Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

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Sermons

September 2002 (click here to return to "September 2002 Sermons" page)

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time (September 15, 2002)

“Canceling Out Debts” Dr. Julie Adkins

Text: Matthew 18:21-35

SERMON

Clarence Jordan,

who was a New Testament scholar

and author of the “Cotton Patch” version of the gospels …

was asked one time,

why he thought it was that Jesus said

we must forgive our brother or sister seventy-seven times.

“Well,” said Jordan in his southern drawl,

“I guess he figured that by that time,

we’d be pretty good at it.”

Who among us is really “good at” forgiving?

Most people I know – myself included –

find it to be one of

the most painfully difficult things

we are ever asked to do.

Now, I’m not talking about small-potatoes kind of stuff like,

“please forgive me for being late,” or,

“oh no, I stepped on your foot, please forgive me.”

Of course we should be able

to forgive small incidents like these,

but they’re relatively easy.

What seems difficult, if not impossible,

is the big-ticket items.

Woundings at the hand of someone we care about.

Betrayal by someone we deeply trusted.

Someone else’s carelessness, or stupidity,

that damages our life irrevocably.

I hesitate even to list examples,

because there are so many,

and they have happened to us all.

Probably more often than we like to think about.

We have all been hurt.

And what we heard Jesus say last week was difficult enough:

if your brother or sister sins against you,

you must go and privately tell them their fault.

This week the job gets even harder.

Not only must we be honest,

we must forgive.

Except, let’s face it,

there are some things, it seems,

that are so awful they can never be forgiven.

Or at least not by us.

Or at least not any time soon.

Or at least not until the one who wronged us

grovels and begs and repents.

Yet, here is Jesus saying “seventy-seven times.”

Truly, it seems impossible.

And, speaking solely in human terms,

it probably is impossible.

Consider the parable:

If Jesus had only told the second half of the story …

Servant 1 owes Servant 2 twenty bucks,

only he doesn’t have it when he promised.

So Servant 2 has Servant 1 thrown into debtors’ prison,

until he pays back everything he owes.

Now that might seem a little excessive,

but certainly not out of line with

what was appropriate in that culture.

It’s only in the context of the first half of that story,

where we find out that Servant 2

has just been forgiven a debt of

something like ten million dollars …

only in light of that do we understand

how shabbily he has treated Servant 1.

He has refused to pass on

the grace and mercy that he was shown.

And for Jesus,

that’s kind of the bottom line:

whatever debt we are owed by whomever,

it pales in comparison to the debt we owed to God,

which has, however, been forgiven.

Having said that, however,

let me reiterate that that is the bottom line,

and getting there isn’t always easy.

Take, for example, the dozens and maybe even hundreds of people

who are coming forward to say they were abused as children or teenagers

by their priest.

Doesn’t it seem unfair and insensitive to say to them,

“Nevertheless, you must forgive.”?

How can they?

How could anyone?

Yet somehow, they must be freed from

the burden of anger, and pain, and shame.

And as satisfying as it may be to see justice done,

or even vengeance (!),

those don’t heal us.

Although it seems strange,

the only way there is to have any hope

of healing from such devastation,

is to forgive the one who devastated you.

Several years ago, I read an article in the magazine Christianity Today

which had this to say:

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free

and to discover that the prisoner was you.”

I needed to hear that

at that particular moment.

Because as surely as a swift kick in the pants,

it made me realize that

no matter how fierce or pure or even justified

my anger was toward a given person at that moment,

it wasn’t hurting him a bit.

My refusal to forgive

didn’t bind or imprison him,

but it was eating me alive.

In fact, listen to what Frederick Buechner has to say

about that kind of anger:

“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun.

To lick your wounds,

to smack your lips over grievances long past,

to roll over your tongue the prospect

of bitter confrontations yet to come,

to savor to the last toothsome morsel

both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back –

in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.

The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself.

The skeleton at the feast is you.” (Wishful Thinking, p. 2)

So, there may be times when

the beginning or our forgiving

may have to be cynical and selfish motives.

When the hurt we need to forgive is truly awful,

we may have to start somewhere like this:

“Okay, I’m going to forgive you,

not because you deserve it, you jerk,

but because you’re not worth

my getting an ulcer over.”

Now we can’t leave it there.

As I said, the bottom line is elsewhere.

But sometimes,

it is okay to start from our own needs.

Beyond that, though,

we forgive because God has forgiven us.

And that’s kind of a two-edged sword.

On the one side,

it is because we are forgiven by God

that we are set free to forgive one another.

Knowing and acknowledging that we are sinners,

in spite of our best intentions,

somehow makes it easier to forgive all those other sinners.

Or to forgive ourselves, for that matter.

On the other hand,

it is when we forgive one another,

when we are able to let go

at least a little of our price and our need to be right,

Only then are we opened up to

the possibility of receiving God’s grace and mercy.

You see,

that was the real problem of Servant #2.

Not just that he refused to show forgiveness,

but that he didn’t even recognize

the forgiveness he had been shown.

I think this is what is meant in the Lord’s Prayer

when we say “forgive us our debts

as we forgive our debtors.”

It’s not that God will refuse to forgive us

if we do not forgive one another …

Just that, until we show mercy to one another,

we simply aren’t open to receiving it

from anywhere else.

Now, forgiveness does not mean

forgetting or trying to forget what happened.

We can’t learn from it if we forget it.

Nor does it mean a kind of cheap-grace

passing-it-off by saying it doesn’t matter.

Because if it really doesn’t matter,

it doesn’t need forgiving.

Listen again to Frederick Buechner:

“To forgive somebody is to say one way or another,

‘You have done something unspeakable,

and by all rights I should call it quits between us.

Both my pride and my principles demand no less.

However, although I make no guarantees

that I will be able to forget what you’ve done,

and though we may both carry the scars for life,

I refuse to let it stand between us.

I still want you for my friend.’” (Wishful Thinking, p. 28)

Forgiveness also does not necessarily mean reconciliation.

And this is a distinction I think many people fail to draw,

including some who write on the topic and ought to know better.

You can forgive someone who is unrepentant.

Indeed, you have to.

You have to get yourself free

from whatever it was and is that is causing you pain.

Besides which, God forgives us all the time,

often long before we even realize that we did something

we need to repent about.

You can forgive someone who is unrepentant,

but until they repent, the relationship cannot be restored.

True reconciliation requires both forgiveness and the acceptance of that forgiveness;