Midweek 5

April 10, 2014  

“Forgive Us Our Trespasses…”

Matthew 18:21-35

In Nomine Jesu

In the parable, Jesus, the wise rabbi, first sets the law not the gospel before our eyes. The king rules with a ledger, pure and simple: for the honest, the righteous, the dutiful he will have kind words. But for all others, for anyone caught in trespasses and debts, his concern is purely the bottom line, getting his money back. So, when the empty pocketed servant stands before the king, owing an insurmountable debt, the king decrees that he, along with his entire family, be sold and repayment be made. Forgiveness is no where to be found and there is no reason to believe that it will be spoken. It’s all a matter of dollars and cents, of cutting your losses, and leaving the debtors to their own demise. But, the stone-broke servant still had a few words left. On his knees, he pleads with the master to enlarge his heart with patience, for he will repay all his debt. To the shock of all, the king’s attitude changes as he goes from being a mafia crime boss to big soft marshmallow. And out of pity, Jesus says, “the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.” The king changes, as wrath is swallowed up in mercy. The servant does nothing but cry out for more time to pay a debt that he knows he cannot pay. He is delaying the inevitable, fooling himself into eternal judgment. So it’s not “that he earns it by extravagantly promising to repay everything at some future date. It is simply that the king cancels the debt for reasons entirely internal to himself” [Capon]. Sadly, while the king was willing to end his old life of bookkeeping the servant was not. He was so enamored by his slippery maneuvering—so unable to imagine the canceling of his debt—that he never saw what the king had done. He was clueless as to the extent to which the king went to wipe away his debt. What unravels is a tragic but predictable outcome of those who refuse to see the magnitude to which they have been forgiven only to turn around and bind those in a debt far less then their own.  

Now our debt before God does not consist in coins and credit cards, but of personal sin to be forgiven. Sin wrongs God, it’s an infinite offense. As sinners, we would not only un-throne God, but un-god Him, strip Him of His majesty only to attempt to wear it ourselves. Sin is no mere mistake, an oops, “I am sorry, I didn’t mean for you to get hurt, or hear those things I said about you.” Intensions are of no consolation to those who have been sinned against. Indeed, this petition makes sinners of all people. This petition brings us face to face with our fallen father Adam, we his fallen children, together incurring trespasses against the Triune God and the creation He created in His image. This petition has us choked in debts. One of the great fallacies of our age is that we can act without hurting someone. We can’t. We have debts upon debts. We have infinite debts, and no amount of pleading will quench the King of King’s wrath. “If one remains in this life, then in no hour of night or day is it possible to not be guilty” [Origen]. Every man is a debtor to God and, in turn, has a debtor. Consider the frightful thought: would you like to have God deal with you as you deal with your neighbor? The psalmist’s words become our own, “For evils have encompassed me beyond number; my iniquities have overtaken me, and I cannot see; they are more than hairs of my head; my heart fails me” [Ps 40:12]. Because we are blind to our own sin and we gladly magnify the sin of our neighbors, the Lord Himself puts this petition in our mouths in order to protect us from such conceit and vain pride, to keep us humble and contrite. He would open our eyes to what we refuse to see, day by day, and night by night, to know aright our standing before the Holy God.

Forgiveness doesn’t come naturally to us, nor can we forgive ourselves for our failure to forgive. We don’t have the power nor the desire to break the will of the evil one. On what then may our certainty of forgiveness rest? Simply: on the faithfulness of God to forgive. “If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” [1 Jn 1:9]. The King has bound Himself to His own promise to be faithful, to forgive sin, whenever we cry unto Him for such pardon and peace. The self-righteous can’t pray this petition for they are blind to their own sin, they will forever see the speck in their brother’s eye, but fail to notice the log in their own eye [Mat 7:3]. But to those trampled down by their own trespasses the apparent conditional nature of the petition is bridged by God Himself and His natural desire to take away the iniquity of His child’s sin and free their burden conscience so as to forgive others as He has forgiven them. God’s forgiveness of your sin is not dependent upon your forgiving of your neighbor. Rather your forgiving is forged and based in the heated irons of God’s love for you in the midst of your deep and grievous sin.  

Everything hinges on this: “that our Father in heaven would not look at our sins, or deny our prayer because of them. We are neither worthy of the things for which we pray, nor have we deserved them, but we ask that He would give them all to us by grace.” Our petition for forgiveness is not and cannot be grounded in our faithfulness to forgive, but must seek refuge and strength in God’s mercy and forgiveness for Christ’s sake. We pray as sons of the Son, who in the Son’s sacrifice and bloody death, declared us to be sons and daughters of the merciful King, the pardoning King, the King who looks at our trespasses and debts and says, “I forgive them, all of them, not one of them will I not take, not one of them will you have to justify, for you have been completely justified in Me, buried in My death, raised in My life.” Our petition for forgiveness constantly takes refuge within God’s prior forgiveness, which is already attained in Christ and constantly applied to us through His gifts of Absolution, Baptism, and Supper. The true art of faith is a firm trust in God’s forgiveness even as we are harassed by the devil, the world, our sinful flesh, and the dark reign of terror they rain down on us daily. The abiding peace of sins forgiven is often hidden to our feelings, yet it is assuredly over all and greater than all experience.

Beloved, I would be remissed not to mention that tension we all feel, that knot in our stomach and heart, between that vast canyon of “forgive us our trespasses…as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It’s a grand pitfall of our conscience and causes all kinds of agony. No doubt, we are in favor of forgiveness. C.S. Lewis cleverly writes, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until there is something to forgive” [Mere Christianity, 115]. Some strike back in revenge. Some run away from life and relationships. Some will just let the darkness consume them, till they are no more. We struggle with forgiveness precisely because it’s not in our nature to do so.  But none of those ways are the way of Christ. They all leave us with the deceiver and prince of this world.

Contrary to popular belief, forgiveness, mind you, doesn’t mean we forget, condone, and approve of what was done. Part of it certainly means that we let go of the fantasies of revenge. This petition already anticipates the final judgment, the reckoning of our Lord. No one gets away with anything. No man can hide his sin from God. Just ask Adam and Eve. The light of God’s judgment will uncover all the hidden deeds done in darkness and unbelief. Not to mention that we mock our heavenly Father when we approach Him for mercy, and at the same moment pulverize our fellow neighbor with hurtful words, deeds, and actions. Such behavior and thinking is condemned by Jesus in our parable. “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” Jesus calls not for limited forgiveness but for unlimited forgiveness. And we, who lay together in the ditches and debts of sin, murdering one another with tongue and hand, looks and lips, should not marvel at Jesus’ response to Peter. For “whoever has any inkling of the meaning of the forgiveness of sins knows that a whole lifetime will not be sufficient for a full understanding of it. For each new experience makes us feel that we had no understanding of it at all before” [Einar Billing].      

Forgiveness creates space for new life. It takes us out of the darkness and into the light, from death unto life. It disentangles us from evil of another. It’s a refusal to let our future be determined by the past. And there are no roads to forgiveness, there no simple flippant phrases, “just give up to God, forgive and forget.” Such trite answer only demean those who suffer, those whose forgiven wounds have yet to be scarred over by the continual eating and drinking of Christ’s body and blood, and the daily remembrance of one’s birth from above in Baptism. This is where it is created, begins, and is shared; the gifts of Christ are forgiveness’s fountain and source. We forgive as we have been forgiven. We are the beneficiaries of the crucified One. Hanging between two thieves, Jesus prayed, “Father forgive them.” That is the cry of infinite forgiveness, a cry we struggle mightily to echo in our own lives, in our families, our work places, our parishes, our day to day life. But again, forgiveness doesn’t originate in us. It begins and ends in Christ who is, in His very flesh the forgiveness of sins, and the life of the world. As one old German Lutheran would put it, “Only because God reconciled the world to Himself in Jesus Christ, can we therefore who are born of dust, as we are all caught in Adam’s choking guilt pray with joyful hearts: Father, forgive” [Albrecht Peters, “Lord’s Prayer, 170].  

In the Name of the Father and of the Son [+] and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.