This
morning (14 November 2015), as I reviewed these notes prior to posting them,
the news about the terrorist attacks in Paris was continuing to unfold. It still isn’t clear how many were
killed—somewhere near 130, it seems—or exactly who was responsible—ISIS has
claimed responsibility but the French government seems to be suggesting that
additional radical groups may be involved.
The
attacks are shocking, leaving us wondering how one group of people could do
this to another. To use an old phrase,
it reminds us of “man’s inhumanity to man.”
(The recent crash of the Russian jet in Sinai Peninsula may be another
such reminder, though the investigation is continuing.) We need to pray for the
friends and families of those killed in the attack and for government leaders
in France and around the world as they determine how best to respond.
As
horrific as the attack was, we don’t have to look far to find examples of such
horror on a smaller scale—or at least on a scale unlikely to be covered by news
agencies around the world. Recently, in
our city, a man was gunned down in front of his wife and children as the family
was leaving a local restaurant; it was an attempted robbery. In Albuquerque, a toddler was shot and killed
while riding in her parents’ car, shot by an angry driver in another
vehicle. It was senseless, a act of
“road-rage.” Beyond such violent,
headline-grabbing acts, there are other “sins of commission and omission” committed
by ordinary people, by good neighbors, by Christians, by non-Christians, by drug-dealers,
and by pastors. This all reminds us of
how much we need this prayer for sinners.
Matthew 6:12
Imagine
what some of Jesus’ listeners must have been thinking as he announced the
coming of the Kingdom of God. They knew
this would be a Holy Empire, one marked by God’s idea of righteousness. Even as Jesus invited men and women into the
Kingdom, some must have been thinking, “I won’t make the cut. I’m a sinner.
I would be as welcome as a baked ham on the Passover table.”
Then
Jesus began to teach about prayer.
Prayer, he said, should be addressed to “Our Father in heaven,” heaven
the place of unparalleled perfection where Isaiah stood before God and cried
out, “Oi, I will be destroyed. I am not pure, and I live among people who are
not pure….”[1] To make matters worse, the very first
petition of that prayer was, “may your Name be kept holy.” At this point, our imaginary listener may
have thought, “A holy God would have nothing to do with me. I’d ruin the Kingdom’s reputation.” Those fears may have been confirmed by the
next petition: “May your rule be realized
as your will is done.” That settled
it. “How could I ever imagine I could be
part of God’s Kingdom,” that listener thought, “I’ve done my own will too
long.”
Then,
Jesus seems to change the subject and encourages his disciples to pray for
bread. Our listener may have come close
to tuning out. After all, what could
Jesus say to such a sinner? But at that
moment, Jesus adds the next petition:
“Forgive us our debts….” Could
that be right? Did Jesus actually say
the holy God of heaven invited sinners to ask for forgiveness?
Each
of us has failed to give God his due;
we are debtors before heaven. We
owe a debt we cannot ever hope to pay.
Who would ever claim to have lived up to God’s demands? None of us, we all fall short. Traditionally, we have put it this way: We have done those things we ought not to
have done and left undone those things we ought to have done.
Earlier
in this Sermon on the Mount, Jesus revealed that sin is in the thought as well
as the act. Lust reveals our warped sexuality
as much as overt adultery. Hatred
betrays our estrangement from our fellow humans as much as murder does.
While
there are those who would claim exemption from the indictment, most who
acknowledge the existence of a Holy God agree with the old charge “all have
sinned.”
Jesus
used the Aramaic term for sin, debt. While the term also refers to money debt,
here it is used figuratively. We owe God
obedience but we have disobeyed. We owe
God honor but we have flouted his authority.
We owe God absolute allegiance but have dallied with “idols” of all
kinds. All the while our debt has been
accruing, a debt from which no human agency could provide a bailout.
Now,
Jesus tells us that God is offering forgiveness. And the forgiveness he offers contains a
beautiful promise. The word translated
“forgive” in this verse means to send away.
Jesus is saying that when God forgives us, he sends our sins away from
us. The word is a reminder of the
psalmist’s joy over the depth and breadth of God’s forgiveness.
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us. (Ps
103:8-12)
God
offers full and complete forgiveness.
The psalmist’s imagery is thought provoking. He says God removes our sins from us “as far
as the east is from the west.” Think
about this. How far is the east from the
west?
A few
years ago, Pat and I drove to the little town of Tobermory, Ontario. It’s located at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula
that separates Georgian Bay from Lake Huron.
On the way there, we passed a sign indicating we were crossing the
halfway point between the Equator and the North Pole. Now, suppose we had winterized the car and
kept driving north, on to the North Pole.
The vehicle is, after all, called a Pathfinder. Anyway, once we got to the North Pole, we
could have kept driving but we would have been driving south, not north.
Now,
suppose for our next adventure we decided to see the sights along the
Equator. Again, we would be
driving. Don’t worry too much about the
Atlantic and the Pacific; that’s why
they make oversize tires. If we started
out driving east how long would it be before we started driving west? When would that compass change from “E” to
“W”? Never.
So,
more than 2500 years ago, the psalmist realized that if God removed our sins
from us as far as the east is from the west, we would never see them
again. That’s the kind of forgiveness
available when we pray this prayer. It’s
a great thought.
Then
Jesus adds a phrase that’s just a little unnerving. We are instructed to pray, not simply “forgive
us our debts,” but “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our
debtors.” When we hear that, some of us
want to cry, “Lord, you’ve got to be kidding.
Forgive those who have injured me, those who have wronged me.”
To
make matters worse, when Jesus finishes outlining the model prayer, he adds a
comment on this petition. He says,
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly
Father will also forgive you;
but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father
forgive your trespasses.
Now,
just what is that supposed to mean?
Some
read those words and believe Jesus is telling his followers that God forgiving
their sins rests on their previously forgiving the sins of others. It becomes a kind of quid pro quo
arrangement, something for something.
I
think these words are hard to understand but I think there are at least three
reasons why they can’t mean our receiving God’s forgiveness comes at the price
of our forgiving our enemies.
First,
it contradicts the notion of grace that runs through the entire gospel. In its simplest definition, grace is “God’s
unmerited favor.” We cannot earn
salvation; it is the gift of God. All we
can do it trust God. But, if our being
forgiven depends on our forgiving the one who injured us, then we have done
something, however small, to merit salvation.
In fact, it opens the door to pride.
We can boast of how magnanimous we are in forgiving our enemies.
Second,
any scheme that says we have to forgive before we can be forgiven fosters
hypocrisy. Any parent with more than one
child knows this. Still, there are
occasions when the temporary insanity that sometimes afflicts parents takes
over and we say things like, “Tommy, forgive your sister or you don’t get
dessert!” To this, Tommy will usually
reply, perhaps through gritted teeth, “Okay, I forgive you.” You’re momentarily satisfied but deep down
you know that not too long after the dessert is gone, the moment of retribution
will come. God—our heavenly Father—knows
this as well. I doubt he would invite
this kind of insincerity.
Third,
asking us to forgive our enemies before we are forgiven is putting the cart
before the horse or, more aptly, turning the monitor on when there’s no
mainframe. Acts of grace and mercy
spring from a heart that has been transformed.
Without that transformation, we are too prone to retaliate.
So,
again, what does Jesus mean when he instructs us to pray, “Forgive our debts,
as we have forgiven our debtors?”
Often
in the Sermon of the Mount, our inner attitude is the key to what Jesus is
saying. When we come to God, asking for
our debts to be canceled, we come with the attitude expressed in the first beatitude. It says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”[2] Jesus is promising God’s blessing to those
who know they are spiritual paupers, who know they have nothing to merit God’s
favor. The word translated “poor” is the
Greek word for the person who is absolutely destitute.
When
we come to God for forgiveness, we are so aware of the gravity of our offenses
that the offenses of others toward us become as nothing. So, Jesus is not talking about sequence: forgive others first then you will be
forgiven. He is speaking of something
that happens simultaneously with our being forgiven. Our forgiving those who offend us reveals the
depth of our understanding about what happens when God forgives us.
In our
schools and neighborhoods, trouble erupts when someone feels they have been
“dissed.” That means they feel someone
has shown them disrespect. It’s nothing
new, Lord Wellington had a duel with another Member of Parliament when
Wellington was Prime Minister.
Fortunately, both were bad shots.
When Wellington told the king about it, the king approved.
When
we properly understand the nature of our sins, we know we have dissed God far
more than anyone has ever dissed us.
Yet, God offers forgiveness to those who have offended him. How can we do anything else?
Jesus
once told a story that showed the opposite of this principle.
23“The kingdom of God is
like a king who decided to square accounts with his servants. 24As
he got under way, one servant was brought before him who had run up a debt of a
hundred thousand dollars. 25He couldn’t pay up, so the
king ordered the man, along with his wife, children, and goods, to be auctioned
off at the slave market. 26“The poor wretch threw himself at the
king’s feet and begged, ‘Give me a chance and I’ll pay it all back.’ 27Touched by his plea, the king let him off, erasing the debt. 28“The servant was no sooner out of the room when he came upon one
of his fellow servants who owed him ten dollars. He seized him by the throat
and demanded, ‘Pay up. Now!’ 29“The poor wretch threw himself
down and begged, ‘Give me a chance and I’ll pay it all back.’ 30But
he wouldn’t do it. He had him arrested and put in jail until the debt was
paid. 31When the other servants saw this going on, they
were outraged and brought a detailed report to the king. 32“The
king summoned the man and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave your entire debt
when you begged me for mercy. 33Shouldn’t you be compelled
to be merciful to your fellow servant who asked for mercy?’ 34The
king was furious and put the screws to the man until he paid back his entire
debt. 35And that’s exactly what my Father in heaven is
going to do to each one of you who doesn’t forgive unconditionally anyone who
asks for mercy.”
The unmerciful servant
didn’t grasp the depth of the king’s grace and so felt no need to show grace to
another.
Does this mean we have to
forget what has been done to us? I don’t
think so. I don’t think so because I
think it’s all but humanly impossible.
Sometimes people hurt us so deeply that their words and actions lodge in
our minds. The memory is always
there. What is important is how we
respond to that memory. Do we let our
memory shape our actions and attitudes or do we allow our experience of God’s
grace to subvert how we would ordinarily respond?
C. S. Lewis depicts how
we can be both honest about the wrong done to us and true to Christ’s call to
forgive.
Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin
that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and
seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness and malice, and nevertheless being
wholly reconciled to the man who has done it.
Just
as God knows all the darkness of our sin and still seeks to be reconciled to
us, by his grace, we can know the worst about those who have wounded us and
still seek to be reconciled to them.
Conclusion
The
Lord’s Prayer is a prayer for all of us because all of us are sinners. We are
all burdened with the weight of our guilt.
God offers us forgiveness. When
we receive that forgiveness, the experience is so liberating that all of our
relationships are changed.
[If you have read this blog long enough you know this sermon is an update of one I posted in October 2011; in the interests of continuity and your convenience, I have included it in this study of the Prayer. I would encourage you to look at the version of the sermon from 2011 because it contains a lengthy discussion of the spiritual and psychological danger of resentment, of refusing to forgive another.]
