ECCLESIASTICUS 27:30-28:7

PSALM 103:8-13

ROMANS 14:5-12

MATTHEW 18:21-35

Sermon – 9/15/02

Forgive...or else

There is no question that the hardest part of the Lord’s Prayer to accept is, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Oh. We get as much forgiveness as we give out? Yes, God is loving and forgiving...and expects us to go and do likewise. That’s pretty sobering if we take it seriously.

Let’s start with the first reading, from Sirach (Ecclesiasticus),a book written a century or two before Jesus. Sinners, the author declares ”hold onto anger and wrath.” Its one thing to “blow one’s stack” – that can be injurious in itself – but to nourish a grudge is far worse.

Imagine a “grudge” as a small, furry animal you could hold in your lap and pet. It feels good, reminding yourself of how angry you are at so-and-so, and how much you deserve to be angry, and how so-and-so really “has it coming”, and how much you’d like to do to make sure he or she gets what he or she deserves as you see it...and all the time you’ve been holding on to the grudge, the furry grudge in your lap has been growing, until you have to put it down (without letting go) and it grows and grows and then you see the teeth and claws the grudge has and by this time the grudge is holding you.

The only solution is to let go of the grudge before it eats you and you become the grudge. Which is about where things are in the Middle East: two giant grudges each of which has eaten millions of Israelis and Palestinians, who are still holding on to their grudges...

Some individuals have the same problem. They refuse to let go of their grudges and over time, their grudge – or grudges – control them. “I’ll never forgive so-and-so!” is the statement of a person in a self-imposed prison.

In the Greek of the New Testament, to forgive literally means, “to let go, to set free.” Forgiving means letting go of our grudges – and letting ourselves out of our own prison of unforgiveness. The alternative is to refuse to forgive and let the unforgiveness warp our souls more and more and more.

Because ultimately, our choice is to spend eternity in the belly of our favorite grudge – or with Christ. That’s it.

Now, forgiving does not necessarily mean forgetting, nor does it mean necessarily trusting the person or letting him or her off the hook. People who do wrong things need to face consequences, which may include punishment, and may include making it harder to hurt someone in the future. If someone steals money from one of us, for example, we are not obligated to invite them to do it again.

There are appropriate consequences. BUT: vendettas are not allowed by biblical ethics. Vengeance is for God, not for us.

Forgiveness also does not mean that the sin that’s being forgiven is “O.K.” In fact, if it wasn’t a sin it wouldn’t need to be forgiven. So if someone asks for your forgiveness, don’t say, “it’s nothing” or “forget about it” – forgive them. Consequences, if appropriate, fine – and then a clean slate, a fresh start, a restored relationship.

At least on your end. For forgiveness when the other person asks us for it, promises to change and really does change is one thing; but sometimes the person who sins against us doesn’t ask for forgiveness and doesn’t change.

Now in last week’s Gospel, Jesus said that unrepentant, recalcitrant church members who sin against other church members can be kicked out of the church: an example of consequences. BUT, Jesus tells Peter in today’s Gospel, we still have to forgive them, even if they don’t want or accept our forgiveness!

Why? Well, first of all, for the sound psychological as well as spiritual reasons I’ve alluded to, because living in unforgiveness, holding grudges, hurts us, whatever it may or may not do to the person who’s hurt us. That person may even be maliciously happy that our lives are still reeling from that person’s actions! Paradoxically, forgiving them in our hearts not only liberates us from the clutches of our grudge, it also shows that we are liberated from the person who sinned against us! (Which may leave that person crestfallen as well as perplexed.)

Second of all, and this is the point of the parable in the Gospel, we must forgive because we have been forgiven so much by God.

What, you say, you aren’t an axe murderer? Neither am I. But – how many people here have always loved God with all their heart, all their mind, all their soul, and loved their neighbors as themselves every day in every way? I didn’t think so. Me neither. You and I have fallen short of what God asks of us. Short? Yes, as much as Sand Hill, on which we are standing, is shorter than Mt. Everest. Getting a stepladder really won’t help us get to 28,000 feet. We have all fallen short, and fallen short by such a margin that the only way we can possibly be accepted by God is – if God forgives us.

Now to the parable. The King audits his servants. Hmm, this has a very contemporary ring to it! The King finds that one of his servants owes him 10,000 talents. A “talent” was the largest unit of money in the Ancient Near East, equal to 5,000 days wages for a laborer. Ten thousand was the largest number ancient arithmetic went to, so 10,000 talents was the largest amount of money that could be described. By comparison, the total annual income of King Herod’s government was just 900 talents.

So, we’re talking a debt which, adjusting for inflation and the smaller size of ancient economies, is greater than World Com or Enron. Serious, serious money. Like the guy just embezzled the entire federal budget.

And the guy gets down on his knees before the King and says “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.”

Right!

Let’s see, work a second shift for the next, Oh, 10,000 years, work holidays, skip vacations. No. Not a prayer. Actually, that’s all this guy does have: a prayer.

And the King forgives him! Releases him from prison, prison he so richly deserved.

And the first thing the servant does after being forgiven this astronomical amount is go and shake down a fellow slave for 100 denarii, a debt of 100 days wages – not pocket change, but 1/500,000 of what he had just been forgiven.

The unforgiving servant gets re-arrested and subjected to eternal punishment.

(WE HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN BY GOD. OUR SINS HAVE ALL BEEN NAILED TO THE CROSS OF CHRIST.) Clear message? O.K., so our homework for this week: think of someone we harbor a grudge against.

Forgive them.

Then, thank God for how much God has forgiven us.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church