FORGIVENESS
We are told to examine ourselves before participating in
communion. One aspect of this self-examination involves asking ourselves if we
have anything against anyone else, or on the other hand, if someone has
something against us. If we our memories have not betrayed us and our
conscience is clear, we can participate in the Lord’s Supper. If some sin or
grievance remains outstanding, we need to make amends or forgive those who have
wronged us.
Forgiveness
is one of the central themes of the Cross. It was one of the driving factors
that sent God in Christ to the Cross.
One day
when Jesus was talking about forgiving a brother who sins against you, Peter
reflected on this and wanted to impress Jesus. The rabbis taught that one
should forgive a brother up to three times. Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, how many
times shall forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Peter
thought himself extravagant by outdoing the rabbis times two and a half more.
In actual fact, Peter wanted to know how few
times he could forgive his brother. There must be a limit to forgiveness, he
thought.
Jesus’
reply shattered Peter’s own sense of generosity in the matter of forgiveness.
His answer, “…not seven times, but seventy-seven times (or 70x7),” actually has
no limit. It is not a mathematical formula but a metaphor implying that we are
to “go on and on and on forgiving.”
I am
struck by this truth almost daily. How many times do you or I go over an
offense in our minds in a week? We play out the video of the event in our
imaginations, thinking about the hurtful words or vile actions that wounded our
feelings. It might be a month ago; it might be five years ago. We can hear the
words; we feel the sting all over again.
Memories
like this need to be brought under the authority of prayer. As soon as you
begin to replay the archive in your head, stop and pray. It is a matter of
utmost importance to your life that you do this. An unforgiving spirit leads to
bitterness, vengeance, and broken relationships, if not with your offender then
with others, as you dwell on the hurt. It is a matter of extreme importance to
your relationship with God Himself that you forgive your offender.
Jesus
said, “…if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will
also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will
not forgive your sins,” (Mt. 6:14-15).
Christ’s
response to Peter that he forgive the brother who offends 490 times speaks of a
further reality: forgiveness is a process. To say “I forgive you” is not
enough. It needs to be repeated whenever we feel the sense of grievance rising
up anew in us. As one writer put it, the heart needs time to catch up with the
head.
By
learning this process of forgiveness (over and over) we are learning to know
the heart of God. God loves to grant pardon; God loves to forgive.
“God
forgives. For contemporary people, who often have a one-dimensional view of God
as a spirit of love, this doesn’t seem all that remarkable. For the prophets
and authors of the Hebrew Scriptures, however, the fact of God’s forgiveness
was an awesome, barely-to-be-believed wonder. God is “a God of pardons” who is
“merciful and forgiving,” and yet this divine mercy must not be taken for
granted.”[i]
To
illustrate the gravity of this truth, Jesus told a parable about a king who
wanted to settle accounts with those who owed the kingdom money. One man had
incredible debt and owed the king ten thousand talents, or shall we say, ten
thousand bags of gold.
For the
man to pay back what he owed was an impossible feat. So the king ordered the
man, his wife, and his children to be sold into slavery. This would in no way
pay the debt – hard labor would not be enough even if this family worked all
their lives. What enslaving the man and his family did do was illustrate the
king’s justice. It would serve also as a warning to others not to presume upon
the king’s treasures and think you could get away with it.
The man
pleaded – we don’t know how long or in what way – but he begged not for mercy
but for time. He wanted time to pay back what he owed, which as you will see in
a minute how impossible a request this was. Instead of time, the king showed
mercy to the man and forgave his debt completely. Now he owed nothing – he was
free.
You know
what the servant did next. He found a fellow servant who owed him a hundred
denarii, or shall we say a hundred silver coins. The first man grabbed his
fellow servant and choked him and demanded payment. The second man begged for
time, but instead of time or mercy, the first man threw the fellow servant in
jail to pay the debt.
I did
some math in this regard. I collect silver coins and I have one here that I
treasure. This coin is a $20 silver coin commemorating the Jets first season in
2011. Though it is stamped with “$20” I actually paid $100 for it. If I
purchased 100 of these coins it would cost me $10000, a hefty sum. Then I could
illustrate the one hundred silver coins from our story.
Now if I
had purchased a gold coin, slightly smaller than this one, it would have cost
me between two and three thousand dollars. Ten thousand bags (each with a
hundred coins) at a cost of $3000 would amount to 3 billion dollars.
Ten
thousand dollars debt is not uncommon for you and me. We can imagine paying off
a debt of this amount in three to five years. Three billion dollars? Let’s be
serious – who in the world could pay that off? If Bill Gates paid the price he
would be penniless and then ultimately indebted to someone else – he would
never be “free.”
This is
the cost of mercy. God has forgiven us an incredible debt. We could never repay
him for all that we have taken from him and used for our own pleasure. But on
the Cross of Christ we find the extravagant cost of our forgiveness.
The
question Jesus poses to his audience then, is this: If God has forgiven you so
much and so vastly, can you not forgive the lesser offenses of your brothers
and sisters?
As we
enter into communion and the self-examination that you have done or will do,
consider the great mercy of God in forgiving your sins, and forgive AGAIN those
who have hurt you. Seventy times seven, Jesus said, again and again. This is
what communion remembers.
AMEN
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