Feb. 7 Sermon: Forgive us our Trespasses
Forgive us our Trespasses, as we Forgive Those who Trespass Against Us
Holy Covenant UMC, Sunday February 7, 2010
Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd
Matthew 18:21-35
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
There are many phrases commonly attributed to the Bible, that in fact have very different origins. Nonetheless, we often mistakenly hear them as gospel truth (even though they are nowhere to be found in the gospel). For example:
God helps those who help themselves (Benjamin Franklin)
God never gives you more than you can handle.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
No rest for the weary.
Even: Do Unto Others as you would have them do unto you. Sure, we have variations, but this phrase is not biblical.
There are many phrases we misattribute to the Bible that actually come from Shakespeare:
For example: Neither a borrower nor a lender be
And, finally, “forgive and forget”. Friends, this phrase is found nowhere in the Bible and has been taught too often in churches as gospel truth.
Today, we’re exploring the phrase from the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”
It’s easy, because this phrase is so dominant in our culture, to believe that when we are called to forgive, we are also called to forget. But as we hear this passage from Matthew, it’s clear that Jesus is teaching something very different.
Let’s look at this passage closely, and discern what our faith is teaching us about forgiveness.
Jesus, is teaching Peter and his other disciples about forgiveness. And he tells a parable:
A man is in great debt to his employer. When I say great, I mean enormous, gigantic, unfathomable debt. Jesus, as he is wont to do, is wildly exaggerating in this parable to make a point. He comes up with an amount that we can’t even count today in modern terms. Billions and billions of dollars this man owes. Well, it’s time for him to pay, the first of the month, he’s had a lot of chances, and the bill is due. But he doesn’t have it. He couldn’t, he will never have it. And he says to his employer, look, I just need more time, if you cut me some slack, give me some grace, I’ll work on paying back what I owe. And the employer, in a moment of love, forgives the debt. Erases it. Wipes it all away, and the man is free. Free from being burdened, from worrying about how to feed his family, free from having his livelihood at the mercy and power of another human being’s whims. He’s erased the past and is ready to move toward his future: a new, liberated future without debt.
And Jesus is really setting us up here for a happy ending—we assume that his future will be nothing but rainbows and puppies and unicorns, that he’ll go out sharing this same love he has received, spreading forgiveness, cancelling debt, refusing to wield his power at the expense of others.
Well, you know the rest of the story, you just heard it: that’s not what happened. Jesus knows human nature all too well to give us such a saccharine ending. The man immediately finds the man who owed him money, a small amount of debt, a trivial amount compared to the debt that was just erased for him….$10 verses billions…and he demands that the $10 be paid. The man in debt pleads…give me a few more days…but he is merciless and seizes him by the throat and throws him in jail until he can pay the amount.
We are appalled—did he forget what just happened to him? The liberation and freedom he felt when he was forgiven? How amazing it is to be on the receiving end of grace?
He forgot, and he repeated the sins of the past. Well, his employer hasn’t forgotten. He ends up throwing the man in jail, too, for committing such a sin against another.
What is happening?
First, Jesus is teaching us about the unconditional love that we receive from God. No matter what we’ve done, where we’ve been, who we hurt, how much we think we owe, God’s unconditional love and forgiveness surround us and God says: You are free. Free from sin. Free from guilt. Free from shame. Free.
This is always the first step of forgiveness: first knowing that we worship a God who always, always forgives us. No action is too grievous—God’s love is beyond anything we can ever do. And God offers this forgiveness for free. When we come to the communion table, like we will later in the service, we hear the words of God’s forgiveness But remember, that the invitation to the table comes first, then we confess our sins and receive assurance…but the invitation is there, to come and feast at God’s table without condition.
N.T. Wright, a biblical scholar, writes that the Lord’s Prayer is something we breathe in, and we breathe out. So we breathe in the words and know them, believe them, experience them in the depths of our souls. And then, once we’ve internalized the prayer, we breathe it out, so that what we believe becomes evident in our words and actions and practices.
When we pray this prayer and breathe in God’s forgiveness, we are called to breathe out forgiveness towards others. Not once, not twice, but 7×77 times as Jesus tells Peter…over and over again as a spiritual practice. As much as we say the prayer, we also forgive. But we can’t show grace to anybody else unless we believe that God graciously extends it to us. So I invite all of us, when we come to the table and receive communion, to take a moment and really breathe in God’s forgiveness and know, in the depths of our souls, that we are forgiven.
Once we know this, we then know we’re called to share forgiveness with others. And this is really hard. It was hard for the man in the parable…he receives forgiveness but can’t offer it himself.
In fact, in the parable, this man is punished. There’s violent imagery. It’s easy to misinterpret this story to mean that if we refuse to forgive that God will punish us forever. But actually, God forgives us and loves us no matter what, we know this—we have to remember that this is a story, not a literal description of God’s relationship to us…so what is the punishment Jesus is describing here? It’s self-punishment. The man has jailed himself. By refusing to forgive, he has thrown himself into a self-made prison of anger and vengeance. He lets the past action of his debtor control what he believes and how he acts. He lives out of vengeance instead of out of the joy of God’s grace.
What a punishment! And how often do we do this ourselves? Obsess about the way someone has wronged us or harmed us? The punishment is that we live our lives in the past, instead of in the future of God’s gracious love and hope for us. Anger ends up defining us, instead of the fact that we are God’s beloved child. And this is a torturous way to live, in the sins of the past.
Forgiveness frees us from all that anger and moves us towards a future filled with freedom and hope. I know what you’re thinking: If we’re supposed to live in the future instead of the past, shouldn’t we forgive and forget?
What Jesus is teaching us here is that the past shouldn’t define us, but it should provide lessons for how we live out a better future. Knowing and remembering our past is essential for transforming our future.
So the first step of forgiving others isn’t forgetting, it’s remembering…holy remembering of past sins. Only then can we transform that painful past into a liberating and reconciled future. The unforgiving servant, in our parable, wasn’t changed by the act of forgiveness, and he repeated patterns of oppression and hostility towards another. This doesn’t liberate anyone. Jesus is calling us to break these patterns of vengeance. To name them, learn from them, and then be free to live into a new way, God’s way.
Archbishop Desmund Tutu says: “We must forgive if there is to be a future”. He lives into the future, but only with a keen eye on the past. When he was working with the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in post-Apartheid South Africa, he was a leader in teaching and modeling forgiveness. But there was remembering as part of the forgiveness. If the forgiveness, if the reconciliation, had been about forgetting the sins of Apartheid, nothing would have changed. But instead there was, and is, a thorough process of remembering. But it’s holy remembrance, remembrance so that the future does not imitate the past. It’s remembering that leads to a changed future, a future where pain/anger isn’t the dominating factor in our lives, but our sense of wholeness as a beloved child of God defines who we are.
If someone sins against us, hurts us, abuses us, we won’t forget what they’ve done, nor are we called to. If we are the victims of physical or emotional abuse, we are not called to keep going back for more pain…this is the opposite of what God wants for our lives. We are called to forgive for our own sakes: this might look like never seeing that person again. But when we let ourselves forgive, we remember the past and then live into a future that is different. That is transformed by love. That doesn’t repeat patterns of harm and injustice. When we forgive, we are no longer defined by pain or anger or hatred, we escape the self-prison of vengeance, and we live into the freedom of God’s hopeful future.
Instead of “forgive and forget, ” let us “be forgiven and remember” Remember that you have been forgiven, that your slate has been wiped clean, and we are called to share that grace with other people. When we come to this table, let us live into a spirit of freedom, hope, and a transformed future, from the God who brings forgiveness out of pain and life out of death. Amen.
