Last night we began a new worship service here at St. John's! The service is being prayerfully designed with our youth in mind but anyone is welcomed to attend! Last night there were about 150 present and it was a blast (with a few minor technical errors)! I was supposed to do the homily for no more than 3-5 minutes but ... suprise, suprise wordy little me ... it turned into 8 minutes. Sorry guys!! Below is a transcript of my message. The Scripture was the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.
So if you were in Sunday school today, you’ve heard lots about forgiveness already today. And, if you were at worship earlier, you probably heard and saw Father Paul with his calculator necklace and heard him pose the question – do you have a calculator in your heart and do you add up and keep all the times other people hurt you. I think the necklace could become a trend … what do you think? And it’s 9/11 so it’s kind of a topic that is on everyone’s mind. But tonight, I want to talk to you one more time about forgiveness, real quickly.
You can probably think Scripture and all the times we’ve heard that Jesus talk about forgiveness.
*We hear about it in the Lord’s prayer (the way Jesus says we should
pray) … forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those …
*And what about all the healing stories from the Bible. Jesus usually
says something like your sins are __________________ (FORGIVEN), get
up and walk or you are healed or whatever.
*And what about that all famous statement from the cross: “Father
forgive them, they know not what they do.”
And, I love the acting out of this piece of Scripture that some of our youth just did parable on the unforgiving or unmerciful servant.
But this parable of the unforgiving servant wasn’t like a one time deal or story. Jesus didn’t just talk about forgiveness once or say 7 times but more like ... oh I don’t know … a total guess here a bazillion and 77 times. Forgiveness is so important that here’s what I think … for us Christians, forgiveness, it should be the real “F” word because it seriously is the cornerstone of the Christian life.
Forgiveness was fundamentally important to Jesus. Fundamentally? That just a really big way of saying really, really, really important. If you look earlier in Matthew (which is where this story comes from) we get the whole forgive and be forgiven concept from Jesus. IN other words - the only way God forgives us is if we forgive others.
And then in Matthew just before this parable, Jesus even lays out this really cool plan for dealing with conflict within the body of Christ. Basically he says if someone upsets you then you need to go and talk to that person alone. If that doesn’t work then take two others with you and try again. If that doesn’t work take that person before the whole church and work it out.
So, in case you don’t get it yet … this forgiveness thing … it’s a REALLY BIG deal.
So then here is my question, if it is so important then why is this forgiveness thing so tough to do?
You see, this is what Jesus did! He took every day worldly concepts – things you and I deal with – and he flipped them upside down. People in Jesus day (and even in our world today sometimes) were used to an eye for an eye type of concept. And here Jesus is saying just forgive … no strings attached.
I don’t know about you … but when somebody hurts me, I really like to hold a grudge. I don’t like it when someone has taken advantage of me, or trashed my name. But way too often, I act like the unforgiving servant and try to make them pay!
But here is a little secret about forgiveness that I had to learn the hard way. When we harbor un-forgiveness it is just like we’re saying, “Okay, person that hurt me you control my life. I’m the puppet. You’ve got the strings. You hurt me. You ruined my life. You keep me from all this potential.”
It can completely control you and it will manifest itself in really yucky ways like anger or depression.
Part two of that is when we feel like there is no way we can let go, we have to trust God to give us the strength to do it. It’s just that simple.
I know what some of you are thinking! Jillianne, “You don’t realize what’s happened to me. You don’t realize what my friend did. You don’t know what my mother did or my father. You don’t realize what that coach said to me. For me to forgive them would be to minimize what they did to me. I’m not going to let them off that easy. I’m going to make them pay. I’m going to make them suffer.”
You’re right; I don’t know what you’ve gone through. But, what I do know is that forgiving someone doesn’t mean you are minimizing their behavior. We’re freeing ourselves up. We’re giving ourselves a gift that money can’t buy.
Because … think about the word “forgiveness.” It has the word “give” in it. When we forgive, we give ourselves the ultimate gift. Also, we’re giving the other person who messed with us a gift. We’re giving them room to change. It’s not up to us whether they accept that gift, we just have to lay it down and walk away.
Father Paul was right. He said this morning that Christianity isn’t for sissy’s. He’s right! But there are so many amazing payoffs for persevering and being open to what God is calling us to do … even if it means doing the thing we think we can’t do and forgiving someone who has hurt us deeply.
Amen?!
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