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Redford Aldersgate
United Methodist Church
Sermon
We
are beginning the last week of our 30 day experiment to find out what
matters most. I have had quite a bit of feed back that this study has
been very helpful to many of you. Like I said last week, there really
isn’t anything new in what is said in the books or the videos or the
sermons ... it’s just that hopefully, a light has turned on for you in
your head and your heart and you’ve said, “That’s right! I’m going to
get my priorities straight. I’m going to concentrate on the eternal
things and not get so bogged down in things that don’t really matter in
the great eternal scheme of things ... I’m going to live like I was
dying.”
If you are new here today, let me quickly catch you up on what we have
been doing for the last three weeks. We’ve been taking part in an
experiment inspired by a song sung by Tim McGraw called: Live Like You
Were Dying. Because if we knew we only had a few more days to live, we
would concentrate on the really important things in life. And the truth
is, none of us know exactly how many days we do have to live. And all of
us are one day closer to the day we die than we were yesterday.
People
die when they are young. People die when they are middle aged. People
die when they are old. Some die after a long illness, some with no
warning at all. When you first begin to talk that way, it sounds rather
morbid.
But,
actually, because this is Easter and the Easter message says
we
don’t have to fear death at all, it’s not a bad thing or morbid thing to
talk about death. In addition,
the
second part of the Easter message is that Christ is alive and is with us
now to give us abundant life NOW. So, we want to make the most of life
and not take it for granted. And, living with the knowledge that earthly
life is limited has a way of helping us embrace life fully.
Some
like the person in the song and the person on last week’s video, Randy ,
have some warning that the end is close, so they have the privilege of
really preparing for death. But like our study has suggested, we could
have the benefit of living like we are dying without having to have the
diagnosis from a doctor. If we open our selves to the fact that we are
all, indeed dying
...
then instead of being morbid, it magnifies the preciousness of life and
helps us to embrace it fully.
The
song suggested that, besides doing some fun things that you may have
always wanted to do, but never taken the time to do, or be brave enough
to do ... you would do some things that will help us to be the spouse
we’ve always wanted to be and the friend or parent or child that is a
blessing to us as well as others. Let’s listen again to that chorus of
the song that is becoming very familiar to us. (Song)
We’ve
talked about loving deeper and speaking sweeter so that leaves – giving
the forgiveness I’d been denying. So today, we are looking at the
importance of forgiveness. We know that it is important to forgive
others. It is intrinsic to our faith.
Every
Sunday we pray the Lord’s prayer. In it we say: forgive us our
trespasses as ...what? ...we forgive those who trespass against us. Of
course trespass means more than just walking across someone’s property
... it means people who have walked over us... hurt us ... sinned
against us. We are to forgive them, because we are asking God to forgive
us the times that we have messed up and done things we should not have
done ... times we have messed up and hurt God.
Jesus
told us many times that we were to forgive others just as God forgives
us. Jesus forgave people he healed. He forgave the people who crucified
him. As they nailed him to the cross, he prayed: Father, forgive them
for they know not what they are doing. His last instructions to his
disciples in Luke 24:37 was that — forgiveness of sins should be
preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. He
preached forgiveness, he practiced forgiveness. But we are still
reluctant to give forgiveness.
The
song says, “I’d give the forgiveness I’d been denying.” We know we are
supposed to give forgiveness but we just deny it. We hold on to those
old grudges and resentments. It seems to be in our nature to not
forgive. It’s hard to forgive. It must have been just as hard for the
disciples as well. They had heard Jesus say that we are to forgive
others. Then one day when Jesus was talking about settling arguments and
disagreements, Peter spoke up and asked him a
question.
He said: "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often should I
forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times,
but I tell you, seventy times seven."
In the New Revised translation, it says, "if another member of the
church sins against me..." The new translators did this because the word
Peter used, does not just mean someone who is related to you, like a
brother or sister, but also someone with whom you share a common belief
system... like
another
member of the church. "Brother" also means a member of your tribe, or
country. It could even be stretched to say another human being. So,
while family relations are definitely being talked about here, it is
also church relationships, job relationships, community relationships...
human relationships, in general.
Also, the new translation says, "Seventy seven" times instead of
"seventy times seven. "When I did a word study, I found out that there
are two words used there: one means "seventy times"; the other means
"seven". It is correct to say either seventy times seven or to say
seventy times and seven. So technically, Peter’s suggestion could mean
either 77 or 490. It makes a difference if you are keeping score. There
is a big difference between 77 and 490. However, Jesus must have sensed
that there could be some misunderstanding with semantics so he told
Peter a story.
Now
this story uses some terms that are pretty foreign to our modern
vocabulary, so let me clue you in on a couple of terms before we begin.
First, it uses the word "talent." We, of course, use that word all the
time. Only, here in this story, it doesn't mean talent like skills or
gifts, it's referring to an amount of money. So, it's important for us
to know that a "talent" was approximately the amount of money that an
average person earned in 15 years. So, let's take a round figure $10 an
hour for 40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year or $20,000 a year for 15
years makes a talent worth $300,000 ... If a talent is $300,000, how
much would 10,000 talents be? What is 300,000 times 10,000? There are a
lot of zeros there ... actually 9 zeros! What does that make it? ($3
billion!) O.K. remember that. Ten thousand talents is how much? ($3
billion). Good, you all would have passed my 5th grade class.
Now
there is just one more figure I want you to know, then we'll get on with
the story. A denarii is a typical days wage. If we work 8 hours for $10
an hour, how much do we get? ($80... whew, that was easy, right? Now the
next question is pretty easy to.) If we worked for 100 days for $80 a
day, how much would we get? ($8,000). Good! So a hundred denarii equals
what? ($8,000) and Ten Thousand Talents equals what? (3 Billion) Keep
those figures in mind as you hear the story Jesus told Peter, just in
case he got mixed up about the number of times he should forgive
someone:
Matthew 18:23-35
Don’t you wonder why the guy didn’t forgive the fellow servant? It seems
as though he forgot who he was. He forgot what had just happened to him.
He had just been forgiven how much? (3 Billion dollars!) He was a
billionaire. But he forgot how rich he was.
Now
if someone owed Bob Goudie $8,000 that would seem like a lot of money.
But if Bob Goudie was a billionaire, (Say his name was Bob Gates and he
was as rich as his brother Bill Gates) $8,000 wouldn’t seem like much
money at all! This guy was in the “Gates” category, but he forgot and
thought his name was Goudie! His problem was that he forgot who he was.
He
forgot that he was a billionaire in grace. So he did himself in. He
didn’t pass on the grace that was given to him and what happened?
He was handed over to be tortured. He was handed over to the torturers.
He wasn't just put in jail, he was handed over to the torturers! He
wasn’t just put into a place that had undergone prison reform. He was
not just put into a place were the rest of society would be safe from
him, he was handed over to the torturers.
In
much the same way, when we don't forgive, we are handed over to the
torturers!
Actually,
modern psychology tells us that unresolved animosity and resentment do
great harm to our personalities. People who carry around deep seated
anger and hurt are so discontented that they are not able to find
happiness.
There
is a story at the beginning of the book "Forgive and Forget" by Lewis
Smedes that helps us vividly see what unforgiveness does to us. I have
used this story in sermons before but I have an extended family member
who keeps encouraging me to tell it over and over because she credits
this story for saving her life. It’s the story of a man named Fouke who
discovered that his wife, Hilda, was having an affair, but because he
was such an upright Christian he forgave her ... or at least, that’s
what he said he did. Actually, he didn’t really forgive her, he just
said he did to make himself look good and her look bad. But, as the
story says: “But Fouke's fakery did not sit well in heaven. So each time
that Fouke would feel his secret hate toward Hilda, an angel came to him
and dropped a small pebble, hardly the size of a shirt button, into
Fouke's heart. Each time a pebble dropped, Fouke would feel a stab of
pain like the pain he felt the moment he first discovered Hilda’s sin.
So the more he hated her, the more pain he had and the more pain he had,
the more he hated her. So the pebbles multiplied and his heart grew
heavy ... so heavy that the top half of his body bent forward so far
that he had to strain his neck upward in order to see straight ahead. He
was miserable. Finally, the angel who dropped the pebbles into his heart
came to Fouke one night and told him how he could be healed of his hurt.
He needed the gift of magic eyes which would see Hilda, not as an evil
woman who betrayed him but as a weak woman who needed him And the way to
get these magic eyes was to ask, desiring as he asked. At first, Fouke
couldn’t bring himself to ask, after all, he was certainly justified in
his anger. But finally, he couldn’t stand the pain anymore. So he asked.
And the angel gave. Each time Fouke looked at Hilda with the magic eyes,
the angel removed one pebble. One by one... it took a long time to take
them all away. Gradually, Fouke felt his heart grow lighter. Gradually,
he began to walk straighter and straighter. Finally, he could walk
straight again. He invited Hilda to come into his heart again, and she
came. Together they began again a journey into their second season of
humble joy. 1
This
story, like the story Jesus told, is a "life-saving story." These
stories even though they are made up stories help us to understand that
unforgiveness, no matter how justified, brings us torture. Someone who
owes us $8,000 certainly should be held accountable. Someone who is
unfaithful to the marriage covenant certainly deserves to be punished.
There are many wrongs that deserve punishment.
But
the point of the stories is not what the debtor deserves... it is what
happens to the person who is or is not able to forgive.
In Jesus' story, the king forgave the servant an outrageous amount.
Peter stars out concerned with numbers, but Jesus uses such ridiculous
numbers that he lets us know that it is not about numbers! Jesus chose a
number so large that anyone who heard the story would realize that no
amount of sin is too large for God to forgive. So whether we've
committed a huge sin or lots and lots of little ones which can added up
to even more, God wants to forgive us. However, for that forgiveness to
stick, we have to pass it on to others. That’s the way it is in the
Kingdom of God. God gives us forgiveness and we pass it on.
If
we were told we only had a limited number of days to live, we’d want to
make sure we were right with God. So, we’d be sure to ask forgiveness
for the things we had done wrong. But that’s not all we would need to
do, we’d need to forgive the people who had done us wrong as well ...
not because they deserve it, but because we don’t want to be tortured by
carrying around all the resentment We keep on forgiving because WE
deserve it. We are forgiven, beloved children of God. We need to
remember WHO we are.
We
have been given the gift of life - a joy-filled life; a debt-free life;
eternal life that includes a gratifying present as well as a glorious
future. We are billionaires of grace! Bill Gates has nothing over any of
us when it comes to the “Grace Department.” Gates or Goudie or whatever
our names happen to be, we are all billionaires of grace. We need to
remember who we are. We don't want to mess up that gift with grudges and
animosity that will weigh our heart down with torturous unforgiveness
and cause us to be prisoners of hatred.
A neat video came with the material for this study. It’s called “The
Rock.” The rock the guy is carrying around represents our anger and
unforgiveness. It’s rather humorous, but it graphically shows the
problems we have if we try to carry around a grudge. So as we see this
guy carrying around this big rock, let’s be honest with ourselves about
our own anger and resentment. Is there anyone you need to forgive? If
you only had a few more days to live, you wouldn’t want to spend it
carrying around a rock like the guy in the video. So let’s be honest
about our feelings and ask God today to help us put that rock of
resentment down.
1Smedes, Lewis B., Forgive and Forget, Pocket Books,1984, p. 13-15