It just so happened that this week's scripture text for church on Sunday was the text on forgiveness found in Matthew 18:15-35. Here is my sermon on forgiveness and messing up:
The first part of this scripture passage is commonly referred to as
Matthew’s section on “church discipline.”
It discusses how to deal with a member who has sinned against another
member of the church.
Before this passage, Jesus has just told the
story of the lost sheep- a story of compassion, love, and unity. The lost sheep story tells about a lost one
who is then reconciled and restored to the community. It seems as if Jesus is saying, “Here’s how
you maintain a healthy community, here’s how you bring back the lost, here’s
how you mend a broken relationship- Talk with your brother- just the two of
you. If talking one on one doesn’t work,
call on two other fellow brothers to help with the mending, lending their
compassionate ear and their gentle wisdom to your conversation. If the offender is still not listening, bring
the larger community into the work of restoration. We are all in this together.”
Jesus’ lessons on how to address conflict are
focused on restoration- mending a broken relationship. A community with Jesus
as its Lord and judge is one that is always seeking to restore the lost.
The Why and the How of forgiveness is touched on, but
that’s not enough for Peter. Bless his
heart, good old Peter needs more. “How
much, Jesus? How many times do I have to
forgive? 7 is the number of perfection
and wholeness. You’re talking about
restoring relationships back into wholeness, Jesus, so do we have to forgive
them 7 time?”
“Peter, the wholeness of seven is a pretty good start. But let’s match wholeness with wholeness,
shalom on shalom, again and again. Seventy times seven.”
In teaching that we must forgive seventy times
seven, Jesus speaks of an endless abundance of forgiveness -- forgiveness that
is absolute, complete, and beyond calculation.
In order to illustrate the point, Jesus tells a
parable, a story:
A servant of the King had run up a debt.
-- ten thousand talents. A talent was the largest
unit of money, the equivalent of 6,000 denarii, and so ten thousand talents
would equal 60 million denarii. Figuring a six-day work week, that means that
10,000 talents would be the equivalent of around 200,000 years of wages! This
is a debt almost beyond calculation, one that no person could possibly pay in a
lifetime, or in many lifetimes.
Why was the king was so foolish as to allow such
an accumulation of debt in the first place. In any case, when it is clear that
the servant cannot pay, he initially orders that the servant and his wife and
children be sold as slaves, and all their property sold, in order to repay at
least a tiny fraction of the debt.
The servant, however, falls on his knees and begs
the king, “Have patience with me, and I will repay you everything” (Matthew
18:26). This is a crazy promise, and the king knows it. There is no way the
servant could ever repay such an enormous amount. Yet the servant’s plea moves
the king to compassion, so that he not only releases the man, but cancels his
entire debt.
The forgiven servant then encounters a fellow
servant who owes him one hundred denarii. The amount owed to the servant by his
fellow servant was the equivalent of one hundred day’s wages. This is not a small
amount for a servant, to be sure, but it pales in comparison to the extravagant
amount the servant owed the king
The forgiven servant seizes his fellow servant by
the throat and demands: “Pay what you owe.” And even when the fellow servant
pleads with him using almost exactly the same words that he himself had used
before the king, “Have patience with me, and I will repay you,” the servant
refuses and has his fellow servant thrown into prison (Matthew 18:28-30).
I’ve never quite understood why the forgiven
servant turns around and acts so terribly to the fellow servant who has a
debt. Did he forget that quickly what
the King had done for him? Was he under
some sort of distress that we’re not made aware of? Were there others threatening him or picking
at him? Certainly, if this forgiven
fellow was being stalked by the mafia or a gang of angry gambling agents, Jesus
would’ve let us in on that juicy tidbit.
This led me to thinking....When are the times when I’m not as forgiving as I
should be? What makes me restrain myself
or withhold forgiveness?
If we’re really honest with ourselves, we can
identify with the unforgiving servant.
We like to feel strong. We pride ourselves
on being able to keep it all together.
Often times, we don’t like to admit that we’re hurting. We don’t want a single soul to see that we’re
flawed or broken. A person might be
staring us in the face saying, “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. Forgive me.” And instead of moving toward
restoration, we’ll close up. We’ll think
to ourselves, “I’m fine. You didn’t hurt
my feelings. I’m strong. You don’t have the power to break me.”
It’s not true, though. We are hurt.
We are flawed. We are
broken. To be restored, you must be able to admit that you
are not whole or perfect. We must be able to forgive. Sometimes this begins with forgiving
ourselves.
Maybe the forgiven servant was having a hard time
admitting some things to himself… his flaws…the part of him that needed
forgiveness beyond the pardon of money he owed.
Perhaps he struggled at the idea of thinking of himself as someone who’d
made mistakes. I’m not the kind of
person who runs up a debt- mismanages money.
I am a hard worker, I am dedicated.
I’ve worked all my life to climb the ladder, to keep my family
comfortable, to make a living for myself and my loved ones. I refuse to even open the credit card
statements or answer the phone calls from the bill collectors. I’m not the kind
of person who gets a low performance rating.
I’ve never had less than perfect attendance. I can’t receive a bad conduct grade. I
couldn’t be the kind of person who would mess things up this big.
The thing is, the forgiven servant has forgotten
something. The forgiven servant is not a
failure. He is not “the kind of person
who....” He’s simply a person.
He is not his mistakes. He is not the sum total of his flaws. His value is not based upon his bank
statement. He is simply a person. He is Human.
We are human.
--
We are reading the book, The Abundant Community,
as a part of our Lenten Series. “Forgiveness,”
the book says,” is the willingness to come to terms with having been wounded.”
When we embody forgiveness, we come face to face with our own sin and
brokenness … we come face to face with
our humanness…and we realize that we are all alike in our utter dependence on
God’s grace and provision.
--
When the king hears about the forgiven servant’s
actions, he is so outraged that throws the servant into prison. “So my heavenly
Father will also do to every one of you,” Jesus tells us, “if you do not forgive
your brother or sister from your heart” (Matthew 18:35).
These are heavy words. We know what Jesus asks of
us, and we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive
those who trespass against us.” Still it seems so difficult, even impossible,
to forgive from the heart.
The
alternative to forgiveness is a heart grown hard with resentment and blindness
to love; it is alienation from one another, and in the worst case, violence. A
world without forgiveness is a world of relational wreckage, the opposite of
the wholeness and fullness of life God intends for us.
The good news that Jesus brings to us in this
message of forgiveness is that we can be released from inner guilt and low
self-esteem. We need not be trapped in
chains of shame. No longer do we have to
wallow in self-pity.
Forgiveness, Jesus tells us, is not something we
count = 7, 77. It is a different way of life…a Kingdom way of life. It is the realization that we are not
God. We are God’s children- beautifully created and good, also flawed,
sometimes broken, able to be wounded
Thanks to the Great and Merciful Provider, to
offer forgiveness, all we must do is be who we are- flawed and messy- human
. For, forgiveness is drawn from an
outside source- the very being God- whose nature it is to be gracious and
merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. God is the source that draws us into wholeness,
reconciliation, and restoration of community.
for as
Jesus says, “Where two or three come together in my name, there am I with
them.”
Thanks for the help from Working Preacher and the commentary at: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2356
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