February 9, 2014 Matthew 18:21-35 REQUIRED TO FORGIVE

Transcription

1 February 9, 2014 Matthew 18:21-35 Forgiveness is a pivotal concept in Christian awareness. If we get fuzzy or play loose with our notions of forgiveness, everything else goes loose and out of focus along with it. So I m not sure how you are doing with forgiveness so far; you are never required to agree with or accept what I try to set before you. But I have already tried to suggest that our culture and society are far off the mark when it comes to forgiveness. We have our own opinions on the subject, and in many places we pay scant attention to God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit when it comes to forgiveness. Of course, that has a lot to do with why forgiveness is necessary in the first place. Ultimately our sins are not against each other, nature, or even ourselves. Our SIN is a relational disruption between us and God. We do not trust, love, obey, or respect God as our true Author and Creator not down deep where it counts the most. This affects our behavior and frequently results in deeds, choices, and attitudes that offend against God and God s purposes. Down on our level, we hurt each other and animals and nature in ways we never would if we were in tune with God and operating out of a deep love-bond with God. But however much we hurt and make it hard for ourselves and each other, ultimately our sin is against God. There are rules and principles that operate in the New Life of the New Covenant in Christ Jesus. Being born anew shifting allegiance to a different King and Kingdom does not mean we are free from all the conditions and principles that Life operates on. Unconditional is a false precept that throws people off course. Chief among the conditions for forgiveness is repentance. Repentance is a change of heart, and, if genuine, it is always followed by a change of behavior and direction. Repentance is a prerequisite for forgiveness. The Christian Life always starts with repentance. Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. We turn and head in a new direction or nothing changes for us. People sometimes say to me, But Jesus forgave everybody from the Cross. Indeed, Jesus offers forgiveness to everybody. It s startling and incredible that Jesus found a way to do that. And lots of us are still trying to find ways to redefine everybody. But the truth remains that nobody gets even one tiny ounce of forgiveness, even from the Cross, until after they repent. Personal repentance is what activates the mercy, BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2014 All rights reserved. PAGE 1 OF 8

2 love, and forgiveness that come from the Cross. That does not mean we are saving ourselves by our repentance, as many have tried to claim. We are completely unable to produce or even explain the mercy, love, and forgiveness that God offers us. But the reality is that if we are unwilling to receive the gifts that are offered to us, then we do not have those gifts. And what makes it possible for us to receive the best gifts that God offers is repentance. So nobody comes singing and dancing to the foot of the Cross. We come in deep sorrow, with new awareness of where we are and what we are like. On some level the Cross breaks our heart, or none of the love and mercy can get in none of the offered forgiveness can get through. Even those of us who are totally sold on Jesus and have walked in His New Way with earnest devotion for years still know that there are places and dimensions in our lives where we have not fully received the forgiveness that Christ Jesus offers us. Guess where the hang-up is? Some facet, some corner, some level of repentance still eludes us. Now I need to digress for a moment. An unfortunate aside perhaps, but it s crucial, I think, to those of us who want to live the Christian Life in our time. Huge numbers of church people in our society have shifted out of Christendom and into humanism. They think Christianity is about outer behavior. That means they have gone back to some version of the Law that thinks we can become acceptable if we love our neighbor, feed the poor, work to save the environment, work for justice and peace and by the way, more and more we are using false definitions of both justice and peace. Quietly but very insistently, a personal relationship with God, personal repentance, turning life and will over to the Holy Spirit, walking day by day in obedience to the Guidance of the Holy Spirit have all been put on the back burner, out of sight somewhere. Everywhere we turn, the church is saying (even yelling): Look at me and my good deeds! Come join us and add your good deeds to our good deeds. We can save the world. We can make a difference. We can right all the wrongs if we just get together and try hard enough. Jesus told us to be very quiet about such things. But we know better than He does. We want everybody to know how much good we are doing and how much more good we want to do, partly of course so they will come help with our projects and help us to be successful in our efforts. Heresy never dies. Idolatry never quits. It just finds new clothes and a little makeup and comes right back to try to seduce us all over again. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2014 All rights reserved. PAGE 2 OF 8

3 Under the banner of this humanism, our culture has grown into an addiction society. We do not have to repent; we just have to find some category some string of initials that will allow us to sidestep personal responsibility. Nobody can expect us to live by the precepts that build true community... because we have a nervous disorder or an emotional disorder or a psychic disorder, or we came from a dysfunctional family, or we suffered a huge trauma in our youth. (Who didn t? ) The majority of us are drugged up, often by prescription. And in the mix, the Christian organizations called churches have become the greatest enablers on the face of the earth. It is really hard to heal people, but never mind because we have learned how to be good enablers. Gone are the days when we believed in justification by faith. Our society now believes in justification by excuses. We make them for ourselves and we make them for each other. That is not the same thing as forgiveness. There is no room for forgiveness and no need for forgiveness if we never admit that we are wrong or that we need to change. In any case, repentance is out of date and out of style. Being born anew is just a phrase for some religious nuts on the fringe who are still guilt-ridden, and maybe they will wake up and come join the UCC and be free. If you were the author of novels, the creator of stories and adventures perhaps like J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, or J.K. Rowling but suddenly in the midst of the stories you were writing you discovered that the characters you had created were refusing to play the roles you had assigned to them. What would you do? Would you change the story to match what the characters were wanting to act out? Would you conclude that they knew better than you did what the story should be like, what should happen, and what it should all mean? By everything we know or experience, we conclude that God, though a superb Author/Creator, has chosen to give the characters free will. God hopes the characters (that s us) will ponder the story and catch on to what God wants the story to tell and be like. And as we do that, we will decide to cooperate to honor God s authority and authorship. More and more we will want to help with the story. But being awkward with our free will, we keep making mistakes. And each time we do, as soon as we realize it, we repent. That is, we turn back to God, turn back to the story, turn back to trying to do it God s WAY as nearly as we can discern what that is in our situation. But each and every time that happens, there is the residue of our mistakes. There is the damage we have done. Mistakes have consequences. Our society keeps trying to delete the concept of consequences. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2014 All rights reserved. PAGE 3 OF 8

4 Repentance includes the awareness of the consequences sorrow for the damage we have done. When possible, of course, we try to make amends; we try to fix or mend what we have damaged. But whether the damage is much or little, we need forgiveness. The Author has to reassure us that we are still valuable, that we are still allowed some place in the story, that we can have new chances to try again and hopefully do it better. Forgiveness means there is a next time. If we are sincere in our repentance, we may even learn from our mistakes. But since we are pretty new and inexperienced at life, we keep making mistakes. Mistakes are destructive. Some people never get that clear. Mistakes, by definition, are destructive. They damage us and others, and if left uncorrected, they keep right on doing damage. Forgiveness is one of the most important categories of life for us because it means that we can move back into a restored relationship with God. Sometimes not always, but often that results in a restored relationship with each other as well. As usual, trying to describe it in words makes it sound too wooden and complicated. Nevertheless, it is especially important for Christians to understand forgiveness, since the world around us talks glibly and constantly about such matters without having the faintest notion what it is talking about. Only God has the authority to forgive. We talk about our own forgiving when really we should talk about receiving and cooperating with God s forgiveness. In Christ Jesus, we are offered forgiveness. Our lives change if we are willing to receive this forgiveness. Having received forgiveness ourselves, we are delegated to declare (in appropriate times and ways) that this forgiveness from God is available to other people also. The rule is: If God accepts and forgives you, then so do I. For some people, that is the hardest part of the Christian Life. On the other hand, apart from that, there is no Christian Life. We cannot give what we do not have. But in fact, if we ourselves have received Christ s offered forgiveness if we have any authentic relationship with Jesus Christ we do have to cooperate when Jesus offers forgiveness to others. You do remember the old category? Any friend of yours is a friend of mine. Well, we are all supposed to be saying to Christ Jesus: Anyone You forgive, I will also consider forgiven. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2014 All rights reserved. PAGE 4 OF 8

5 So we are left with the law of forgiveness: Since we are no longer required to keep all the precepts of the Law before we find acceptance, caring, love, or status with God, neither are our fellow humans required to keep all the precepts before they find caring, love, or acceptance from us. We all need room and space to grow and learn. And we all need endless new chances. Jesus mentioned seventy times seven. Arabic numerals had not yet been invented; have you ever tried to multiply with Roman numerals? Seventy times seven meant something close to infinity to those who heard this teaching. There is no escaping it! The New Law is clear and, in some ways, more unyielding than the old one, but only on this one point: If you receive forgiveness, you must be willing to extend this forgiveness to others and at times, you will be asked to declare it to them. Only God has the authority to forgive. But we are required if we receive this forgiveness to cooperate with it, and to align our own lives with God s offered forgiveness. The words of Frank Weiskel still ring in my ears. He was my spiritual Mentor in long-ago New England days. I had been raised far more in the Law than in Grace. Of course, that often came out as we discussed our efforts in the church there in Amherst, New Hampshire. Frank would sometimes get exasperated with me, though he loved me greatly, and he would stop the conversation and say, Bruce, we are not in the morals business! We are in the forgiveness business! Jesus is totally uncompromising on this point. You may think of Him as kind, understanding, compassionate, and caring, but you will be very much mistaken when it comes to the subject of forgiveness itself. When it comes to the requirement to forgive, Jesus is completely unforgiving. I think it s because when humans talk about forgiveness, they become absurd, play word games, and deal in logical impossibilities. But Jesus cannot afford to leave us unclear on this subject: Forgiveness is not optional. It is required that we add our acceptance to anyone and everyone whom God forgives. There are no exceptions. (Red alert! Red alert! This is not a drill!) You heard the parable. If we translate the debt amounts: A man is forgiven a billion dollars, whereupon he goes to his fellow worker and demands that he be paid back the hundred dollars that is to owed him. And when the fellow worker cannot pay, the man has him thrown away. Sometimes we complain that the parables are difficult to grasp. But other times, like right here, the problem is that they are all too clear. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2014 All rights reserved. PAGE 5 OF 8

6 What is the difference between one hundred dollars and one billion dollars? What we each owe to God is beyond calculation, beyond comprehension. What others may owe to us is always comparatively small. At the end of this story, the Master (who is obviously God) is truly angry. He repeals the forgiveness of the billion-dollar debt. All judgment and condemnation come into full play on this man who has been unwilling to treat his fellow worker as God has treated him. And now he has the added ire of God on top of it. Now, you might claim that God is still hoping that the weight of judgment, hopelessness, and condemnation will cause this man to take a second look at his condition and perhaps beg for forgiveness a second time only this time mean it. (You see, we cannot mean it for ourselves if we do not mean it for others. That is one of conditions of forgiveness.) And without a qualm we can promise each other that if the man does indeed see it if he repents and seeks forgiveness again God will again release him from the full billion-dollar debt. After that, if he goes after his hundred bucks again, he will be in ever-deeper trouble and so it will go until he learns, if ever he learns. If ever we learn... We are stuck spiritually and emotionally stopped and stuck until we learn the law of forgiveness. We can take Jesus word for it or we can test it out for ourselves, or both. It comes out the same. This precept is amazingly difficult to learn, despite the fact that it operates with terrible precision all the time and all around us. If we go apart to a quiet place and look within to the condition of our own soul it will be as if our soul is a beautiful and productive field. But everywhere in our life where something is unforgiven, it will be like a huge boulder sits there in the middle of our field. Nothing grows near it, and always no matter what else we do or how productive we are trying to be always we must work around that boulder. It is always in the way. All other furrows and crops are twisted to go around it. And if the field is strewn with boulders, trying to work the field is more and more a nightmare. They are all too heavy for us to lift and none of our machinery can budge them. Only forgiveness can remove them. And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with every one of you, unless you each forgive your brother from your heart. That is not my opinion or a comment from me. That is Jesus talking. It is a chilling reminder of a hard-core requirement for every Christian. You would think that the necessity would be so obvious that we would not resent the requirement, but I have not found this to be so. The requirement to forgive remains one of the chief barriers to the Christian Life. That is, BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2014 All rights reserved. PAGE 6 OF 8

7 we avoid Jesus and whole-heartedly put off joining His Kingdom because of this requirement to receive and then to declare forgiveness. Actually, most of us like it for the most part, but for each of us there are a few situations and a few people that make this an egregious precept one almost impossible to swallow. This is, of course, frequently true in and around the stuck places in our lives. Should it cross your mind, this parable is not an isolated instance of Jesus being adamant about forgiveness. We know that His chief argument with the Pharisees is over this very issue. It is at the core of the core issue of Law versus Gospel. It is built into our primary understanding of discipleship by standing within the very prayer that identifies us as followers of Jesus and gives us the terms of the contract (the New Covenant): Forgive us the wrong we have done, as we have forgiven those who have wronged us. (Matthew 6:12 REB) And just in case that went by too fast or sounded too familiar, Jesus adds: For if you forgive others the wrongs they have done, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs that you have done. Does that sound obscure, confusing, difficult to grasp? Don t we wish! Christians never hear this parable without realizing that the man who was forgiven a billion dollars is like any one of us when we first come to the Cross. From a debt so deep and wide that there is no possibility of ever clearing it, we get eternal life and love and relationship with God handed to us. To then leave the Cross and go demand that others be perfect in their dealings with us that is what this parable is about. It is ludicrous, to be sure, but we forget anyway. And so we have to go back to the time when we first realized that God in Christ Jesus forgave and accepted us. Then the law of forgiveness shines forth again, and it is no longer difficult or hard to understand. Then forgiveness truly does flow from the heart, as our own gratitude wells up again from within. There is only one unforgivable sin in the Bible (Luke 12:10; Matthew 12:31, 32), and it is the refusal to accept forgiveness. If we absolutely refuse to receive forgiveness, how can we be forgiven? Please remember: If, five minutes or five years later, our hearts change and we become willing to receive forgiveness, we are no longer saddled with the unforgiveable sin. If we refuse to receive forgiveness, then by definition we are stuck with the unforgiveable sin. But it is this sin of rejecting forgiveness that is unforgiveable, not us, if our hearts change. Just a little comment for the Pharisees among us. BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2014 All rights reserved. PAGE 7 OF 8

8 Nevertheless, for us, forgiveness is not optional. It is not our forgiveness. We do not own it or manufacture it. If we do not forgive, we have not yet received forgiveness. If we have not yet received forgiveness, we are not able to forgive. So we are never a fellowship of the righteous; we are never a gathering of the good guys. We are the ecclesia: the people of Jesus a fellowship of sinners who are eager and delighted to extend to other repentant sinners the forgiveness that we ourselves have received. Sing Hallelujah! BRUCE VAN BLAIR 2014 All rights reserved. PAGE 8 OF 8