Homily for 24 August 2014, the 11th Sunday after Pentecost--If We Want Forgiveness We Have to Forgive

Homily for 24 August 2014:  If We Want Forgiveness We Have to Forgive

11^th Sunday after Pentecost (1 Corinthians 9:2-12)                    (Matthew 18:23-35)

 

The message of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ in today’s Gospel reading is clear and simple.  It shouldn’t take very many words to talk about it:  if we want God to forgive us for our sins, we must forgive people who sin against us.  If we want forgiveness, we have to forgive.

That’s it.

I would like to stop talking here.  The word of the Lord should be enough.

But I know from personal experience that it is not enough to convince us and change us without a lot of reinforcement.  Forgiving can be very hard.  When someone sins against us—by physically or emotionally hurting us or someone we love or something we value—usually we want to hurt them in return.  And then we expect God to forgive us because we feel that our feelings and actions are justified.

But Jesus’s point in the parable of the unforgiving servant is that we can’t have this kind of double standard that says “I’m OK but you’re not.”  If we want forgiveness, we have to forgive.

We usually try again to justify ourselves.  We say that the person who offended us acted unreasonably, irrationally, selfishly, pridefully—while we acted in a reasonable, thoughtful, objective way.

However, we cannot actually make that judgement.  We don’t know what is going on inside the other person’s brain and heart.  We don’t know all the circumstances of that person’s life that may have caused him or her to act as he or she did.  And if we judge and condemn that person anyway, we are the ones whose pride and love of self has taken control.

Sometimes we also need to remember that cultural differences can make people act in ways that are offensive or unexplainable to us.  We think that all Christians share basic values and so should always understand each other and never hurt each other.  But it is clear from experience that Christian values are influenced bu the cultural values of society at large.

An American Christian once told me that my job as a clergyman was to pray for the defeat of the “enemies” of his political organization.  A Middle-Eastern Christian once told me that Christian values required him to kill his son if that son disgraced the family.  I have a hard time accepting those ideas as Christian values.  But I must understand how they are influenced by cultural values.  And that helps me to forgive.

Ultimately, forgiving is something we must do in faith.  It doesn’t depend on the other person’s being sorry or apologizing or even realizing that he or she did something wrong.  It doesn’t depend on the other person at all.  It’s not a trade.  It simply is what we must do if we love God and believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior of the world.  Our salvation depends on it.

Unless each one of us forgives our brothers and sisters from our heart, our heavenly Father will not forgive us.  And all of us, without exceptions, need God’s forgiveness.

And so, knowing what we must do and that God will give us the strength to do it, we give thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and unto ages of ages.  Amen.