LD 51, Matthew 18:21-35 "The Long Haul" Scott Hoezee

Last Monday, just as I was preparing to get cracking on this sermon, I visited on online greeting card website to send an electronic anniversary card to some friends. As I was glancing through this website's menu of choices, I noticed they had a separate category of cards devoted to "Forgiveness." Since I was preparing a message on forgiveness, I naturally was drawn to check out those cards. Mostly they were humorous intended to be used for relatively minor hurts. "Forget about it," "Don't worry about it" were the sentiments of two cards. Another expressed forgiveness by saying, "Everybody is a work in progress."

But I mention this today because on this website, as probably in most Hallmark stores, forgiveness cards were categorized right along with birthday and get well cards. That is, they were what could be called "occasional cards." You don't send a "Get Well" card just any old time, but occasionally you need such a sentiment and that's when you purchase and send just such a card. So also you may not need a forgiveness card very often, but once in a while such a thing may be handy.

Seen this way, forgiveness becomes a "now and then" matter. But it is precisely such an understanding of forgiveness which the Lord's Prayer tilts against. So this morning I want to suggest a different way of viewing forgiveness. And I want to access this angle on forgiveness in a way similar to how we dealt with the request for daily bread last week; namely, by considering the placement of this petition within the Lord's Prayer.

Within the context of this prayer it ought to surprise you that this highly spiritual matter of forgiveness comes after the mundane matter of food! You would expect just the reverse: first we tend to our souls, then we get around to ordinary matters like bread. But not so. For some reason the model prayer provided by our Lord deals with the earthy ahead of the spiritual. We need not conclude that eating lunch is more vital than forgiving Harold, but it is highly curious that the prayer is laid out this way. Clearly both matters are important. God really is interested in us body and soul, as the complete beings he created us to be.

But maybe there is something else to be said here. Because in the Lord's Prayer the request for bread and the plea for forgiveness are yoked with the word "and." "Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins." You say these two petitions in the same breath. Why is that important? Because perhaps it is Jesus' way of telling us that there is a connection between daily bread and forgiveness--we need both every day!

Daily bread. Daily forgiveness. "Feed me, O Lord. Forgive me, O Lord." If you sit down to three meals a day, you can pray these words on forgiveness at each meal right along with your words of gratitude for a bowl of chicken soup and a roll. Forgiveness is that constant of a need. That's why we make a mistake if we treat forgiveness similar to how the Hallmark folks treat forgiveness cards. This is not an occasional, now-and-again matter.

Instead, forgiveness is something we live, something we embody every moment. But that only stands to reason. After all, the very foundation on which our identity as Christians is built is nothing less than the death and resurrection of Jesus and the flood of gracious forgiveness which that grand sacrifice unleashed. Forgiven is who and what we just are.

Forgiveness is not a tool you need just once in a while. Forgiveness is not like that Phillips screwdriver which you keep out in the garage and which you fetch now and then when a kitchen cabinet is loose. Forgiveness is not a tool to be utilized occasionally but is more like the clothes on your back. You don't generally walk around the house naked and you surely never leave the house without some kind of attire covering you. Forgiveness is more like that: it goes with you, accompanies you, and is needed by you everywhere you go.

So what does this imply? Several things. For one thing it implies that each and every one of us needs to be forgiven by God, and by others, every day. We need to be forgiven about as often, if not more often, as we need to eat. True, most days we are not guilty of anything huge. Most days we are not carrying around with us the burden of having committed adultery, of having embezzled money from our company, or of having been convicted of drunk driving. But there are always a slew of smaller sins, lapses, and faults. There are always those dark thoughts which we're glad no one else can see.

Just because we may lack any big sins does not get rid of all our other sins. To ignore ordinary peccadillos on the grounds that they just don't warrant attention is a little like saying that because your entire house is not on fire, it's really not such a big deal that the furnace room is full of smoke from a faulty water heater. Big fires need attention, but so do small ones--and not just because they have a way of getting big but also because they're a problem even when small!

Seeing forgiveness as every much a daily matter as eating and drinking puts each of us into perspective. We're faulty folks. We need to be forgiven. Constantly. Remembering that is the point of Jesus' parable in Matthew 18. Only if you are a fool would you deny to others the very gift which you receive constantly and lavishly. The more keenly aware you are of your getting that gift every day, the more inclined you will be to distribute it to those who are in need of a healing, restorative word from you. Do you feel good, relieved, joyful when, through the Holy Spirit, you hear God saying to you every single day, "Forgiven!"? Well then, when there is an equally flawed person in your debt because of a mistake, lapse, or sin, let him or her experience the same kind of joy by hearing you say, "Forgiven!"

God forgives us daily. We forgive others daily. Every day we carry around with us a mental list of people we could forgive. Some of the names on that list have been there awhile whereas others appear and disappear quickly. There may even be certain names--your spouse, a co-worker--which appear on that list pretty regularly but which also get erased regularly as you exercise the daily task of forgiving as you have been forgiven.

Forgiveness is our lifestyle. It's our habit. We do it every day for the same reason we eat every day: we need it to stay healthy. And by doing it every day, we stay spiritually limber, too. This daily habit is a good way to be in shape should a day arrive when we have something major to forgive. The more practiced we are at forgiving the ordinary foibles and annoyances of life, the better poised we may be to forgive even an extraordinary hurt.

Of course, even so, forgiving big hurts is not a cinch. Even seasoned and well-practiced forgivers may struggle with forgiving certain people for certain deeply wounding sins. Since Jesus uses a monetary image in his parable, let's do the same by way of analogy. Suppose that you routinely take care of paying your bills. When the garbage bill comes due for $60, you pay it. Assuming you are in reasonably good shape in your checking account, you don't fret paying off a $60 debt to the disposal company.

But if in the course of paying your bills one day you run across a Visa bill for $2,300, you're going to be a whole lot more mindful about it. You will at very least want to check your bank balance to see if you even can pay a debt of that size. You're going to maybe have to pay off this particular bill in installments over time. Now the basic practice of paying bills is the same no matter how much the bill is. What you need to do is ultimately the same whether you're talking about a $60 garbage bill or a $2,000 credit card bill.

But when the bill is large enough, how you go about accomplishing the goal of paying it off may take you down a slightly different, longer road than is the case with smaller sums. But unless you want to be sued by the credit card people, you do work at paying it off. It just takes longer in some cases.

The analogy to people and the forgiving of spiritual debts is perhaps obvious. Every day we ourselves need to be forgiven and every day there are other people whom we need to forgive. Mostly it's routine, $60 stuff. Mostly we are able to do it simply by drawing off the spiritual reserves we already have. But always we do it in the name of Jesus and because of his work. I get forgiven by God for that lusty fantasy I entertained in my mind over lunch and so I then turn around and forgive my friend for having snapped at me in a moment of irritation. God and all of us do this kind of forgiving daily.

But there are those times when we encounter something so devastating, so surprising in its intensity and in the damage it wrecks in our hearts, that not only are we not able to just forgive it in a moment's time, we may even wonder whether we will ever find the spiritual strength to forgive this person for that wounding deed. What does our praying "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us" imply for these dire situations?

It seems to me that it implies we keep working at it. There may be times when in utter honesty we have to say, "Right now I simply can't let this drop! I just cannot forgive him!" There are times when the hurt is so bad, that to pretend you can forgive in a heartbeat would be not only dishonest but unfair to yourself and ultimately to even the person who caused the grief. We do people no favors when we mask the sometimes life-shattering hurt they brought us. For some people the only way to ensure that they will not do this again (to you or to someone else) is precisely to hold them accountable.

Human beings created in the image of God need to be held accountable. If a shark bites you while you are swimming off the California coast, you would never talk about forgiving the shark, much less of trying to find ways to communicate why what he did hurt you. He's just a shark! He thought you were a seal. That's that.

But it's very different when a person acts like a shark and takes a bite out of your soul. Here is someone who must be dealt with as a responsible moral agent. Here's someone who needs to know the damage she did, including if that means your saying, "I can't forgive you right now. I am that hurt. I've got to recover before I will have a chance to rally the resources I'll need to forgive you." If someone is mangled in a car accident, the first priority is to get the physical wounds healed. If there are mental wounds like post-traumatic stress syndrome or the like, then they need to be healed with therapy eventually.

But even if you are a therapist who passes by the accident, you'd be a fool to kneel down next to the wrecked car and say, "Let's talk about this accident so you can deal with it in a healthy psychological way." Of course not! Even a therapist would need to grab a hankie and staunch the flow of blood first. Get to the other stuff later. So also with great spiritual wounds: the immediate injuries need to be tended to first. Then, sometime later, you may be in a position to move on toward forgiving the one who inflicted the wounds.

And, of course, there are any number of phenomena that can make forgiveness a long, tortured process. It is exceedingly hard to forgive people who refuse to admit they were wrong. It is very difficult to proffer forgiveness to people who slap the gift of grace out of your hand saying, "Keep your forgiveness! I don't want it!" It is difficult to forgive the person who won't speak with you, refuses to look at you or meet with you.

In one of his fine books on forgiveness, Lewis Smedes speaks eloquently about forgiving people for what they do and not for what they are. In many cases Smedes' advice is just right. But it is not always that cut and dried. There are lots of people who do what they do because of the kind of people they are. You can try to hate the sin but love the sinner, but sometimes the personality of the sinner is exactly what brings about a particular sin again and again. You cannot always say, "I know you didn't mean to do that." Sometimes people very much mean to do that!

So there are any number of factors that can bollix up the life of even the most forgiving people. Well and good. Admit that forgiveness takes a while in some cases. Admit it if there are days when you can but cry, "I can't forgive you right now!" But what the Lord's Prayer does not permit a Christian to say is, "I can't forgive him now. I never will forgive him and I don't care, either!"

Someone once said that the scariest, most sobering word in the entire New Testament is that tiny little word "as." "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." That vital connection between God's abiding forgiveness of us and of our in turn forgiving others tells us that we must forgive. This is not some weird demand on God's part, however. This is not some hoop we must jump through to earn our salvation or to perform like some trained dog just because God enjoys watching us do tricks.

No, the reason for the connection between God's forgiving us and our forgiving others is because of the sheer power of God's forgiveness. It is so great that it simply must and will change us. The reason God expects us to forgive as a result of our being forgiven is the same reason you can expect to be wet after diving into Lake Michigan: water is wet and when you immerse yourself in it, you get wet. So also with forgiving grace: grace is magnetic and beautiful. When God immerses you in grace and saves your life eternally by it, you will be dripping with grace yourself. You will be full of grace and truth and so spread it to others.

This does not eliminate the fierce struggles we talked about. This does not mean forgiveness is easy--forgiving us killed the Son of God! That's a pretty good indication that when that which needs forgiving is a large or grave enough matter, it's going to take a lot out of us to forgive it. But what this does mean is that we are inclined to forgive. It means that we recognize that the future of the cosmos hinges on God's ability to forgive.

The future depends on forgiveness--my future, your future, the universe's future. If some day there is a bright new world in which to live with God and one another in eternal shalom, it will be the world forgiveness built. We incline to forgiveness already now to show that we understand this. And we want to be part of God's grand restoration project, contributing our own little bits and pieces of gracious, forgiving beauty as we go.

Inevitably, a sermon like this makes some of us feel guilty. But I do not want anyone to take a particular struggle with forgiveness as some dark sign that maybe God's grace has not touched you after all. However, if you have a very long list of grudges, of people with whom you long ago decided you would never speak again and if in the recesses of your heart you also say, "I don't care," then perhaps it is well if this sermon gives you pause.

But to struggle with forgiveness is a different matter. Processes of forgiveness that stretch out over many years need not cause you to conclude that you are someone whom God refuses to forgive. But the more we realize how rich God's forgiveness of us is, the more we should at least want to struggle with the difficult cases even as we just generally make ordinary forgiveness our lifestyle and habit.

Because no matter how spiritual we are, we will never be done with this matter. When will we be finished with needing forgiveness and practicing the same? Probably long about the same day when we no longer need any daily bread. May God give us the stamina to stick with forgiveness over the long haul of life in a broken world. Amen.