Sermon 8th July 2012

Today, our Curate, Gill Tayleur, continues our study of The Lord's Prayer

[We continue our series on the Lord’s Prayer, today looking at, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. We are using Tom Wright’s book, The Lord and his Prayer, as a basis for this series, and this sermon uses his helpful insights from that book extensively.]

“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Anyone remember that? It’s a quote from the 1970s film Love Story. I enjoyed it at the time – well, I cried through it at the time. But now I must say I disagree with the quote. I’m not the only one, lots of people have taken issue with it, including John Lennon who said, “Love means having to say you’re sorry every five minutes.”

Love doesn’t mean never having to say you’re sorry. Love means you are sorry when you hurt someone, especially someone you love, and in saying it you take responsibility for it. And give the person you have hurt, the opportunity to forgive you.

Saying sorry, and forgiving, don’t get talked about a lot in our society. Have you read an article in a magazine or paper recently on how to say sorry, or how to forgive your partner or friend? I haven’t. And if there’s an apology in a publication because they printed something not true, it’s often hidden away in a small paragraph in a middle page. We seem to have either forgotten about forgiveness or trivialised it.

And I think that’s because as a society we don’t think much about sin, or wrongdoing, about the stuff that might need forgiveness. For many people, there’s hardly any rights and wrongs any more, just the really extreme ones, and the philosophy of life is ‘live and let live’, ‘if it feels good, do it’, and tolerance is valued above nearly everything else.

If almost everything is tolerated, and almost nothing seen as morally wrong, then I don’t need God to forgive me, and I don’t need to forgive anyone else either. If I’m hurt by someone, I can retreat into my private world and pretend it didn’t happen. Or get revenge. Or simply delete or block the person from my Facebook or Twitter account, so I needn’t relate to them any more. There’s little pressure or encouragement to forgive the person who has hurt me.

Jesus talked a lot about forgiveness, and it’s here in the Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive us our sins, for we forgive everyone who does us wrong.” That’s what we just read in Luke’s gospel. In Matthew’s (chapter 6) Jesus said, “Forgive us the wrongs we have done, as we forgive the wrongs that others have done to us.” And a few verses later in Matthew, immediately after the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus adds, “If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.”

There are plenty of other places Jesus spoke about forgiveness, told stories or parables about forgiveness, and where he actually announced that someone was forgiven their sins! This was all part of the coming of God’s kingdom, which I’m bringing in, he said.

If you were here when we looked at the earlier line in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your will be done, your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven”, you’ll remember that Jesus announced the coming of God’s kingdom a lot. The people wanted God to come and rule as King, to liberate Israel from her slavery, to bring an end to oppression & exile, thus setting the world back to rights. They knew that that oppression & exile were consequences of Israel’s sin, and so that liberation would include liberation or freedom from sin. The Forgiveness of sins, capital F, was part of God’s kingdom coming. And Jesus announced this Forgiveness of sins, whenever he said, “your sins are forgiven” to someone, and showed it too, with healings and miracles, and in welcoming people looked down on as immoral and sinners. Jesus’ words and his life said, the Forgiveness of sins is happening now!

And as he went round announcing it, announcing that the Kingdom of God had arrived, and the Forgiveness of sins was happening, people responded and he taught them how to live as Kingdom of God, Forgiveness of sins, people. In particular, having received God’s forgiveness themselves, they were to forgive others. If they didn’t, it would show they hadn’t grasped what was going on, hadn’t grasped or accepted

that the Kingdom, and Forgiveness was coming. Not forgiving others wasn’t a matter of failing to live up to a new bit of moral teaching. It was more like cutting off the branch you’re sitting on. Denying others forgiveness, denies the truth that we’re forgiven by God. It denies the truth that we’re all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness, all of us including me, and not just people I think are worse than me.

For that is our natural frame of mind, isn’t it? To think, I’m not so bad, I’m not a sinner like a child abuser, or drug pusher, or murderer. Those are the sort of really extreme things everyone knows are wrong.

But wake up! Listen! The truth is, Jesus said, greed, and anger, and lust and jealousy,

control and manipulation, and selfishness of all sorts – is sin. He said that not loving God,

and living his ways, is sin. That not loving others – all the time! – is sin. The standard is,

not just above someone we consider worse than ourselves, more greedy than me,

more critical than me, a bigger liar than me, but the standard is how Jesus himself lived, a holy and perfect life, and that’s how God designed you and me to be. So none of us is up to the mark, all of us are sinners. We may not like hearing it, but it’s what Jesus said, and it’s true. And living in denial is pointless in the long run. But recognising our sin,

taking responsibility for it, is the way to forgiveness and freedom from it.

This is The Good News of the gospel! That God loves us, and offers his forgiveness and mercy, thanks to Jesus’ death on the cross. On the cross, Jesus took the whole weight of sin and evil on to himself, in his tortured, agonising death. On the cosmic scale, and the individual scale, that is for you and me, for your sin and mine. Because God loves us so much. That much.

And so the prayer “forgive us our sins” was supremely answered on the cross. The cross was indeed the great act of liberation, of forgiveness, which the people of Israel had been waiting for, although it didn’t look like it at the time. And we too can experience

that forgiveness and freedom, when we recognise our need for it, when we admit our sin.

Then we can live as his forgiven people. And that means forgiving others. As we read in Matthew, Jesus said, “If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.”

This doesn’t mean that we earn our forgiveness by forgiving other people. It’s saying, as people who understand and appreciate our own need for forgiveness, and God’s wonderful gracious mercy in giving it, so of course we are going to forgive others.

Asking for the blessing of God’s forgiveness only makes sense if we’re living by that same blessing, giving it to others, ourselves. It’s a nonsense not to.

And there are other reasons to forgive the people who’ve wronged us. I’m assuming there are people in your life who have wronged you. We’re all bruised, physically or emotionally, from what others have done. Accidentally or deliberately, people have hurt us, and it can rankle, and smoulder in our memory and emotions. We may be resentful, bitter & twisted, angry and/ or very, very hurt. But we can forgive.

You’ve hear it said from this lectern before, love is a choice, not just a feeling, a choice,

about how to live lovingly toward someone. In the same way, forgiveness is a choice,

not just a feeling.

One way of thinking about forgiveness, is in terms of releasing or writing off a debt.

When someone has wronged us, the damage is like a debt to be paid. The damage they’ve done and the debt they owe us may be emotional, financial, physical or relational. It might be as a result of betrayal, or related to our reputation. Whatever the situation, a debt is owed to us, because we’ve been wronged.

In order to forgive, we can decide, can choose, to write off the debt, to release the person who has wronged us, from their obligation to us. We can choose not to expect them to repay the debt.

Imagine living with one hand tied by a strong cord (representing the debt owed to us)

to a big wheelbarrow full of sand (the way we were wronged). We have to push that thing round with us everywhere we go. It’s exhausting! But this is a picture of the burden

of an unforgiven sin against us. Forgiving means taking a sharp knife and cutting that cord, dropping the load and leaving it behind. What a relief!

Forgiveness is a choice. It doesn’t condone the wrong or hurtful action. It doesn’t mean that the consequences of their wrong against us disappear. And we can be sure that one day God will judge the one who has wronged us, and indeed all of us. But forgiving those who have wronged us, by writing off their debt, or slashing the cord that binds us to their wrong, means that we can be free of the burden of it.

So, we’ve seen there are several reasons why we might choose to forgive those who have wronged us. Because God has forgiven us – at the price of his son’s agonising death on the cross. Then, it’s a nonsense not to – as in, if we say we believe in our sins being forgiven, isn’t it hypocritical not to offer the same forgiveness to others? So when we forgive, we are behaving like our Father in heaven. Then, not forgiving can be a dreadful burden to us, like the wheelbarrow of sand. It can lead us into sin ourselves;

lead us to bitterness, resentment, anger, self pity.

And lastly and most importantly, we forgive because Jesus told us to. We’ve just heard it in the Lord’s Prayer, and there are plenty of other places where we are told to forgive like God does. Later in Matthew’s gospel, in chapter 18 Peter asked Jesus

how many times should we forgive someone who has wronged us? Rabbis would have said 3 times. Peter said, is it as many as 7 times? Jesus replied, 70 times 7 times! In other words, without limit. Forgive, again and again. And again. And again. Even if the person isn’t sorry? Jesus says to forgive because God forgives us, full stop.

This is so hard. I know this is so hard. There are people in my life I have to forgive over and over, knowing it’ll happen again, it’s infuriating! But it’s my choice. To push a wheelbarrow around all the time, & carry all that infuriation, and hurt, and indignation,

and self pity, and self righteousness – or to slash the cord and forgive, to let the debt go. Freedom. It’s a no brainer. But still it can be very, very hard to do.

So how do we forgive? We’ve heard it’s a choice – what does that mean, how do we cut that cord?

We pray. We bring it all to God. We come and tell God all we think & feel about what has happened. He has plenty of experience of people saying and doing things that hurt him. We bring to him our pain, our anger, all of it. We thank him for forgiving us,

and ask him to help us forgive the other person.

Then we have to recognise the wrong against us, to see it for what it is. In my experience, thinking about it, often means seeing some way I’ve contributed or not helped the situation, or at least reacted badly to it, so that the sin isn’t entirely on their side. In which case we need to genuinely repent and honestly say sorry to God for our own wrong doing.

I have sometimes found that writing down what has happened, how I’ve been hurt,

what the debt is if you like, is helpful. To write an imaginary letter to the person, one I’m not going to send, saying you did this this and this and it hurt me or caused trouble for me in these ways... Or we can write down simply how they’ve wronged us, what they owe us, like a bill. And then we can make the choice, the firm irrevocable choice, to forgive them. We must rip the paper up, or burn it. Or write PAID on it like a bill, and then throw it away. Get rid of it. Permanently.

Or if pictures and imagination is more our thing, maybe imagine the wheelbarrow, and imagine it being full of the way we were wronged, picture the wrong in there in some way. And imagine cutting the cord that binds us to it – slash it! And see it roll away down a hill, or see yourself stand up and start to walk away from it.

Whether either of these ways are helpful for you, or you find some other way of putting into practice the choice to forgive, I strongly encourage us to speak our forgiveness out loud before God. “I forgive my brother for the things he said. I choose to forgive him. I set him free from owing me for it. I don’t expect him to pay me back any more. The debt is written off. He’s free of it. And so am I.”

We may not FEEL any different; that’s not the point. We’ve made a choice, we’ve acted on it, we’ve forgiven. Now we can pray for the person who has wronged us. Pray for them – for God’s blessings on them, for their well being in whatever ways are appropriate. We might think of a practical way to show kindness or love toward them.

I may have made it sound easy – it’s not. I may have made it sound quick – sometimes it can be, once and for all, sometimes forgiveness is a long drawn out process,

especially if the wrong and the damage caused was great and the pain runs deep.

But over time, God can help forgiveness to really take effect, and can bring a measure of healing for the pain, so that our bruises can be healed.

I realise that in 15 minutes I’ve not covered every aspect of forgiveness! It’s a big subject and there are lots of difficult questions about it I’ve not begun to tackle – and that I don’t have the answer to. But I’d like to end with a story from the Evening Standard a few weeks ago, 12^th May:

“A mother whose 22 year old son was stabbed to death in a brutal gang attack is to sell family heirlooms to raise thousands of pounds to help give his killers the chance to lead better lives. In an extraordinary act of forgiveness, Fatemah Golmakani, 56, said she hopes to mentor her son Milad’s four attackers when they leave prison. She wants to show them they are loved, take them on nice trips, and show them what life is really about”. She said her anger had turned to sadness and now to forgiveness. She added: “I can’t bring my son back but what I can do is forgive his murderers to begin to take the weight off myself. It’s the only way I can start coming to terms with it.”

Every week we pray the Lord’s Prayer together. We pray, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” Today, will we earnestly admit our sin and ask God for forgiveness? He has promised to give it freely out of his great love for us!

And today, will we choose to forgive those who have sinned against us?

Amen.

RESPONSE

WHO do you need to forgive? Maybe there’s someone you’re not on speaking terms with? Or someone about whom you’ve said, “I can never forgive them!” It may be a family member, a friend, someone you work with, a neighbour, or someone here in church. Who might you need to forgive?

WHAT have they done to wrong you?

HOW do you feel about that, and about them?

Is the way you think or feel actually something you need God’s forgiveness for yourself as well? (maybe anger, desire for revenge, self pity, bitterness)

WHAT do they owe you? What’s on the bill, or in the wheelbarrow?

WHAT might it look or feel like to be free of that outstanding bill, or of the weight of the wheelbarrow?

DO you want that? Will you CHOOSE to forgive?

DO IT! SAY IT! PRAY IT!

WHAT else can YOU do to enact your forgiveness?

To show love to the person?

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