April 10, Lesson: Matthew 18.21-35

Sermon Title: You Don't Mean It?

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INTRODUCTION

A couple was celebrating their Golden wedding anniversary. Their domestic tranquility had long been the talk of the town. A local newspaper reporter was inquiring as to the secret of their long and happy marriage. (1)

"Well, it dates back to our honeymoon, " explained the husband. "We visited the Grand Canyon and took a trip down to the bottom of the canyon by pack mule. We hadn't gone too far when my wife's mule stumbled.

My wife quietly said 'That's once.'

We proceeded a little further when the mule stumbled again. Once more my wife quietly said, 'That's twice.'

We hadn't gone a half-mile when the mule stumbled a third time. My wife promptly removed a revolver from her purse and shot the mule.

I started to protest over her treatment of the mule when she looked at me and quietly said, "That's once."

  1. One, two three, it is a numbers game.

    1. It is one of the games that people play.

    2. This is not your usual parlor game.

      1. We are not playing Sheepshead, 500 or Candyland

      2. This is a serious game.

      3. Game is a word that describes the way we understand and play the game of life.

  2. Peter is a game player.

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MAIN BODY:

  1. Peter was greatly struck with what Jesus had just said about the reconciliation of enemies

    1. He wants to know what limits may be imposed on his generosity.

      1. What if the offender made no compensation for his offence.

      2. What if the offender did not substantially acknowledged not his wrong doing.

    2. Peter thought that by mentioning seven times he was being unusually liberal and generous in proposing such a measure of forgiveness.

      1. This is what Peter had been taught.

      2. Some rabbis had fixed this limit from their interpretation of Amos 1.3 and 2.1.

Thus says the LORD:
For three transgressions of Damascus,
and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because they have threshed Gilead
with threshing sledges of iron, (Amos 1:3, NRSVA).

Thus says the LORD:
For three transgressions of Moab,
and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because he burned to lime
the bones of the king of Edom, (Amos 2:1, NRSVA).

      1. "For three transgressions, and for four," etc; but the usual precept enjoined forgiveness for three offenses only drawing the line here.

      2. There was no pity to be shown for a fourth offense.

    1. There once lived a wise man by the name of Ben-Sira who bid a man admonish the offending neighbor only twice.

Question a friend; perhaps he did not do it;
or if he did, so that he may not do it again.
Question a neighbor; perhaps he did not say it;
or if he said it, so that he may not repeat it.
Question a friend, for often it is slander;
so do not believe everything you hear.
A person may make a slip without intending it.
Who has not sinned with his tongue?
Question your neighbor before you threaten him;
and let the law of the Most High take its course, (Sirach 19:13-17, NRSVA).

      1. He is silent to any further forgiveness.

      2. What more do we need.

    1. The Jews were very fond of defining and limiting moral obligations, as if they could be accurately prescribed by number.

    2. The game could be played and one offered forgiveness for the usual amount of offenses, and then the game was done.

  1. Jesus demolishes these limitations of law by extolling mercy and grace.

    1. Jesus says not seven times, but seven times seven times.

      1. This was seen to be outrageous.

      2. Jesus is not concerned with numbers.

      3. Jesus is concerned that his followers live by different principles.

      4. Jesus is concerned with developing a different way to see ourselves and all others.

    2. It is not how often one forgives, but is it often enough.

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  1. Our biggest concern ought to be to answer the question: "How does one develop a forgiving state of mind and action?"

    1. Is there a state which leads to a willingness to forgive that overcomes a reticence to forgive?

    2. I went on the Internet and typed in steps forgiveness.

      1. I found that on Google there were 1,200,000 hits in 0.26 seconds

      2. There are all kinds of people offering all kinds of advice.

        1. Forgiveness: 14 Steps

        2. The Top Ten Steps to Forgiveness.

        3. Eight Steps to Complete Forgiveness.

        4. 4 Steps to Forgiveness.

        5. Theoquest | 21 Steps

        6. Aromatherapy-Steps to Forgiveness

    3. The list is endless, confusion reigns.

  2. Let me attempt to provide you with some information that may be helpful in inspiring you to become a Christ-centered forgiving Christian.

    1. We forgive ourselves for ourselves.

Tom O'Donnell, Esq., New Hartford, New York writes:

"Lord, If you'll forgive me, I'll forgive me."

"I know you'll forgive me. That's the easy part. That's what Jesus and the Cross and the Resurrection were all about: Forgiveness."

But forgiving myself -- that's another story. I wonder why it's so hard to forgive ourselves. I don't mean giving ourselves another chance. We do that all the time, in so many different ways .... we discover the error of our ways and, promising ourselves to do better next time, we 'forgive' ourselves.

But the next time repeats itself, again and again. And each time we go through the same routine -- we suffer our brokenness, struggle through pangs of guilt, and forgive ourselves. But we don't really for-give, do we? Or maybe I should say, fore-give. For to fore-give is to give up in advance. To fore-give is to say No to the sin before it pounces; to ward off the anger, to reject the half-truth; to resist the stereotyping. To fore-give is to say No to our brokenness and, just as your Son did, to say Yes to our Resurrection.

Lord, ... help us to forgive us our sins, but, more importantly, to fore-give us our sins that we may fore-give those who sin against us. For in the fore-giving is the receiving, and in the receiving is the Resurrection.

      1. If we cannot forgive ourselves, we can forgive no one else.

      2. We will only mentally cramp-up and live with an intolerance for others.,

    1. We Need to Forgive for Our Own Sake

      1. This appears to be much like the first step, but it takes the first step further.

Anemia was the girl's problem. After several months of unsuccessful treatment, her physician decided to send her to the medical officer in the district where she worked. He wanted to get his permission to send her to a mountain sanatorium. The patient returned to her physician one week later with the permit from the medical officer. On the permit was this notation: "On analyzing your blood, however, I do not arrive at anything like the figures you quote." The physician checked his original figures, drew a fresh sample of blood from the girl, and rushed to his laboratory to find the blood count really had changed. He returned to his office and asked the girl, "Has anything out of the ordinary happened in your life since your last visit?" The girl replied, "Yes, something has happened. I have suddenly been able to forgive someone against whom I bore a nasty grudge; and all at once I felt I could at last say, `Yes', to life."

That story about the high cost of holding a grudge was reported by Dr. Paul Tournier in his book, A Doctor's Casebook in the Light of the Bible. (2)

      1. Harboring resentment or vengeance raises 'Cain' with our whole physical self.

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    1. We forgive others for ourselves.

      1. In 1995, I read Sister Helen Prejean's book, Dead Man Walking (3)

      2. There is a marvelous illustration which highlights this point.

Lloyd LeBlanc told me that he would have been content with imprisonment for Patrick Sonnier [the killer of his son, David]. He went to the execution, he says, not for revenge, but hoping for an apology.

Patrick Sonnier didn't disappoint him. Before sitting in the electric chair, he said, "Mr. LeBlanc, I want to ask your forgiveness for what me and Eddie done," and Lloyd LeBlanc nodded his head, signaling a forgiveness he had already given.

He says that when he arrived with sheriff's deputies there in the cane field to identify his son, he knelt by his boy -- "lying down there with his two little eyes sticking out like bullets" -- and prayed the Our Father. And when he came to the words: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," he had not halted or equivocated, and he said, "Whoever did this, I forgive them."

But he acknowledges that it's a struggle to overcome the feelings of bitterness and revenge that well up, especially as he remembers David's birthday year by year and loses him all over again: David at 20, David at 25, David getting married, David standing at the back door with his little ones clustered around his knees, grown-up David, a man like himself, whom he will never know. Forgiveness is never going to be easy. Each day it must be prayed for and struggled for and won.

    1. We forgive others for the others sake.

David Van Biema, in an article written for Time Magazine, "Should All Be Forgiven?" (4) writes about the impact of his wife's murder on his son.

On March 24, 1998 Mitchell Wright was plunged into anger and despair. On that day, two boys, Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, played sniper on their middle-school campus in Jonesboro, Arkansas. They murdered four of their schoolmates with 22 shots. They also killed a teacher, Shannon Wright, 32, Mitchell Wright's wife.

Wright knew that he must fight against being consumed by rage. He began on the very Sunday after the horror, asking his fellow congregants in church for support.

The stakes, he realized, were high. First, there was his 3-year-old son, Zane. "When my wife was dying, she said, 'I love you, and take care of Zane.' Well, if I lose it, then I can't take care of him." And then there was the matter of his immortal soul.

"If you let the hate and anger build in you, that's a very strong sin," he says softly. "I need to be able to totally forgive." And what does that entail? "To me, forgiveness would be if when these boys get out, I can see them on the street or in a Wal-Mart and not want to ...." His voice trails off. He concedes, "I am not at that point yet."

    1. We forgive ourselves and all others for God's sake.

      1. We are children of the eternal God and heavenly Father, joint heirs with Christ of all that God is offering us.,

      2. How can we be any different"

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  1. So how are we going to achieve, even in a small way, all that has been achieved by the illustrations that have been used so far?

    1. We ought to remember that the development of the capacity to forgive is a process.

    2. It is not acquired instantaneously.

Susan L. Nelson, "The Freeing Grace of Forgiveness," in Presbyterians Today, March 1998, page 16 reminds us that:

Forgiveness is a process - a journey. As much as we might like forgiveness to be a "forgive and forget" moment, lives do not work that way. Old hurts have a way of resurfacing as we are led to examine a new facet of a wound we hoped had healed. Forgiveness is a commitment to face life with a posture that risks rather than protects, while also struggling with the fact that there are times when protection is the wise choice.

"The essence of forgiveness is always the same," says Robert Enright, who founded the International Forgiveness Institute, a training center in Madison, Wisconsin, five years ago. "You've been hurt by someone. You choose to give up resentment to which you are entitled. You offer benevolence and mercy to someone who does not deserve it..." (5)

Mercy does not require compromising your standards of justice, Enright says. "Forgiveness and reconciliation aren't necessarily the same thing. You don't have to cave in to the other person. But you can break the cycle of revenge if you are willing to forgive."

    1. It helps to live within a community of forgiving people.

Valerie Weaver-Zercher, "God's Crime Bill," www.christianitytoday.com, writes about the Landisville (PA) Mennonite Church

She wrote that in April, 2000, every Sunday for the past nine years, members of the Landisville (PA.) Mennonite Church have prayed for a son of their congregation. Every month they send him a small sum of money, and every month some of them visit him.

Prayer, money and visits: fairly typical examples of congregational caregiving, one might suppose. What's atypical is that nine years ago, after a meal with relatives on a calm Sunday afternoon, 14-year-old Keith Weaver killed his parents, Clair and Anna May, and his sister, Kimberly. The inexplicable horror of the crime and the loss of lives rocked the Weavers' family, church, and community to the core.

In the middle of their grief and disillusionment, however, members of the Landisville congregation got busy. They helped clean the house where the murders occurred, established a legal support committee to care for Keith's needs so that the surviving brother and sister wouldn't have to, and founded a "seventy times seven" fund to collect money for his expenses. They studied grief, forgiveness and victimization in Sunday school and sermons, calling on the expertise of area chaplains and counselors. A year after the tragedy, they held a memorial service to lament the loss of their loved ones and to recommit themselves to the journey of forgiveness.

These days they are continuing that journey, through prayers and financial help and visits to Keith in prison. "Forgiveness is an act of God's grace," says Landisville pastor Sam Thomas. "You don't forgive and forget; you forgive again and again and again."

      1. I do not know if they are still in contact with Keith Weaver.

      2. The Landisville Mennonite Church certainly provides a shrining example of that a congregation can do for one of its own who strays and continues to need assistance.

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CONCLUSION:

  1. To help Peter, the rest of the disciples and all Christians to understand the necessity and the purpose of forgiveness, Jesus tells the story of the Unforgiving Servant.

    1. We have a choice as to what kind of child we will be.

    2. We can be forgiving as we have been forgiven or we can be unforgiving.

    3. What is vital for our own personal mental and spiritual health is to understand the implications of the unforgiven.

    4. This is the state of the unforgiving servant.

    5. It is for this that he is condemned and put into prison.

  2. There is the classic story about the back woods man who takes as his bride a woman from the city.

As they head back into the woods, the mule carrying the bride and her trousseau stumbles. and the man looks the mule in the eye and says: That's once!

The going gets steeper and harder as they head further into the back country, and the mule stumbles again, the man, even more severely now, tells the mule: That's twice!

Coming over the last ridge, late in a tiring day, the mule stumbles again. the man take his bride off the mule, pulls out his gun, and shoots the mule right between the eyes!

The woman is incensed! she goes hysterical, and lashes into the man, berating him for his stupidity in killing the mule.

She wasn't harmed by the stumbles, and now, how will they get all the stuff to the cabin, and besides its getting dark and she's tired.

She finally pauses to take a breath and the man, her new husband, looks her square in the eye and says: That's once!

  1. The numbers game.

    1. Don't play the numbers game.

    2. It can lead to disaster.

  2. Play the Jesus game.

    1. It leads to reconciliation and peace.

    2. If not for the other, at least for yourself.

1. Submitted by Zaxgram (Retrieved from http://www.butlerwebs.com/jokes/marriage.htm)

2. Edward Chinn, Wonder of Words, (Lima, Ohio: C. S. S. Publishing Co., Inc., 1987), p. 46.

3. Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 244-245.

4. David Van Biema, "Should All Be Forgiven?" April 5, 1999, TIME.COM.

5. Quoted by Mary Rourke, "Finding a formula for forgiveness," Los Angeles Times, September 9, 1999.

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