Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Be careful what you ask for – you’ve heard that sage advice,
haven’t you? But, do you know there’s more to it? The full quote continues, “Be
careful what you ask for; you just might get it.”
Be careful when you ask a question of Jesus that is based in
the Law. When you ask a Law question, be careful because you may get a Law
answer.
How often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?
It’s another question of Law, and it comes hot on the heals of Jesus’
instruction “If you brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault,
between you and he alone. If he listens, you have won a brother. If he does not
listen, take another with you…” (18:15ff). You notice Jesus didn’t give
restrictions, conditions or exceptions – he simply says, “if he sins against
you.”
I suspect Peter is realizing that this process of forgiving could
become rather burdensome and most certainly repetitious. Peter wants some
clarification, a limitation, a boundary on how often forgiveness is to be doled
out. After all, isn’t there a time of accountability, a point where enough is
enough, where forgiveness ceases and justice prevails? How often, Jesus? Peter proactively
makes a rather generous seven-time offering – seven is a perfect number, a holy
number, a number of fullness and completion, an offer of forgiveness that is twice
what the Jewish rabbis taught. Forgiving a repeat sinner seven times seems
rather generous.
How many times do I forgive? Remember: a Law question merits
a Law answer. Peter wants a quantity, so Jesus gives Peter a quantity, but not
what is expected. Jesus ups the ante: seven isn’t sufficient; even seventy is
not enough. How often do you forgive, Peter? How about seventy times seven.
People ask me frequently how to forgive someone who has
sinned against them – a terrible, grievous sin, one that hurts at the deepest
core and is hard – almost impossible – to forgive. How do you forgive the drunk
whose decision to drive cost your wife her life? How do you forgive the man who
sexually assaulted you? How do you forgive your classmate who posted ugly lies
about you on Twitter and Instagram, making you the laughing stock of school? How
do you forgive your spouse, son, daughter, or parent, that person who violated
your trust and love?
If you think forgiveness is yours, it is something you do,
if it is within your power, your ability to give to someone else, you will
never be able to forgive. You will always have limits, exclusions, restrictions
on your forgiveness. It might be in quantity: I’ll forgive you seven, or seventy,
or seventy-times-seven times, but not one more. It might be in quality: I
can forgive everything else, but this? It becomes selective: I’ll
forgive you and you and you, but you…nope. It can also be dismissively self-righteous:
it’s OK for someone else to forgive you but not me…no, sir. If you think
forgiveness is yours to meter out and dole out as you wish, you are always
under the burden of the Law. If you think forgiveness is what you do, you are
like the servant when he encounters another servant – I’ll forgive you, but
only when payment is made in full and I get my pound of flesh in the process.
And, if you think forgiveness is yours to meter out, you are
in danger of following the footsteps of the first servant who encounters the second
servant. One hundred day’s wages is too
much to pass by, so the first throws the second into jail because he can’t pay
up. That’s dangerous thinking; foolish thinking. Remember: this is the way of
the Law. Be careful what you ask for…you may get what you’ve asked for. When
restitution is demanded of someone else, it then is also demanded of you. He
who had been set free is jailed and tortured; he, who refuses to forgive the
one who owes him, has his own forgiveness nullified.
Now, I want to help you to turn the question. We’re going to
change it from “how often do I forgive?” to “how often do I need forgiveness?” In
other words, stop looking at the other servant and see only yourself. Suddenly,
you have a completely new perspective. Rather than we being the ones giving out
forgiveness in a limited number of drips and drops, we realize our own need for
forgiveness is vast, beyond limit and number. Our own debt – or, as we pray in
the Lord’s Prayer, our trespasses - are beyond number. “For I daily sin much
and indeed deserve nothing but punishment,” the Catechism says (5th
Petition of the Lord’s Prayer, Explanation). How often do I need forgiveness? Constantly,
frequently, daily, hourly. What do I need forgiven? Everything.
But, how do you repay a debt you can’t repay? Both servants
thought they could negotiate. One owed ten thousand talents. Given a talent is
about 20 years wages, he had accrued 200,000 years worth of debt. The other
servant owed 100 denarii. With a denarius being a day’s wage, it would be three
and a half months’ work. Both men argued they would repay it, given a little
more time, a little more grace, a little understanding. But, in reality, neither
could afford the repayment price. All they could do was ask for mercy.
When we see ourselves as a servant with an insurmountable
debt, that we are the ones who need forgiveness, that our sins far outweigh and
outstrip any hope we have of repaying the price ourselves, the parable comes to
life. You are the servant whose sins are an insurmountable debt; you are the
one who needs forgiveness; you have accumulated a sin-debt that far outweighs and
outstrips any hope you could possibly have of repaying the debt accrued. You
are not the King who decides how often to forgive but as the one who oh, so
often stands with the servants and implores, “King, have mercy on me a sinner.”
All you can do is stand at the foot of the King’s throne and ask for mercy with
your hands open and empty.
The ironic thing is that we ask for mercy from the very One against
whom we have accrued our sin-debt. We confess this: We have sinned against God
in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and what we have left undone;
and we have sinned against our neighbor by not loving him and her as ourselves.
We ask the King of Kings for mercy; we ask God to forgive us.
I’ve had people argue with me that forgiveness is too easy.
Someone sins and then asks God to forgive. Tabula rasa: the slate is wiped clean. Easy,
peasy, lemon squeezy. No consequences, no problem, good to go. The issue with
that thinking is that it forgets that sin is a debt that must be paid. In the
parable, the master forgives the servant’s debt of 10,000 talents. Literally, by
cancelling the debt, he is paying debt himself; that is, it costs him 10,000
talents. When God forgives your sins, it is because the debt has been paid in
full. Not with gold or silver, or with the stroke of a pen on a receipt. Your
sin-debt is paid with the holy, precious blood of Jesus and His innocent
suffering and death. He doesn’t count: how often have you sinned…seven sins,
seventy transgressions, seventy seven violations of the Law against God and Man!
You asked for it – Lord, have mercy on me a sinner! – and God, for the sake of
Christ Jesus, gives you what you need. Jesus pays your entire debtor’s price in
full so that you do not carry the burden into eternity, His one death for the
sins of the world. Your sins have been atoned for, covered in the blood of
Christ, and you have been redeemed, purchased and set free.
In your baptism, you were marked with the sign of the cross
on your forehead and heart. The cross of Jesus marks your entire body. Those hands
that were once empty, reaching out for the King’s mercy, are now marked with
the cross of Jesus. You are released from your debt, the bill stripped from
your hand, and you are forgiven all of your sins. Your idolatry, your misusing
God’s name, your laziness in the Word and in prayer, your ugly words spoken against
your parents, children, spouse, and elected officials, your mismanagement of
company time, your wandering eyes and wondering mind…all of it, forgiven in
Christ. You stand before the Master transgression-free. So there is never any
doubt, absolution is spoken again and again, you are reminded of your baptism
again and again, you receive Christ’s body and blood again and again so that
you are constantly reminded that you, having sinned much, have been forgiven
even more.
Earlier, I asked how do you forgive someone who it seems
impossible to forgive? You don’t. Forgiveness is not yours to do. But Christ forgives,
fully and perfectly. And that includes the other servant who has hurt you. Your
fellow servant also stands before the King, also imploring His mercy. They are fellow
servants of the King, whose transgressions have likewise been taken from them.
They are servants for whom Jesus died, servants who have likewise been marked
with the sign of the cross on their forehead and heart and washed in the water
of Holy Baptism. Do you see their hands? Empty, emptied by Christ and marked
with His blood. Your hands, empty; their hands empty. By God’s grace, through
faith in Christ, you – plural – are forgiven.
In being forgiven, you are then enabled to share that
forgiveness with other sinners. Christ has forgiven you and set you free so
that you become a forgiveness sharer, sharing Christ’s forgiveness with those
around you. It begins with humility, seeing your own sin-burden and knowing
you, too, stand in front of the King of Kings asking for your own measure of mercy.
Knowing, believing, trusting and relying that you have been
mercied much, you pray that the King enables you see that person who hurt you as
a fellow servant who likewise has been forgiven by Jesus. With deepest of
humility, instead of clenching your hands into fists of anger, hold out that
cross-marked hand and extend it in compassion and love to your brother or
sister in Christ. Now, remember - be
careful what you ask for because you may get it! Your heart begins to soften
and you start to see him or her as a fellow redeemed servant. And, in that
moment Satan will do everything he can to stir those old feelings again. Repent,
be forgiven, and deliver forgiveness again. This side of heaven, the gift of forgiveness
between sinners may never be perfect; it may need to be repeated every time you
see that person. That’s life under the cross, as one sinner who has been forgiven
much to another sinner who also has been forgiven much.
Be careful what you ask for. “How often do I have to forgive?”
That’s a question of law with limitations and restrictions. When you see
yourself as one who daily needs forgiveness, and who daily receives the
forgiveness of God in Christ Jesus, the question changes. It’s no longer how
often do I have to forgive, it becomes “How often have I been forgiven?” The
answer is, simply, always.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
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