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Crescent Hill Baptist Church

Louisville, Kentucky

Pentecost 18
September 14, 2008
W. Gregory Pope

SERIES: The New Monasticism

VOWS OF COMMUNITY: FORGIVENESS AND RECONCILIATION

Exodus 14:19-31; Psalm 114; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35

We are spending this fall looking to the monastic life as a model for congregational life. One thing you
cannot escape in a monastery is community. You have to learn how to live together in peace. Any
community, even a monastery, requires the practice of forgiveness and reconciliation. Community
relationships are simply impossible without it. Because we all hurt others and get hurt by others. No one
knows this better than country music writers.

One of the many things my theology professor Frank Tupper did for me was not only open my mind to
profound theology, but he opened my heart to country music. Frank has spent the past three gatherings of
the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship hosting a breakout session on Country Music and the Spiritual Life.
There’s a lot of country music I cannot stand, but some of the lyrics are priceless. Country music is real
life, especially when it comes to heartache. I love titles like:

“You Stomped on My Heart and Knocked that Sucker Flat”

“If Heartaches Were Wine, I’d Be Drunk All the Time”
“You Stuck My Heart in an Old Tin Can and Shot It Off a Log”
“Mama Get the Hammer (There’s a Fly on Papa’s Head)”

You don’t get stuff like that anywhere else.

On my way to pick up Ryan from pre-school this week, I drove by Harvey Brown Presbyterian Church.
I’ve been able to tell by the sermon titles on the sign out front that they follow the lectionary also. The
sermon title for this week sounds like a sacred hymn turned country song: “O Grudge That Will Not Let
Me Go.”

Those are the kinds of lines that get you in touch with the real world. And many a day, those lyrics form
the prayers of our hurting hearts.

In Matthew 18, Jesus has been talking about what to do with our hurts. And when Jesus talks he is always
teaching us that the kingdom of God works not as the world works, but as a new way to live based on
forgiveness.

The Christian community deals with offense and pardon differently than the world does. Or at least it
should.

But the Christian community struggles with forgiveness just like the world does. If you have no one you
find hard to forgive, you are either a very rare person or a very young person. Chances are that for most
of us when talk turns toward forgiveness, faces of those who have hurt us come to mind.

Peter is obviously thinking of someone he finds hard to forgive. He asks Jesus the question, “If someone
sins against me, how often should I forgive? Seven times?” It is a very generous offer. More than twice
what is required by Jewish law. But Jesus says, “No. Seventy times seven!”

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And the disciples are stunned. Are we supposed to forgive someone 490 times? Well, the point is not that
we forgive someone a particular number of times. The point is not to put a limit on forgiveness but rather
live with a heart trained in unlimited forgiveness. By the time you forgive someone ten or twenty times,
forgiveness becomes a practice of the heart.

And we must learn the practice of forgiveness. If we think back to last week where Jesus talked about
confronting those who have hurt us for the purpose of reconciliation, there is no point in me confronting
you about your sin if I have not first been shaped as a person who is capable of forgiving you for that sin.

The church cannot take a gospel message of reconciliation to the world while being unreconciled to one
another.

To make his point, Jesus tells quite the absurd tale that his listeners would have no doubt found amusing.

A slave approaches the king with a debt of over a billion dollars. Well that’s a laugher! An Egyptian
Pharaoh couldn’t come up with that kind of money, much less a slave. The point of course is that the debt
we owe God is so enormous it is unrepayable.

The king threatens to sell the slave and his family.

The slave asks for patience, saying he will pay the debt. Another joke. It would take him well over
100,000 years to pay that kind of debt.

The debt is so enormous, and the request to repay so ridiculous, the king does not extend patience but
compassion. The king forgives the debt, writes it off entirely, and sets him free. Extravagant forgiveness.
Pure grace. He is forgiven.

But now the story turns dark.

The forgiven servant goes out and refuses to forgive a debt of $3000 owed him. The servant had learned
nothing from his compassionate master. The king hears about it and throws the slave in prison for the rest
of his life.

And so we ask ourselves: What have we learned from our compassionate God? Do you know what it is
like, do you recall experiences where you knew God had forgiven you? When tears flow from your heart.
When scales of guilt are lifted from your soul. Or a gentle rain begins to fall upon your sin-parched life.
You were forgiven and you knew it.

What have we learned from our compassionate God? Have we been willing to take the beauty of
forgiveness and share it with others? With all that we’ve been forgiven as the beloved children of God, we
really have no right to withhold the blessing of forgiveness from anyone else.

Most of the time we try not to make our lack of forgiveness too obvious. We keep it subtle. Someone says
something negative about you and you hear about it. You make a mental note not to forget. A church
member did something years ago and ever since then you’ve been secretly hoping they’ll go to church
somewhere else. Are there people here to whom you smile politely, but you wouldn’t choose to sit by in
worship?

Sometimes the whole idea of forgiveness is too difficult to even think about. There are wives who hate
their husbands for a betrayal that will never go away. Former friends who said angry, calculated, spiteful
words that neither will ever forget. Children who can’t get over what their parents did. And fathers who
hate their son-in-laws for what they are doing to their grandchildren. It’s hard to forgive. Sometimes we
would rather lose a sister or a brother than go through the pain of forgiving them.

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In this parable, I don’t know that Jesus is prescribing judgment as much as he is describing the harsh
reality of an unforgiving heart. When we fail to forgive as the servant in the parable, we choose prison.
We choose to lock our selves up in our bitterness.

Jesus wants to make us aware that there’s a direct connection between forgiving others and being
forgiven. Those who don’t offer grace to others don’t experience grace for themselves.

In our best moments, we’d like to leave our bitterness behind. We recognize that our refusal to forgive
hurts us. But how do we make the resentment toward those who have hurt us go away?

It is the work of God within us. And God does that work by forgiving us day after day after day, failure
after failure after failure, sin after sin after sin. After being forgiven so much, we learn to forgive others.

Forgiveness is the attribute of those who have been forgiven. We discover the sometimes painful truth that
we are like those who have hurt us. When we’re unwilling to forgive others it’s because we’ve forgotten
the grace we’ve been given. C. S. Lewis said, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because
God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

An embarrassed employee is summoned to the boss’ office expecting to hear a blistering dismissal. The
company may file criminal charges. The boss asks if he is guilty. The clerk says he is. But then the old
man shocks him, “I’m going to forgive you. You’ll be the second person in this company who has been
pardoned. What you did, I did long ago. We both belong to grace now.”

We all belong to grace. Stanley Hauerwas says, “We are members of a community of the forgiven.” [1]

Forgiveness is what makes us God’s people. The willingness to do the hard work of constantly reconciling
our selves to one another makes us the church. The church that doesn’t forgive one another has ceased to
be the church.

We forgive as God does, not winking at evil, but taking evil seriously and still opting for grace. Forgiving
another doesn’t mean we’ll forget what they’ve done, that our wounds will completely heal, or that we’ll
feel warm and fuzzy, but it does mean that we will see them in the light of God’s grace.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to forgiveness is that most people have a hard time actually believing they
are forgiven. It is arrogance to keep carrying the guilt and shame when God says your sins have been
pardoned. As John Claypool observes, “A lot of people lay down their burdens at the altar, but then pick
them right up again and carry them out the door unchanged.”

Another obstacle to forgiveness is the false self-esteem of being the victim. There is a strange cult of
victimhood these days. We take pride in being offended. It gives us the moral upper hand. And it allows us
to escape our own responsibility for a breach in relationship. It becomes our excuse for failure. We wear
our wounds like a badge of honor, hoping others will feel sorry for us. And with all the benefits from being
victimized, why would we want to forgive? Of course, when everyone is a victim, no one takes
responsibility and nothing gets solved.

In the Jewish Talmud a person is required to ask forgiveness three times in the presence of witnesses. If
forgiveness is not granted, then the responsibility for the original offense falls on the person who refuses to
forgive. After all, he or she is the one who will not let the wound heal.

Jesus goes further than that. He does not even require that forgiveness be asked before it is given. Because
that’s how God is. And regardless of the repentance of the offender, forgiveness is necessary for our own
souls, and for the healing of the wider community. A refusal to forgive is actually a sin against the
community, the church.

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And you have to ask yourself, is this the kind of person you want to be? Angry, bitter, plotting revenge,
finding pride in being “the offended one”?

Our choice is to live in the injustices we’ve suffered or in the mercy we’ve received. God doesn’t ask us
to create forgiveness out of nothing. God invites us to join in what God has already given.

But listen, forgiveness is the best revenge. Forgiveness heals our wounds. Forgiveness repairs the torn
fabric of human society by removing one more ounce of hostility from the world.

I read this week about a television show “Forgive or Forget,” in which guests appear who have done
things that have hurt their loved ones. They confront each other to see if forgiveness will happen. The host
of the show goes by the name of Mother Love. And at the close of each episode, Mother Love says,
“Never underestimate the power of forgiveness.”

The monks of Blue Cloud Abbey in Minnesota know that power. They gather each Thursday evening to
participate in a ritual of communal reconciliation, confessing and forgiving those attitudes and actions that
have negatively affected community life in recent days. Then they join together in worship and Holy
Communion, followed by a buffet feast of joy. [2]

Forgiveness and reconciliation are holy moments of grace and great joy. Outrageous love can heal because
“love covers a multitude of sins” and “keeps no record of wrongs.” Touched by God’s grace we become
gracious ourselves.

You may recall the story of Shakespeare’s King Lear. He doesn’t wait to die to give up his kingdom, but
goes ahead and divides it between his daughters Goneril and Regan. For this he asks little in return, only
hospitality - a place for him and his knights to stay. But all the gifts in the world don’t make these two
daughters generous. They pretend to love Lear to get their inheritance, but his kindness doesn’t make
them kind. Like the servant in Jesus’ parable, the sisters quickly become defensive of what they’ve been
given. Why should they share it? They push their father out. His grace doesn’t make them gracious. King
Lear is a tragedy that ends in darkness and tears, but there is a gorgeous reconciliation between Lear and
his youngest daughter Cordelia. The power of forgiveness produces a final moment of joy and hope.

Come, let’s away to prison;

We two alone will sing like birds in the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: and we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh.

We are the church when we pray and sing and tell old tales and laugh and share the outrageous, unlimited
forgiveness of God.

___________________

1. Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, Brazos Press, 2006, 166

2. Dennis Okholm, Monk Habits For Everyday People: Benedictine Spirituality for Protestants, Brazos,
2008, 82-83

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2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425

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