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THE LORD’S PRAYER: FORGIVE OUR SINS
By Nancy S. Cushman
Luke 6:37-38
May 29, 2016 Memorial Day North Scottsdale UMC
SETTING THE CONTEXT
Over the last month, we have been reflecting in depth on the Lord’s Prayer. The prayer has four movements.
v The first step is the calling. We call out to God as a people connected to and in need of God “Our Father who art in heaven.”
v In the second step we affirm the nature of God; God is “honored, holy, wonderful. “Hallowed be thy name.” The Common English Bible (CEB) translation says “uphold the holiness of your name.”
v The third step involves requesting three things from God: 1) daily provision; 2) forgiveness and 3) deliverance.
v The fourth step in the prayer is acknowledging that everything belongs to God and God is the source of power and glory.[i]
We are considering the petition for forgiveness today. Every week we pray “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Our Bible translates it, “Forgive us for the ways we have wronged you, just as we also forgive those who have wronged us.” (Matthew 6:12, CEB) Both Matthew and Luke, show Jesus tying the request for forgiveness to a specific action. Luke speaks of it in the “Sermon on the Plain” where he is speaking to his disciples and crowds of people from all over the region. At the end of this very challenging lesson on loving your enemies, he claims that by loving your enemies “you will be acting the way children of the Most High act, for he is kind to ungrateful and wicked people. Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate.” (Luke 6:15b-16) I love theologian Fred Craddock’s quip about this, “There were those in the audience who handled life's inequities and injustices by judging and condemning those whom God seems to be letting off the hook. Apparently God's gracious and forgiving treatment of others leaves the work of judging unattended and so we must take care of it.”[ii] Jesus addresses those of us who want to pick up that unattended business.
Read Luke 6:37-38
THE SERMON
“That’s not fair!” How many of us have ever made that statement? We like those scales of justice to be perfectly balanced, don’t we? The idea of a God who is kind to the undeserving and not just the undeserving, but to ungrateful and even evil people is a little shocking and irritating. Where is the fairness in that? And then Jesus talks about fairness, getting what you deserve, and he flips it around aiming at the faithful-us. The scales are our scales and the weight is our judgmentalism, our condemnation, our forgiveness and our generosity. I don’t think Jesus is saying that fairness and justice are unimportant. Craddock makes a profound point, it’s one of those things I’m going to write down and save. “Without justice and fairness, grace degenerates into permissiveness, just as justice without grace hardens into cruelty.”[iii] I think Jesus is saying that in the kingdom of God justice and mercy are in tension and mercy carries greater weight. Jesus was really pushing them and us to be compassionate, to practice mercy. Think of a measuring cup made specifically for your life. Imagine how full that cup would be of God’s forgiveness, of God’s patience, of God’s mercy given to you. Jesus challenges them and us to give those same gifts to others measure for measure. Rabbi Zaslow said, “the rabbis (clearly including Jesus) affirmed that God has embedded laws of reciprocity and balance in nature.”[iv] Jesus encourages us to lean in to reciprocity not of what other people do but reciprocating the forgiveness, mercy, grace, and compassion that we have received from God. The measuring cup is God’s holy character not that of our enemies or opponents. This is the measuring cup we use when we pray “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
We need that ability to forgive. Being in community is not easy. There are always going to be people who disagree with us on something. There are always going to be people who irritate or hurt us intentionally or unintentionally; usually the ones who hurt us the most are the ones who mean the most to us. If we are rigid and unforgiving, it will be difficult if not impossible to stay in a healthy relationship. This call to forgiveness keeps us from being stuck in the past weighed down by bitterness.
I saw this played out in our recent General Conference. The General Conference is a meeting and a body of people. It is the top policy-making body of The United Methodist Church and it is the gathering of that body once every four years. At General Conference United Methodist delegates from all over the world can revise church law, adopt resolutions on current moral, social, public policy and economic issues and approve plans and budgets for church-wide programs for the following four years. With your gracious support, I was able to go to General Conference earlier this month. Imagine 894 people from all over the world trying to agree on church law, social issues, public policy issues and budgets.
Arguments about human sexuality dominated the conference. The debates and political maneuverings were often painful and discouraging as both sides feel very strongly about their beliefs on the issue. Each side sees the integrity of the practice of their faith at risk. Add into this cultural differences. I could feel within myself resentment building towards those who think differently from me. The pressures to schism (to break apart) as a denomination were very strong from the extremes on both sides. It finally became apparent that the body could not move forward on this issue and that the conference was being consumed by the division. And most people were so tired of fighting about this. Finally, someone proposed that the bishops lead us to a way forward.
In an unprecedented move, the General Conference turned to the bishops for a proposal. The Council of Bishops met all afternoon and evening working on a proposal. Our Western Jurisdiction met every morning before the sessions started. On the morning after the bishops met, social media was saying that they were going to recommend we split. We headed into our morning session anxious and sad. Our western bishops came to us and the first thing they told us was not to believe everything we read on social media. They told us that they, the bishops, share a strong desire to stay together as one church. They offered a proposal to have a small representative group from across the world come together to review every paragraph in the Discipline dealing with human sexuality. It recommended stopping any more discussion on the issue (including 56 petitions) and refer it to the commission and it called for exploring ways to avoid further complaints, trials and harm while upholding the current stance of the church. They will come back with a proposal in two years.
Forgiveness is essential to our unity. We have to be able to forgive the frustration and hurt of the past as well as the hurts that come from being different people with different experiences and beliefs in different cultures.
One of the African bishops shared this parable with his delegation.
“It was the coldest winter ever. The porcupines decided to group together to keep warm. This way they covered and protected themselves; but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions. After a while, they decided to distance themselves one from the other, butbecause of the cold they began to die,alone and frozen. They had to make achoice; either accept the quills of theircompanions or disappear from the earth. Wisely, they decided to bear the pain andgo back to being together. They learnedto live with the little wounds caused by theclose relationship with their companionsin order to receive the heat that camefrom the others. This way they were ableto survive.”
Forgiveness is the healing ointment for the wounds we inflict on each other. Whether we are talking about our community as our global United Methodist Church or our local church here at North Scottsdale or our small group or our families, we all poke each other sometimes and occasionally we wound each other deeply. Forgiveness promotes the healing of those wounds.
When we pray “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us” we are recognizing God’s full measure of mercy, a measuring cup of mercy that is “packed down, firmly shaken and overflowing.” (Luke 6:38) and that is the amount of mercy and forgiveness we are called to give each other. I see in that prayer not only asking God’s forgiveness of our sins but pleading with God to give us the ability to forgive those who have wounded us. Seeking to use God’s measuring cup to balance the scales we use for each other. Jesus said, “the portion you give will determine the portion you receive in return.” I fervently pray that we choose to huddle together living with the punctures and wounds trusting in the balm of forgiveness and the power of compassion. Lord, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Amen.
[i] Rabbi David Zaslow. Jesus First-Century Rabbi. (Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2014) p. 28-29
[ii] Fred B. Craddock, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Luke (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), p. 91.
[iii] Craddock, p. 91.
[iv] Zaslow, p. 91.