Derek was ticked. He had text-messaged his best friend some playful words about a girl he wanted to date. The kind of off-color stuff most people laugh at, but aren’t really appropriate, and would cause great embarrassment if it ever got into the wrong hands, which it did, because Derek’s buddy (or former buddy) shared it with ten other friends, who shared it with the very girl Derek was interested in. Derek didn’t think he could ever forgive his former best friend.
Jenny was extremely hurt because her friends didn’t call her when they went out last Friday night. She was home alone, wondering what was up, only to find out the next day that nobody thought to call her. She felt lonely and rejected. She was not going to forgive her friends for being so rude.
Tracey would not forgive her mother and father. How could she? Now 25 years old, she still struggled to sleep through the night, remembering those many nights as a young girl when her father would come into her room and force himself on her, threatening her with the wellbeing of her sister if she ever broke silence about what was going on. She couldn’t forgive her father. And she couldn’t forgive her mother who let it happen.
Mark wasn’t planning to forgive his wife anytime soon. Probably never. She cheated on him. That’s unforgivable.
Michael wasn’t planning to forgive the guy who lived next door who made a racial inference toward him, and followed it up with an “I’m just kiddin’ around.”
Sandy didn’t intend to forgive the people who invited her to church, but then treated her with disgust when they found out she was a lesbian. She didn’t plan on visiting their church, either.
Stan wasn’t about to forgive his company for laying him off in such a bad economy – what was he supposed to do now?
We all have stories of people who have hurt us, who deserve retribution, who we feel justified to judge.
Peter, the spokesman for Jesus’ disciples, asked Jesus about the rules of forgiveness (Matthew 18:21-35). Namely, he wanted to know how many times we should forgive people before letting them have it. Peter was probably confident in his guess of seven times. Seven was the number for completeness and perfection, plus it was more than double the traditional three times instructed by the rabbinical code.
Jesus drop-kicks Peter’s suggestion, and rattles his (and our) cage by instructing his disciples to extend unlimited forgiveness. Peter’s generosity in terms of grace turned out to be quite stingy in comparison, huh?
Noticing that Peter’s jaw had hit the floor in shock, Jesus told the story of the unforgiving servant. In this story, a servant (probably a high-ranking official) is brought before the king who demanded repayment of the servant’s debt. The amount owed was incalculable – more than the servant could every pay back in ten lifetimes. The king ordered him to be put into slavery. But the servant begged for leniency, and the king showed great mercy, canceling the entire debt. But that same servant, when he saw a man owing him a comparatively small amount, demanded repayment. When the guy said he didn’t have it and needed time, the servant wanted to beat him and jail him. The king got wind of this response, and called him to his court, where he reprimanded him for being so merciless when he had just received great mercy. Seeing his true colors, the king cast the servant into jail, where he would remain imprisoned for the rest of his life.
Many of us are imprisoned. We have been forgiven by the One we have offended the most – God, our Creator, the One who is keeping this whole thing going. We have been forgiven of all that we’ve ever done wrong, all thoughts, actions, attitudes – everything. And yet when we focus on the pain someone else has caused us, we can’t let it go, or them go. We hold onto the pain and anger. Still forgiven, we struggle to forgive others. We become embittered. We find ourselves in misery – a prison built by our own stubborn refusal to forgive as we’ve been forgiven.
That’s the irony, of course, that Lewis Smedes famously stated when he noted that when we forgive someone, we set a captive free, and discover that we were the ones in chains. It’s true.
Jesus basically makes a connection here between our capacity to forgive and the reality of forgiveness from God we’re walking in. In other words, our incapacity to forgive calls into question our own receipt of God’s forgiveness of our sin.
Note: It must be stated that God is not calling us to be doormats, taking abuse as it comes and never challenging it. The context of this story comes not long after instruction on how to hold people accountable for their poor choices.
This forgiveness stuff is directly related to the larger concept of love. The reality is that God wants us to be so overwhelmed and immersed by God’s love for us that the very same expressions of love flow out of us, pouring into a world stuck in a love drought. Living in and with this kind of love is the greatest gift we can offer each other, and the world. Read 1 Corinthians 13 and see how your love looks in comparison to this brief description.
The hardest and easiest people to love and forgive are those that mean the most to us – our closest friends, our spouse, our children, our coworkers. Paul, in speaking to the church at Ephesus in the first century, briefly described what love between a husband and wife should look like. The picture was a radical departure from anything in the ancient world – a Picasso among Monets. He made women functionally equal to men but telling husbands and wives to love each other as they had been loved by Christ. He told both parties to love and serve each other sacrificially, to put the others’ needs ahead of their own. He told men, in essence, to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their bride if necessary.
Radical love. Radical forgiveness. These are foreign concepts in our world today. But has the world’s approach worked very well? How well has the philosophy of retaliation worked for us in our pursuit of world peace? Has violence ever begat anything but violence?
There’s much more to say. Let’s simply say this: Derek, Jenny, Tracey, Mark, Michael, Sandy and Stan all have the choice to follow this world’s paradigm and choose not to forgive. Or, they could recognize that all people are broken, and all people find God equally forgiving, and therefore they could choose to forgive those who hurt them. One leads to perpetual suffering. The other leads to freedom and life. Which one should they choose? Which one should you choose?
Audio Download: http://www.crosswalknapa.org/mediafiles/sermons.xml
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