle schools in sports. We did not have a mascot. So we had an election. It came down to a choice between eagles and possums. (Many girls thought possums were cuddly!) Possums won. Word spread. Everywhere we went, we were met with jeers from the opposing teams, “Hey possums, been hanging by your tails lately?” Their taunts were a powerful motivating force! We would get even with them by pounding them into the dirt! They owed us and we would collect! (I can still feel the anger when I tell the story!)

Revenge is such a basic human emotion. Why would Jesus think we could be any different? Isn’t Jesus asking the impossible from us when he says we should “forgive from the heart” those who have done us wrong?

Not just those who have slighted us; not just those whom we may envy because they got something we wanted: but to forgive those who have truly sinned against us. And “sin [against us] would not be sin if it did not steal something that [could not] be recaptured.”

A sin against us is a debt that someone really owes. They ought to make it right with us----at least apologize. (“Forgive us our debt as we forgive our debtors ---those who are in debt to us.”)

Being forgiving is one of Jesus’ expectations that, when we are honest, we really have to wrestle with! It is too often three steps forward, four steps back. And so we want to ask Jesus:

“Don’t debts matter? Are you telling us that we should act as if we did not care about right and wrong? Does it mean that we should just act like it does not hurt?”

No, I don’t think this is what Jesus is teaching us.

Just before Jesus tells this parable, he tells us that, if we have something---like a debt--- against a brother or sister, we should confront them with it, face to face. Forgiveness is not acquiescence. Forgiveness may look like it from a distance, but in the act of forgiveness violators and violations are taken seriously. Forgiveness is not calling a wrong a good thing.

And to forgive is certainly not to accuse yourself or feel guilty for a wrong done to you, assuming that you brought it on yourself. (That is a separate question, and bears some scrutiny, but we shouldn’t assume this is the case.)

Forgiveness is voluntarily giving up the right you have to get even, to be paid what is really owed. In other words, I will not respond to them in the same way that they did to me, though I may be entitled.

Here is the rub: I may hope that such action may result in reconciliation, or elicit an apology from the perpetrator. But my forgiveness of him or her will not depend on his or her apology. Forgiveness is an action of the one who has been offended.

Remember: to forgive does not mean that you have to feel warmly about the offender. And when someone continue to abuse your friendship and keep on wounding you, it doesn’t mean that you have to stay in the relationship under those conditions.

It does mean that forgiveness begins with you, not waiting on them to change. And it means to see them---in your prayers especially----as persons in need not only of God’s judgment but also in need of God forgiveness and healing, saving power. (And it doesn’t count if you forgive them but hope that God will not!)

But here we are back to the question we began with: isn’t even this too much to expect? All of us can remember being loaded down with “shoulds.” Such as when our mother told us, “Now go over there and tell your brother that you forgive him for throwing your Frisbee into the neighbor’s yard.”
Why was Jesus so pointed in his command to forgive? Well, perhaps he was laying before us a new way of seeing ourselves and our neighbors before God.

We can learn to forgive only by a cleansing of our own heart and only by knowing how generous God is in forgiving us.

This is why the story from Matthew about the King and his servant is so much fun to read.

Jesus has heard Peter ask the legalistic question: How many times should I forgive, as many as 7 times? You can imagine the irritation in Jesus’ reply.

“Peter, wake up! Haven’t you figured out that the reign of God is not about keeping score?! Not seven, but 70 times 7!” Then, as Peter kneels to scratch on the dirt and do the math: “70 times 7 is, let’s see… that would be….490 times….” (Or: “Let’s see, that means I have just fifty three times to forgive old Charlie for his letting his dog use my yard all those years.”) Jesus tells the story: “Think of it this way, Peter:”

A ruler wants to collect from his debtors. One slave owes him a huge amount: an amount equal to fifteen years wages! No way he could pay! So the king give the order: “Sell him, his wife, his kids and have a big garage sale and bring me the proceeds.” The slave begs the king: “Give me a little time, I beg of you and I will come up with the money I owe you.”

The king feels sorry for the poor fellow, sets him free and writes off all of the fellow’s debts. An astonishing decision! The risk being that everybody else who owes him money may expect the same.

So the slave, as he left the king’s house, comes across a fellow slave who owed him money. It was only one day’s wages. But he tells his fellow slave, “Pay me what you owe me right now.” The debtor begs him, “Just give me some time and I will pay you as soon as I can.” But the slave says, “No way.” He has him put in prison and would not let him out until he paid what he owed.

When the king found out about this, he was outraged. “I forgive you all that debt and you can’t give this fellow a little more time when he owes you, by comparison, so little!? What kind of a fellow are you?! Don’t you have any compassion in you at all? So, as Eugene Peterson translates, the king “put the screws to the fellow until he should pay the debt.”

(Now you have to realize that Jesus, in his parables, was not condoning slavery or debtors prisons, or torture of criminals: The point is in the contrast, between the mercy shown and the mercy withheld. And Jesus nails the meaning down in his last word:

“This is how my heavenly father will deal with you, unless you forgive your brother from your hearts.”

(And/or, tell the story of the owner of a boutique on Rodeo Drive, from Word and Witness, 1987)

There is this story, making a similar point.

A tough old rancher has thousands of cattle. Someone stole one his cows. The rustler was dragged before the rancher who gives the verdict, “Hang him; it’ll teach him a lesson.”

When the rancher dies, he stands before his maker, trembling in his boots. God says, “Forgive him; it’ll teach him a lesson.”

With God’s help----and only with God’s help----We can be more like God is. That’s the lesson. We can be partakers of the divine nature (First Peter). Not all at once. But we can be steadily cooperating with the infinite Spirit of God as we practice the gift of forgiving.

For you and I can’t live a day without God’s forgiveness. And the forgiveness of those we have hurt. We offend knowingly and unknowingly, with malice aforethought and maybe just with a kind of carelessness. And every sin against another----which we learn very early in life very well----is a sin against our Creator, too.

Like the first servant, we owe more than we can ever pay. We are debtors. And if we don’t think so, we are doubly so. That’s the message Jesus had for the ledger keepers and the so-called religious leaders of his day. They could not see themselves as they truly were. And if you don’t know yourself as debtor, you run an even greater risk of missing the banquet of forgiveness God has laid out for you and for all mortals.

(Forgiveness is not the only thing we owe our neighbors or sisters or brothers. But forgiveness leads in all of the other virtues: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, self-control-----fruits of the Spirit of Jesus living in us ( Galatians 5).

Our new life in Christ begins when we come to see ourselves as God sees us: wonderfully made and prone to life-sapping self-inflation and/or deflation.

This is what Jesus tried and tries to do for us. Not to heal us lightly by telling us that we are OK.

God holds a mirror up to us so that we see our desperate brokenness and separation------- and God’s patience and mercy.

“Christ died for us when we were yet sinners. That is proof of God’s love for us.”

God has and does wipe the slate clean . We are loved beyond measure.

Take hold, take hold of this God who loves you this much!

And as you do, forgive those who have sinned against you.

We are on a pilgrimage toward maturity----Wesley called it “perfection in love”---- toward grown-upness in the restored image of God, into the full stature of life God has given us in Christ. We learn to trust like children trust.

And our adult minds are freed for magnificent accomplishments in conserving and redeeming this bleeding and yet awesome creation. We offer an alternative to “eye for eye,” and getting even.

The command to forgive becomes an invitation to forgive.
Though Jesus doesn’t mention it, there is another pay-off as we cooperate with God’s spirit of forgiveness and grow to be more like God:

We will find that the energy we expend on being angry and vengeful can be spent on something else, or someone else. Forgiveness breaks down the cycle of action-reaction. We can acknowledge our wounds and become “wounded healers” of others. We can “give up the hope of a different past,” and walk with Jesus in the new way he taught us and showed us to live.

103:8 The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
103:9 He will not always accuse, nor will he keep his anger forever.
103:10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
103:11 For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
103:12 as far as the east is from the west, so far