THE GIFT OF FORGIVENESS
PASSING IT ON
Matthew 18:21-35
The Gospel today begins with an interesting dialogue between Jesus and Peter. Peter asks Jesus, “How many times should I forgive my brother? Seven times?” It seemed like Peter was looking for a limit. There has to be a limit. Right? I m told that the Rabbis in Jesus time would have said, “Three” Three times – that s all the law requires. Peter knew that Jesus limit would be a little higher than what the law required so he suggests seven (that s over twice the limit that the Rabbi s taught). I don’t think that Peter was ready for Jesus answer. Jesus surprises him when he answers, “NOT”. “not seven times but seventy times seven.” Another words there is no limit on forgiveness. Jesus isn’t saying that you forgive the other person 490 times, and when you reach 491 you re home free and you don t have to forgive anymore. He uses this figure to say there is no limit.
There are some problems for us in these stories of forgiveness. They center around the fact that WE DON’T WANT TO FORGIVE
We would rather nurse our hurts, keeps our wound alive, allow the past to rule us. I don t think that we are really oriented to forgiveness most of the time. I think we are more oriented to getting even. What do we say? “He s going to get it in the end”, “What goes around comes around”, She may act that way now, but it will come back on her”, “They’re going to pay in the end” “They can’t do that kind of thing and get away with it.”, “You re going to be sorry”
It sounds like we are out on the school ground again. That’s what we said when we were kids. We still have the same scripts.
I’m not saying that people should not have to face the consequences of their actions. We all face the consequences of our actions. But we can be so overcome by retribution that it becomes a bondage to us.. .and it destroys not only their future but ours.
There are some people who are left with only room in hearts for bitterness” That is a certain kind of bondage.
Truly, If we are able to find it in our hearts to forgive there are benefits in the act of forgiveness for both the forgiven and forgiver. Frederick Buechner points out in his book Telling Secrets:
When somebody you’ve wronged forgives you, you’re spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience. When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you’re spared the dismay corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride. For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their own skins and to be glad in other’s presence.
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Lyle Lovett, a country music writer and singer had a song out a few years ago about not being able to forgive someone who had done him wrong. The line that stands out in that song for me is: “God does, but I don’t, and that’ s that difference between God and me.”
God does. That is the point. We discover in the scriptures that God is quite different from us. Our ability to forgive is not dependent on some superhuman effort on our part but on knowing God s unlimited forgiveness of us, and our acceptance of it. When we accept God’s forgiveness of us, and truly receive it, we cannot help but be affected inwardly, and cannot help but pour out from ourselves the same forgiveness in return. So, it is a question of passing it on. As the old hymn says, “Freely, Freely we have received so freely freely give.”
That is what this parable that Jesus tells after this dialogue with Peter is all about. It is about a person who is forgiven 10 million dollars, an amount that he could not possibly give back. He goes out after he is forgiven this amount and punishes a person who just owes him a few dollars. That action showed that he had not really taken in what that forgiveness really meant. He was just glad to get off the hook. He kept it to himself. He hoarded it. He could not reach out in the same way to another person. He could not pass it on,so he lost it.
Robert Farrar in Parables of Grace says that the man in the story misses out on a whole new life he might have lived. He gives us kind of scenario of heaven and hell. In this scenario the resident of both heaven and hell are “forgiven sinners”. There are no good guys or bad guys, no upright successful types. They are all failures. What is the difference? In heaven, forgiveness is accepted and passed along. In hell it is rejected and blocked.
As Martin Luther King points out in one of his speeches:
“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. The one(He) who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
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We have all sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God, you and I. We have all been forgiven. God has forgiven you and I seventy times seven. To be forgiven by God is something like being forgiven 10 million dollars. We are forgiven all the good intentions that we never carried out that left someone in the painful lurch, fragile spirits being trampled on by our clumsy galloping through life, careless words, and grasping deeds that robbed others of their self esteem and snatched away opportunities for a lifetime, infidelities of the heart, hypocritical judgments meted out, other gods worshipped along the way.. It has all been forgiven. wiped away for eternity.
Forgiveness in not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.
Do you live in the freedom of that forgiveness or are you still in bondage? One of the ways that you know that you have really accepted God’s forgiveness, is being able to pass it on.
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