Forgiving
from the Heart
Matthew
18:21-25
September
14, 2014[1]
Forgiveness again! Didn’t we just hear a sermon on this topic? Didn’t we just complete a Lenten Study on
forgiveness? If you are wondering how
often we have to hear about forgiveness, you are in good company. Peter himself asked Jesus, “If another member
of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “Not seven times, but …
seventy-seven times.” (Some translations
say “seventy times seven”—the Greek in our oldest manuscripts differ on this
point). You can read about this in
Matthew 18:21-35.
And yet, here we are. Once again, Jesus is reminding his disciples,
he is reminding us all, he is reminding me, just how important
forgiveness is to our spiritual journey.
It is so important that Jesus tells us that if we want to receive
forgiveness ourselves, we must forgive others from the heart!
So I asked God this week, if this is so
important, help me see this truth in a different way. How can I offer it from a new
perspective? My answer came in a
conversation I had this week with one of my spiritual directors. His name is Fr. Joe. And although he wasn’t speaking specifically
about forgiveness, his words put forgiveness in a new light for me.
Fr. Joe told me, “God can only occupy the
space that we give Him.” If we give Him
a tiny bit of space, He will occupy just that amount of space. If we give Him a wide-open space, He can
occupy a wide-open space. I have been
thinking about that idea constantly since then.
I recognized in it the idea that I have been using to speak about the
second worship service that we will be starting in October, with the theme
“Making Space for God.” We aren’t simply
talking about space in a crowded sanctuary at 9:30 am—we are talking about
space in human hearts—hoping to reach out to people in Fluvanna whose hearts
are filled up with so many other things.
We are inviting people to make space in our hearts for God.
How do I connect that concept of space with
forgiveness? Let me ask you—how much
space in your heart is filled up with hurt, anger, resentment, disappointment, or
bitterness? To use a different metaphor,
how often do you continue to push the rewind button in your spirit and replay
the scene of someone hurting you? Forgiveness
means clearing the debris from our lives so we can make space for God.
But it is hard to forgive. It is so much easier to keep replaying over
and over again the bad things that have been done to us. And in the process, we re-live the pain over
and over again, and we close our hearts to the living God.
In a humorous way, I was reminded of this the other night when
our son David told about attending a baseball game in Richmond a couple weeks
ago. He was there with his wife, Nicole,
our two grandchildren, and Carol. A
batter hit a pop foul that towered so high it got past the backstop and was
heading right to Section 209, Row H, Seats 9 through 13. David had his glove with him, and it was his
moment to shine. But he was so concerned
about protecting his family from the ball that was heading in their direction
that the ball bounced in and out of his glove.
He was mortified! Weeks later,
all he can see is that ball bouncing out of his glove. He could not forgive himself—even as he was
telling me the story! He just kept
replaying the scene over and over again!
(I pointed out to him that at least is was a minor league game, so there
was no television camera beaming the picture out to a big screen in the
outfield for everyone to see!)
It’s easy to laugh at David’s situation; but our laughter masks
the hurt that most, if not all of us, carry over some situation. We have been hurt. The person who caused our pain may have been
a stranger on the highway, a friend, a family member or ourselves. And we keep replaying the same incident in
our minds over and over again, but the result never changes.
There is only one way to stop inflicting this pain on ourselves
again and again. That way is the way of
forgiveness. Yet I know how hard this
is.
Peter asks Jesus, “When a member of the church hurts me, how
many times to I have to forgive him or her?
Do I have to forgive this person as many as seven times?” Jesus answers him, seventy-seven times or
seventy times seven. If you have to
count, whether to seven or to seventy-seven or to 490, you have missed the
point.
The real point is not to count how many times
you have forgiven; the point is to forgive until you no longer are holding
anything against your brother or sister.
How long do we need to hear about forgiveness? Jesus’ answer is “as long as it takes.”
Jesus then tells a parable to illustrate his
point even further about the unforgiving servant. This servant owed an immense debt to the king
of the land. When the king threatened to
throw the servant in jail for failure to pay, the servant pleaded for mercy and
the king forgave the debt. But when the
king learned that the servant had then threatened someone else who owed him
a small sum of money, the king “took back” his forgiveness and through the
unforgiving servant into debtor’s prison.
I have often been curious about the point
Jesus was making here. Was Jesus
implying that God might change his mind and take back the forgiveness He has
given us if we fail to pass the test? The
answer that I have been receiving this week to that question is no. God does not change His mind on
forgiveness. But the real question is
whether we are able to receive forgiveness in the first place. Are we clinging so tightly to the things of
the past—the hurts we have sustained, the wrongs that we have suffered—that we
have no room to let God have space in our hearts? Are we clutching so tightly to the anger and
resentment in our lives that we can no longer reach out to receive the bread of
life from the One who prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do?”
Don’t
get me wrong. I know that forgiveness is
easier said than done. I know from my
own experience—both on the forgiving side and the times that I need to be
forgiven for my own mistakes, my own stupidity, my own failures. It is hard to forgive.
I
don’t mean to gloss over the pain that we experience. It is real.
I
don’t mean to suggest that in forgiving, we need to put our lives, or our
safety in jeopardy by returning to an unhealthy or even dangerous
situation. God does not call us to do
that.
I
am also aware of the pain that can be caused when someone refuses to forgive
you or me for the things that we have done.
And
I don’t pretend that forgiveness is a magic want that we can wave and go
immediately to a happy ended in which “they all lived happily ever after.”
But
Jesus is clear: In order to receive
God’s forgiveness, we need to be able to forgive—not just in our heads, but in
our hearts. We need to forgive so we can
make space for God.
How
many times do we need to forgive? As
many as it takes.
But
what do we do when we reach the limits of our ability to forgive? We give that situation to God. There are times that we need to pray, “Lord,
I can’t forgive this person on my own. I
need for you to forgive through me.” It
is that prayer—the prayer that recognizes our own weakness—that gives up
control to God, that gives God the room to work.
In
a few moments, we will be invited to come to the Table. It is hard to open our hands to receive the
presence of Christ if we are holding on to the past. As you come to the Table, may you pray the
prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive
those who trespass against us.” May it
be so!
Copyright
© 2014 by Thomas E. Frost. All rights
reserved.
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