Why Should I Forgive?

Matthew 18:21-35

Will you pray with me?

Holy God, your Word is strong and leads our feet to your holy dwelling place. Strengthen and guide us with your Word through the power of your Holy Spirit; in Jesus’ name. Amen.

There once was a man named Simon Wiesenthal.  Simon was a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp during World War II.  He suffered a great deal at the hands of the Nazis, but not as much as some of his friends and family who lost their lives in very cruel, inhumane ways. 

One particular day Simon was taken away from his work group to speak to a dying Nazi soldier.  The dying soldier wanted to confess his atrocities and sins to Simon.  The soldier told Simon about specific instances when he had been ordered to kill Jewish families and he complied.  The soldier asked Simon to forgive him.  He appeared to be truly repentant of his sins and wanted to confess to Simon, who for him represented all Jews.

Simon was faced with a very difficult choice between compassion and justice.  After some time passed, Simon said nothing and left the soldier’s bedside.  The soldier died sometime during the night.  Simon was often haunted by the memory of the soldier and wondered whether he had done the right thing.

What do you think? Did Simon do the right thing?  Should he have forgiven the penitent soldier?  What would you do if you were Simon?

Forgiving someone is very difficult to do because it involves becoming vulnerable; it involves removing the barriers which separate us from God and our neighbor.  These barriers are a result of sin and they cut us off from a relationship with God, the source of life.  Because of this separation, we are out of sync, out of step with creation; we are filled with anxiety and fear living a life that is incomplete. 

The unforgiving slave of our text found himself with a debt of ten thousand talents.  This is an outrageous amount of money!  If one talent was worth more than fifteen years’ worth of wages for an average laborer, imagine how much it would be if you multiplied that by ten thousand.  One would have to work for one hundred and fifty thousand years to pay this debt.  It’s mind-blowing.  The unforgiving slave is buried under a mountain of debt. 

So the king one day decides to call in his loans, beginning with the unforgiving slave.  The king is all but ready to sell the unforgiving slave and his family to another master to pay off the debt, but the slave begs him to reconsider. Then a miracle happens: the king forgives the man of his enormous debt and sets him free; this huge, enormous debt that was weighing him down, that had him stuck in the mud with his wheels spinning, was taken away.  The barriers between him and the king are gone.

This is the Gospel message: God has removed the barriers between God and us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The Bible says, “The wages of sin is death.”(Romans 6:23)  Death is the pay check of sin.  God has given us a way out of this mess we’re in.  Jesus Christ took upon him the sin of all humanity, past, present and future, paying in full the debt we owe through his death and bodily resurrection.  This is why every Sunday we confess our sin together, letting go of our debt that comes from sin.  We acknowledge our need for God’s forgiveness through our prayer of confession. We are forgiven of our sin.  And we are assured of this when the pastor or lay reader or all of us in one voice declare in Jesus Christ we are forgiven.

What do we do with this freedom from sin?  What are we to do with this forgiveness that has taken down the barriers between us and God?  Jesus says we are to share this same forgiveness with our neighbor, with everyone we meet each day.  (And so we have the Passing of the Peace.  “Because God has forgiven us let us forgive one another.”  When we pass the peace to one another, we’re not simply exchanging pleasantries and small talk, we are sharing the forgiveness we have found in Christ with those around us.)  There is nothing anybody can do to us that can in any way compare with what we have done to God; and if God has forgiven us the enormous debt we owe to Him, we must forgive one another the debts owed to us.  We forgive one another because God has forgiven us.

Once the slave was forgiven by the king and released from slavery, he ran into one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii.  One denarius equals one day’s work.  Multiply that by one hundred and it’s only one hundred days of wages or just over three months of work.  It doesn’t compare to the debt forgiven by the king.  But it turns out the forgiven slave does not forgive as the king had forgiven him.  He has him thrown in prison until the one hundred denarii is repaid.  Word gets back to the king.  The slave is punished and tortured.

Forgiving one another is very difficult, but it is necessary to bring wholeness and restoration to our lives and our relationships with one another.  It gives us the chance to rise above the old baggage that once weighed us down. 

Have you ever attended a tractor pull?  For the uninitiated, the “tractor” in these events is more like a rocket with four wheels.  Some of these tractors have multiple engines and are longer than a truck.  The tractor-like rear wheels are about the only item on the machine that resembles an ordinary farm tractor.

These high-powered tractors are hitched to a wedge-shaped trailer that plows into the ground creating greater resistance the farther it is pulled.  The tractor, racing toward the finish line, usually starts out strong, but quickly labors and often stalls under the ever-increasing resistance.  The wheels of the tractor often spin so rapidly that the tractor becomes literally stuck in the mud, spinning its wheels and unable to continue.  Only when the trailer is unhitched from the tractor can it move again.

We all have something in our past or present that is weighing us down: old memories, spoken words we regret, imposing physical abuse upon someone or a victim of abuse, financial debts that we just can’t seem to pay off.  Many of us have done things that we are unable to forgive ourselves for.  And we find ourselves spinning our wheels and stuck in a moment we can’t get out of.  It’s when we unhitch ourselves from what is weighing us down that we can get out of the pit and get back on solid ground. 

Why is it so hard to forgive others?  Why do we hold on to grudges, old hurts, bitterness and feelings of resentment? 

When we hold on to bitterness and hurts from the past, we are enslaved to it.  It gets a grip on our hearts and it slowly suffocates our spirit.  It grows like a cancer that’s out of control slowly killing us.  It’s a splinter that festers under our skin infecting our spiritual and physical bodies.  Do we really want to live like that? 

To forgive is to let go; to let go of the barriers that separate us from God and from one another.  It is to let go of what is holding us down and holding us hostage.  It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do, but it is the only way to get right with God and with one another.  It’s the only way to free ourselves from slavery to the hurts, bitterness and resentment of the past.  It’s the only way to free ourselves from the tremendous debt we owe God because of sin.  It’s the only way to free ourselves to live in peace and harmony with our neighbor.

I believe that, as author Beth Moore puts it, “We never look more like Christ than when we forgive.” We never look more like Christ than when we forgive.  To be Christ in our time is to forgive ourselves and one another as God has forgiven us.  That is why we are to forgive.

Let us pray.  Gracious God, we kneel before you acknowledging our need for forgiveness.  We are entangled in a web of sin and resentment.  We’re tired of living enslaved to fear and anxiety.  We want to be made complete and whole again so we may live in sync with your whole creation.  Thank you for forgiving us our sin so we can forgive one another.  Amen.