Forgiveness: This is the Way

Introduction: This is Where we Start?

If I were to go out on the street right now and ask folks what they thought the biggest issue was for the church, what they thought Christians were most concerned with right now, what do you think they would say?

Would they talk about Christians in politics, either from a democrat of republican position?

Would they talk about social issues, things like homosexuality or abortion or things like that?

Would they talk about how the Church is in a continued season of declining membership and church attendance?

Would they talk about technology, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and Tik Tok and Snapchat (I only had to look those up a little bit to know what they were…)

It is entirely too cold and snowy for me to actually go out there and give this a shot…but I think that’s a pretty fair guess.

I’m guessing that at least one of those would come up if we started asking folks what they thought.

What’s hilarious about that list? Not one of those things, not one of those current issues, is anything that Jesus speaks about in our Gospels.

Not once does Jesus engage with partisan politics, right or left. He’s interested in the Kingdom.

Not once does Jesus mention homosexuality or abortion, both of which would have been practices in his day.

Not once does Jesus talk about Church membership, or numbers of followers, as though the goal were to build the biggest following.

And hard as this might be for younger folks to recognize, Jesus lived in a world before Facebook and Twitter, let alone iPhones.

To be sure, Jesus speaks to the spirit of many of these issues, but the issues themselves? Jesus is silent.

So as (my tradition) begins a season of Lent, we wanted to look at things that Jesus does speak about.

And we have to start in a place that I’m betting none of our hypothetical people on the sidewalk would have guessed: We need to talk about forgiveness.

(@ City Mission: Read Matthew 18:15-35)

Text

When Someone Sins against you.

Jesus opens up with an assumption that so many of us seem to forget in this life: people are going to wound you.

To be human at all, to be someone who interacts with anyone, is to be hurt, or insulted, or wounded by someone else.

You can try to isolate yourself, you can try to keep yourself from toxic people, but anyone anywhere is capable of wounding you.

So Jesus says

If another member of the church sins against you, tweet about it.

If another member of the church sins against you, talk about them behind their back.

If another member of the church sins against you, cancel them.

No, that’s just what we want to do.

When someone sins against you, Jesus sets up this flow chart.

Start with one on one.

In pastoral ministry, I’m constantly surprised by how many people will come to me and complain about someone else in the church.

When I ask if they’ve spoken with the individual they have an issue with, the answer is always no.

It’s easier to talk about the person who’s wounded us than to actually talk to them.

But that’s exactly what Jesus has called us to do.

After that, get one or two friends.

Again, make sure you do step one before you do step two.

Lots of people love to solve disputes by tiny mob rule, and that’s not what Jesus is advocating here.

If that doesn’t work, go to the church.

Part of what I like about this system is the number of places that Jesus gives us to let someone else set us right.

If I think someone has sinned against me, how likely is it that I’m actually the one who’s done the sinning?

If that’s true, somewhere in here a trusted friend or member of the church is going to set me straight.

If that doesn’t work, take the Frozen approach.

“LET IT GO!!!!”

Stop Counting

My son right now has entered a unique battle with us.

He has to eat something healthy in the morning before he’s allowed to have a treat.

So my wife and I will declare something like “You have to finish your bowel of Cheerios before you can have a treat.”

Then the negotiations begin:

How about 10 Cheerios?

How about the whole bowl.

How about 15 Cheerios?

How about the whole bowl?

And at some point you come to realize that if you’re counting it out like that, you’re not really eating healthy, are you?

Peter has a question at the end of Jesus’ teaching about someone hurting or offending us.

Yeah, but how many times do I actually have to forgive them?

Seven times, right?

I mean if you think about it, Peter’s got a point.

If you have a friend who has wronged you 6 times in a row, and they hit you again for a seventh, maybe it’s time to stop forgiving?

Jesus says “No, not seven times, but I tell you, seventy seven times.”

Now in a lot of ways, Jesus is being silly.

Seventy seven is not the *actual* number of times after which we need to stop forgiving people.

Jesus wants us to imagine the hilarious situation of counting that high.

Ok, that was 55 times you’ve hit me. Only 22 to go Fred!

Jesus wants us to stop counting.

Jesus wants us to set aside our score cards that we are all so good at carrying.

Jesus wants us to remember that we are in fact on level footing with everyone.

Jesus wants to remember how many times we’ve needed to be forgiven.

A Parable

So he has a parable.

The humor of this parable is lost in the exchange rate.

The first slave owes the king ten thousand talents.

A talent is 15 years wages of a normal laborer.

So I did some math for us:

$7.25 is the PA minimum wage.

$15,080 is a years wage on minimum wage.

So a talent would be $226,200

But this guy owes his king 10 thousand talents.

So this slave owes the King $2,262,000,000 in today’s money.

I’d really like to know what this dude was shopping for to get that far in debt!

But that’s the point of Jesus’ story. The first slave owes a debt that is just beyond comprehension.

If the debt is remarkable, the King’s ability to forgive it is even more astounding.

The second slave owes the first slave 100 denarii.

A denarii was a day’s wages, so again, more math!

(Because nothing makes for a relevant and interesting sermon like math!)

$7.25 an hour x 8 hours = $58 a day.

So this guy owes 100 of those, so $580 dollars.

You should be laughing.

The guy who just ten minutes ago had a debt of $2 billion dollars has his fellow slave by the throat for $580 bucks.

The point Jesus is making here:

You have been forgiven so much by your father in heaven.

Every action, every careless word, every terrible deed, every thought done to offend God is forgiven in Jesus Christ.

Let me say that again:

No matter what you’ve said, thought, done, breathed, imagined, or considered, Jesus Christ offers you forgiveness through the cross, and offers us new life to live in new ways through the resurrection of the empty tomb.

Jesus question then is this: How is it even possible for us to hold a grudge against, well, anybody!?

How could we have been forgiven of so much yet still harbor anger toward those who have wronged us?

How could we have been relieved of so much debt find ourselves with our hands around the throats of our brothers and sisters?

How could we possibly accept the love of God in to our hearts while we carry such rage and hatred toward our brothers and sisters?

Application

Own your own forgiveness

I had a friend in college who kept saying that there was no way that he could ever be a Christian.

I was a theologian, so I tried to reason with him, to use logic.

He said there was no way he could ever be a Christian.

I was also a worship leader, so I tried to appeal to his heart and point out the beauty of Christ.

He said there was no way he could ever be a Christian.

I tried to get his family, all devout Christians themselves, to bring him around.

He said there was no way he could ever be a Christian.

One day I asked him why.

He said that in high school, he had been young and foolish and gotten his girlfriend pregnant.

She was scared, and so she wound up having an abortion.

And this friend said to me that there’s no way that God would ever forgive him for that, so he couldn’t be a Christian.

And that even if Jesus did offer forgiveness, he felt like he didn’t deserve it.

My friend’s story is a bit extreme, but I know so many Christians who feel the same way on some level or another.

They can’t own the forgiveness that Jesus Christ is offering.

They are, to borrow Jesus’ parable, very aware that they’re carrying $2 billion in sin.

They hear Jesus words of forgiveness, and they assume that they are meant for someone else.

My brothers and sisters, hear me on this:

I don’t know you...

I don’t know what you have done.

I don’t know where you have been.

I don’t know what has been done to you.

I don’t know what you have done to others.

I almost don’t need to know.

The blood of Jesus is sufficient for you.

When Jesus says you are forgiven, he means it.

When Jesus says you are redeemed, he shows it.

When Jesus says you are loved, he proves it.

Own that!

Our job in this life is to live like the saved.

Our job is to live with the kind of joy that only comes from having $2 billion in sin debt forgiven all at once.

Our job is to glorify the one who forgives the debt!

The Coach Story

A few years ago, I worked for a big church with a big staff.

The finance manager at our church was a huge nerd who always talked about coaching his kid’s baseball team, so we gave him the nick name coach.

Because coach was a big nerd, we were fast friends!

We ate lunch together most days.

We hung out sometimes after work.

We gave each other rides when our cars were in the shop.

Coach played keyboards in the worship band with me, so we shared the shenanigans that can only happen in a band.

And because we were in that band together, coach was riding shotgun with me on praising God.

Some of the deepest, most meaningful memories in my mind of worship have coach’s face in the frame, he was always right next to me.

And then one day, our pastor called us in to his office and told us that Coach no longer worked with us.

In the days, weeks, and months to follow, we came to learn that from his position of financial manager, Coach had stolen at least $1.3 million dollars from the church.

Not only that, but one of the ways that Coach had concealed his crime was to not pay the church’s payroll taxes, which meant that in addition to being out $1.3 million, we owed the US government $1.2 million.

I tell you that story to tell you how hard this can be, the work of forgiveness.

We worked for a Church! We were in the forgiveness business!

And yet I can tell you that all of us at the church, myself included, had a really hard time working ourselves to forgive coach.

How could you be in the praise band, singing about how great Jesus is, while you’re lying to my face?

How could you be in the meetings where we were talking about mission and making people’s lives better, when you were stealing from those people?

How could you do this to us, knowing that we’d be paying for it for generations to come?

But it just shows us that forgiveness is not theoretical!

In sermons like these, we like to talk about the idea of forgiveness, without talking about the work of forgiveness.

I’ll bet if you tried, right now, to close your eyes and think of someone who has wronged you, you won’t have long before someone’s face comes to mind.

Maybe they didn’t steal millions of dollars, but

Maybe they lied to you.

Maybe they lied about you.

Maybe they betrayed you.

Maybe they broke your heart.

Maybe they took advantage of you.

Forgiveness, I learned with coach, is not an immediate thing.

It’s a process, and it’s a lot of work.

Maybe you’re in a place where it’s time to have a conversation with the person you need to forgive.

Maybe you’re in a place where a quick text message or phone call would be safer.

Maybe you’re in a place where you’re not ready to talk, but you just need to set about praying for that person.

Maybe you’re way back at the beginning, and it’s just time to decide to work on forgiveness.

Wherever you are, my encouragement to you today is to take one more step toward forgiving a real person who has really wronged you in your real life.

But at the same time, let me offer a word of caution here:

Forgive and…forget?

There is a popular saying out there that we just need to “forgive and forget.”

First of all, you won’t see the word forget anywhere in the scripture we read.

Jesus doesn’t at any point say that the debts are forgotten, just that they are forgiven.

And secondly, forgetting the way people have wronged us can lead to some really toxic situations.

If someone abuses you, you probably shouldn’t forget that.

If someone has a problem with drinking, you probably shouldn’t forget that they can’t go to a bar.

If someone has a problem with stealing, you might not want to hire them as your financial secretary!

Scripture even has some colorful language about these kinds of people in Proverbs:

Proverbs 26:11- Like a dog that returns to its vomit, so a fool who reverts to his folly.

There are toxic people in the world, and while we are absolutely called to forgive them, there is no circumstance where we have to be around when they return to their vomit.

Forgiveness is not an excuse for abusers to keep abusing.

Forgiveness is not an excuse for thieves to keep stealing.

Forgiveness is not a blank check for horrible behavior.

And a big piece of why that’s true is because as counter intuitive as this might feel, forgiveness is actually way more about us than it is the other person.

Rat Poison

After a few months, Coach was due in court, and we as the pastors at the church were invited to speak.

As I was walking back to the courtroom from the restroom, it just so happened that I passed coach in the hallway.

It was the first time I had seen him since everything went down.

I had been doing the work, I had been doing the praying, I had brought myself to where I wanted to be.

So as we passed in the hallway, I stopped him and looked him square in the eyes and said “I love you. Jesus loves you. I forgive you.”

And then we kept walking, because we weren’t really supposed to speak to each other.

But I walked away from that experience shocked at how much better I felt.

I said it because I felt like I should relieve some burden in coach’s life, but found out that some sort of burden had been lifted off my shoulders.

I couldn’t believe how much lighter I felt.

Christian writer Anne Lamott has this beautiful quote about forgiveness:

Refusing to forgive someone is like drinking rat poison, and then waiting for the other person to die.

Refusing to forgive someone is way more toxic to us than it is to the person we refuse to forgive.

Most times, let’s be honest, they don’t know that we refuse to forgive them!

It’s like having a fight that only half of the combatants know they’re in!

So church, I ask this today, knowing that we probably have someone in our lives that we need to forgive, what does it look like to put the rat poison down?

What does it look like to take those next few steps on the road to forgiveness?

What does it look like for us to own the forgiveness that Jesus Christ has already offered us on the cross?

What does it look like to take those next few steps and take the burden off of our shoulders by forgiving someone else?

When it comes to Christianity, forgiveness is the way.

And so in this season of Lent, I’m going to wrap each of these sermons up with a challenge to you.

Take some time this week and reach out to someone you need to offer forgiveness to.

Knowing that the only reason we could do such a thing is because Jesus Christ, in his infinite mercy, has already offered that forgiveness and so much more to you and I already.

Our job is to share the wealth!