How to Forgive and Why A Sermon by Rev. Matt Fitzgerald St. Pauls UCC, Chicago IL Matthew 18:21-35 Then Peter came and said to him, Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow-slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, Pay what you owe. Then his fellow-slave fell down and pleaded with him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you. But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow-slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you? And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart. Every one of the 52 stories that we'll read this year is embedded in a larger story, an overarching narrative that the Bible tells. First - We are estranged from God. Born to live in paradise, we are exiles, living east of Eden, neither where we should be, nor who should be, but exiled. We are born to live so close to God that he might just walk out of the hedgerow in the gloaming, but instead we are estranged. To be human is for that separation to surface in our interactions with one another. Divided from the love that made us, we then turn and struggle with each other.
Scripture wants to credit all of this with an originating incident. The apple that Adam and Eve ate. The longing to be god-like. Personally, I'm not concerned with why we're like this. I just know that we are. I feel it. I see it. It is why we try to solve our problems with violence. Why we struggle to be understood. Why we don't even understand ourselves. Why God seems so obvious, but also so far away. Why doing the right thing is so logical, but is also, all too often, next to impossible. When read through the biblical story, human existence emerges as a state in which I am cut off from my own best self, from my sisters and my brothers, and from my God. A hard truth, but only the truth can set us free. For, the Good News of our religion is that God cannot and will not tolerate this great divide. And so second, after the fall, the next move in the Christian story is the claim that the ultimate expression of God's might is to cede all majesty, give away control, leap over and into the chasm between humanity and the divine, to walk among us in order to love us no matter what we've done. To pull every one of us back into God's embrace. In Jesus God bridges the gap, brings us back into Eden, forgives the Adam and the Eve deep within each person and forgives every one of our petty little sins in the process. All of this, I think, helps explain what was going through that former debtors' mind the minute he walked out of his King's presence. What was he thinking? My guess is that the second the height of his relief began to fade, his mind began to wander. Thinking about the pain in his lower back, or how he'd spend his summer vacation or whether the car needed an oil change, or I can't believe it's twenty degrees outside again, and hey, there's that guy who owes me money.
In other words, that former debtor was much like you and me. Easily distracted, the memory of grace erased by ten-thousand interruptions, constantly forgetting just how much we've been forgiven. Always wanting justice to trump mercy, so long as we're not on the receiving end. And so he grabs his debtor by the neck, demands repayment, full of self-righteous indignation. Determined to get some justice. In my time working as a caretaker for developmentally delayed adults I had two men on my caseload named Dave and Johnny. They were roommates and had lived together for nearly fifteen years. Picture the Odd Couple except that Dave was Oscar and Johnny was also Oscar and you'll get a sense of the dynamic in their apartment. They got along beautifully, loved the same television shows, wore each other's clothes and bowled together each Thursday afternoon, all the while providing one another with strong, but usually unspoken emotional support. Unlike most of the other guys I tried to support these two thrived despite living in a culture that was inhospitable, cruel because of their disabilities. They needed each other. And they had each other. It was a real joy to behold. I believe Dave and Johnny had one of the best friendships I've ever seen. Except they fought about work. Dave functioned highly enough to work outside prepping pizzas and folding delivery boxes at Domino's. Meanwhile, Billy spent the day on a sort of lowkey assembly line in a sheltered workshop with the other folks in our program. Dave's job was obviously better. He made friends, ate free pizza, and, best of all, received a $20.00 tip-out from the delivery drivers at the end of each week. He lorded all of this over Johnny with a constant subtle sort of patronization. The money came in singles and five dollar
bills which he set lovingly on his dresser every Friday afternoon. Meanwhile Johnny had direct deposit and me as a co-signer on his checking account. And then, all of a sudden he always had a fresh pack of cigarettes, spare change for a Mountain Dew, a dollar in his pocket. And you know where this is going. Mid-week when I dropped in on them I found these two friends, these two men who needed each other so profoundly, both just heartbroken. Dave was locked in his bedroom. Johnny sat on the couch with his head in his hands. The story came out quickly. Dave had caught his roommate rifling his dresser, pocketing his cash. It had been going on for months. Weeks went by and Dave refused to forgive his friend. Whenever I dropped in it wall stony silence and Johnny's awkward overtures. He asked and asked for a little bit of grace and he got none. Why Dave asked me, should I forgive him? I m going to ignore him. Just let him sit there. And that's what he did. And even though Dave's insistence on justice over mercy felt right his eyes were sad every time I came by. The life had gone right out of that apartment. Why should I forgive him? Dave put it so plainly. But it wasn't a rhetorical question. It was a plea. More like, Please tell me, why should I forgive him? I want to. Tell me why I should. Or perhaps a plea is how I ask the question. How in the world can I ever find the strength, the grace, the love to forgive those who have truly hurt me? How can you? On the surface Jesus sure doesn't give an easy answer, He just says forgive. And by the way, if you don't forgive, you'll be tortured.
And so Dave sits on one side of his living room stone cold, Johnny on the other. Dave, determined to remain stone-cold, but obviously wanting nothing more, nothing more, than a return to the friendship that gave him so much meaning. All of which is to illustrate the point I began this sermon with: In the language of his own parable Christ erases our debt and we are set free. And what what kind of hypocrite, what kind of ingrate would ever refuse to practice mercy, once his own debts have been erased? The answer, I think, is a person who knows neither the measure of his debt, nor the fact that it has been forgiven. Or a person who has somehow forgotten both the measure of her debt, and the fact that it has been forgiven. How will we ever learn to forgive? First, we will discover how much we need to be forgiven. And then we will realize that our debts have been destroyed. First we will discover how much we need to be forgiven by God, and then we will realize that She has given us abundant grace. Wiped our debt off the books. Love us unconditionally. Back to that apartment. Dave may not have been as guilty as his Johnny. But he was hardly blameless. I know that in his life Dave hurt people, wounded and worried his own family, acted selfishly, and offended God in the process. Not because he confessed a thing, but because he was a human being. And I have no doubt that God loved him nonetheless. How could Dave ever hope to forgive his friend? By realizing that he himself had been forgiven.
But how was he to know? He didn't go to church. He didn't know the story. And no one in his life would ever dream of preaching him the gospel. I couldn't. At that point in my life, twentythree years old, much more concerned with self than God, I stood a better chance of reciting the Gettysburg address in French than I did speaking coherently about the love of Christ. I didn't have the language. I didn't know what was happening, why there was this distance between Dave and Johnny, between me and my own family, between the person I was born to be, and the man I was becoming. And so the day that Dave asked me about forgiveness and I said nothing in response, I left his apartment, totally stymied by the tragedy of existence. Unaware that all I knew was the first act. The first chapter. The first move in the story. Dave and Johnny left me yearning for the love of God even though I didn't know it. And while I didn't return to church the very next morning, I know that conversation and my own inability to speak changed my life. I wish I could go back in time to answer Dave's question. How to forgive? Come to church. Learn a story strong enough to order existence. Stronger than eye for an eye. Stronger than me, mine, more, purchasing power. Come to church. Learn the story. Pray the prayer of confession with all your heart and mind and soul. Receive the words of absolution as a stone-broke debtor suddenly set free. Feel your debt forgiven. Rejoice at the goodness of our God, and then, come back to be reminded of these truths. Come back on Easter Sunday when the brass pins your ears back and the scent of lilies lifts your senses up to heaven. Come back in the dead of winter when
you have to kick the slush off your boots before walking in the door to sing the day's first hymn. Come celebrate that your every sin has been forgiven, that God's love is yours, that Christ has paid the debt which once defined you. What Christianity promises is that when this happens you will realize you have no choice but to turn and forgive the ones who wound you, Forgive your family even if you had to leave them to save yourself, Forgive, even God, who wields grace as both a sword and healing balm, tearing your heart in two, even as he sews it back together. Forgive yourself, not to excuse your own wrongdoing, but in order to let God be God. In order to let Christ's love change you. And if I don't? If refuse to be re-molded, re-formed, re-made by grace? Well, Jesus says I will be tortured. Not in some cartoon hell whose existence is a fiction. But in this life, my refusal to forgive its own just dessert. Dave's refusal to forgive its own penalty as he stands there stonestill and dead quiet in a home once filled with love, wishing desperately that existence were different, unaware that it already is. Amen.