Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

As We Forgive Our Debtors

by Dave Wilkinson

Matthew 6:9-12 Matthew 18:32-33

May 7, 2000

On February 2, 1984, during the Lebanese civil war, a 14 year old Lebanese Christian boy named Hanna Haddad wrote a letter from Beirut. I received a copy of the letter from Dr. Kenneth Bailey who was then at Beirut's Near Eastern School of Theology.

"I can still hear the sound of thundering guns telling me that somewhere nearby people are dying.

"Ever since we left the village I feel as though something has been shattered inside me. We have lost everything. Our house was burned. My books were torn to pieces. Our furniture was stolen. But what is more important is that the soft nights and the fresh mornings in the village are gone, and with them I have lost my roots and have become "like grass blown by the wind," as the psalmist put it.

"For me, time used to be the time of sleeping and of waking up and of working in the fields -- the time of life. But now time has left me. It belongs to the one who stands behind the thundering gun. It is the time of death.

One night early in September our village was shelled and we fled. We hid in a cave near our small brook waiting for the mad night to subside. But the guns did not stop so we fled again through the valley until we reached Beirut.

We thought we had escaped. But the dark night caught up with us in all its madness. Am I living through a nightmare? Has time really stood still ever since the big clock was broken on the wall of my grandfather's house in the village?

One day someone came and told us that our house in the village, my grandfather's house, was looted and burned. The young men burned it after emptying it together. My anguish grew into hatred. Hatred is strange for it takes many forms. For me, it is like a boil. It took root within me and sowed the seeds of death in my heart. It grew and spread like a boil with nothing but pus inside.

"I woke up at the sound of the big guns in Beirut. I asked myself, "how can a young man stand behind a gun and fire all those rockets around us?" I thought of that young man and to me he acquired the face of that other young man who looted and burned my grandfather's house.

"And in the midst of the sound of thundering guns, from the depths of my despair and pain, I finally understood. "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am but sounding brass," like the empty shell cases of the big guns. Love alone can bear the burden of the living for it bears all things. It bears this young man who is standing behind the gun, and that other young man who burned my grandfather's house.

"We carry our dead with us like open wounds. All of us have such wounds. Life is different. Life is the realm of love which overcomes death. I pray that the living God may reign in our lives, and not our dead."

Such a powerful and wise letter. It is hard to believe that it was written by a 14 year old boy. Most 14 year old boys I know don't express themselves with such poetry and love. But it is the letter of a boy old beyond his years -- made old by things he has seen.

Let me quote again his last two paragraphs: "We carry our dead with us like open wounds. All of us have such wounds. I pray that the living God may reign in our lives, and not our dead."

Like this boy, we also face decisions of forgiveness. In those times, how do we let the living god rule in our lives and not our dead?"--whatever the dead are for us. We each have our own dead -- those remembrances we carry with us of the times we have been hurt.

It is hard to forgive. But it is essential.

Too often we are like the little boy who was sitting on a park bench in obvious agony.

A man walking by asked him what was wrong. The boy answered, "I’m sitting on a bumble bee," the little boy replied. "Then why don’t you get up?" The man asked. The boy replied, "Because I figure I’m hurting him more than he is hurting me!" The healing process begins when we get up off the park bench.

It takes a toll when we hold onto a grudge.

There was an interesting study conducted by the Gallup Organization and reported in 1994. In this study Philadelphia ranked first among U.S. cities on what was called the "hostility index." The hostility index was based on a nine-question scale that asked people how they felt about such things as loud rock music, supermarket checkout lines, and traffic jams. Other cities on the hostility top five were New York, Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit. Perhaps you saw in the newspapers just a few months ago that New York City has a much higher death rate than average from coronary disease. At the bottom of the hostility index were Des Moines, Minneapolis Denver, Seattle and Honolulu.

Medical experts looking at the results felt it was no coincidence that the cities that rated high on the hostility index also had higher death rates. Commenting on the study, Dr. Redford Williams of Duke University Medical School said, "Anger kills. There is a strong correlation between hostility and death rates. The angrier people are and the more cynical they are, the shorter their life span."

Dr. Robert R. Kopp puts it this way: Grudge-holders are grave-diggers and the only graves that they dig are their own. The world’s most miserable person is one who won’t forgive. Nothing can gnarl the soul more quickly. It has been said so aptly, ‘If I had and enemy whom I wanted to punish, I would teach him to hate someone."

The answer to unforgiveness is given in the Lord's Prayer and the two things that this prayer offers us -- the opportunity to be forgiven and the opportunity to forgive. Forgiving and being forgiven. The Bible ties the two together again and again. As a boy from one of those trespassing churches prayed: "Forgive us our trashbaskets as we forgive those who put trash in our baskets." He didn’t get the words right but he got the idea right. Matthew 7:1-2 "As a man judges others, so he will be judged himself, and in matters of mercy he will get what he gives." Matthew 5:7 "It is the merciful who will receive mercy." James 2:13 "Judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy."

Jesus tells the story of the unforgiving debtor. He concludes by saying "so also my heavenly father will do to everyone of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."

Do you see the deep interplay between God's forgiveness of you and your forgiveness of others? Jesus says some very strong words right after He teaches the Lord's Prayer. He says: "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses."

Now wait a minute. I thought salvation was free. The Bible says in 1 John that "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." But now Jesus is saying that we can't be forgiven unless we forgive. Isn't that a contradiction -- a changing of the rules?

No, it's not. John says "If we confess our sin": to confess, (homolegea in Greek) literally means "to say the same thing as God" -- to agree with God that our actions were sin no matter how we might feel about them--and also to agree with God as to where our sin puts us on the relative scale of debt.

You see, this is the point of Jesus' parable of the unforgiving servant. No matter who has hurt us--no matter what they have done to us -- Jesus says it is still only a hundred dollar debt compared to the million dollar debt we owe God. And for us to ask for God's forgiveness for the million dollar debt and then to turn around and push someone to the wall for the hundred dollar debt means that we have no comprehension of the depth of our own need -- and the wonder of what God has done for us.

For us not to forgive means that we haven't really grasped the nature and scale of our own debt. We are not "agreeing with God." So we haven't really confessed at all---and there is no forgiveness without confession and repentance.

Now this does not mean that God waits for us to earn His forgiveness by forgiving others. We can never earn any of God's favors. It is simply that we cannot truly ask for forgiveness unless our heart is right regarding other people. We're still holding on to half our sin and god won't have it.

Quite simply, the person who is unforgiving has cut himself or herself off from the forgiveness of God. However we take Jesus' words, we cannot evade the clear message that to be forgiven we must forgive.

This means that praying the Lord's Prayer can be dangerous. "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." We pray it so glibly--without thought. But look at what we say when we pray it. "God forgive me as I forgive others--at the same time and to the same degree." This means that if you are unforgiving, when you pray this prayer, that you are deliberately asking God not to forgive you. You are asking God to treat you the same way you are treating another person.

We need to examine ourselves before we pray the Lord's Prayer. We should never pray it glibly and without thought. For in this prayer, we measure the forgiveness we receive.

As we prepare to come to the Lord's Table look at yourself. Is there a person you haven't forgiven? A parent? A spouse? An ex-spouse? A child? A neighbor? A co-worker? Another member of the church? If there is then take this time now to forgive from your heart and then, this afternoon, take the tangible steps to make reconciliation and reality -- and, by your act of forgiveness, open the floodgates of God's power and love in your life.

Let us bow in silent evaluation and preparation.