“The Forgiveness of Sins”

A Sermon Based Upon  Matthew 18: 15-35

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

April 2, 2017, Series: Apostles Creed 14/15)

One of the most difficult things a community pastor is called to do is to conduct funerals of people who don’t go to church.   I’d been called upon to do this several times.  Sometimes I’ve done it well, other times, not so good. 

      Somebody told a joke about this pastoral challenge.  You can decide whether or not it’s funny.   Here it goes:

        “Jimmy, the local drunk, fornicator, embezzler, and philanderer dies.”

“His wife, a proper lady, wants a nice funeral for him to keep up appearances.

Despite the fact that religion meant nothing to Jimmy, she goes to local catholic priest.

       ‘Please,’ she begs the priest, ‘I know that Jimmy was a scoundrel and never went to church, but can’t you at least bury him and say a kind word over his body?’

        The priest looked at the poor pleading woman and felt sorry for her. ‘Oh, all right,’ the priest says, ‘bring him to the church and I’ll see what I can do.’

      “The entire city and every one of his relatives down to his third cousins turned up at the funeral to hear what good a priest could possibly think of to say about a guy like this. The priest took a deep breath, looked out over the straining, expectant crowd, thought a minute, and said, ‘I know Jimmy O’Brien was a drunk, a fornicator, an embezzler, and a philanderer. But next to the rest of his family, this guy was a saint.’” Chittister, Joan. In Search of Belief (Kindle Locations 2717-2728).

OUR NEED OF FORGIVENESS

This sounds like a joke, but it’s really not.   In a Pastoral Counseling class, I recall learning that if see someone with all kinds of behavior problems, like being a drunk, a fornicator, an embezzler, or philanderer;  normally, when you carefully and thoroughly study the case history of that person, you’ll uncover something else was the ‘real’ problem.   The person who came to you never simply a sinner, or trouble-maker, or ‘problem’ all by themselves, but most often they are a troubled soul, still suffering deep within and all that unresolved pain is now surfacing in all their bad behavior.   They don’t have the emotional, spiritual resources they need to cope. 

The goal of the counseling with someone like this, however, is not to excuse the person’s behavior, nor even to forgive them, but to try to get them to the point that they can forgive whoever or whatever had brought them such deep hurt.   Then, the goal was to encourage them to take full responsibility for their own actions and to help them discover the spiritual and emotional resources within themselves, and perhaps beyond themselves, so that they can find healing.  That’s what they told us in class, but what they didn’t tell us, is that most of the people quietly stick all that pain down into their soul, and either they don’t know what to do with it, or they never show up to share it.  hey just go getting by in whatever way they can.

Not long ago, I was in choir practice on a Wednesday, and a lady in the community called and asked if I could be on ‘standby’ for the funeral for her father.

           “What did you say?”  I asked her.  “You want me to be the ‘back up’ for a funeral?

           “Pastor, I know this sounds strange.  My Dad was a member of your church.  But he hasn’t gone to church since he was a little boy.   I’ve been intending to come, myself, but….”

           “OK”?  I answered. 

           She continued: “We’ve asked his brother-in-law to do the funeral for him, but he’s 82 years old, and has a doctor’s appointment and is not sure whether or not he can make it.”

          “We’ll I’m not sure...”  I stuttered.   “I’ve never played ‘back-up’ for a funeral.”

          “I hate to asked you to do this, pastor.   But we don’t know what else to do.  

 After a moment of going over my schedule in my head, I responded:

        “Let me have his number.”  I thought to myself, “I’ll make sure he get’s there.”

Even after my phone, the older pastor told me that he had a doctor’s appointment.  “They always make you wait.”   He still wanted me to be there, just in case.   

When I did arrive at the funeral home, fortunately, the older preacher was already there. 

            “Do you need me to do anything?”  I asked.

             “You just start things off, and I’ll do the ending, and we’ll have a song between us, and then after I speak, there will be a closing hymn.”

So, with those instructions, I stood up to greet the family and friends.   As I looked over the crowd, I didn’t see a single person in that family who had ever been in church.  The Pallbearers, well they didn’t look like the kind of fellows you’d normally see in church either.

What do you say in a situation like that?   

I opened my Bible, and after reading the 23^rd Psalm, began something like: “David said that, when he walked through the valley of death, he would not be afraid.   He was not afraid, because the Lord was his Shepherd and Guide.   I know that we all think we can make it through life, pretty much on our own.  Maybe we can make it through life.  But when it comes to facing death, especially the death of those we love, we all need a Shepherd.   The Lord is my Shepherd.   Jesus Christ wants to be your Shepherd too...   God’s love stronger than death.

After I finished and the song had played, the elderly Pentecostal Holiness preacher stood up.   He started out by saying that he didn’t know whether his brother-in-law was saved.  

        “Uh oh, here it comes,” I thought to myself.

    He continued to say that his message today would be to try to bring comfort the family.  Then, he started telling about a tragedy.  He said that when his brother-in-law was a boy, a bad storm hit their town.  “His father was carried away by a flood.  They didn’t find his body until a couple of days later.  That’s hard to get over, as a family.”  He said.

As the minister continued, I suddenly remembered what the daughter told me during our phone conversation:  “Maybe he once went to church when he was a boy.”  She added: “But he did like to hunt and fish.  He loved to play rook.  You could talk about that….”

What do you do, when people don’t measure up to our expectations?   What do you say, when they don’t fit into what you think is right, what the church thinks is right, or even, what God says is right?    Today, near the end of the Apostle’s Creed, it says, that we the church are supposed to ‘believe’ in ‘the forgiveness of sins’.  Now, it’s one thing to believe in the ‘forgiveness of OUR sins’, but it’s quite another thing to believe in the ‘forgiveness’ of THEIR sins, especially those who have sinned against us.   

In today’s text from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus instructs his disciples:  “If another member of the church sins against YOU, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone....”    If that doesn’t work, “take one of two other with you!”   Now, Jesus continues, and if that still doesn’t work, ‘take it to the church’.    Finally, Jesus concludes, “If the offender still refuses to listen, even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile or tax collector….Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven….”  (Matt. 18:15-18).

Those were Jesus instructions, Matthew says.   “If someone has hurt you, you should go to them.”   If you value your relationship with them, try to get things worked out.   If they won’t listen, get someone else to help.  That’s all still very good advice—for church, in a marriage, for almost any kind of relationship.  But still, Jesus admitted right up front, this wouldn’t be easy. Both parties have to value the relationship enough to go through this.  So, “IF the offender still refuses…..”,  Jesus suggested.  He warned us already, it might not work.  

Unfortunately, many people today, just like was yesterday, would rather just walk away, let the relationship crumble, or don’t want to admit, nor do they have time to deal with it.   Besides, in churches today, we don’t have any kind of moral ‘authority’ to make something like this work anyway.   If people don’t think much about ‘God’ or ‘heaven’, what does it matter what happens on earth.   So, when relationships break, when someone sins, we just go straight to the ‘Gentile or tax collector’ part.   We assume they won’t listen.  We assume others don’t want to get involved.  What does it really matter?  Who cares?  Let them be ‘Gentiles’ if they want too!   Let them be whatever they want, and I’ll be whatever I want.

And if we don’t care about getting our relationships with each other right, what do we care about our getting our relationship with God right?   Well, I’ll tell you at least about one man who learned to care.  He didn’t do it on purpose either, but it still happened.   Reynolds Price was a middle-aged professor at Duke University, an English professor and a critically acclaimed novelist. Some years back, I took a continuing education workshop with him at Duke and got to hear his story.  Since then, I’ve also read his book,  “Letter to a Man in the Fire”.

Once upon a time, Price had a productive, successful academic career. Life was good. Then one day he received some grim news.  The Doctor told him that there was an 8-inch tumor wrapped around his spine.  No operation could be guaranteed to fully remove it.  Physicians agreed he would not have more than 18 months to live. The pain grew until it was devastating.
He went through months of debilitating treatments, physical therapy and a slew of remedies that attempted to relieve his pain. He began to pray and read the Bible, although he noted that he didn’t find any quick relief. Then one day he had a vision, and it caught him off guard. He taught at a Methodist University but by his own admission, he was a only a part-time Protestant.
In his vision, Price saw himself by the Sea of Galilee and Jesus summoned him. They waded out into the water. He writes, “Jesus silently took up handfuls of water and poured them over my head and back until water ran down my puckered scar. Then he spoke, once, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ and turned to shore, done with me. I came on behind him, thinking in my standard greedy fashion, ‘It’s not my sins I’m worried about.’
So to Jesus’ receding back I had the gall to say, ‘Am I also cured?’ He turned to face me, no sign of a smile, and finally said two words, ‘That too.’ Then he climbed from the water, not looking around, really done with me.”   Without knowing whether he was still asleep or awake,  Price said he “was home again in my wide bed.”

Reynolds Price was never fully physically healed. His cancer eventually diminished due to treatments, but he remained in a wheelchair the rest of his life.   You might ask, “What did Professor Price get out of that experience?”  

          “I am still fully filled with gratitude.”

The vision he experienced had erased all superstitious feelings he had that his sickness came as a punishment, or that he was in any way deserving of it.   For, he heard Jesus say “You sins are forgiven”.  This experience brought him closer to the promise of God even when his illness threatened to tear him away from life.  OF course, Reynolds Price didn’t get his life back, but did get something.   He lived the rest of his days with a loving, forgiving, and redeeming presence of Christ.   The key to rest of his life: Jesus forgives.

THE WAY OF FORGIVENESS

The church believes in the ‘forgiveness of sins’ because Jesus believed in it.  Jesus practiced forgiveness and made it the priority of his ministry.   Right at very beginning, in his very first miracle, Jesus told the paralyzed man, who had been let down through the roof,  “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5).  That was exactly the words Reynolds Price heard in his vision.  When Jesus first spoke those words, some called it ‘blasphemy’.  They said “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”   But Jesus kept on forgiving people anyway, just like he was God.  He kept on forgiving up to his very last moment when they placed him on a cross to crucify him.  Even then we find Jesus still praying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not realize what they are doing!”  (Luke 23:34).  What they were “doing” was not only killing an innocent man, but they were killing, according to the first gospel, the ‘Son of Man…who came…to give his life as a ransom for many (Mk. 10:45).  However you approach the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, according to all those who were with him, or first came to follow him, and write about him, right at the center of everything that Jesus was, what he preached, the miracles he worked, and even at the center of how and why he died, you will find rising up right from the middle of it all, this question, and perhaps an answer to, about God’s forgiveness.  “Who can forgive sin, but God alone?   Who sins should we forgive?  How can we be sure that our own sins are forgiven?   Faith in life, faith in Christ, the Christian faith, all faith—finally comes to rest in whether or not we believe in ‘the forgiveness of sins’. 

The early church came focused, fixated itself, and founded the church based upon this very belief in faith.   On the very day the church was born, Simon Peter stood up to say,  “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus so that your sins may be forgiven…. (Acts 2:38).   Peter preached again, even when he too was getting into trouble for it,  “God exalted him (Jesus) as…Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins…. (Acts 5:31).  And with Paul, as the takes the gospel into the Gentile world, the message is applied to those outside of Israel, and the point is main even stronger, but does not change:  “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us…(Rom. 5: 6-8)  To the Colossians, Paul sounded out the assumption we have echoed in the Apostle’s creed:  “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (1:14).

In the text in front of us, the main thread is ‘forgiveness’.   In addressing need of forgiveness, Matthew quotes Jesus; perhaps applying the words of Jesus to his own day.    The point is that the church, now newly established, was seeing God’s gift of forgiveness, not as a blessing, but a problem.  It is the kind of problem any of us can face in life, when the good news of the gospel confronts the real world.  It’s the world where all of us struggle over how to deal with people, live with people, or even love people who have hurt or offended us.   It is this kind of ‘problem’ that causes Peter to ask Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" (Matt. 18:21 NRS).   Now, Peter is definitely trying to be nice.   He’s already willing to go more than the ‘second mile’ Jesus spoke about.  He’s willing to consider forgive someone ‘as many as seven times?’   That’s a lot further than some people will go.  But this is ‘church’, so let’s try harder, right?

This is when Jesus gave Peter another shocking truth.   Jesus said, “Not seven times, but, I tell you seventy-seven times (or seventy times seven, as some translate).  It really doesn’t matter which exact number you come up with, because Jesus was not trying to be exact.  He was being indefinite.  Jesus was saying that there is ‘no limit’ to how many times you are supposed to forgive a person when they are in ‘church’ with you, close to you, living beside of you.  If you are trying to live with other, you’ve got to forgive and keep on forgiving.  

Now, we are not told how Peter responded to Jesus’ answer.  Maybe we are not told because that really doesn’t matter now.   What matters now is how the church will decide to be a church in the world.   So, how will we, the church of our day,  respond to such an ‘outlandish’ idea of forgiving someone who is close to us, but who has hurt us?   Will we forgive?  How can we forgive, indefinitely?

For you see, either this whole idea of forgiveness is either from God, or its just some ridiculous, unreasonable, or outrageous idea, that hasn’t worked, didn’t work, won’t work, doesn’t matter, and really doesn’t make much sense in life at all.  Or maybe…just maybe this way of forgiveness and being a forgiving person, is the only possible ‘way’ of living and relating to each other in a world where we finally realize that ‘all have sinned and come short of God’s glory’ and that we too, no matter how right or wrong we are, ‘we are saved by grace, through faith, it is a gift of God’.   All of us,  Peter included, as the gospel story goes on to tell us, have  either both the one who has hurt someone, as well as, being the one who has been hurt.

THE ACCEPTANCE FORGIVENESS

This very Christian ‘way of forgiveness’, based on the ‘gift of grace’ God has revealed in his Son, and on ‘the faith’ we are called to accept and receive by believing on him; not ourselves—this is not a ‘way’ based on our ‘frustrations, ’ the ‘facts’ or only on our ‘feelings’.  

Forgiveness does not deny the facts, not does it negate our feelings; but it does give us a greater, bolder, life-changing truth that re-imagines everything in another light.  It is not an easy way, and it seems impossible when we only live in that moment.  It’s not even a ‘way’ we should try alone, because we will need a community, a people, or a new family, to help live and forgive ‘this’ way.   This is the way we can only live when we ‘walk’ his way---the one who said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  Only the most daring ‘way’ of the one who lived and died ‘the forgiveness of sins’ can break loose the most difficult relational realities we humans will ever face.

This is why Mother Teresa, as she worked in one of the most difficult places on the face of this earth, where there was very little Christianity, but all kinds of pain and hurt, put up a poster on her wall in Calclutta, gave people their only way out.  It said:

 People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;  Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;   Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you’ll win false friends and true enemies; Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;  Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;  Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give your best anyway.

For you see,  in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;

It was never between you and them anyway.

[Reportedly inscribed on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta, and attributed to her. However, an article in the New York Times has since reported (March 8, 2002) that the original version of this poem was written by Kent M. Keith.]

Mother Teresa’s poster points us in the same direction Jesus took Peter.   Jesus told Peter and us, a parable.  Parables are how little people like you and me, gain an opening into the unfathomable ‘heart of God;’ a God whose ‘ways are not our ways, and whose thoughts are not our thoughts’.  

You remember the point of this parable don’t you?  The King is about throw a landlord into prison who owes him a great debt, but instead has mercy forgives the huge debt.   But the landlord, who is forgiven, does not decide to live with the same grace and gratitude, but turns against his own ‘slave’ and puts him into prison for a much lesser debt.   His fellow slaves report this to the king.   He summons the landlord back, scolds him for not showing the same mercy to his own servants, and hands him over to be ‘tortured’ until his great debt, he could not pay, is finally paid.

We can certainly understand this need for ‘forgiving’ very well,  until, we get to ‘how’ Jesus finally explains it, when he add: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart" (Matt. 18:35 NRS).   So, at this place, where Jesus’ story ends raises the big question for us:  How dare a forgiving God stop forgiving, when he has told us not to stop forgiving?   Perhaps, however, the question here is still not about God, but solution still depends on what goes on in ‘our heart’.

In ‘The Book of Forgiving’, written by Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho, there is a story about Kelley Connor.  When she was 17, she was driving herself to work in the family car from her home in Perth, Australia. It was going to be a good day. It was her younger sister’s birthday and they were going to celebrate later that evening.

On the way to work that day, Kelly accidentally hit and killed seventy-year old Margaret Healy as she was crossing the street.   She was driving too fast up a hill, and as the road crested she was looking into the rearview mirror- instead of straight ahead. Too late with the brakes, she slammed into the older woman.  It was an accident, but she was fully responsible. She was at fault, but the police wouldn’t let her tell them the true story of what had happened.

“How fast were you going?” – the policeman asked.

“I’m not sure, but probably 42 miles an hour. I was going too fast.” Kelly said.

“Do you know the speed limit?” the policeman asked.

“Thirty-five miles an hour.”

“Then how fast were you going?” He asked again.

“Probably 42 miles an hour.” Kelly said again, this time a bit confused.

He sighed, asking again…”What is the speed limit?”

“Thirty-five miles an hour.”

“Then how fast were you travelling?”

Kelly says that she really didn’t know what to say. Was he asking her to lie?

“I was going thirty-five miles an hour,” she finally said.   “Good”, said the policeman. Then he began to write up the citation that would not lead to her imprisonment.

After she returned home that night, Kelly’s mother passed an edict that said that the whole family would have to live the rest of their lives as if the event never happened and told Kelly that she was forbidden to ever speak of it again.  Ever.  So, after the news had passed, and nothing happened to her, she began to live in fear that it would all catch up to her. Her anxiety kept building through months and even years that someone was going to come and take her away, where she deserved, to be locked up. She had recurring dreams that led to nightmares and continued insomnia.

Kelly began to think she wasn’t worthy to have a life because she had taken a life. There was no safe place to go and no safe person to turn to.   Her family fell apart. Shame, dread, guilt, pain all built up around them.  She said later, ‘Her entire family began to die the day she hit and killed Margaret.  Her mother stopped talking to anyone, her father moved away.  Her friendships died, her youth died, her future died. She came to believe that the only person who knew her pain was the woman she killed.

The police and her parents wouldn’t punish her, and they wouldn’t speak the truth, so she began to shrivel up. She kept her shame and her secret for decades, and it nearly killed her.

It took her nearly thirty years to admit the wrong and break the silence imposed by her mother on that tragic day.  After lengthy therapy, once she was able to speak about it, she was also able to make space for her own anguish, ask for forgiveness, and finally, release the relationship that would not let go.  Today Kelly lives writes and speaks publicly about forgiveness. Her book, To Cause a Death, recounts her journey from silence to self-forgiveness.

Her life was forever altered not just by taking a life, but also by not naming the hurt, and by not finding some measure of forgiveness that tormented her so.  Kelly’s story is important for us.  Perhaps the what Jesus meant that the question of forgiveness remains finally with us.  It is not what God is going to do to us, as much as it is, what we have already done,  deep on the inside, when we haven’t really accepted the value of forgiveness for ourselves.  Forgiving oneself, is always the hardest of all.  Accepting God’s acceptance of us, so that it becomes who we are and how we forgive and accept others, is the only way to have a ‘heart’ and a ‘soul’. 

Listen to this final part of a poem by Desmond Tutu, that points us all the place where all ‘torture’ and ‘hurt’ can find mercy and peace in the ‘forgiveness of sins’: 

           Is there a place where we can meet? You and me,  the place in the middle, the no man’s land,  where we straddle the lines;   where you are right and I am right, too,

        and both of us are wrong and wronged.
                Can we meet there?
                And look for the place where the path begins,
                     the path that ends when we forgive…   

Isn’t this the same path to Golgotha that Jesus walked.  The road to forgiveness that still begins and ends in him?   Amen.