To Forgive As We Have Been Forgiven

Matthew 6:9–15 NIV

9 “This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ 14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

And then from the HC, LD 51.

What does the fifth request mean?

Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors means,

Because of Christ’s blood, do not hold against us, poor sinners that we are, any of the sins we do or the evil that constantly clings to us. Forgive us just as we are fully determined, as evidence of your grace in us, to forgive our neighbours.

[Begin with a lengthy story]

Ortona is a town on the Adriatic side of Italy that in some way ceased to exist on Christmas day 1943. During the second world war, Ortona was a town where the Germans chose to take a stand and delay the allied troops advancing up the Italian boot. It was right around Christmas day 1943 that Canadian troops met the Germans at the Moro River and fought a fierce and bloody battle into the town over an eight day period. Originally the Canadians thought they'd be into the town in about a day, but what they didn't know is that they were about to crash into what the Germans called their "winter line". ..a German defence line that Hitler ordered held at any cost. Canada was about to be sucked into the bloodiest battle of the Italian campaign, a battle that came to be know as "Canada's Stalingrad.”

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In a very real sense the Canadian troops were walking into a trap. 25,000 soldiers of the Canadian First Division up against some of the best units of the Wehrmacht. As one reporter put it, "The Germans were holding ideal defensive positions about the ravines and gullies of the Moro Valley." The Canadian troops were about to be ambushed.

A Canadian reporter of the day, Matthew Halton, reported:

If it wasn't hell, it was the courtyard of hell. It was a maelstrom of noise, and hot splitting steel... the more murderous the battle, the harder both sides fought. From window to window, from door to door, in a carnival of fury.. . the enemy used every trick, and every weapon, including flame throwers.

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In the single most deadly incident of the battle, the Germans blew up a building packed with Canadians. The one surviving soldier from the Loyal Edmonton regiment was pulled from the building three days later.

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At the time when this story was reported by the CBC a number of Canadian soldiers who fought in this battle were still alive. But for the 60 years prior they have had to live with what a CBC reporter called, the "Ghosts of Ortona." The ghosts of bitterness, anger, hatred, resentment.. .at the German soldiers who killed their comrades and friends.

Some of these men were walking together alone through a cemetery outside Ortona, they place where they left so many friends behind. Samuel Lenko, a private with the Loyal Edmonton Regiment, walks among the headstones and says,

It tough, I tell you, it's really tough. I go to find Don Maclean, a stretcher bearer, he went out to find a wounded German soldier, and another German shot him. He had a red cross band on and everything. It was one of those things.. . that just happened.

These are three of several Canadian soldiers who didn't want to live with the hatred any longer. Veteran Ted Griffiths, was the head of the Canadian delegation and initiated the idea of meeting with the Germans. This is what he said, "Who the hell is going to carry hatred around all their life." At the invitation of the Canadians, the surviving Germans were invited to a meeting of reconciliation in the town of Ortona.. . .55 years to the day after the bloody battle.

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In coming together they shared memories:

A number of Germans took refuge in a church , Ted Griffiths said, 'The fact that it was a medieval church never entered my mind. Bear in mind the business of the day was killing. The fact that it was Christmas, didn't even enter my mind at the time, but when you survive a battle, and you begin to think back on what transpired, this is when all the ghosts arrived and it is the ghosts of Ortona, the ghosts of that church that keep coming back to haunt you.

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At another church that same Christmas day, Canadian troops would come in shifts off the battle line for some roast pork and Christmas pudding. As part of a desperate search for some normality, an organist played Silent Night, while the battle raged outside.

This is what the organist describes:

For that moment we were able to live in another world.. .almost in tears I think, to sing those words.. .and then in an hour or so to go back to their fate, whatever it might be and for some of them it was the last meal on earth.

Fifty five years later the troops from both sides came together. The purpose? To be reconciled, to forgive.. . .. TO EMBRACE.

Forgiveness is EMBRACE. Men that shot guns at each and killed each others fiiends. . .embracing.

Ted Griffiths meets German Joe Klein and says? "very pleased to meet you . . . it's been a long time.. .but you must come in and meet the boys."

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One of the other Germans that the boys would meet was Karl Bauerline. He was the one that set the explosives in the building that killed so many Canadians. [Didn't want to share.]

Reporter, David Halton, puts it like this:

As they walk streets with memories that have scarred their lives, all agree reconciliation has been too long in coming...Back at the cemetery, some Canadian veterans are uneasy about becoming friends with the men who killed their buddies.

But nevertheless friends they became.

One of the high points of their reunion was their Christmas Day dinner. Where? You guessed it, in the same Santa Maria de Constantinopoli church where the Canadians had their one hour Christmas dinner while war was waged outside.

On that day, the same organist?, Wilf Gildersleeve got behind the same organ and played the same hymn, Silent Night. All the memories came flooding back, but this time the old enemies were sitting side by side at the same table.

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Canadian Samuel Lenko says,

It’s really been fantastic, this is something I never ever dreamt of.. . I never thought it would happen.. . it's something totally unbelievable.

“This meeting has been a cleansing of the soul" said Ted Griffiths. "It's a shedding of some of the ghosts of Ortona.. . they have forgiven us.. . we have forgiven them and we've come together in the spirit of friendship."

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William Willimon, emeritus Dean of the Chapel and professor of Christian ministry at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, recalls listening to Huston Smith, one of the world's greatest scholars on world religions, commenting on the distinctive characteristics of the various faiths of the world. When he got to Christianity, Smith simply said, "Forgiveness. Forgiveness of enemies. This is the very strange notion that makes the teaching of Jesus distinctive."

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Why do Christians need to pray? So that they will be able to embody the kind of forgiveness that Jesus made possible. We are foolish to think that forgiving someone who has offended you, or asking someone you have offended to forgive you, is easy. And yet we are equally foolish to think that this way of living is not absolutely necessary for Christians.

Our text from Matthew says it frighteningly clear? “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins? your Father will not forgive your sins." (Mt 6: 14-15) Charles Spurgeon in one of his sermons on hindraces to prayer says that an unwillingness to forgive will close us off to God hearing our prayers. He says there is an "if" in this verse which is easy to overlook.. . if you do not forgive the sins of others when they sin against you, God will not forgive you.

Some 20 years ago the the Christian Courier published a series of articles on the Lord's Prayer by a Dutch theologian named Sillevis Smitt. In the article dealing with this particular petition, he writes,

Refusing to forgive others is like saying that we still have moral claims to make and chips to cash in. It means staying outside the realm of God's grace. In the end, if we live our lives without compassion and forgiveness we will find our stubborn selves excluded from the kingdom of God's grace and favor. (CC, Nov. 22/04, p.13)

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Smitt states it strongly. God will not forgive us if we refuse to forgive others. What do you think? Is that too strong? Someone might say that would be to turn our need to forgive into a kind of works righteousness, a strange kind of legalism. You know, almost like saying that God's love is “conditional” ... I thought God's love was “unconditional”.. . Are you suggesting Andrew, that God's grace is conditional? Well, no, but kind of yes.. . Let me use an illustration.

Imagine a young couple that just got married and they quickly realize that they have no financial means to purchase a home. [I know that’s very hard to imagine living here in Vancouver, but stick with me…] Both have reasonable salaries, but also have graduated from university with significant debt. One of their parents feels for them, and out of a genuine love for them and a desire to see them settle down, says, “We want to give you a gift. We would like to give you enough money to serve as a down payment for a new home, so that whatever you are now paying in rent, that same amount can be applied to a mortgage." Suppose the sum amounts to $250,000. [that's a nice gift.!]

Now the gift is unconditional. The money is as good as theirs. They didn't have to do anything to earn it, they didn't have to do anything special to receive it...we might even call it a grace gift. BUT, the gift can only be realized and applied into their own life, if they buy a house. It's an unconditional gift, but it can only be received and applied if they buy a house.. . they have to buy a house to receive the gift.

Perhaps it's the same way with God's forgiveness. God's forgiveness towards us is unconditional. He wants to forgive us because he loves us. But we know that forgiveness in our lives has been received when we extend that same forgiveness towards others.

Story of unmerciful servant in Matt. 18 . . . .

Story of woman caught in adultery (John 8), rather than forgive, church leaders want to stone her. . . "whoever is without sin, let him cast the first stone."

I think N.T. Wright says it well,

The Lord and His Prayer Chapter Four: Forgive Us Our Trespasses

Failure to forgive one another wasn’t a matter of failing to live up to a new bit of moral teaching. It was cutting off the branch you were sitting on. The only reason for being Kingdom-people, for being Jesus’ people, was that the forgiveness of sins was happening; so if you didn’t live forgiveness, you were denying the very basis of your own new existence.

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And so we invite God to speak His word into our lives. Where does God want to bring forgiveness into your life? Into your relationships? Maybe for some of us, its towards soldiers.. There maybe some of us who are old enough here such that this story of Ortona comes very close to home. Maybe its towards a son or a daughter,. . . you haven’t spoken to each other for a long time.. . you remember the words they said to you, or you to them.. . words that drove a deep wedge. Maybe its towards a friend, a colleague, a boss, a teacher who mistreated you years ago.

[Story of apologizing to my childhood friend, Peter Johnston]

Where are your ghosts?

Forgiveness isn't about "she should be the one who comes to me first."

Forgiveness isn't about "he owes me an apology, then I will forgive them."

Forgiveness isn't about "how could my son speak that way to his father?"

Forgiveness isn't about "he should or she should."

Forgiveness is about embrace.

The Prodigal Son is a remarkable story about forgiveness and embrace. Rembrandt painted this well known painting based on the parable of the prodigal son and called it the return of the prodigal son.

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It's also a picture of God the Father embracing us.. . . And inviting us to extend the embrace to others.. . to sit down at a meal with our enemies.. . I think the meal the soldiers ate together is one of the most powerful images of what the Lord's supper is all about that I've come across. Those who were at one time were enemies now become friends because they are both eating the broken body and shed blood of Jesus Christ.

Why do we need to pray?

So that we can forgive others, just as we have been forgiven ourselves.

Prayer (beginning with a prayer written by Cornelius Plantinga

O God, wondrous in love for sinners, we give you thanks for saving grace. You do not hold against us our treacheries and neglects, but let them drop. You do not hold against us our conceit and indifference, but let them go. Forgiveness is your gift to us. Even our faith is your gift. We have been saved by grace through faith—and all this is your gift. Surely there is none like you

now, may your grace in us empower us to freely forgive those who have sinned against us. Lord, where we have caused offense, where we have injured others with our words or with our deeds....if it is possible for us...enable us to reach out and express that forgiveness, and in so doing, rest more securely in the forgiveness you have freely extended to us.

through Jesus Christ. Amen. — Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.