"Life Together Part 2: Forgiveness" - Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

Life Together Part 2: Forgiveness
Lent 1 – Narrative Lectionary 1
February 22, 2015
Grace, Mankato, MN
Matthew 18.15-35

Many of you know that I’m a big fan of the Disney movie, “Frozen.” I like its strong, female characters who can be princesses without being princesses. I truly appreciate its message of love; not romantic love, but sacrificial love. Plus it is just good fun with memorable songs. Yet, I came to realize this past week that its signature song, “Let It Go,” with all of its farcical offshoots and its seemingly beneficial message, is problematic in many ways. No matter how much we’d like to do so, sometimes we can’t just let it go. A number of years ago a pithy Christian saying was making the rounds: “Let go and let God.” But when it comes to forgiveness, letting go and even letting God can be nigh on impossible.

Today we are presented with some more of Jesus’ teaching, this time with an explanatory parable at the end. It’s a parable that is all too clear: we are to forgive. This reading is the second half of Jesus’ fourth discourse, the first part having been read on Ash Wednesday. We noted then that the overall theme of this discourse is how we are live together in community. On Ash Wednesday, we learned that life together means that we are to have childlike humility, utterly dependant on God. Today, we pick up the topic of forgiveness, about what needs to happen when community is broken. Clearly, Matthew’s community took their life together seriously because as they preserved the words of Jesus we find that there’s explicit instruction for how we repair broken relationships.

I’m fairly certain that if you polled 100 Christians about whether forgiveness is important, 110 of them would say “Yes.” I’m also sure that we’d all agree it is God’s forgiveness that makes our forgiveness possible. When I meet with couples who wish to be married, we read in Genesis 1about how God created us in God’s image. When I ask what they think that means, a variety of answers are given. Once in a while, some have pointed out that we love and forgive like God loves and forgives. In fact, there is an old Jewish folk tale that says before God created the world God forgave it. And the parable indicates with an absurd amount how unbounded God’s forgiveness really is. It has been estimated that to pay pack 10,000 talents would take 150,000 years!

Yet, this head knowledge comes smack up against our practical reality of hurts and damages that happen to us. CS Lewis notes that it’s a beautiful notion until it comes up against that flesh and blood person you want to smack in the nose. We also know that our society has a hard time with repentance and forgiveness. All you have to do is pick up a newspaper or log into social media. As we have seen with A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez), what passes for apologies and repentance is a sham. And when someone is caught in an unfortunate situation, such as Brian Williams, even a sincere apology is not enough to prevent a sacrificial blood-letting. Furthermore, we also know that not forgiving is toxic; as they say, it’s like drinking rat poison and expecting the rat to die. And we know that not being able to forgive leads to hearts that are hardened and closed to love.

So, what are we to do? Well, it seems forgiveness begins with accepting that we cannot change the past no matter how devastating it is and how much we want to do so. But, it means realizing the past doesn’t have to hold us captive any longer. It also means that for us to be able to forgive we need utterly and humbly depend on God. Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch Christian who was held in a Nazi camp during WWII because of her actions to free Jews from persecution. Most of her family was slaughtered but she somehow managed to survive. Years later she spoke at an event and after she was finished speaking, an old man came up to her. She recognized immediately that he was a guard at the prison and responsible for much of the brutality. Yet, here he was, holding out his hand and asking forgiveness. She said she could not forgive him, but she could take his hand. As she did so, she felt God’s forgiveness flowing through her, doing what she could not do for herself.

Regarding forgiveness, “Let it go” isn’t particularly helpful, and letting God is helps get us further. God is steadfastly determined to wring healing and wholeness out of the tragedy and brokenness of our lives. That’s the message of the cross, God’s pledge to forgive all, to not let our past hold us captive any longer. And the resurrection is God’s promise that, regardless of our past, we have an open future of God’s making. In the end, “let it go” may not change anything, but as a commentator notes, “let it in, let it work and watch it grow” does. May God’s unending forgiveness flow through you and give you new life. Amen.