Forgiveness

 

Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

Service of Worship

September 13, 2020

Rev. Natalie Bowerman, Pastor

 

Let us pray:

Dear God, on this day we read in our Gospel lesson that you call us to forgive others. In fact, not only do you call us to forgive, you call us to forgive over and over and over. While in theory we long to follow your lead, in practice it is so hard to let go of our grudges, debts, and resentments toward others. Help us. Open our hearts and minds this day. Help us to be more like you. Amen.

 

Our Gospel lesson comes from Matthew 18: 21-35:

²¹ Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

²² Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.^[g]

²³ “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. ²⁴ As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold^[h] was brought to him. ²⁵ Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

²⁶ “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ ²⁷ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

²⁸ “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.^[i] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

²⁹ “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

³⁰ “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. ³¹ When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

³² “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. ³³ Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ ³⁴ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

³⁵ “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

 

A Message

“Forgiveness”

Forgiveness. It’s something we talk about a lot at church. In fact, we talk about forgiveness every time we say the Lord’s Prayer: “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.” We lift up a few core truths about forgiveness just in that one sentence: forgiveness is an essential spiritual act, and one that we pay forward. When we forgive we bestow upon others what God first offered us.

That all sounds so great. So virtuous. And it’s an oft-read, oft-quoted sentiment in worship. This week’s Gospel reading was the lectionary-appointed Gospel lesson, meaning this teaching about forgiving one another seven times seventy times is guaranteed to come up once every three years. It’s a message we’ve been hearing as long as we’ve been darkening the doorways of churches: Jesus forgave, so we forgive. To follow Christ is to forgive. Christians are forgiving people.

Those are some solid faith goals right there. But in practice, when we go out in the world and have real relationships with real people, and we give our hearts away only to have them returned to us broken, this becomes a whole different kind of conversation. None of us are spared this kind of pain; to live and to love is to get hurt. None of us wants to be resenting, grudge-bearing people. But it was so much easier to hear our Sunday School teachers tell us about forgiveness than it is to extend that olive branch to someone who harmed us.

Some hurts are relatively small, or trivial, and easy to forgive and get over. This morning when Sean discovered our 6 year old son took the whole tub of vanilla ice cream out of the freezer and ate it with his bare hands like Winnie the Pooh in a honey pot, he was mad, but I think he’ll move on. Some wounds follow us around for a few days, or a few months, or a few years, or during a particular chapter of our lives, but then we find ourselves in a totally different place one day and those old hurts feel irrelevant. Some hurts cut us very deeply. Some actions leave such long lasting consequences on our lives, and even the lives of our children after us, that at best, forgiveness can only be something we practice little by little. And above all we must remember that we forgive as an extension of loving our neighbor as ourselves. Forgiveness begins with love of the self, and manifests in love of others. It starts with taking care of your own spirit.

This week I asked a few clergy women friends of mine if they’d be willing to share their experiences of forgiveness with me, and when you hear some of the stories they shared I think you’ll see what I mean.

“I forgave the classmate in college who cheated off of my work and then got ME in trouble!”

“I forgave the girl who bullied me in the 7^th grade.”

“I forgave the coworker who undermined me in front of our clients.”

“I forgave my parents for abusing me.”

“I forgave my partner for having the affair that ruined our marriage.”

“I forgave my pastor for his sexual misconduct.”

“I forgave my husband when he died and left me a young widow.”

Forgiveness so often is also part of grief. Every hurt is so different, and how we experience hurt is so personal. Some wounds are individual in nature. Some trespasses affect a whom family. And some debts harm a whole culture, country, or community. Sometimes the scale of forgiveness is so vast that we need God’s help just to face the task before us.

We who live in this country witnessed a wound like that just a few days ago, on the anniversary of the September 11^th terrorist attacks. That day cut every single person connected to this country and had worldwide ramifications. Nineteen September 11ths have come and gone since that fateful day, yet the images we saw then are no less horrifying. Despite this being a shared cultural wound, we all experienced it differently. I was in high school and living in Chicago when that terrorist attack happened. I had never heard of the World Trade Center until it was gone. If you’re older than me, if you lived in New York City or near the Capital, if you knew someone who did, if you knew any of the people who were injured or killed, if you or a loved one served in the armed forces…that day was different for you. This anniversary is different for you.

Sometimes we think we’ve dealt with our pain, and then a new hurt comes out of the same event. Last Friday I was watching New York City’s annual memorial service honoring the lives lost that day, and I was flipping back and forth between that and old news clips from 2001. My four year old daughter was looking over my shoulder and started getting confused. She said “Mommy why is that plane flying in a building? Planes are supposed to fly outside. Turn this off, Mommy, it’s making me sad.” Lily was born long, long after that awful day, but she’ll have to deal with it, too. It’s part of her American DNA.

Forgiveness can be downright bewildering. That’s why it’s so helpful to have Jesus as our teacher and example. In this morning’s Gospel reading Peter is looking to brown nose. He already has a special relationship with Jesus, after all Jesus changed his name from Simon and dubbed him the rock upon which he’d build the Church. But still, Peter was looking for more. So he said “Hey Jesus, let’s say someone, like maybe that dude over there [points to Judas] totally salts your game. How many times does a Good Jew forgive him? As many as…seven times???” Expecting to waltz away with a gold star Peter gets his ego trip cut short when Jesus instead says “try seventy-seven [or seven times seventy, depending on your translation] bro. Get to work.”

Jesus is tough, but realistic. He didn’t mean to teach us that our forgiveness skills would never be good enough. But he did mean to tell us that, despite what our faithful upbringings may have conditioned us to believe, forgiveness isn’t like a switch you flip, where you instantly drop your hard feelings and never think about them again. That may work for some small hurts, but for most of the painful experiences in our lives forgiveness is something you have to keep working toward little by little, day by day. Forgiveness is waking up and immediately thinking about an old abusive relationship, and then having to take a breath, inhale in some of God’s peace, and make it through another day without harboring fantasies of punching the guy. Forgiveness is confidently walking into your school and sitting in the company of a girl who bullied you before and might bully you again, reminding yourself that you’re tougher than you look. Forgiveness is sitting down to Thanksgiving Dinner next to your way-too-political uncle yet still breaking bread together. Forgiveness is attending Annual Conference with a colleague who supported the Traditional Plan, while shaking his hand and blessing him in his ministry. Forgiveness is God’s way is closing the wounds in our hearts one stitch at a time. It’s impossible on our own, but with God as our cardiologist it will happen.

I wanted to close this message with an historical account of forgiveness. On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, officially ending the Civil War after five gruesome years. The North won. They immediately broke out in celebration and wanted to not only party but gloat. Dancing and singing broke out in the streets and eventually found its way to President Lincoln. Enveloped in a crowd, his secret service ushered him into a building, and he addressed the people from an open window. He said a few wise words as Lincoln was skilled at doing, but then turned back to the people, many of whom were holding portable instruments and asked them if they wanted to play a song for him. They joyously affirmed and expected to start singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, the anthem of the Union. Instead Lincoln asked them to play “Dixie”, the anthem of the Confederacy. He told them the war was over, and that song belonged to everyone now.

When you forgive, your heart begins to sing a different tune, and you invite others to sing along.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

And now receive a benediction:

Our God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, will guard our going out and our coming in from this time on and forevermore. And as all God’s people we say together: Amen.