The Task of Forgiveness

Wesley United Methodist Church September 11, 1999 Matthew 18:21-35 The task of forgiveness Isnt it easy to imagine the action of the gospel lesson? Can't you just imagine the rich government officaial, who thinks that he is on top of the world. He's arrogant, bossy and never seems to get what he deserves. You are almost greatful for the day when the kings officials come to get him. They take him to jail and torture him and demand his payment. So much money that it would take even the richest person years to earn that sum. Boy he must have really been living it up, and to think that this was all in borrowred time. And the king in his infinite wisdom and kindneto be innocent. Forgiveness is and will always be an impossible task. Yet so is conqering death and asking destruction where is your sting? Yet that is the task of a Christian. Forgiveness is a gift from God that we choose to give ourselves. It is freedom from the prsion that anger sentences us to. Forgivenss is the ability to ope our minds, our hearts, ans souls to the healing power of god. Fogiveness is not the number 490, forgiveness is an understanding of infinite. and living life in that infinity. God's infinite love. Remember that person that you thought of at the beginning of the service. That person who did sucha terrible thing to you that you could not get past that anger at them? Is that anger still with you? What is that anger doing to you? What is that anger doing to your relationship with that person? More importantly who is it that is holding on the anger? Does you anger affect that prson? Is it making them sick? Is it stoppong them from doing anything that they want to þ'Nª, ª, ° T› Ð ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ½- È0 0 0 0 0 0 0 à=Ð/ Ð 8 d 0 ÿÿÿÿ Ð 20 – »- Rev Harriette Cross Wesley United Methodist Church September 11, 1999 Matthew 18:21-35 The task of forgiveness Isnt it easy to imagine the action of the gospel lesson? Can't you just imagine the rich government officaial, who thinks that he is on top of the world. He's arrogant, bossy and never seems to get what he deserves. You are almost greatful for the day when the kings officials come to get him. They take him to jail and torture him and demand his payment. So much money that it would take even the richest person years to earn that sum. Boy he must have really been living it up, and to think that this was all in borrowred time. And the king in his infinite wisdom and kindness forgives all of that debt. It's not that this offical deserves such a break, yet he gets it anyway. He should be the most greatful man in the world. and yet once he is out of jail he is back to his old hateful self. It is jut like him to find a poor inocent farmer, who he has probably been cheating anyway and demand a few pennies from him and be so mean to him. And then he puts the man in jail, where he is not able to pay his debt anyway. Boy what a jerk. When you hear that story, cant you just feel the anger for that official just boil up inside of you. Don't you just wish that someday he gets what he deserves. He is one person who deserves to burnin hell forever isn't he? Jesus is an excellent story teller, because as we imagine this scene, none of us are able to see ourselves in that picture. Or if we are in the picture, we are the ever kind king, or the poor mistreated farmer. But none of us are mean enough or heartless enough to be the rich official. If we owed someone a million dollars, adn they forgave the debt. We would be so greatful that we would gladly forgive the person who owes us twenty. It is interesting that Jesus understands that the character of the rich official is not out of the ordinary. And in all fairness to the rich official, you never know, his anger might not have been about the money. There is a breaking point in all of us. We might be able to get over soneone owing us $20. Yet there is someone in all of our lives who has done something to us that we have not been able to let go of. As a matter of fact, right now, I invite you to think of someone that has done you wrong and you have not been able to get past that wrong. Think of the hurt and anger that stand with you when you think of that person, it is okay to hold onto it for now. All of have been forgiven of much, yet we refuse to let go of the debts that we owe. We say the lord's prayer all of the time. Which means that all of the time we are asking God to forget about what we owe him. as we forgive our debtors. Yet forgiveness is still one of the most difficult things for us to do. It is still easier to explain the miracles of God parting the waters of the red sea, and Jesus turning water into wine in church than it is to explain the miracle of forgiveness. You can come up with all types of scientific explanations to make the miracles of the Bible clear, yet it is still difficult is not impossible to explain why we should forgive someone who has done us wrong. There is no clearcut scientific formula to explain our feelings, and the make our feeling valid, yet explain why we should give them up at the same time. when someone does you wrong, at what point and how to do walk on with your life without seeing justice done. At what point are you a nice person and at what point do you become a doormat for anyone who wants to take advantage of you. At the beginning of the scripture passage, Peter seems to give an interesting answer to this question. You forgive people seven times, and then you demand justice. In jewish tradition it was believed that God forgave people for three times and then he punished you. The book of amos speaks of this type of justice as he gives a series of threats to his audience that for three times for doing a certain offense they will be forgiven, yet for four times God will take vengence. Seven is more than half of threee, so he is being generous. Yet jesus explains to Peter and to us that real forgiveness is not about numbers. You forgive not only seven times, yet seventy times seven times. And even though realistically when you get to 490 times of forgiving someone for the same thing, it would seems that either you or the other person should have gotten a clue by now that something is indeed wrong, you still forgive anyway. If you notice, Jesus does not offer any guidelines of the process of forgiveness, or give any explanations of why we should forgive or give a fine line of what things you get over and what things you hold onto. As a matter of fact he tells us that all of that is irrelevant. Forgiveness is an infinite quality that Christians are supposed to apply to all in all people in all situations. In his explanation parable we are in the role of the the rich official. Think about it in your life. Of course there are people in your life who owe you something, there are people in your life who have done something wrong to you. Now I invite you to think a little harder, there are also people who you have done wrong, who you have betrayed, who you have cheated. As a matter of fact, the things that bother you when are done to you, you have done the same to others, that is the source of your irritation about the present situation. Yet when you did it to someone else, how did you expect to be treated? As a matter of fact, what you have done to someone else is probably not nearly on the scale of what has been wronged done to you? Did you expect to be forgiven? as the lord's prayers tell us , there is hardly a day that passes they are not in forgiveness about something. There is probably something that we said that we should not have said. It is almost a reflext action to tell a story about another church member, just between frieinds". Or to snap at a family member and to walk away, or to secretly laugh at the tie that a coworker chose to wear. And then there are those bigger acts, acts of betrayal like against family members, or a harsh word said to a child in frustation, a lie that we told that got out of hand, and then there are offenses against god. like criticizinc someone's religion, or failing to show a child what it means to grow in faith. We have all fallen short in our faith. no matter how much we dwell in the faults of others, our fault are always just as bad if not worse. And everyday, as we ask god for forgiveness, you know what he gives it to us freely. Is that person that you need to forgive you still with you? Is that pain still too great to bear? Are you still wondering why you should forgive that unspeakable sin that person has done? Does it help to say that forgiveness is not a right that you need to give to others because they deserve, it is a gift that you are free to give to yourself. The thing that finally destroyed the rich official, was not the debt that he owed the king, it was his grudge against the farmer. It was his own feelings or resentment that landed him back in jail until he could pay his entire debt. and being that he was locked up, he would never be able to earn enough money to pay his debt. Jesus tells us that this will happen to us to if we do not learn to forgive. We will be in prison forever. The prison of our own feelings. Even medical research shows that an inablility to forgive causes serious illnesses and complicates other situations. Usually when we have to be hospitalized, that is our bodies way of dealing with unresolved anger and grief. the most seriously depressed people are those who ar harboring a grudge for something that happened long ago, that they were not able to get over. The new england journal of medicind reports that the culprit for all of this is pent up anger. Anger destoys us physcally, it also destoys us emotionally. It freezes us and prevents us from responding to situations. When we are focused on anger and criticinzing, we are not fosuces in creating solutions to our problems. Anger destroys relationships. Most of the time when we are angry at someone that we love, we do not tell them. We hold it inside unable to talk freely about anything, much less our feelings. Just as the famer is not free to go and earn the money to pay off his debt. Our anger prevents us from speaking to that person in order to let them redeem themselves. Why should we forgive? because it allows us to live the freedom that Christ gave to us. What does this passage on forgiveness teach us? It teaches us that God understands our feelings of hurt and shame, she really does see things our way and she really is on our side. and that in the love of God, we are not dealt with justly even when we demand it of others. This passage is an invitation for us not to get caught up in the victim mode, not to allow ourselves to be doormats to others. As we sit here together as a family, we are all equal, respeected and worthy to God. All of us here are forgiven doebotrs. The debt that we owe is not more or no less than the debt of anybody else. All of us here have been hurt in some way. Allof us have been victimized. Yet we have all hurt, betrayed, or victimezed someone else. Those who have done the same the same to us have done so as a way to strike out and release there feelings of hurt, anger, or victimization. We are all in debt and surrounded by folloew debtors? We ar debtors who need the love, fellowship, and forgiveness of one another. Forgiveness is not a carelessness or indifference to wrong, it is on the absense of morality. forgiveness is the task of a Christian. Forgivenss means giving up the power game, it means giving up the need to find somebody right and somebody wrong, it means giving up the need do? Does that person even care that you are angry? I invite you to take the time to free yourself this week, talk to that person, either in person or in you head and tell them they are forgiven. Why should you forgive? Forgiveness is a gift from God that you freely give to yourself. In some ways we are all like the rich offical, if we do not forgive the debts of others God will through us in prison forever. amen. en he puts the man in jail, where he is not able to pay his debt an