"And Forgive Us Our Debts..."

Sermon on Sunday, October 17, 2010

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
- Colossians 3:12-13

A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother saw the opportunity for a lesson, and so she said to her boys, “If Jesus were sitting here, he would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.’” Kevin thought fast, turned to his younger brother, and said, “Ryan, you be Jesus!”

Sometimes just because we’ve had the lesson doesn’t mean we have any idea what the lesson really means.

Today is the fourth Sunday in our sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer, and so we’ll spend some time with the phrase, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” And you could say that we’ve all had the lesson on this one. From an early age, most of us are indoctrinated into some sense of understanding about forgiveness.

In most cases, our early sense of forgiveness was thrust upon us. “Say you’re sorry,” we all heard our parents and teachers order as they tried to resolve conflicts at the breakfast table and on the playground. “You go and apologize right now!” Did you ever hear something like that? “You march over there and say you’re sorry this very instant.” I caught myself intervening the other day with two of my own daughters. There’d been an altercation involving some Polly Pockets, and it had required a time out, after which, in an effort to promote peace and reconciliation in the Johnston-Krase home, I ushered the offender back to the scene of the crime and, before play could resume, asked the offending daughter, “Now what do you say to your sister?”

In so doing, I joined the ranks and ranks of parents who have attempted to force forgiveness on their children, only to have it backfire. You see, my own children are learning, as I did at their age, that the purpose of an apology is often to get you off the hook, or even worse, that the purpose of an apology is to satisfy not the person to whom you’re apologizing, but rather the adult who’s managing the conflict.

Of course, when it comes to helping our children navigate conflict, much of our energy is put into helping them say the right things. Actual forgiveness is a deeper and more complicated issue, and as we grow into adulthood, we all discover that at one time or another.

Most people genuinely aspire to forgive in their daily lives. A while back, a Gallup Poll in this country shared that 94% of the people surveyed felt like it was important to forgive. In that same poll, however, only 48% said that they usually try to forgive. It’s always one thing to say the right things about forgiveness—it’s another to actually put forgiveness into practice. In the same poll, 85% of those surveyed said that they could not forgive on their own and needed outside help.

Sunday after Sunday, we pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Others pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Some Christian churches have found that “debts” and “trespasses” don’t make immediate sense to folks in our culture these days, and so they pray, simply, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” They’re all fine ways to pray a prayer that we struggle to follow.

The early Christian church must have found it difficult too. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul wrote, “Bear with one another and… forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive”—imploring the faithful to mirror God’s forgiveness in their own lives.

“So you also must forgive…” But what does that look like? Mother Theresa said “if we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.” And that’s just it. Forgiveness isn’t simply about accepting an apology, and it’s especially not about accepting an apology that’s been coached by an “adult” or some other authority figure.

In the daily and weekly scrum of living, practicing forgiveness is tough. In the midst of feelings damaged, when we find ourselves as victims, when hurtful words have been said, when we push through the troubled waters of separation and divorce… forgiving can be tough. And yet, as Paul Boese said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” And so it is good for us to name and honor the potential that forgiveness holds for us.

This morning I won’t pretend to make forgiveness easy. The fact that our need to forgive appears so frequently in Scripture reminds us that forgiveness has never been easy. I would like to take some time, however, to help us think a little more openly and perhaps hopefully about forgiveness in our own lives—about the power of forgiveness to “enlarge the future.”

An author I’m liking more and more these days, Lewis Smedes, lifts up four truths about forgiveness that I’d like to share with you today.

The first is that forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself.

When we think about forgiveness, we’re often led to consider the issue of fairness. And it often can feel like forgiveness isn’t fair. Maybe you’ve been hurt or maybe your life has been changed forever because of someone else’s carelessness or meanness. And while forgiving may sound like the “Christian” thing to do, it still doesn’t seem fair, in light of the damage that’s been done. Smedes argues that offering forgiveness may not be about fairness to the other person, but rather fairness to yourself.

“Forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself,” he writes. And so he argues that when someone hurts us, it’s not fair that the hurt goes on and on and on, for the rest of our lives. It’s not fair to us that the one who hurt us once can hurt us again and again in our memory. And so while forgiveness may be about fairness to another person, it’s also, and perhaps more importantly, about fairness to ourselves.

The second truth about forgiveness, according to Lewis Smedes, is that forgivers are not doormats.

That’s an image of forgivers that we need to shake—that image of someone offering forgiveness looking like a doormat, lying down and letting others walk all over him or her.

Smedes tells a story about a woman who learned about being a forgiver without being a doormat. This woman had a five year old son who was playing in the front yard near the curb when a drunk driver swerved off the road and killed him, right in front of the house. The absolute worst thing for a parent to imagine. For two years, she lived in a fog of rage and even fantasized about the most horrible things happening to the man who took her son’s life. She wanted him to somehow suffer more than he had made her suffer.

“Well,” says Smedes, “after living in the misery of her blind, unhealed rage for two years, she woke up to the fact that the drunk who killed her son was now killing her—inside—a day at a time, killing her soul. And she was helping him do it.” With the help of the woman’s priest, she began to forgive even this man, and to send a message to her community and prevent further misery, she began a local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk driving. These two acts went hand in hand. Forgivers are not doormats. They forgive others, but do not tolerate their wrong doing.

The third truth about forgiveness is that you don’t have to wait until someone says they’re sorry.

Sometimes we get to thinking that the beginning of forgiveness is an apology, but that’s not always the case. “I’m sorry” can be nice to hear, when it’s genuine, but sometimes it’s not, and sometimes it never comes.

If we wait for the other person to ask for forgiveness, we just might wait forever, and then we’re the ones stuck with the pain. “Why should you put your future happiness in the hands of an unrepentant person who had hurt you so unfairly to begin with?” Smedes asks. “If you refuse to forgive until he begs you to forgive, you are letting him decide for you when you may be healed of the memory of the rotten thing he did to you.” I can remember talking with Dee Talley, the interim minister in this church before me. We were talking about forgiveness, and Dee made this remark: “Not forgiving another person is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die.”

Waiting for an apology can result in you putting your happiness in the hands of the person who made you unhappy in the first place. Don’t let your forgiveness wait for an “I’m sorry.” Let the other person be responsible for that while you go on healing yourself.

The fourth truth about forgiveness is that forgiving is a journey.

Sometimes forgiveness is a lot like grief. It isn’t over in a day or a week, or even a year. Sometimes it’s part of life’s journey, and it takes time. It may help to remember, then, that forgiveness isn’t about letting someone else off the hook—it’s about healing and recovering in the midst of pain.

And so sometimes we find ourselves struggling to forgive the same person again and again and again. And that’s ok. And while we’re on the subject, let me simply say that sometimes the person we’re struggling to forgive is ourselves. You might hear someone say to you, “Oh, well, you just need to forgive yourself,” but sometimes that’s easier said than done. Forgiveness is a journey, and it can take time.

So, to recap some truths about forgiveness:
1. Forgiving is the only way to be fair to yourself.
2. Forgivers are not doormats.
3. You don’t have to wait until someone says they’re sorry.
4. Forgiveness is a journey.

My hope all along in this Lord’s Prayer sermon series is that we might pray the Lord’s Prayer with more hope and intentionality than ever before. I pray today that the prayer, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” might make new and gracious sense to you. I pray, too, that forgiving others and forgiving yourself, you might find your future enlarged with faith and love. Amen.