by Doug Hammack
Forgiveness is at the very center of Christ’s teaching. Forgiveness is a whole lot harder than any sermon makes it out to be. Grace is to be the hallmark of the follower of Jesus. Forgiveness is to be the stamp, the trademark of the spiritual person. God has something for us in forgiveness:
-something bigger than the good feeling revenge gives us
-something realer than the satisfaction we feel in holding a grudge
-something truer than the true pain we feel when we imagine the offender getting away with their offence
Last week we looked at one of ways things work on spiritual journey
• Today, I want to look at another
• Today, I want to talk about how forgiveness works
Forgiveness is at the very center of Christ’s teaching
• When he was dying on the cross… Forgive them
• When Peter brought up the issue, Jesus shocked him
Somebody must have wronged him
Knowing forgiveness was part of spiritual deal, brings it to Jesus
Rabbinic tradition of the day…
forgive somebody 3x when they wrong you, then stop forgiving
so, knowing Jesus was breaking the mold in things spiritual, he more than doubles the going rate of forgiveness
how about this, Jesus?
How about we forgive these ne’er-do-well’s seven times?
Jesus’ answer had to be disconcerting…
• How about 77 times, or 490 times (both translations ok)
• Or in other words…
• Forgiveness goes on, and on, and on…
• Long past what you think would be outrageously ridiculous
Grace/forgiveness are much, much bigger than you understand Peter
• These are the centerpiece of spiritual living
• And if you would follow me, they must take the central place they deserve
So let me tell you a story to help you understand, Peter…
And he told a story something like this…
The way the spiritual world works, he said…
The way this forgiveness thing you’re asking about works… is like this:
Imagine a corporate CEO ordered an audit which revealed that an employee owed the corporation over $6.4 million
• He’d worked a loophole in company policy that allowed to borrow company stock for a personal investment
• However, the deal had gone bad
• Now he had to pay back the stock he’d borrowed…
• And he was in way, way over his head: $6.4 million
• The CEO issued a memo instructing the lawyers to begin collection proceedings
Whatever it takes, get that money back!
If you have to, force him to sell everything he owns
A week later, the employee came to the CEO’s office, hat in hand, to beg for clemency
• I know I took that risk with the company’s money
• It went bad, you’re out the $6 ½ million, and I owe it to you
• But I don’t have even a fraction of the money. I screwed up!
• But my wife and kids are counting on me to provide a living
• If you begin collections, this will get out…
First, I’ll lose everything and still pay you back only a portion
But more, my name will be blackened, nobody will hire me
My family will be destitute, I’ll be unemployed, unemployable
So I ask for mercy…
• I ask you to forgive the debt I owe you
• I can still be a productive account manager
• I can earn the company money by working here
• And I’ve learned my lesson…
• I’ll never put the company’s funds at such risk again
• Please forgive me this great blunder and let me live again
Chin scratching, scrutinizing looks, pause, pause, pause…
All right, my friend. I’ll speak to the board. I believe we can consider this a write off and hope to regain some of it through your productivity
• But don’t make me regret this
• You work hard, you be productive
• And for goodness sake, don’t do something this stupid again
Out of prison, out of harm’s way, out of hell
What a relief
Straightaway, he calls his wife, they celebrate their release
But the same audit that had caught his $6.4 million problem, also revealed that an employee in his own organization had a problem
• He’d been using a company car he thought was his to use
• However it wasn’t his to use, and he’d racked up $1400 in miles
• And so the one who’d been forgiven sic’d the lawyers on his own administrative assistant
• The guy, making $41K a year, had to max out his credit card to pay the charges
Now everything was fine until the quarterly reports were in, and the employee forgiven $6 million’s performance review was up
• His supervisor noted the discrepancy between the money he was forgiven and how he’d exacted the car allowance from his asst.
• He defended himself, saying that he’d lost so much of the company’s money, he swore he’d never lose another penny
The performance review eventually ended up on the CEO’s desk
• He called the guy in.
• The board and I forgave you $6,400,000
• And you couldn’t go easy on this poor guy for $1400
• Hell, just out of gratitude for your own reprieve, you could have paid the $1400 yourself
• Or you could have forgiven it and taken the hit on your department’s bonus
• But you, who were forgiven so much, have forgiven nothing!
• What are you thinking?
He fired the guy
• made public announcement his disregard for company monies
• filed criminal proceedings
• the guy lost everything
• and ended up in prison for 3 years to boot
and Jesus ended the story to Peter this way…
• this is how this spiritual thing works
• all of us come to God in a bottomless abyss of soul-debt
• God’s mercy, grace, and forgiveness are so rich and full, they reach into that abyss and pull us out
• But, if we don’t extend forgiveness to the others in the hole around us…
• We put ourselves right back into the abyss
• The hellish prison of unforgiveness is soul destruction at its worst
Grace is to be the hallmark of the follower of Jesus
Forgiveness is to be the stamp, the trademark of the spiritual person
Jesus didn’t pull any punches about how easy it would be…
• People do wrong to us and get away with it
• People hurt us, and either don’t know they did, don’t care, or have so much on their plate they can’t do anything about it
• There is no shortage of wrongdoing that invites forgiveness
• No shortage of hatred, ill will, bad behavior, offense, misconduct
• All you have to do is be in contact w/ other humans, and you’ll get a belly full of wrong doing begging to be forgiven
I read a sermon on forgiveness in preparation for today’s message…
It began this way…
Forgiveness is a whole lot harder than any sermon makes it out to be
C.S. Lewis wrote about how hard it was this way…
• “Last week in prayer, I discovered, or at least I think I did, that I suddenly was able to forgive someone that I had been trying to forgive for over thirty years.”
Let there be no illusion about forgiveness
It is agonizingly difficult
If we’re honest, it’s even difficult to affirm Jesus’ teaching on subject
• How much harder it is to follow it, put it into practice
• We may be able to bring ourselves to the conception that it would be good to forgive the human race for sins known/unknown
• But how do you forgive your best friend for betraying you?
• How do you forgive a parent for abusing you?
• How do you forgive a spouse for falling in love with another?
• How do you forgive your children for abandoning the values you taught them?
Forgiveness in general is one thing…
Forgiving a specific wrong that has brought you deep personal pain…
Well that is something else entirely
In some cases it seems impossible to forgive once
…let alone 77 times
Even though we have a deep longing inside ourselves to be forgiven…
Even though we recognize how right it is in the general sense…
Forgiveness is one of those most severe of mercies
It is terribly painful to forgive
• And it wasn’t any easier for the first followers of Jesus when they heard this story
• We describe the world as “dog eat dog” not “dog forgive dog”
• Like us, the early followers of Jesus had a hard time with forgiveness
After this story Jesus told Peter, the men around him in one voice opened their eyes wider than normal
• A collective gasp was translated, oh God, help us
• In the Luke version of the story, they exclaimed together
• Oh God, increase our faith
• Show us how to believe this way of being
Hard-nosed pragmatists, fishermen, taxmen, these guys knew they would need something beyond themselves for this
But still…
Jesus left absolutely no wiggle room on this one
• If we are to be followers of Jesus, extending forgiveness to those who wrong is us is not optional
There’s an almost obsessive insistence on this one
• Forgive, or burn in the hellishness of human anguish
• Forgive, or let your divine destiny go right on by w/o you
• And it wasn’t a suggestion, it was an imperative
• Do this thing!
• Don’t negotiate, don’t try to figure a way out!
• Do this thing!
Now given our belief in the goodness of the universe God made…
• Given our belief in the love of God for people…
• We know that if Spirit of God mandates such a thing, it is good
• As Michelle once preached…
It is always in your best interest to obey God
It is always in your best interest to wrestle this one to the ground
To contend, to struggle, to thrash it out, until we find the way to forgive
The wisdom of God revealed to Jesus…
The wisdom of God revealed to the ancients…
The wisdom of God revealed to spiritual people of all traditions…
…forgive
Our own aren’t really healed until we forgive
• We never move forward into wholeness until we forgive
• We don’t live from our true centers until we forgive
• We don’t live from our truest selves at all, until we forgive
• Our lives don’t move forward until we forgive
Don’t feel bad if it takes you a long time, forgiveness is that hard
• But, don’t ever settle into complacency on the subject
• If there’s someone out there that precipitates hatred, anger…
• If you loath them, get upset when somebody mentions them
• If your face forms a scowl when you think of them…
• Just know there is work that must be done before life begins
God has something for us in forgiveness
Something bigger than the good feeling revenge gives us
Something realer than the satisfaction we feel in holding a grudge
Something truer than the true pain we feel when we imagine the offender getting away with their offence
There is a universal resonance w/ forgiveness in every human soul
• We are all wired at our deepest cores to forgive
• It is in the nature of God
• And at that place where we are one with God, it is in our nature
• Consequently, we resonate with it deeply
• Both receiving it, and giving it
I never read the book of Ernest Hemingway’s that tells this story
I read about it…
• a young man wrongs his father and runs away from home
• he ends up in the city of Madrid
• his father has a great and powerful love for his son
• after years of missing his son…
• knowing where his son landed, but not knowing how to contact him…
• the father takes out an ad in the Madrid newspaper
• Paco, meet me at the Hotel Montana, at 12 noon Tuesday. All is forgiven. Papa
• I guess Paco is a common name in Spain
• When the father arrived at the hotel, he found eight hundred young men waiting for their fathers
We are all drawn to the correctness and properness of forgiveness
• Something inside eagerly awaits being extended forgiveness
• Something inside us also eagerly awaits the opportunity to extend forgiveness to others
• Something inside us knows it is right, and it draws us
And that something speaks a greater truth than the revenge, the grudge, the pride, the pain
When we see forgiveness we affirm its beauty
• Something is right w/ the universe when we receive it…
• Something is right w/ the universe when we extend it
STORY
Back in 1935, Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York, visited a night court in the poorest ward of the city. He relieved the judge for the evening and took the bench himself. A case came up where a grandmother had been arrested for stealing bread to feed her grandchildren. La Guardia said, ‘You are guilty, and I have got to punish you. Ten dollars or ten days in jail.’ And then LaGuardia pulled a 10 dollar bill out of his pocket and put it in his hat.
At that point he pronounced a fine on everyone in the courtroom for living in a city where grandmothers had to steal bread to feed their grandchildren. They passed the hat and that woman left the courthouse with her fine paid, and with 47 dollars and 50 cents to feed her grandchildren.
That’s an easy one
It’s a grandmother for goodness sake. What hard heart would not be moved to forgive a needy grandmother or her hungry grandchildren?
But the principle remains when the offender is less attractive
• When the bread stolen is your own child’s last bread
• When the offense is directed at you
• When the pain caused is much deeper than physical hunger…
That woman left the courtroom having experienced mercy/forgiveness
• Her world was changed by the experience
• She experienced a different way of being human together
• The world of those who were “fined” was changed as well
• Each was exposed to opportunity to live from the deeper truths
• The deeper mysteries of Divine life inside us
• Each will in turn, be more likely to show mercy to others
• That woman is changed by the experience of goodness, rightness, holiness… forgiveness
And these are truths for attractive grandmother offenders
And for very unattractive, vindictive, mean-spirited offenders
People have done you wrong; people will do you wrong
• Some will come ask you to forgive them
• But most will not
• Some will be awful people who have done awful things
• Most won’t deserve to be forgiven
And when this happens, we are confronted with a choice
• Will you seize onto the pain or onto the divine lifeline?
• Will you seize onto the pride, and withhold mercy?
• Will you be like the employee forgiven $6.4 million?
• If so, your souls ends up in prison
• You’ll be imprisoned in anger, hatred, depression, guilt
• You’ll burn in the hell of lost destiny, ignored divinity
And I don’t want that for us
I don’t want that for you