Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

Forgiving from the Heart

Pastor Meyer’s Sermon

Sunday, February 17, 2008

July 4, 1826, the citizens of the United States are celebrating the 50 th birthday of our nation. At the same time, two of the former presidents are in their beds fighting for their life. Two homes, messengers being sent back and forth to keep the other apprised as to each other’s condition. At first glance, it seems touching that these two founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, would want to keep tabs with each other and how they are doing when they’re both on their death beds. But, unfortunately, there’s nothing touching about it at all.

You see, for the last 50 years, they have been bitter enemies. Adams and Jefferson clashes were widely known. Working together under George Washington, they had bitter arguments. The core reason is they had fundamentally different ideas of how the country should be handled and this filtered into their private lives as they took every opportunity to attack verbally each other as they were seeking the presidency. It’s so intense, the hatred for each other, that it caused Adams to say multiple times that even though Jefferson was seven years younger than him, he would outlive Jefferson. Hence, the messengers going back and forth between the two homes as each of them fought to stay alive longer than the other. John Adams’ last words, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

Can you imagine being on your deathbed and the only thing you can think about is not your family. It’s not the legacy you’ve left behind. It’s not the service you’ve done for your country but rather, it’s whether you can stay alive the longest, to hold on the longest so you can see the other person die, holding onto grudges from past things, unwilling to forgive.

Last week, we talked about how we go about making a Bucket List, a Bucket List being the list of different things you would want to do before you, well, kick the bucket. And as we follow along with Jesus on His journey to the cross, we start to learn about some things that we can add onto our Bucket List. And Jesus tells us the first thing that should be on our Bucket List is forgiveness, we should not hold anything against anyone or hold grudges but to forgive.

Now Jesus, that’s fine and all but the question is how often do I have to forgive? You see, I have some difficult people in my life that I find myself constantly having to forgive so the big question for me and maybe for all of us this morning is how many times do we forgive? When is it enough? When can we say no more for you? The bible gives us some insight as we see how Jesus responds to Peter. You see, Peter had the same question. “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Seven times?” Peter, too, must have had something going on in his life where he realized that, “I have some difficult people and I’m constantly having to forgive them.” And he probably, too, was wondering, “Where is that cutoff point?” Because the religious leaders of the day were saying, “You forgive three times and then no more.” Three times and no more. That sounds pretty good to me. After all, I’m a baseball fan so three strikes and you’re out. These people have hurt me. Maybe it’s the person in high school who stole your boyfriend or girlfriend or maybe it’s the hurtful lie that your neighbor has been telling other people in the neighborhood about you. Or maybe it’s the action of your former spouse against you that had caused the divorce. Yes, three times and no more. That sounds good to me.

And when Peter suggested seven times, he had just doubled everything he has learned and then he added one more just for good measure because probably he thought, “Oh, this would measure up to God’s graciousness.” Jesus has a surprising answer. But Jesus says, “I tell you not seven times but seventy, seven times.” In other words, 490 times we are to forgive. And this number far shatters any number that Peter or maybe even us would come up with. But the interesting thing is if we dig even a little deeper into that number, knowing that the number seven to the people of that day meant complete or finished, Jesus is actually telling Peter and us to forgive without number.

So when we think about the family member who constantly is talking disrespectfully to you or the coworker who is fighting against you to get that next raise or the friend of yours who has stabbed you in the back by sharing a secret that you had shared with them with someone else, we need to forgive without number.

Now, my friends, forgiveness doesn’t mean that we excuse the pain this other person has caused you. It doesn’t mean to forgive and no longer deal with the hurt. It doesn’t mean we excuse the other person. No, because we still need to deal with the hurt. We still need to deal with the pain. We still need to heal but the problem comes in when we refuse to forgive, when we refuse to reconcile and we wait for the other person to repent and say, “I’m sorry,” before we forgive. Or we wait for the groveling to take place. Or when we start to act like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and say, “I will not forgive unless he comes on his hands and knees and begs for it.” Because, you see, you’re taking your happiness and your peace and you’re saying, “Here it is. It’s up to you to decide. It’s up to you to decide whether I can be free of this pain or not.” Because, you see, you’re giving that person, the person who has hurt you, the privilege of deciding when you can be free and happy again.

But we learn what Jesus did in His life here. When Pontius Pilate and others were talking disrespectfully to Him and mocking Him by saying, “So, you’re the king of the Jews?” Or He had the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the teachers of the law that were fighting against Him every step of the way in His ministry and He literally endured being stabbed in the back as His back was whipped by Roman soldiers, as the stabbing pain of the crown of thorns in his forehead and the stabbing pain of the nails being pounded into his hands and feet, that while on the cross, Jesus did not say, “I’ve forgiven enough.” He didn’t say, “No more for you.” Instead, while on His deathbed, He chose not to hold things against us, to carry a grudge. In fact, Jesus said ten of the most precious words that he could say, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Forgiveness was Number One on Jesus’ Bucket List and it should be Number One on ours, too.

Are you holding a grudge against someone, someone who has hurt you deeply and you just can’t seem to get past the point of forgiving that person? And maybe you’re wondering if you ever will get to that point. The bible gives us three things we can do as we journey towards forgiving that person who has wronged us, the same way God has forgiven us.

And the first one is we rediscover the humanness of the person who hurt us. You see, I don’t know about you but when someone hurts me and I get angry, I tend to start to define that person by the action that he or she did to me. We all kind of do that, don’t we? When somebody lies to us, the next time we see that person, we say, “Oh, that’s Megan, the liar.” And we start to define the person by the actions they’ve done and we can’t get past thinking about that when we see the person. You see, the bible has a wonderful metaphor, though, when it talks about God forgiving us. The bible says, “God washes our sins away.” You see, He washes away all of that muck and that dirt caused by sin that’s on the outside. He washes it off and He sees us for who we really are. God doesn’t define us by the actions that we’ve done. He rediscovers the humanness of us. And so as we work towards, as we journey towards forgiving, we can try to discover the person who has hurt you is a lot more than the actions they did to you. We begin to see they, too, are fragile. They, too, are weak and they, too, are sinful human beings, not all that different from each of us.

Now the second thing we can do as we are trying to seek to forgive as God forgives is to surrender our right to get even. This is something we deal with all the time, isn’t it? It’s that feeling when you get hurt, you have that desire to want to get even with the person. Somebody spreads a rumor about you, you go and you spread a rumor about that person. Somebody comes up to you and says something hurtful to you, you’re back in their face trying to say something hurtful to them. We constantly feel the need to balance the score and we certainly know that’s not what Jesus did.

After the humiliating betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter stands up to defend Jesus and Jesus says, “Do you not think I cannot call on my Father and He will put at my disposal twelve legions of angels?” You see, Jesus could have balanced the score. But instead, Jesus gave up His right to get even and gave up His life for us. So as we forgive, we can work toward giving up a desire to get even. In essence, that’s what we are praying when we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses, our debts as we forgive those who have trespassed or have debts against us.”

Now the third thing we can learn about how God has forgiven us and use that as we seek to forgive others, and this is probably the most difficult one, is we change our feeling about the person. Now this can take quite awhile but we can start doing that by actually praying for that person. And as we pray for that person, we’ll start to realize that we’re starting to look at that person in a different light. There’s not a condescending light by any means but it’s more of a light of Christian love and compassion and care. And we’ll feel the animosity starting to drop away from us. Now it doesn’t mean we have to be best friends with this person, no, but it does mean we can start to let go of the animosity we have for that person.

Now the best way I can illustrate this is to talk about my grandmother. My grandmother’s youngest son, my Uncle Steve, was killed back in 1970 by a drunk driver in a car crash. And she and I talk quite often and, over the years, we’ve talked about Uncle Steve because I still remember him. I was about two years old at the time. And we still talk about him and I remember one conversation where we were talking about Uncle Steve and forgiveness came up. And I asked, “Have you forgiven the man who was responsible for the accident?” And my grandmother said, “Yes, I’ve forgiven him.” And I said, “Well, how do you know you’ve forgiven him?” And she said, “Well, I find myself praying that the man would do well in his life.” You see, God does the same for us. Because of Jesus, He wishes us well in our lives.

The bible says that God gave His Son so we may have life and have it to the full, to have happiness and peace given to us because God says, “I forgive you.” And we have happiness and peace because we can go to others and say, “I forgive you.”

So, my friends, I think I’m going to put forgiveness as Number One on my Bucket List. Because when I’m on my death bed, I don’t want to be thinking about what other people have done to me. No, I want to be thinking about what Jesus has done for me. What about you? Amen.