ON THE PATH: FORGIVENESS
A Sermon by
Luke 17
3Be
on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if
there is repentance, you must forgive. 4And if the same person sins
against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I
repent,’ you must forgive.”
5The
apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
Here come da
Judge! Here come
da Judge! That
old routine by comedian Flip Wilson sticks in our minds every time we start
thinking about God. It is a fearsome
image: the Judge. I went to traffic
court one time, not because I had broken a traffic law (that time), but merely
as an observer for a seminary class assignment.
As we waited for the judge to enter, the tension in the room was
palpable. Palms were wet with sweat; a
well-dressed lady whispered nervously with her lawyer; eyes were averted; a
somber silence hung over the room. And
then the judge entered, wooden-faced, steely-eyed, brow furrowed already, an
aura of sternness flowing with him into the courtroom. The first case was called and a man who had
been ticketed for going 7 miles over the speed limit, protested that he had
only been going 3 miles over the limit.
“All right,” said the judge, “we will reduce the offense to only three
miles over the limit. Of course, it’s
the same fine either way. Guilty. Pay the
clerk. Next.” Sin is sin, no mercy given for sins of lesser
degree. The stylish matron arose with
her family attorney by her side to protest her speeding ticket. She said, “I was in the middle of a line of
eight or ten cars all going the same speed.
If I was exceeding the speed limit, we were all exceeding the speed
limit, but I was the only one the officer pulled over. That is unfair and I have my attorney with me
to see that I am treated fairly.” The
judge looked at the woman, looked at the attorney, and said, “We can only catch
‘em one at a time. Guilty. Pay the clerk. Next.”
Who can argue with that logic? If
you break the law, you have to pay the consequences, no matter how much company
you had doing it. Then an unwashed man
in oily work clothes was called forward for his case. The judge said, “You were cited for having
broken tail lights and were given a week to get them repaired. Can you prove to this court that your tail
lights are repaired?” “Yes, your Honor,”
he replied, “my car is outside in the parking lot; you can go look.” “Well, I am conducting court and can’t go
look; do you have a receipt from where you purchased the lights?” asked the judge “Oh, I didn’t
buy them” the man said, “I stole them off my brother-in-law’s car.” The judge’s head snapped up from his papers,
“You did what?” “Yessir,
I took them off his car because his wife, my sister, was the one who smashed
mine out with a hammer to begin with.” The judge broke out in laughter and banged
his gavel, “Charges dismissed!” Other
than that case it did no one any good to beg, plead, argue, persuade or attempt
logic. The rest were all guilty and were
treated as such. And therein is our
predominant image of God. For we
recognize ourselves clearly as the offenders, the breakers of the laws of God
and community, the guilty. We have done
too much, our sins have been too severe, we have overtaxed God’s love and we
can hear the gavel banging down on our cases: Guilty!
But look at this little snippet of a teaching by Jesus,
stuck here in Luke’s gospel among several other sayings that don’t connect to
each other and don’t have to. Each can
stand alone. In this teaching Jesus is
talking to his disciples about the full extent of forgiveness. “If another disciple sins against you, you
must point out to them their sin and if there is repentance, YOU MUST
FORGIVE.” Did you hear that? Not “you ought to forgive them.” Not “it would be nice of you to forgive them.” You MUST forgive. Jesus goes on to say, “If that person sins
against you again, even seven times a day, and turns back each time to say, ‘I
repent,’ you MUST forgive.” Seven times
a day!! Not just seven times in one day,
but seven times EVERY day, you must forgive.
If we had been standing with the disciples that day, what
would have been our response to that teaching?
We might not have said it out loud, but we would have been thinking, “Yeah,
right…like that’s going to happen!
Anybody that sins against me that much doesn’t deserve forgiveness! How could I ever be friends, or even
acquaintances, with such a person? I
wouldn’t want to be around that person; I would avoid them like the plague; I
would shut them out of my life completely!”
And inevitably as we objected to Jesus’ words in our minds, it
would finally occur to us: we are
that person, that sinner. We are the
ones who keep messing up in God’s eyes.
And because we cannot conceive of forgiving such a repeat repentant, then
we cannot conceive of God continuing to forgive us. We think that God is at least as judgmental
as we are and possibly more. So, we can
take all those steps on the road to salvation but we hit an impasse at the point
where God is supposed to forgive us. We
can deal with Conviction, where we finally recognize our once alibi-ed actions
as sins. We can screw up our courage to
spill all our secrets to God in Confession.
We can genuinely be sorry for what we have done, repent, and want to get
our lives on a different and straighter path.
We can do all that. But because
we can’t be frequent forgivers of others, then we can’t understand how God can
forgive our incessant sinning. We put on
judge’s robes so often that we can’t picture God without a similar robe and
gavel.
But, let me ask you this: would Jesus be demanding of his
disciples something that even God was incapable of doing? Would Jesus tell them that they MUST forgive
when repentance is asked if that was not a heavenly law as well? Is Jesus asking us to be better than
God? Or instead, is Jesus describing in
his teaching the very nature of God to which we are to aspire? Jesus is telling us how God is and therefore
how we are to be.
God is kind, tolerant, patient. No matter the size or severity or frequency
of our sin, it is forgivable. Perhaps
you can’t forgive yourself. Perhaps if
others knew of your sin they would condemn you.
But God’s grace is immeasurable; God’s love for us is vast. No matter what our sin has been, all God asks
of us is that we recognize our error, see a better way and have a desire to be
a different person. Don’t ever hesitate
to come before God. The Today’s English
Version of the Bible translates Paul’s comment in Ephesians 2:7 this way: “God brought us to life with Christ even
though we were disobedient to demonstrate for all time to come the
extraordinary greatness of his grace in the love he showed us in Christ Jesus.” God has gone to the utmost limit for us. No matter what we have done, God’s grace will
cover it.
During World War II a soldier was killed and his two buddies
desperately wanted to give him a decent burial although the war raged around
them. They carried his body to the
nearest village and there they found a fenced cemetery beside a small
church. It happened to be a Roman
Catholic Cemetery and, though the soldier had been a Protestant, they went
inside to ask the priest for permission to bury their friend there. But the priest explained that the cemetery was
consecrated and reserved for Catholics only.
Yet when he saw their disappointment, he knew that he had to do
something to help them, so he gave them permission to bury their friend just
outside the cemetery fence. This was
done. Weeks later they marched back
through that village and sought to pay their respects at their friend’s grave--but
they couldn’t find it. They walked the
entire perimeter outside the fence but there were no graves there. Their search led them back to the priest and
they asked what happened to their buddy’s grave. The priest told them that he was unable to go
to sleep that night after making them bury their friend outside the fence. Knowing that he was not permitted to dig up
the body and bury it inside the cemetery, instead he got out of his bed and got
his tools…and he moved the cemetery fence to include the soldier’s grave.
Sure, we don’t deserve God’s love and forgiveness. Sure, we haven’t met all the requirements and
obeyed all the commandments. But because
of God’s extraordinary grace, God has “moved the fence” to include the
undeserving, to include you and me. As
the disciples said to Jesus, we say also, “Increase our faith, Lord!” Increase our faith until we can believe that
God is great enough to forgive. We give
thanks to the One who moves the fence for us.