Do any of you remember the movie Love Story? From at least 30 years ago, starring Ryan O’Neill and Ali McGraw? It was a real tear-jerker. Spoiled rich young man at Harvard meets gifted beauty from the wrong side of the tracks... she dies, eventually, of some unspecified wasting disease that leaves her looking more ethereally beautiful as the hankies come out and the muffled sobs fill the theater. The reason I bring it up is because of its most famous line. You may have
heard it even if you don’t remember the movie. It was, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
Well of course as we all know that is utter nonsense. What she meant was that she knew he was sorry even before he said anything. But what love really means is always being willing to say you’re sorry. How many of you have learned that this is the secret to a good marriage? Don’t worry about who was right, just say you’re sorry and work out the details later.
We all hate being wrong. And we hate being in the wrong even more. Not too long ago I was berating myself for having done something stupid and flippantly said that to err may be human but I was getting tired of it and would rather be God, because being God means never having to say you’re sorry.
Of course I know that I shouldn’t be flippant about such things, but I didn’t mean to be disrespectful of God, but of myself, and of the never-ending struggle it is to accept with grace the fact that being human means making mistakes. Sometimes really big ones. And of course if you stop and think about it, it’s absolutely true. The only person in the entire universe who never, ever has to say “I’m sorry” is God. And Jesus, of course, but since Jesus is also God it sort of goes without saying.
And so it’s something we all need to learn how to do. We all need to learn how to ask for forgiveness. When was the last time you had to ask someone’s forgiveness? What was it for? Was it for a careless word, a broken promise, what? Was it hard to say “I’m sorry”? Did you really mean it? Was it for a one-time offense, or was it for something you find yourself doing all too often? Incidentally, don’t forget that Valentine’s Day is this coming Saturday, it’s a great time to do some all-purpose fence-mending.
But it doesn’t go in just one direction. Just as frequently as we need to ask for forgiveness, we’re always in the position of having to grant forgiveness, as well. The people around us - our parents, our spouses, our children, our friends and co-workers - they’re all just as human as we are. Sometimes more so, if humanity is measured by the number of mistakes. When was the last time you had to forgive someone? How hard was it? Is it easier for you to ask for forgiveness or grant it?
Forgiveness is one of the things we Christians have to struggle with all our lives. For some of us, the struggle involves believing we have been forgiven. For others, the struggle comes in forgiving someone else. But we can’t get around it. It’s absolutely basic to the Christian life. The good news is that we start with God’s forgiveness of us. We don’t come to the table empty, trying to conjure up
forgiveness from somewhere in our own little souls, we come with God’s own forgiveness in our accounts to draw from. Is there something in your own life that you’re deeply ashamed of, something that you really aren’t quite sure God has forgiven you for?
It took me a long time to understand that God had forgiven me for the abortion I had when I was 25. For years I was sure that the reason I never married and had children of my own was because God was mad at me. But it doesn’t have to be that big a sin, that dramatic a transgression. I still cringe when I remember my little brother getting into trouble because I told on him when my Dad was in one of his periodic fits of anger, and Jeremy got punished a whole lot more than he deserved. Is there something still on your conscience, something that’s keeping you away from God?
Even harder, though, is learning to forgive one another. How can you forgive someone when they have seriously hurt you or someone you love? How can you forgive someone when they have lied or stolen or cheated or betrayed you? And how can you forgive someone who hasn’t repented?
Peter asked Jesus, "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as 7 times?" Jesus said to him, "Not 7 times, but, I tell you, 77 times.” [Mt 18:21-25] And then he told this parable: One day, a customer burst into the office of a bank president and said, “Please help me! I lost my job, my unemployment has expired, my credit cards are maxed out. I can’t
pay my mortgage. I can’t pay my car payments. Can you help me?” Well, the bank president thought to himself, “Well, this has been a good year. I think I’ll do an act of charity today.” So he cancelled all the man’s debt. There was no more mortgage. No more car payments. No more credit card bills. With one stroke of a pen, the bank president forgave his customer thousands and thousands of
dollars in debt.
The next day, the bank president was telling a friend about this, and his friend said, “Oh, I know him. I saw him in court the other day. He took his neighbor to court for running into his car and causing about $500 of damage. His friend had begged for time to pay it back, but the man demanded his money right then and there.” Well of course the bank president couldn’t believe it. “You mean, I forgave that guy thousands and thousands of dollars in debt, and he wouldn’t give his
friend a break?” The bank president was furious, and went back and tore up the debt cancellation he had signed the day before.
That’s what it’s like when we refuse to forgive the people who have hurt us, who owe us something. But it helps to understand what forgiveness really is, before you tie yourself in knots trying to do the impossible.
First of all, forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending nothing has happened. Forgiveness doesn’t mean responding to pain or injustice with “It doesn’t matter.” Mind you, some things don’t matter. We should be slow to take offense, and quick to excuse accidents. But there is a big difference between excusing and forgiving. Forgiveness is for people who have really done wrong, really wounded us. And God does not ask us to ignore our wounds. He asks us to forgive those who caused them.
The second thing that forgiveness isn’t is enabling. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you have to put yourself in the same position over and over again, like a parent giving the keys to the car back to the kid who just ran it into a telephone pole. Forgiving doesn’t mean acting like Charlie Brown, who every year when football season begins, lets Lucy hold the football for him to kick, only to have her jerk it away at the last minute for the sheer fun of watching him fall down. Forgiving doesn’t mean leaving your purse out for the thief, or the booze out for the drunk.
But what does it mean? Paul tells the church at Colossae to “Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” [Col 3:13]
Well, how does the Lord forgive? Step one comes from a very familiar text. “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteous ness.” [1 Jn 1:9] The first thing we have to do is confess our sins. Matthew doesn’t include that part in his recounting of Jesus’ words,
but Luke does. Listen to the difference: “if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ’I repent,’ you must forgive." [Lk 17:4] Luke reminds us that forgiveness follows repentance. But that’s not all he adds: Luke reminds us that “I forgive you” doesn’t mean, “go ahead, do it again!” In his account, Jesus also tells the disciples that “if another
disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive.”
The second step in the forgiveness process is the hardest part. The second step is letting go. Although we do say “forgive and forget”, we don’t really forget. I mean, we can’t, can we... Have you ever berated yourself for being unable to forget something you have forgiven? Forgiving doesn’t mean instant amnesia.
Even though God said “I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” [Is 43:25] this does not mean God has holes in his memory. What it means is that he won’t bring it up again. It’s over. It’s gone.
But the more we try to forget, the more we remember. So forget forgetting, focus on forgoing instead. Give up the right to get even. Every victim is positive the perp deserves to suffer just as much as we have suffered, but that’s a deadly trap. There’s no such thing as “even.” To the wealthy man, $10,000 is pocket change; for the single mom, a lost $10 means less food on the table. Demanding that things come out even makes us slaves to the past, slaves to the wrongdoer,
and slaves to our own memory of pain. The only way to be free is to let go. By forgiving, we place the outcome of the matter in God’s hands and be content to let him balance the scales in his own way and in his own time.
The next step, the third, is to rediscover the humanity of the wrongdoer. What does that mean? Well, when we have been wronged or injured, the person who did it to us turns into a sort of monster. We define them totally by what they did to us. But when we look at them with Jesus’ eyes, we are quite likely to see a weak,
confused, frightened, complex person, not all that different from us. You all know the saying, “To understand all is to forgive all.” Well, some people use that phrase to mean that you can’t blame people for what they do because - pick one - they were abused as children, they’re oppressed by society, they have an addiction, well, the list goes on. But that’s not what I mean by looking at them through Jesus’ eyes. What I mean is that there is a person that Jesus died for, and even if you can’t imagine having done what they did yourself, you know that Jesus would rather have them turned than burned. Although we may want to stop them, we no longer want to hurt them.
And that’s what makes the next step possible. We understand that more pain isn’t the answer. And so the next step is to wish our wrongdoer well. We not only surrender the right to take revenge, but we also desire good things to happen to or for them. We pray for them. We bless them. But what about justice? Isn’t justice one of God’s attributes? Aren’t we supposed to care about justice? Well,
yes. We are. But this isn’t about how to structure a just and peaceful society. This is about interpersonal relationships. This is not about law. This is about redemption.
When John Wesley served as a missionary to the American colonies, he had a difficult time with General James Oglethorpe. The general was known for his pride and harshness. One time Oglethorpe declared, “I never forgive.” Wesley replied, “Then, Sir, I hope you never sin.” [Jesus’ Blueprint for Prayer, Discovery Bible Series, p. 22]
Justice is when you get what you deserve. Mercy is when you don’t get what you deserve. Grace is when you get what you don’t deserve.
Earlier in same sermon during which Jesus teaches his disciples the prayer we are studying, Jesus said "You have heard that it was said, ’You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven...” [Mt 5:43-5] And Paul echoes this teaching when he writes to the Romans,
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” [Rom 12:21] That is how God treats us. Instead of punishing us for our sins, he overcame them with the sacrifice of Jesus. Instead of making us earn his favor, he just pours it out upon us. Grace is the pattern that God gives us to follow.
If you are struggling with forgiving someone, remember that forgiving takes time. Corrie ten Boom once told of being able to forget a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but she kept rehashing the incident and so couldn’t sleep. Finally, she cried out to God for help in putting the problem to rest. She wrote this about the incident: "His help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran
pastor, to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks." "Up in the church tower," he said, nodding out the window, "is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops. I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we
take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down." "And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations, but the force—which was my willingness in the matter—had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at the last stopped altogether: we can trust God not only above our emotions, but also above our thoughts."
It’s not that she couldn’t remember that something had happened. If she chose to, Corrie could have brought the incident back to mind. But she dethroned the memory and refused to let it control her life. If there is any grievance you are hanging onto, it is poisoning your soul. Get rid of it.
Jesus implies it is unthinkable for a forgiven person to not forgive. It should be an automatic reaction. A couple of verses after the one we are studying today, Jesus says if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” [Mt 6:14-15] Preacher Everett Fullam paraphrases it like this: “Father forgive my sins only to the extent I am willing to forgive those who have sinned against me.” [As quoted in J. Mark Copeland. After This Manner Pray.
(South Plainfield, NJ: Bridge Pub., 1992.) p. 157)
Oh - just one more thing - remember that I said that we’re not obliged to forgive those who haven’t repented? Well, that’s not quite true. We can’t rebuild the relationship until they have repented. But as long as you hang on to the hurt, you will never be free. God is ready to forgive the minute we turn to him. And so since it takes us so much longer to let go of our grievances than it takes for God, we’d better get started immediately in order to be ready when the time for forgiveness comes. And besides - who wants to be a slave to the past,or to pain, or someone else’s sin? Wouldn’t you like to be free?
