“THE CALL TO FORGIVE --- WHAT A COINCIDENCE!” Matthew 18:21-35

Dr. Charles D. Yoost, Senior Pastor I see it there. Don’t you? There’s a pack on your back! Oh, with your Sunday clothes on, it’s not too noticeable. Don’t worry. It’s not obvious. But I can tell: you have a pack on your back. You’ve got a lot of stuff in that pack. Sometimes it gets pretty heavy, doesn’t it? Hey, I know. I’m wearing one, too. You know what I keep in mine? I store things there, just like a squirrel getting ready for winter. When somebody embarrasses me, I jot that down, and put it in the pack. When I am humiliated, I note carefully who said what, and that goes in the pack. All my hurt feelings are stored there. Every little injury, each unkind statement, and all the collected grudges of the years: they’re all in my pack. It’s getting heavy, almost too heavy to carry. But I’ll make it. Just watch me. I can handle it. I always have. You can handle yours, too. You have to. My pack comes in handy. For not only do I use it to collect all the hates and cruelties and injustices of my life, I also use it to dispense some zingers of my own. When I have a chance, and I see you in a vulnerable spot, why, I just reach back into my pack very cautiously and get out one the bits and pieces that have your name on it, one of the things you have done to me. I take careful aim, and hurl that bit of poison back at you. My pack comes in handy. I never put it down! I never know when I’m going to need some ammunition, and I wouldn’t want to get caught off guard. I even sleep with my pack on! Oh, it wasn’t very comfortable at first, but I’ve gotten used to it. I’d feel strange without it now. One afternoon as I was struggling along under the weight of my pack, someone stopped and asked if I wanted a ride. I gratefully accepted. He noticed that I didn’t put the pack down, even though there was plenty of room in the back seat. Obviously, he didn’t realize the importance keeping my pack handy at all times. Some people just don’t understand. Like this Jesus fellow. He says to take off your pack and let your shoulders have a rest and see what it’s like to walk around without that load on your back. He says that there’s more power in letting go of all that stuff than there is in hanging on to it with one hand and reaching inside for little bits of ammunition with the other. He says that taking off the pack --- with God’s help, of course, is the key to understanding the new life that he keeps talking about. It sure sounds attractive: freedom from the weight of that heavy load; power that brings healing to

  

 

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relationships that have steadily deteriorated through the years. He says all this is a gift from God --- giving us power and setting us free. I wonder. What I am talking about, of course, is forgiveness: that basic experience that makes such a difference to everyone and everything it touches. Forgiveness is the key to the Christian life. It is the cornerstone in our relationship with God. It is the only way to get the packs off our backs and begin living the full, free life that God intends for you and for me. The dictionary defines forgiveness as “giving up resentment against a person or giving up the desire to punish.” That’s what God has done for us. That’s what God calls us to do for others. For every American, September 11 will never again be just another day on the calendar, the day after September 10 and the day before September 12. From those who were grade school children at the time, to those who are senior adults, all of us can remember where we were and what we were doing at the hour we learned that terrorists had attacked our country that day in 2001. When we began planning for the fall kick-off, I noted that by coincidence, the big day was going to fall on Sunday this year, the tenth anniversary of that horrific event. Then I looked at the lectionary Scriptures for the day. As many of you know, the lectionary is a cycle of Bible readings, designed to cover the major themes and events and stories of the Bible in three years. The appointed Scripture for today is Jesus’ parable of the Unforgiving Servant. What a coincidence, I thought! Then I remembered what I heard my friend and mentor, Joe Harding, say many times. Joe Harding, the designer of Vision 2000 and many other evangelistic tools for the United Methodist Church, preached here at Church of the Saviour on several occasions. Joe used to say, “There is no such thing as a coincidence. What we think of as a coincidence is really God working incognito.” Then I began to ask myself, what is God saying to us today? What does God want us to do on September 11, 2011? Does God want us to take the packs off our backs? Are we ready, are we able to forgive? When Peter suggests that seven is the appropriate number of times to forgive a brother or sister, he seems to be demonstrating to Jesus how much he has learned under the Master’s tutelage. Seven is an important number in biblical numerology. It is the number of completeness, as in the seven-day week in the Genesis creation account. We often set up criteria before we are willing to forgive someone: he must say he is sorry. She must be willing to make amends. But it appears that Peter is willing to forgive without any sign of repentance on the part of the offender. Thus Peter demonstrates his understanding of a gracious and generous heart by suggesting the unthinkable: offering forgiveness not once or twice, as might be expected for a righteous person, but seven times. Jesus, of course, has more to teach Peter. He begins by saying that though Peter is on the right track, he is not there yet. “Not seven times,” Jesus says. Seven is a good start, but complete love is shown by those who forgive without measure. Bible scholars do not agree as to whether Jesus means “77” or “70 times 7,” but the point is clear: we should be so generous of heart as to forgive beyond the ability to count. Those who keep score are, in a sense, not really practicing forgiveness. They are merely collecting offenses, putting them in their packs and allowing them to accrue until the pack gets so heavy that anyone would see the obvious need to write the offender off. To illustrate what he means by forgiveness, Jesus tells a story. In that story a king forgave a servant who owed a huge debt, an inconceivable amount of money. In these difficult economic circumstances, what could be better than the news that all our debts are canceled? No more house payment, no more car payment, no more medical bills, no more credit card debt. The debts are canceled; the ledger thrown away. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

  

 

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But the servant left that experience where he had received extravagant mercy, for the debt was larger than ever he could hope to pay, and who should he bump into but a fellow servant who owed him some money (a small amount by comparison), and grabbed him and ordered him to pay up! When the poor fellow could not pay, the man had him thrown in prison. When the king learned this, he called the man whom he had forgiven and had him imprisoned. “I forgave you all that debt …and should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant? “ Then the hard words of Jesus: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” Did you read the fine print? Did you hear that last condition? Grace is offered. God will forgive. But, in order to receive forgiveness, we must be willing to forgive others. May I remind you that every time we say the Lord’s Prayer we say, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” God’s forgiveness of us is linked to our forgiveness of others. Forgiveness is not a quality that comes easily to most of us. The wounds are too deep. The pain is too severe. The damage is too extensive. So it is that the way of Jesus comes as a challenge to us when he asks us to forgive those who have trespassed against us. Now if it was just anybody saying it, we would have a tendency to ignore them. But when Jesus says it, it has a different ring to it, for here is a man who practiced what he preached. Not only did he teach about forgiveness in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus practiced forgiveness in his own life. The call to forgive that I want you to think with me about this morning is not a philosopher’s theory or a social scientist’s formula for successful living. No, the spirit of forgiveness is a viable lifestyle, demonstrated by Jesus. A Sunday school teacher asked the class what impressed them the most about Jesus. One little boy said, “The thing that impresses me most is when Jesus forgave the people from the cross.” Intrigued, the teacher asked, “Why do you say that?” The boy replied, “Because I could not have done it.” I’m not sure I could have done it. But Jesus did. And he bids us to follow in his steps. Peter Storey, who was our Myers Lecture speaker here at Church of the Saviour several years ago, was one of the architects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. The world watched as apartheid was dismantled, and forgiveness, rather than vengeance became the order of the day as that country began a new chapter in its history. Eighteen years after the fact, a member of the secret police confessed that he had shot a young man, then went to his home and dragged his father out of the house and shot him, in front of his wife, and forced her to watch as he and his drunken friends dragged both bodies away. As he confessed this crime, the horrified court sat in silence as the judge asked the wife and mother, “What would you like to see done to this man?” The old woman, who was both a grieving mother and a grieving widow, said softly, “This man has taken away from me all that I had. But he has not taken away all of my ability to love. I want him to gather up some of the dirt from where my husband is buried. And I want him to visit me twice a month.” (1) This woman could have asked for revenge, but instead she chose the path toward reconciliation. The day the United States invaded Iraq, confident that the most evil and threatening force in the world was Saddam Hussein, a worship service was held on the campus of Easter College. Tony Campolo was the preacher, and during his sermon, he proposed that, rather than drop bombs on the Iraqis to try to force Hussein from power, the U.S. should send ships to Iraq laden with medical supplies, food and other items, dump these on the Iraqi people for free, and see

  

 

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what would happen. Campolo said, “If Hussein is still in power in six months, attack if you must.” (2) Of course, few took Tony Campolo seriously. His seemed a ridiculous proposal. Did he not care about justice? Wrong had been done, and somebody had to pay. The United States proclaimed that Iraq was a just war, a war on terror, and we spent $ 700 billion dollars and lost nearly 5,000 American military personnel, including our own Augie Schroeder, who was 23 years old at the time of his death. In 2006, a crazed gunman burst into a one-room Amish schoolhouse near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and shot ten girls, ages 6 to 13, killing five of them, and then committed suicide there in the classroom. Amidst shock and grief, the Amish leaders emphasized the concept of forgiveness and offered reconciliation to the family of the man who had murdered their children, even inviting the widow of the gunman to one of the funerals. I learned through one of our members, Pete Krouse, a reporter for the Plain Dealer, that when a high-level delegation of Chinese visitors came to Cleveland as part of a trade mission, one of the things they requested see was an Amish community, because they had heard about the shooting in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and were intrigued by the Amish community’s ability to forgive. This fall we are focusing on text messages from God. I believe it is no coincidence that the parable of the Unforgiving Servant is our text for the day. Did you hear the phone? Did you get the text? Let September 11, 2011, be a day of new beginnings. Let it be the day we answer the text message from God: the call to forgive. Prayer: Dear God, How hard it is to forgive! How hard it is to take the packs off our backs and let go of the hurts and injuries we have experienced through the years. Yet we know that offering forgiveness is the only way to the full, free life that you intend for us. Help us to ask ourselves who you are calling us to forgive, and from whom do we need to ask forgiveness. Thank you, Jesus, for taking all our sins upon yourself and forgiving each and every one. Having experienced your forgiveness, help us to go and do likewise! Amen. “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you!” --- Anonymous Notes:

1. Pulpit Resource. Vol. 39. No. 3, p. 38. 2. Ibid., p. 39.

© 2011 Charles D. Yoost