Forgiveness
Matthew 18:21-35
Our Gospel message today has a clear message for us. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Don’t forgive, and expect your debts to come back to you. The slave had amassed an unprecedented debt. In today’s standards, it would be the equivalent of $15 million. In reality, there was no way that this slave could ever hope to pay off such a debt. It was an unachievable mark.
However, when it came time for the slave to collect from another, he was unwilling to forgive a $15 debt and instead had the debtor thrown into prison until his family could repay the debt.
Such is our own life. We have unprecedented debt in regards to God our Father. We have offended him and owe Him much for His grace. He chose to forgive our debt as if it never existed. In return, we need to offer that same forgiveness to those around us.
Forgiveness is the virtue we value the most, and exercise the least. We all love to be forgiven; we expect it and we want it. But often, we struggle to forgive others; we resist it, and sometimes, we even refuse to do it.
Forgiveness is not natural. That’s why it’s so hard to do.
Forgiveness is not fair. Our sense of justice wants to be vindicated.
Often, we’d rather seek revenge rather than grant forgiveness. We’d rather push blame onto others instead of taking responsibility and asking for forgiveness ourselves.
Forgiveness is like meeting someone for the first time. That means there’s no baggage. No history. No grudges. No hidden resentments. To forgive means to start over by giving people a fresh start. In short, to forgive is to give grace to another, and free ourselves from bitterness and hate.
Seek Forgiveness
Forgiveness isn’t just for others. It’s for ourselves as well. Having guilt on our back is never a good feeling. Pride often gets in the way and we don’t feel comfortable asking for forgiveness for however we’ve hurt those around us. Instead of humbly coming forward and admitting fault, we allow division to rise between our relationships. By simply asking for forgiveness, we can sow the seeds of peace, harmony and restoration.
We’ve all done things wrong at one point or another. We’ve hurt those closest to us with our words and with our deeds. We’ve said things in the height of passion and anger that were designed to spur painful emotions. We’ve lied, cheated and stole. We’ve hated and we’ve been stubborn where we had no right. We’ve pushed love aside and replaced it with revenge.
Just as the man in the gospel message received forgiveness yet failed to forgive, sometimes, we might also look forward to receiving forgiveness from God, yet fail to give that same blessing to those around us. Everyone has affected relationships with either forgiving or failing to forgive.
Think about how this attitude can affect those closest to us. Ernest Hemingway loved to write about the country of Spain. In his short story, The Capital of the World, Hemingway tells of a father and son who had stopped talking to one another. Things got so bad that the son left home. After several years, the father wanted to mend the relationship and so he looked everywhere for his son. When he came to the capital city of Madrid, he decided to go to the newspaper office and take out a big ad in the newspaper that said this: “Paco, please meet me at 12 noon tomorrow in front of the newspaper office. All is forgiven. I love you. Your Father.”
The next day at 12 noon, there were 800 men named Paco standing in front of the building! I suspect we have some Paco’s here this morning in need of forgiveness. We may also have some parents who need to give the gift of forgiveness to others.
Freely Grant Forgiveness
But, seeking forgiveness is only have the picture. We need to freely grant forgiveness as well. Willingly and unconditionally. If we don’t forgive others, the pain, suffering and bitterness will eat us alive from the inside out. Placing pain on ourselves as well as on the offender.
Take a look at how spite can eat away at both sides of an offense. In the mid-1800s, there was a wealthy real-estate broker who aquired a plot of land in an exclusive residential area of New York City. This lot presented an unusual problem. It was five feet wide and 104 feet long. There was nothing that he could do but sell it to his neighbor. He went to the neighbor and asked if he would be interested in buying the lot.
The neighbor had a beautiful apartment building right next door and could have used the space to expand some of the apartments. However, he offered only 20% of the cost of the land. The millionaire exploded in anger. “Why, it’s worth five times that!”
The broker was beside himself with rage. Within a few days, he hired an architect and a contractor to build one of the strangest houses ever conceived. The neighbors complained, but the city officials could find no codes or violations to stop the construction.
He built a four story building consisting of eight tenement units that were little more than a row of tiny rooms. Each was barely able to accommodate a stick of furniture. In fact, the largest dining table in the building was a mere 18” wide. But, the building was instrumental in blocking sunlight to the neighbor’s apartment windows.
When it was finished, the wealthy broker moved into the uncomfortable house. There he lived for 15 years until his death. The house, which became known as “Spite House,” stood as a monument to one man’s problem of hate and unforgiveness. Blocking sunlight to the nearby apartment buildings while making life difficult for those who lived in such an odd sized dwelling.
There are a lot of Christians living in Spite House today. Jesus told Peter that he should forgive. Not just forgive Forgiveness is a major part of being a Christian. When we refuse to forgive then we begin to allow bitterness to stop us from entering into fellowship with God.
C.S. Lewis probably said it best when he said, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”
The effects of unforgiving are easily apparent: broken relationships, broken homes, division in the Body of Christ, bitterness, anger, resentment, rage, and so on. Every one of these are found in an unforgiving person.
Forgiveness is an Attitude
It’s easy to see that both forgiving and receiving forgiveness affect relationship and create a lasting attitude in both the offended and the offender. If we choose to continue with the offense, relationships will continue to be damaged and result in nothing but perpetual pain.
Look at how a tragedy can lead to continual unforgiveness.
Each week Kevin Tunell was required to mail a dollar to a family he’d rather forget. How’s that you might ask? They sued him for $1.5 million dollars but settled for $936 to be paid a dollar at a time. The family expected the payment each Friday so Tunell wouldn’t forget what happened on the first Friday of 1982. That’s the day their daughter was killed.
Tunell was convicted of manslaughter and drunken driving. He was 17 years-old at that time. She was 18. Tunell served a court sentence. He also spent seven years campaigning against drunk driving, 6 years more than his sentence required. But he kept forgetting to send the dollar.
The weekly restitution was to last until the year 2000. In other words, 18 years. Tunell was to make the check out to the victim, mail it to her family and it was to be deposited in a scholarship fund.
The girl’s family took Tunell to court 4 times for failure to comply. After one court appearance, Tunell spent 30 days in jail. He insisted that he wasn’t defying the order, but was haunted by the girl’s death and tormented by the reminders.
He offered the family two boxes of checks covering the payments until the year 2001, one year more than required. But they refused the checks. It’s not the money they were after, but penance, they said. Probably more like vengeance than penance.
The mother said, “We want to receive the check every week on time. He must understand we are going to pursue this until August of the year 2000. We’ll go back to court every month if we have to.”
I know that most of us would never question that family’s anger. But is 936 payments enough to demand from Kevin Tunell? Will that family ever be able to put the matter to rest? In some ways, no. But will they ever try to forgive? How much restitution is enough?
If you were that family, how many payments would you require? Or better yet, how many payments do you now require of someone? What about the person who has offended you? What do you require of him or her, and how many payments?
No one makes it through life without being hurt or injured in some form. No one. Just like that family, you’ve been a victim. But also like Kevin Tunnel, you’ve been the villain as well.
That 18 year-old girl died because someone drank too much. And perhaps a part of you has died because someone spoke too much, or demanded too much, or neglected too much.
Everyone gets wounded in life. No one is immune. And when we get hurt or wounded, we must decide: how many payments will I demand from my offender?
We may not require that our offender write checks to us, but we have other ways of settling the score.
Conclusion
So, what can we learn from all of this? Forgiveness is as much an attitude as it is an act.
Through the grace of god, we’ve already been forgiven from our own errors and shortcomings. An unforgiving heart produces nothing but pain in either the offended, the offender or even both. Forgiveness frees us from hatred and restores a us to a loving relationship with God as well as our fellow man. “Love and Forgiveness go hand and hand, you can’t Love without Forgiveness, and you can’t Forgive with out Love”.
God has graciously erased our debt just as the King erased the debt in our Gospel lesson. We’ll never have enough checks to pay off that debt. As we encounter those around us who hurt us, we need to remember our own debt that’s been erased and treat our offenders with the same kindness God first showed us.
Let us pray
Heavenly Father, thank you for always forgiving us when we bring our sins to you, for restoring us to fellowship, and for giving us your Holy Spirit to help us study your word now. We pray these things in Jesus’ name, Amen.
