Return to Sermons Page | Home Page

"Forgive Us Our Debts, As We Forgive Our Debtors"

Sermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on Matthew 6:9-15
given March 25, 2007

Simon Wiesenthall tells the story of a young Jew. The time is near the end of the Second World War and the young man is taken from his barracks in the death camp to a makeshift army hospital. He is led to the bedside of a Nazi soldier whose head is completely wrapped in bandages. The dying Nazi blindly extends his hand toward him, and in a whisper begins to speak. He confesses to having participated in the burning alive of an entire village of Jews. Three hundred people were rounded up and then taken to a house where they were all crammed inside. The house was doused with gasoline and hand grenades were thrown in. Those who tried to escape were shot. The soldier is now terrified of dying with this burden of guilt and he begs absolution from the Jew. The young man is torn between compassion and horror as he listens to this appalling story. Finally the young man walks out of the room without saying a word. Simon Wiesenthall is able to explain the vivid details of this story because he was the Jewish youth. Throughout his life that moment has haunted him. Should he have forgiven the German soldier?

A young mother slowly spills out her story to a counselor at the shelter for battered women. Earlier that day she packed up her young son and came to the shelter. She grimaces in pain with each breath she inhales. The counselor suspects she has a broken rib. The woman explains that this is not the first time her husband has hit her. He has verbally and physically abused her for more than two years. She says, “It began when our son was just a few months old. My husband is under a lot deal of pressure at work and little children aren’t as quiet as my husband would like for them to be. Sometimes our son cries, and my husband gets pretty upset.

He says it’s all my fault because I’m not a very good mother.”

The counselor inquires, “Have you ever talked to anyone about this before?” The woman shakes her head, no. She informs the counselor that each time after he loses his temper, he says he’s really sorry and he begs her to forgive him. In the past, she has always forgiven him, but now she wonders if that is the right thing to do.

Today is the final sermon in our series on the Lord’s Prayer and it presents us with one of our greatest challenges in following Christ. Jesus instructs us to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” And then, to underscore the most demanding line in the prayer, he adds: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Does forgiveness include the situation faced by the young Jew? What about the battered woman? What should she do?

In the Christian faith there is a powerful affirmation of the compassion and mercy of God. Despite the wrongs we perpetrate, God seeks to forgive us. However, this never allows us to breeze over the pain that people inflict on one another. While the Scriptures teach us that God is gracious and merciful, they also teach us that God opposes sin and is angered by injustice. Anything we say about forgiveness will be shallow and incomplete if we attempt to minimize the reality of evil. Human beings possess the capacity to do unspeakable things to one another, and so talk of forgiveness is an offense against victims of injustice if we attempt to minimize the abhorrent nature of some vile deeds.

Further, before I say much about forgiveness, I must admit that I am a very fortunate person. My son did not call me from the World Trade Center on September 11th to say “Goodbye.” Neither of my daughters has been kidnapped. My parents will not be massacred in Sudan. And so in making comments about our need to forgive, I confess that I do not know if I could ever get to the point of forgiving someone who killed one of my loved ones. When I speak of forgiveness, I am aware that I have not had to forgive in the worst of circumstances. Even then, I struggle to become as forgiving as Christ calls us to be.

When we study the gospels with an eye toward Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness, we cannot avoid the astonishing words he spoke from the cross. About the very people who were killing him, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) It is a remarkable example of forgiveness in the face of cruelty and injustice.

If we turn to the 18th chapter of Matthew, we read that Peter once approached Jesus and asked him how many times he must forgive someone who sins against him. Peter says, “As many as seven times?” I suspect few of us would be as generous as Peter. Yet Peter’s noble offer to forgive someone seven times sounds almost petty when Jesus responds, “Not seven times, but seventy times seven.” Then, Jesus tells a story whose punch line is that God will not be merciful to us if we do not forgive those who hurt us. Most of us think that Jesus said, “God will forgive you if you repent,” but in fact, he said, “God will forgive you if you forgive.”

Don’t you hope God is considerably more forgiving than we are? Knowing our propensity for holding grudges and seeking revenge, I would hate to think that God would treat us in the same manner.

Some say that to forgive is to forget, but I don’t think forgiveness entails erasing something from our memories. If we forget an injustice, we may allow it to happen again. Forgiveness does not require us to forget the pain someone has inflicted on us, it calls on us to let go of its destructive power over us. Forgiveness allows us to move beyond the painful memory.

When I meet with couples who are preparing to marry, I remind them that forgiveness is essential to building a solid and vibrant marriage. No one is perfect and if you live with someone long enough, he/she will not only irritate you with annoying habits, but eventually will do something that will hurt you. You will feel totally justified in holding it over them and striking back, but I hope you will pause and seriously contemplate whether you want your dispute to escalate into a war or if you want to choose the path of forgiveness. Some people feel as if they need to keep score in their close relationships. However, if you keep score - no matter what the score is - you lose.

Usually it is easier to forgive someone if we can make sense of why they hurt us.

If someone explodes in anger at us, it helps to know that her husband has just left her. But since we cannot always know what is happening in another’s life it helps to remember that there are always things going on with people of which we are unaware. Philosopher Jeffrie Murphy tells of a boy who just learned that the class bully was routinely abused by her parents. The boy said, “That takes all the fun out of hating her.” Hate often feeds on stereotypes, of one dimensional images of people. In order to forgive, we must have empathy for others. (1)

However, we must not confuse empathy with excusing someone from taking responsibility for her actions. There is a tendency in our culture to absolve everyone of their guilt by blaming someone else for their behavior. A folk singer named Anna Russell has captured this thinking in a piece of music she composed. Its lyrics read:

I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed

To find out why I killed the cat and blackened my husband’s eyes.

He laid me on a downy couch to see what he could find,

And here is what he dredged up from my subconscious mind:

When I was one, my mommy hid my dolly in a trunk,

And so it follows naturally that I am always drunk.

When I was two, I saw my father kiss the maid one day,

And that is why I suffer now from kleptomania.

At three, I had the feeling of ambivalence toward my brothers,

And so it follows naturally I poison all my lovers.

But I’m happy now because I’ve learned the lesson this has taught;

That everything I do that’s wrong is someone else’s fault. (2)

Justice demands that we be honest and that people take responsibility for their actions.

Justice requires harmful actions to cease and for crimes to be punished. The German soldier who murdered the Jews cannot simply return to society. The abusive husband may need to be restrained from his wife. Forgiveness does not substitute for justice, but it does remind us to walk in another’s moccasins before we pass judgment.

It is a true blessing when forgiveness can mend a broken relationship and two people who are alienated from one another can renew their friendship. However, forgiveness cannot always achieve a beautiful reunion. Sometimes, the most forgiveness can do is to put an end to the hostilities. Sometimes the best we can achieve is to let go of the hurt and no longer allow the painful past to poison the present.

Forgiveness is a compassionate action toward someone whom we might justifiably say does not deserve it. But forgiveness is not only directed at the one who caused the pain, it also helps the victim. If we have been hurt by someone, forgiveness helps us let go of the pain so that we can put it in the past and move forward. When we forgive someone who has hurt us, even if they fail to confess their wrong, we allow the memories that haunt us to “wither away like plants without water.” (3)

While forgiveness cannot change what has happened in the past, it can alter how the past impacts the present and the future. We can cling to the past in a way that leads to despair or we can forgive the past in a way that leads to hope.

How do you react when someone hurts you? Do you try to figure out some clever way to make them pay for it? Do you try to make them feel really guilty? Do you try to back them into a corner? Or can you speak honestly to them about the way they have harmed you while leaving open a path that can lead to reconciliation?

Frederick Buechner says that when we forgive someone who has harmed us we say, “You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights I should call it quits between us. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you’ve done and though we may both carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you to be my friend.” (4)

In the end, forgiveness is the only true path to shalom - that state of peace that includes health, wholeness and well-being. It is an arduous path and sometimes seems interminable. Yet Christ helps us realize that there is a tremendous difference in the quality of our lives if we are forging the demanding path toward forgiveness rather than the easy path of evening the score.

NOTES

1. Donald Shriver, Jr., “The Forgiveness We Need,” the keynote address to the Agenda for Reconciliation in Caux, Switzerland, July 31, 2001.

2. James R. Bjorge, Living in the Forgiveness of God (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1990), p.24.

3. Miroslav Volf, “Letting Go: The Final Miracle of Forgiveness,” in Christian Century, December 12, 2006, p.31.

4. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p.79.

Return to Sermons Page | Home Page