Forgive Us As We Forgive
Pastor Mathew Magera – 2/12/17 – Sermon 208
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, from our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
When I was a kid, I loved to ride my bike. I had so
much fun riding around, pretending to be different things. Planes, trains, mail
trucks, garbage trucks, racecars, school buses, you name it. I was obsessed
with riding bikes. I remember one day I rode down to my friend's house a few
houses down from mine. They had this fenced in area between their house and
their garage and my friends and I would pretend it was a parking garage. Nobody
was home at the time but I wanted to play anyway. So, I rode up, opened the
gate, drove in and closed the gate behind me. Then, I went back out through the
gate. I did this a few times. But, one time, I got into the fenced in area,
shut the gate, but I couldn't get it open again. I was too small, I couldn't
climb fences and I was not strong enough to get the gate open. I panicked. But,
I had one option. I went up to the backdoor the house, just about fighting
tears now, luckily the door was unlocked, I ran through their house, out the
front door and ran home to get help. I got my mom to come help me. Now, by this
time, of course, my friend's family had just gotten home only to see new bike
in their yard along with their front and back doors wide open. Everything was
fine, once my mom had explained what happened. But, still, as a kid, I thought
this was what it was talking about at the part of the Lord’s Prayer where we
say forgive us our trespasses. Lord, forgive us when we trespass on other
people's property as we forgive those who trespass on ours.
What Is Trespassing?
I hope I’m not the only one who has ever thought of
this petition as a means to keep off private property. I mean, as a child, what
definition of the word trespass do we typically learn first? In fact, we were
talking about something like this at Bible study last night. On many of the
fields around here and potential hunting areas, what signs are posted? “Private
property. No trespassing.” Meaning, stay off. Fortunately, the Lord’s Prayer
has been translated many different ways that we also can have different words
in place here. The more modern version, perhaps the most ideal way to
understand this petition says, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who
sin against us.” Now, that’s much simpler, is it not? That gets right to the
point. But, yes, in an archaic sense, the word trespass can also mean sin. We
may understand it now, or maybe we just believe it because that is what we are
taught to believe. Another translation of this petition might sound like this, “Forgive
us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Still, not as easy to understand as
sins, but a bit more helpful. A debt is a failure to pay something. Do we think
that Jesus knew just how much a college education was going to cost us in the
21st century that he anticipated our need to pray for the forgiveness
of debt? No, likely not. Still, this
word was the one that was in the original language. Debt.
In Jewish thought,
each and every sin created a deposit of debt before God. Each sin, therefore,
created a dividing line separating the person from God. With each sin, the
divide grew. On the other hand, each good work contributed to the person’s
accumulation of assets which built kind of a bridge to lessen the divide. Each sin was a demerit that separated and those
demerits were called debts. So, in a way, it does have a monetary value to us
when we hear it that way. As a Jewish person in Jesus’ day, your goal was to
have more good works than debts. Of course, it never worked out for anybody.
So, I really like these definitions. Sins is easy to understand. Yes, we know
we need our sins forgiven. Debts can be culturally understood if we think of it
in terms of money and our standing before God. But, the prayer we most likely
know is “Forgive us our trespasses.” So, I did what anyone would do when they
don’t know how to define a wore, and I went to the dictionary. Actually, I went
to Google because why waste time turning pages when Google will tell you
anything with so much less effort involved.
So, I’m on Google and I get the definition and I look
for the correct meaning I’m looking for. It said, “a sin; an offense.” Okay, a
little anti-climactic at best. So, I went to the synonyms. Sin, wrong,
wrongdoing, transgression, crime, offense, misdeed, misdemeanor, error, lapse.
But, then there was this last one and it stopped me a bit. This last synonym
for the word trespass was “a fall from grace.” I have to be honest, I just
stopped right there and stared at it. Sometimes you don’t need an expensive
Bible commentary to get some powerful insight. So, I stared at this synonym and
I thought to myself, that’s it. A sin is something bad I’ve done, a debt is
money that I have not paid, and trespassing is running through somebody’s house
when they aren’t home, but falling from grace... is different. Forgive us when
we fall from grace. Now, if you take a moment to think about what that sounds
like. If we use that definition we are praying to God to forgive us each time
we fall from grace. We are praying that God would be gracious even though we
have led ourselves outside of its boundary. We are praying that God would take
a step beyond the boundary and bring us back into grace with grace as the tool.
We’re on one side of the fence and can’t get the gate open, the gate that we’ve
shut and we are praying that God would open it for us. It sounds like something
God would never do, yet Jesus is the one that is teaching us to pray and Jesus
would not teach us to pray for something that were not possible. Forgive us,
Lord, when we fall from grace. Be gracious to us once again.
Forgiveness Is Not Conditional
Of course, this would all be great if we didn’t have
to worry about the second part of this petition. Forgive us our trespasses as
we forgive those who trespass against us. We thought we could get out of it but
we still have work to do. It sounds like a conditional statement. If we forgive
the sins of others against us, God will forgive us. Does it seem like something
God would say? I mean, love your neighbor, right? The Golden Rule, perhaps? Treat others as you wish to be treated.
But, now I want you to think about this question... what if God forgave us in
the same way we forgive each other?
Just think about those people who have wronged you and
how you responded. Think of them. Sure, you might say, yeah, I’ll forgive this
person for this, I’ll forgive that person for that. But, what about that time
when you said, I’m not so sure I can forgive you quite yet. What about that
time when you said, I’ll forgive you because I know I right thing to do but not
because I really want to? Or maybe even that time you said, no, absolutely not,
I just can’t bring myself to forgive that person for what they did. Now, take a
minute and put God in our shoes. What if he really treated forgiveness the same
way we treated others. God will say, okay, I forgive you for this, I forgive
you for that. I guess I’ll forgive you for this other thing but I really don’t
want to, but no, I will not forgive you for that last one. Can you imagine God
doing that? If you can’t imagine God doing that, then perhaps we need to
rethink how we pray this prayer. It sounds conditional, as if God’s forgiving
us relies solely upon us forgiving others.
Forgive us, just as we have forgiven others. God I
forgave so and so, forgive me. Or perhaps on the other unfortunate side, God, I
can’t forgive them, thus you must not be forgiving me of my sin. How
detrimental to our faith that must be, to be in a place where we just cannot
forgive somebody and to have that guilty feeling multiplied when we pray these
words of the Lord’s Prayer that appear to tell us that because of our condition
God cannot forgive us. We are unforgivable. Can you believe that? Can you
believe that a human limitation such as not being able to forgive someone for
whatever it may be, can stop God from offering us complete forgiveness of our
sins? No. We’re sinful creatures, we’re naturally not going to want to forgive
someone, it’s one of our faults. This can’t be understood as a conditional
prayer. We cannot avoid looking for grace here. The Law is always conditional,
grace is always grace.
So, if we don’t look at it as a conditional,
statement, how then can we look at it? First of all, forgiveness is never
conditional. God forgives us our sins, He forgave us our sins on the cross. It’s
a done deal. Whether or not we believe it is another question and another
sermon. But, the all-important word here that we need to focus on is the small
word, “as”. Perhaps we might better place
the word “while” here. Forgive us
our trespasses while we forgive those who trespass against us. Have you
ever been wronged so bad you thought you might never able to get to that point
of forgiveness? If you got to that point where you were able to forgive, how
did it feel? When we come to a position where we can forgive someone, for us to
be able to overcome the great distance we had to travel to get to that point of
forgiveness, it serves as a reminder of God’s forgiveness over us. We who were
an eternal distance away from God because of our sin have been forgiven. The
difficulty in forgiving one person one thing is only the starting point to how
God is forgiving us right now. This prayer is serving to remind us of God’s
forgiveness so that when we forgive someone and we understand what that feels
like, we have already felt the power of forgiveness given to us. It’s like a
weight being lifted off of us to forgive someone and as we do it can remind us
of the great weight that has been lifted to restore our relationship with God.
If we can do it, we can only imagine how much greater God’s forgiveness is. It’s
almost as if we have been forgiven all over again. Forgive us while we forgive
others. Pure grace because God has promised it. Our forgiving someone else does not earn our forgiveness. Jesus’s blood
shed on the cross earned our forgiveness.
Forgiveness is Unexpected
Put yourself in a situation where the subject changes
to church. You are with someone who knows you well. You may even be related to
them and they start telling you why they haven’t gone to church in however
long. You’ll hear it all from the
service being too early, to having kids that have sports on Sunday, to Sunday
morning being prime time for fishing and hunting. What’s the best and most
unexpected thing you could do at this point? They’ve just sat there confessing
to you what has been keeping them from the Lord. The best thing you could do in
a situation like this is take them by the hand and say, “Joe,” or whatever
their name is, “in the name of Jesus
Christ, your sins are forgiven.” I guarantee they won’t be expecting such a
response. But, do we normally do that? No. We say, come to church with us. Why
are we withholding forgiveness for so long? It’s as if we’re saying if you come
to church you will be forgiven, but no, that’s not how we should respond. We
don’t want to delay God’s grace from being shared any longer than we have to.
Forgive them and forgive them right then and there.
They won’t be expecting it. They’re thinking you’re
inviting them to church and say, “wait, what did you just say?” And you’ll tell
them you just offered them forgiveness in Jesus’ name. In fact, by offering
them forgiveness you’ll be leading the conversation into a much deeper place
than just inviting them to church. If you invite someone to come to church with
you, aside from the time of the morning they would have to wake up, what do you
think their next question would be? “What do I wear?” Already, they are back
focused on themselves and how to present themselves before God. You stand there
and forgive their sins in Jesus’ name, they might ask, how can you do that?
Boom, well let me tell you.
* * *
Forgiveness. It's what Jesus is all about and thus it
is what we are all about. And just as unexpected as it will be for that other
person to hear, we know that forgiveness of our sins also comes when we are
least expecting it. We should offer that forgiveness just as freely as God
offers it to us for we know that if God ever stopped forgiving us our eternal
future would be lost. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who
trespass against us. Forgiveness when we fall from God's grace realizing how
inadequate we are. Forgiveness not conditioned by our human abilities but
freely given and remembered as we practice the sharing of grace. Forgiveness
shared in those unexpected moments. With
that said, would you please join me in prayer.
Almighty God, we confess to you that we
are sinners. There are areas in our lives that are not pleasing to you and
justly deserve your punishment. Even today we have sinned against you in ways
that deeply offend you. We are sorry for them and repent of them and pray for
your boundless mercy. May Jesus' blood, shed on the cross, wipe away our sins
and make us clean within. May you overcome the sins that have been in our
families for generations. This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
In the name of Jesus Christ,
your sins are forgiven. Forgive early and forgive often as we have also been
forgiven. To God be the glory now and always. Amen.