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March 4 2018Psalm 51
The Lord’s Prayer: PardonI Cor. 1:18-25
By Rev. Dr. Janet Macgregor-Williams
West Milford Presbyterian Church
This is the third in a series of sermons looking at the Lord’s Prayer. We learned about the Person we pray to—a God who is personal and who wants to have a relationship with us. We also learned about the Purpose of prayer as we seek to bring about the kingdom of God here on earth. Last week we explored how God has Provided for us, and our mosaic of God’s provisions is hanging up. I have challenged you to say the Lord’s Prayer each day during lent and not just rush through it from memory, but instead take time to think about the prayer. I hope some of you have taken up this challenge and that more of you will join in the challenge today.
A visiting minister comes to a church and before the service he asks the head usher: Are you “debtors” or “trespassers”? At first the usher was confused and then he realized that the minister was asking what they said when they prayed the Lord’s Prayer. I know we use “Debts” here, but in both Matthew and Luke’s recording of the Lord’s Prayer it is usually translated “Sin.” The problem is that we don’t like to talk about sin and we don’t want to think about the fact that we are sinners.
I am reminded of the story about a frustrated driver, looking for a place to park in NYC. He placed a note under the windshield wiper of his illegally parked car which read: "I’ve circled the block for 20 minutes. I’m late for an appointment, and if I don’t park here I’ll lose my job. ‘Forgive us our trespasses’." When he came back he found a parking ticket and a note from a policeman: "I’ve circled the block for 20 years, and if I don’t give you a ticket, I’ll lose my job. ‘Lead us not into temptation’."
Whether it is parking in NYC or thinking evil thoughts, we are all sinners on a daily basis. King David was described as a man after God’s own heart, but even he had his flaws. It was after he rapped Bathsheba (one of the earliest recorded incidents of the “#Me Too Movement”) that he writes Psalm 51, calling out for God’s mercy.
It is in this context that we pray for God’s pardon as we say: Forgive us our debts and we forgive our debtors. The book of Common Prayer has this line in the prayer of confession:
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.
Our sin is anything that gets in the way of our relationship with God, whether it is thoughts or actions. But the good news of the gospel is that God’s response is one of forgiveness and grace.
This grace is depicted in the Musical Les Miserables. When Jean Val Jean stays in the Bishop’s home, he steals two silver candle sticks. But when the police catch him, the bishop replies that he gave him the candlesticks and says that he forgot to take the other silver the bishop gave him. God has shown us grace and offers us forgiveness, even when we don’t deserve it.
The Lord’s prayer is not just about how God has forgiven us, but it also invites us to share this forgiveness. Forgiveness is never easy, and yet Jesus calls us to forgive, as well. Before I can talk about forgiveness, we must look at what it is not. Psychology Today says:
Forgiveness doesn't mean you are pardoning or excusing the other person's actions.
Forgiveness doesn't mean you need to tell the person that he or she is forgiven.
Forgiveness doesn't mean you shouldn't have any more feelings about the situation.
Forgiveness doesn't mean there is nothing further to work out in the relationship or that everything is okay now.
Forgiveness doesn't mean you should forget the incident ever happened.
Forgiveness doesn't mean you have to continue to include the person in your life.
... and forgiveness isn't something you do for the other person.
By forgiving, you are accepting the reality of what happened and finding a way to live in a state of resolution with it. This can be a gradual process—and it doesn't necessarily have to include the person you are forgiving. Forgiveness isn't something you do for the person who wronged you; it's something you do for you. Forgiveness does means giving up the resentment and the pain. Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in a South African prison as he fought for the rights of his people said:
Resentment is like swallowing poison and waiting for your enemy to die.
We can’t change the past, but we can change how we carry our feelings about it into the future. And forgiveness is the key.
Forgiveness doesn’t void what happened, but it does change how you feel about it. Forgiveness allows us to let go of the power that an undeserved wrong has over us and helps us move forward. Without forgiveness the wrong continues to fester in our body, our emotions, like a cancer, spreading and poisoning everything it touches. But with the power of forgiveness, we let history inform us, rather than control us. Forgiveness give us the power to stop the cancer of hatred and bitterness that is killing us and transform it. One of my professors had his share of undeserved tragedies in his life, and yet he said:
When we choose to forgive rather than seek revenge, we set a prisoner free, only to discover that the prisoner you have feed is yourself.[1]
It doesn’t negate the hurt, but rather takes away the power of that pain to continue to have power over you and allows you to move forward with your life. Forgiveness is a transformative act, that changes who you are. Gandhi was right, if we live by the rule of “an eye for an eye” the whole world will be blind. The only way out is forgiveness.
So how do we forgive? There is no magic wand, no simple set of four steps you must follow. It is a process and the steps vary for each person and each incident. All I can do is give you some clues that just might help us all along the way as we journey toward forgiveness.
Forgiveness is about freeing up and putting to better use the energy that is being consumed by holding on to grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing old wounds. It is hard work holding a grudge. It takes up time and space in our heads and in our emotions. It impacts the way we look at things and how we feel about people. It blocks us from being the very best that we can be. Think of it as a cancer, when doctors treat cancer, their goal is to isolate it; cutting off the blood supply that feeds the caner. Forgiveness means cutting off the path that is feeding into those grudges and choosing to move on. It is about realizing that we have a choice, and deciding to choose happiness over righteous anger. Remember I said it would not be easy.
Forgiveness is about being an adult, it is about taking the higher road, it is about responding rather than reacting. Forgiveness is about refusing to replay past hurts in your mind over and over again, like a broken record. Forgiveness is about realizing that anger and resentment don’t serve you well. When we do this we can choose a new way forward; we become unstuck. Ultimately, forgiveness is the gift that you give yourself, as you set yourself free from your anger and resentment.
Maybe you have seen the bumper sticker that says “Stuff happens,” it is meant to imply all of the terrible things that go wrong in life, it reminds us that we all have those undeserved wrongs we have experienced. But there is another side to the terrible wrongs we have experienced. We also need to remember that “Grace happens.” We are the first example of how grace happens, for none of us merit God’s grace, but we have all receive it every day. We begin our worship service each Sunday with a Prayer of Confession—because we all disappoint God, we all fall short of being the best we can be on a regular basis. We all need God’s grace. When we remember that we have been forgiven, that we have been given the free gift of God’s unconditional love and grace, then we begin to discover how forgiveness can transform our lives.
Jesus challenges us to forgive and he modeled that forgiveness on the cross. He taught us to pray, with words of forgiveness. Reminding us that we have been forgiven and are called to forgive others. God has reached out to us in love and forgiveness. Can we take up the challenge and offer forgiveness to those who have hurt us? Can we let go of the resentment that betrayal has planted in our lives? Can we forgive ourselves and let go of the disappointments in our lives? Can we set the prisoner free, whether the prisoner is the one who has hurt us or ourselves, as we are held captive by our anger? Can we accept Jesus challenge to forgive?
[1] Lewis B. Smedes, Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve.