Sermon from Sunday, Sept 14, 2015

Scripture:  Matthew 18:21-35
Sermon:  Why on earth forgive?

I think I am a fairly forgiving person.  

 

I try not to hold grudges – at least, not anything so strong as to call it a grudge.  I think I’m not too hard to get along with.  When someone says or does something hurtful, thoughtless or unkind I try to understand why, and what might lie behind it.  I believe whatever they have done somehow makes sense to them, and I try to understand it from their point of view.

I don’t get fussed up when someone speaks ill of me, or acts against me.  Most often I just shrug and go on, and if there is real harm or hurt, I step back, call a little truce, get a little distance, and let time do its supposedly healing work.

But I wonder, is that really forgiveness?  Or is it something else, like avoidance?  

If it was real forgiveness, for instance, would there be so many gaps and distances in my life?  People I’m no longer close to?  Family I don’t see?  Parents I spent so much time alienated from?  

There’s all kinds of issues involved in that, but is it at least in part an avoidance of really dealing with issues and conflicts in a way that makes forgiveness, reconciliation and real relationship possible?

If I knew how to practice real forgiveness, would there be the deeply stored resentment that I feel being touched and stirred within me at times in some relationships?  

 

If I knew how to practice forgiveness, would there be the quick flare-ups of anger that I then have to get over and try to explain or justify?  

 

If I knew how to practice forgiveness, would the horn in my car still be working, instead of being disabled from an overly long and loud blast I levelled one day at another driver beside me because she annoyed me?

 

In our reading, Peter thinks he’s pretty good at forgiveness.  Someone in the church has hurt him – maybe slandered or criticized him unfairly, cheated him out of something, snubbed or insulted him.  Peter has forgiven him and given him a second and a third, and even a 4^th and 5^th and 6^th and 7^th chance.  Peter feels he’s handled it pretty well, so he brings the matter to Jesus’ attention.

 

“How many times must I forgive a brother?” he asks. “As many as seven?”  Maybe he’s growing tired of how one-sided this relationship seems to be, how he seems to be the one who’s always forgiving  and reaching out to be reconciled.  Maybe he’s looking for affirmation and praise for how well he’s done.  Maybe permission to finally give up on making this relationship good.  Seven, after all, is the number of perfection.  Even God stopped and called it enough when God reached the seventh of the days of creation.

 

But Jesus doesn’t play along:  “No, not seven; rather, seventy times seven.”  

 

In other words, if you think you know when there’s been enough forgiveness – and that some day there may have been enough, think again.  Because there really is no end.  Rather it is all there is, and without it, there is nothing.  Without unending forgiveness, everything falls apart and is lost.

 

And with this we begin to scratch the surface of an important question about forgiveness, which is why.  We often wonder about the how of forgiveness – how do we do it, and how it happens.  We also wonder about who and what and when to forgive.  Whether to forgive.  In what situations it may or may not be called for.  We also wonder, as Peter did, about how often.

 

And why forgive is also a good question.

 

One answer that’s big these days is that we forgive for the sake of our own well-being.  When we hold a grudge and hang on to a hurt, it’s really ourselves we hurt the most.  We harden our heart and limit our spirit.  We close ourselves in and we bind ourselves for longer than necessary to the pain of whatever happened.  I’m sure we’ve all heard the saying that holding a grudge is like drinking poison, and hoping your enemy will die.  Lewis Smedes, a Christian psychologist and therapist says “to forgive is to set a prisoner free, and discover that the prisoner was you.”   As I saw on a poster this week, “forgiveness is not something we do for other people; we do it for ourselves – to get well and move on.”

 

All this is true.

 

Yet, there’s also something else about the why of forgiveness – why we do it, learn it, and seek to grow into it as a practice, something less self-centred and less self-serving.  It’s that forgiveness is most often the most honest thing we can do.  However we understand the how and who and when and what of it – in relationship the most honest way of being true to what we know most deeply about ourselves and about God, is to forgive another.  It’s a witness – a way of openly living out and affirming what we know about ourselves and about God.

 

In the story Jesus tells it’s easy to see ourselves as the middle manager who when called to a true and honest accounting of himself – of herself, of myself – cannot but be aware of how dependent on mercy and the forgiveness of another he is. 

“Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything I owe,” he says, when confronted with his debt.  To which the master says, “I know you can never pay back all you owe.  I forgive you your debt; go free and let’s move on in a new way from here.”

 

One of the simplest and most ancient and universal of Christian prayers – so old and so common it’s known simply as the Jesus Prayer, is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.”  It’s a prayer Eastern Christians pray over and over at different times of the day.  And which of us has never had occasion to pray it as well?

 

And we know it’s not just Jesus’ mercy we depend on.  When I think of people I have hurt, let down, or betrayed, I know how dependent on forgiveness I am in my own life.  When I think of promises I break, relationships I damage, and thoughtlessness or selfishness I practice, I know how much my own life is supported by, and dependent upon the tolerance and forgiveness of others.  Without that, how on earth could I ever be and continue to be where and who I am?  

 

So who am I, the story makes me ask, not to forgive others in turn and be part of the world that God builds and sustains with the mystery of this most special of all graces?

 

Which leads to a second thing that forgiveness is honest to – it’s a way of being true to what we know of God.

 

Like the master of the household in the story, it’s not really God’s desire to punish anyone or bind anyone and their household forever to the wrongs they have done and the debt they have rung up.  If God were to do that, there would soon be no household, no family or community, no world at all that would be left.

 

Rather, God forgives the debts, takes the loss, absorbs the cost so that all may continue to work and grow into new life together.  It’s not a matter of just letting everything go.  Forgiveness is neither blindness to, nor avoidance of the issues.  But it’s a matter of letting go of the past to let the future still be a future – letting go of the past in such a way that lessons can be learned and the future can unfold in a better and healthy way.

 

To borrow a word from Rev. James Eaton that’s the heart of a sermon he’s preaching today to First Congregational Church in Albany NY, it’s about opening up and leaving open the possibility of transformation for all concerned – both the wronged and the wronger, both the sinner and the sinned-against.  It’s God’s deepest desire that the household, the family, the community of earth stay together and learn step by step and day by day to work together well, to be good and profitable, to be holy and life-giving.  And one thing that makes this happen – one thing without which it can never happen, is forgiveness, the practice of honest and open, personal and mutual forgiveness.  

 

It’s only when we force God’s hand that the master comes down hard to divide the bad from the good, and to punish the wrong-doer.  And even then, the one who is defined as being in the wrong and who faces stiff punishment is very simply the one who fails to forgive as he has been forgiven, the one who fails to grow into God’s eternal and ongoing practice of world- and life-sustaining forgiveness.

 

I know there’s still a lot unanswered about how and who and when and what to forgive, but we cannot escape the why – that forgiving others is the best way – sometimes the only way, of living true and being honest to what we know about ourselves and about God.