|
|
|
|
Sept 12, 1999
The background of Jesus' story about the forgiveness of a great debt is this: Peter is worried about how much forgiveness is appropriate among persons who follow Jesus. Peter is well aware of human nature, and of our desire to hold grudges, nurse old wounds, resent discipline. Peter is also familiar with the rabbinic tradition which taught that an offender should be forgiven three times; Peter more than doubles that standard when he suggests to Jesus that "seven times" might be the more generous Christian response to one who has sinned against us.
Whether you read Jesus' response as 77 times or seven times 70, Jesus is upping the ante by giving a number which suggests that for him forgiveness is not a quantitative practice but a basic attitude of discipleship. We are called to be a forgiving people at all times.
Jesus then uses a story to illustrate his understanding of how forgiveness must work.
The King in Jesus' story is a good businessman who from time to time audits the books. Calling together his accountants, he asks them for an inventory of the grain, wine, cattle and slaves. The inventory reveals that one of the king's chief servants has borrowed from the master's assets without replenishing the inventory. (This begins to sound like a Hong Kong story!) This servants comes up l0,000 talents short. Today's lottery winners with their spectacular millions can hardly compare with the hyperbole of this one man's debt. If he were make good on working off his debt, he would have owed his king l64,000 years of labor, or about 3,000 lifetimes - to discharge his debt.
The King decides to cut his losses: "Auction the servant's property, then auction him, his wife, and his children as slaves."
The servant goes to pieces: falling on his knees, he weeps, begging his master to have patience. "I'll pay you back every denarius - I swear!"
The king knows there is no way this can ever be done, but then he does what a King can do - with a simple word and stroke of his pen he forgives the servant his immense debt. The king cancels the debt and takes away the penalty for the servant's trespasses against him.
Jesus taught us to pray: "Forgive us our debts. or sins, or trespasses, as we forgive those who have debts with us, or who sin against us." This is an extension of the Golden Rule, to treat others as we want to be treated. We are comforted so that we can comfort others; we are given gifts for the benefit of all; we are loved so that we can love.
The story goes to the heart of the divine: It is the nature of God to forgive and to continue to lavish his love upon his creatures. This is one of many stories from the teaching of Jesus which may be read as encouraging a hope in universal salvation. If God forgives without divine counting and seemingly without human accountability, then there is salvation hope for everyone, including the most sinful, indebted human being. This is the theological hope noteworthy in the Arminian and Wesleyan schools of theology.
Regretably, the experience of complete forgiveness is something many do not experience in the church. How many poor souls have come to one church or another desperately needing forgiveness and not found it. The Church, unlike Jesus, often raises up conditions upon its forgiveness.
And how many, among even us this morning, still cling to old hurts, not experiencing full forgiveness, even though we may be on the far side of baptism and therefore technically recreated with a forgiving heart. You may need to forgive someone at this very point. Perhaps a parent because you believe some bad things of your past must still rule your life now. Perhaps co-workers? Employment rage is a growing phenomenon in our offices as employees believe they must get even at any costs. Some among us need to forgive society itself because we have believed that "no one cares." Holding grudges traps us in a denial of our responsibility while Jesus knew that forgiveness liberates us.
Forgiveness is not the same as universal liking. You probably know the l2 step prayer: "God give me the courage to change the things I can; the strength to endure those I cannot change; and the wisdom to know the difference." A friend sent me a comforting twist on that prayer: "God grant me the Senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do like, and the eyesight to tell the difference."
I like that form of the prayer not only because I am getting older and thus have the blessing of forgetting a lot of people who offended me way back when; the story reminds me that I don't have to like everyone. I do need to forgive them and that helps me to forget those whom I never liked in the first place!
The first part of Jesus' story is challenging for we know forgiveness is something we like to claim but fail to proclaim in our living. We too often are like George Eliot's description in ADAM BEDE: "We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves." The embracing of the death penalty by many Christians indicates how spiritually we are divided on the practice of forgiveness. And the hesitancy of the rich nations to forgive the debts owed them by the poor nations, most of which can never repay debts, illustrates how legalistic and contractual even when both charity and common sense agree on the wisdom of forgiving what can never be repaid.
The story goes on to be even more disturbing to us. For Jesus suggests that divine forgiveness, if not passed around and shared, can be undone: that our forgiveness can be recalled. The theme of universal salvation is sounded in the king's initial forgiveness of the great debt; good news for the optimistic view of human and divine nature in Wesleyan and Arminian teachings on universal grace and universal salvation. But the second part of the story gives comfort to the more dark Calvinist doctrines of personal accountability and the possibility of damnation for many.
For now the story focuses on those who are able and willing to receive God's forgiveness, but are unwilling to share that forgiveness with others. The forgiven servant leaves the palace a free and new man and runs into a lesser servant who owes him only a pittance by comparison to the debt just removed from the senior servant. Nonetheless, the forgiven man is unable to share his forgiveness and has the other man thrown into prison until the debt was paid.
Other servants observing this brutal exchange report it to the King who becomes outraged and enraged and revokes his forgiveness, handing the servant over not only to imprisonment but to being tortured in prison. A sentence which in the context can only be interpreted as the punishment of torture until death. And then Jesus' strange admonition: SO MY HEAVENLY FATHER WILL ALSO DO TO EVERONE ONE OF YOU, IF YOU DO NOT FORGIVE YOUR BROTHER OR SISTER FROM YOUR HEART.'
Are some false Christian assumptions corrected in this conclusion? Do we believe that once I am forgiven, it is permanent, and there is no second jeopardy. Once I am saved I can do what I want to do, and my salvation is in no way compromised? Can God reimpose a debt or sin I have already been forgiven of? Is it reasonable for God to expect a Christian to be a person of patience, pity, and forgiveness.
On the latter question, I hope God does so expect because to fall into the trap of practising the emotions and actions of a hostile, unforgiving heart is to invite early death through heart disease, strokes, depression, and and through self-destructive accidents and habits. It is really a continuance of God's mercies that he insists we live what Jesus preached: that we limit our very human inclinations not to forgive and its related negative qualities of lack of patience toward others, delays, and setbacks; mistrust of co-workers, annoyance with the habits of family members of friends, and a persistent need to have the last word in arguments and to get even when wronged. For if we persist in these unaltered moods we are inviting early death.
"I want my heart to be in tune with God, In every stage of life may it ring true; I want my thoughts and words to honor Him, To lift Him up in everything I do."
This matter of forgiveness we can revisit at next weekend's retreat when on Saturday afternoon we shall have an hour of healing ministry. A requirement of the Holy Spirit in order to give us peace is that we check out any unforgiven persons and memories from our hearts.
Forgiveness is crucial to our theology, for we need to understand what God both gives and expects from us…forgiveness. When practised in the church and in our lives, forgiveness open doors to living.
No matter that forgiveness is at times demanding, not to practice it is damning. We certainly see that in the lives of ethnic groups who deny the option of forgiveness in preference to clinging to the injuries and hatreds of old and thereby dig their own graves. Oh, that the Kosovars and Serbs could yet forgive.
The contribution which Nelson Mandela made as the first president of a liberated South Africa shows how God uses individuals who practice forgiveness. And just this past week I experienced a lift to learn that my old friend, Demetrios of Athens, has just been named Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church of America. I go into this remarkable story of turnaround fortunes in my current Pastor's page on our web site.
The Demetrios I have known for 27 years was always the smartest, most liberal and most kind leader in Greek Orthodoxy. But he never got to lead. His very smarts, liberal outlook, and kindness meant that he was several times passed over for higher office and kept as a Bishop of nothing.
But as I explain in our web site, "What goes around, does come around" and now, finally, at the age of 7l, this kind and forgiving human being has been elevated to lead the most affluent branch of Orthodoxy and at a time when the Church in North America desperately needs a forgiving person as its spiritual shepherd.
Forgiveness empowers the forgiven to in turn forgive and thereby to lead us.
Pastor Gene Preston
|
|
|
|
The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
This page has been visited
times.
This page hosted by
Get your own Free
Homepage