Pentecost 14, year A

Last week we talked about the fact that Jesus gives us the power to hold one another accountable when we sin against one another.   

And we talked about the fact that the reason for this power Jesus gives us is that sin leads to death.   And Jesus is no fan of death! 

Jesus is all about life and wants us to be too.   

So part of loving one another is to help keep one another on life giving journeys, and also to keep our community together so that we can be witnesses to God’s love in the world, in spite of the fact that we will inevitably sin against one another. 

So how do we hold one another accountable?  We talked about the first part of that answer last week—the importance of creating a safe space of trust and love between one another and also within our community—the intentional work of respecting the dignity of every human being, even when the going gets rough and we find that hard to do. 

So today we come to the second part of holding one another accountable.   

Forgiveness. 

Jesus is big on forgiveness. 

When the disciples come to him and ask him to teach them to pray, he gives them a prayer in which forgiveness plays a central role.

“And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”   

Or– if you prefer the contemporary version of the Lord ’s Prayer—forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. 

In today’s gospel, in order to back up his insistence that forgiveness should be a way of life for all of us, Jesus  gives us what turns out to be a rather troubling parable  in which he compares the kingdom of heaven to this very earthly story of a repeating cycle of hatred and violence in which an unbelievably merciful king forgives the gigantic and unpayable debt of a servant who then goes out and shows no mercy to someone in his debt and actually has that person thrown into prison.  And the king, upon hearing of this servant’s lack of mercy, withdraws his own mercy and has the man handed over to be tortured until he can pay his own impossible debt.   

A very ugly story, and then like a knife twisting in our hearts comes the clincher at the end—“And so my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” 

What? 

Don’t we hear over and over that God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love?  So how could this be, that God would not only not forgive us but torture us until we repay our debt?

First of all, let me say here that Jesus, especially in the gospel according to Matthew, loves to speak in hyperbole—that is, he loves to say shocking things in order to get people’s attention and to make his point.  Remember those passages about plucking out your eye if it sins against you, or cutting off your hand?  These passages are meant to grab us, shake us up, and get us to pay attention to the point Jesus is trying to make. 

So I don’t think God is planning to torture anyone for anything—that goes against the very nature of God. 

But because God has given us free will, God will let us torture ourselves, even to death, and that is exactly what can happen when we don’t forgive one another for the wrongs that we do to one another.  And in the process of torturing ourselves because we choose not to forgive, we commit yet another sin.   

We break God’s heart.   

Because holding on to resentment, anger, outrage and hatred, no matter how justified that response is, only eats away at us from the inside.  It’s like constantly  drinking battery acid, and that stuff will kill you in the end.   

That’s why Jesus harps on the need to forgive, because if we don’t, our hearts are going to die, and remember, Jesus is all about life. 

But—to choose the path of forgiveness can be one of the hardest decisions we’ll ever make, depending on what it is we need to forgive.

To forgive someone takes commitment, time and work.   

And forgiveness is not a one time thing that we do and then forget about it all.   When we remember the sin that we have committed and still feel guilty for and we haven’t forgiven ourselves, or when we remember yet again the sin that someone has committed against us, we once again have to choose to go back down that path of forgiveness. 

If you wanted to listen to me preach all day, we could now enter into a “How To” section of the sermon.   

But instead, I’d like to suggest that if you want to explore more about forgiveness that you can turn to some of the resources that Ben listed in his email this past Friday.   

First of all, for why forgiveness is transforming, you could watch this DVD, The Power of Forgiveness.   This is my copy. I would be glad to loan it to you, or if enough people want to see it, we could watch it together sometime and then talk about it.   

And if you want a manual on how to forgive, I’d recommend Desmond Tutu’s new book, The Book of Forgiving, in which he offers what he calls the fourfold path to healing.  You can find some of the details about this book in Ben’s email, and if it seems helpful to you, then order the book or check it out of the library.  Again, I would be glad to meet with a group and we could work through the book together .

So with those resources in mind, I’d like to leave you with the last words Jesus said in today’s gospel about forgiveness, that we are to forgive our brothers and sisters from our hearts. 

For Jesus, it all comes back to that safe space we talked about last Sunday. 

I’m going to call this the heart space—God’s dwelling space in each of us, the space from which we reach out to others with openness, respect and trust, even in the face of possible rejection, danger or death.   

The place in which the transformation of ourselves, our relationships, and our knowledge and love of God can grow, like that tree planted by streams of living water in Psalm 1, which yields its fruit in due season and its leaves do not wither.   

It’s from this space within that the forgiveness that Jesus wants us to offer has to come—and so as I said last Sunday, it’s the loving attention to the heart and that safe space that eventually gives us the motivation to want to move out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, and out of death into life, as our Eucharistic Prayer today puts it.     

One last thing.  In the end, no matter how hard we try and work, and read how to  books and pray and hold on to the desire to forgive,  in the end, being able to forgive ourselves and one another is God’s gift, a total act of grace on God’s part. 

At least that’s the way I’ve always experienced it. 

Once many years ago I felt so sinned against, and I knew that my anger toward the person was eating me alive, turning me into a person I didn’t want to be, but no matter what I did, I just couldn’t let my anger and frustration go—yes, it diminished, but it was still there, like a fatal cancer. 

One day I was praying, not even about this situation, and suddenly I had a vision. 

I saw a long ugly scar running down my torso. 

And out of the scar was growing a beautiful flower.   

I think that’s why I like the cover of Tutu’s book so much—it brought back this memory of mine. 

And I looked at the scar and knew it would always be there, but that’s ok.  Because the beautiful flower never could have grown and bloomed unless the scar had been there. 

In the end, the forgiveness I finally experienced was the gift God longed to give me.   

I decided to take it. 

And I hope you will too.   

Amen.