The Work of Forgiveness

How many of you are familiar with the idea of children having chores and getting allowances? You do certain things, and you are expected to do them, and when they are done, you get your allowance, your payment. It teaches children the American way. Work = pay, effort = reward. So, when someone asks us to do something, our quick response is often: “What’ll you give me for it?” “What’s it worth to you?” or “What’s in it for me?” Our culture values the system of effort/reward so highly that when there is not an obvious reward, like when we are being asked to volunteer, we often hear, “You get out what you put in” or “The blessing you experience far outweighs the sacrifice” or “The reward is not of this world.”

We didn’t do chores or allowances with our kids. At one point, one of them wanted to earn more money, so we developed a “beyond expectations” list of tasks that could earn money. But, generally, everyone was, and is, expected to participate in household tasks because they are part of the family.

In the households of 1st Century Palestine, each person was expected to do their part for the good of the household, including slaves. Now, a note about slavery: I am not going into the problems of the system of slavery that was practiced in the 1st Century in this sermon, it isn’t what Jesus is talking about here. What we need to know in order to understand what Jesus is saying is that slaves were primarily the poor, people who had fallen into debt, people without a family compound to belong to who were left vulnerable. The slaves in the household worked both in the fields and in the household. They were expected to work all day in the sun, and then come in and work in the kitchen.

Jesus uses this household structure as a metaphor for God’s expectation of us. Slaves were expected to plow or shepherd the sheep all day and then come inside and cook and serve, and they didn’t see any reason for a reward, no reason for special recognition or thanks for doing what you are supposed to do. It’s like that with us and God, Jesus told the disciples, when we have done what we are excpected to do…we have only done our duty. What Jesus is talking about, that we are expected to do, is the work of forgiveness.

Then Jesus has been talking with the Pharisees, and then he turns to his disciples. Remember the Pharisees believed that if they just got it all right, if they followed the rules perfectly…and everyone else did…then the kingdom of God would come. So, as they walk away, Jesus says to his disciples, “No matter what people are going to mess up.” There are going to be wounds and mistakes, crevices and cracks in relationships. Jesus teaches about 3 ways we relate to sin. There’s the sin you commit, the sin you aid and abet, and the sin against you.

First, sin that you commit. Jesus says, “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come.” You will be tempted, and you will sin. You will not always put God first. You will not perfectly live out the commandments so that you live in community with mutual love, care, and respect. Jesus was right. Every one of us stumbles and needs forgiveness.

The second category of sin is the sin we aid and abet. “Woe, though,” says Jesus, “to the person who offers the opportunity, who causes the slip, who trips one of the little ones up.” In context, Jesus has just told the Pharisees the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The little ones are the people like Lazarus, the vulnerable, the marginalized in society, living on the streets, begging at the gate. Jesus says it would be better to execute yourself by attaching yourself to a millstone – a huge donut-shaped stone, that weighs about 1600 pounds and was used for crushing grain into flour – and being thrown into the sea (he didn’t come up with this illustration, this was a means of execution in the 1st Century) than to cause someone who is vulnerable to sin. Pastor Kevin Riggs says about this passage, “Here is the lesson: If we close our eyes to the needs of the forgotten, causing them to steal, borrow, and beg to survive, it would be better for us on judgment day if we simply died by criminal execution! No wonder Jesus says to His disciples, ‘So watch yourselves’.”

But what happens when the sin is committed against you? Jesus says, “When a sibling in faith sins against you, rebuke them, call them out on it, and if they repent, forgive them…even when they sin against you 7 times. (The number is symbolic; 7 is the number of wholeness.) Even when they break relationship completely, the pattern remains the same – reprimand, repent, reconcile.

And the disciples exclaim, “We need more faith to be able to live like that! Increase our faith!”

And Jesus responds, “No. You don’t need more faith. You have all the faith you need.

It isn’t your faith that uproots mulberry trees with their massive root systems that both burrow deep, penetrating the earth and also spread out wide into an extensive interwoven mass of shallow roots.

It isn’t your faith that allows that uprooted mulberry tree to flourish, planted in the sea. You can see how ridiculous this image is, right? A tree with all its roots, uprooted and somehow planted in water?

It isn’t your faith that will allow you to forgive. It is the one in whom you have faith, God. What matters isn’t how great your faith is, what matters is that you have faith in God who is great. God is the master of the household, and forgiving is just part of what you do as a member of the household. The work of forgiveness doesn’t follow the pattern of work = pay or effort = reward. It is expected of disciples.

That’s not to say that it is easy. It takes intention and often it takes time and determination. You may remember the story of Corrie ten Boom, a Christian who hid Jews from the Nazi’s during the Holocaust. She told about trying to forgive a particular wrong that was done to her. She had decided to forgive, but at night she found that she couldn’t stop thinking about it, living it again in her mind, and sleep wouldn’t come. She confessed her struggle to her pastor, who answered,
“Up in the church tower, is a bell that’s rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the bell-ringer lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops. I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.”

“And so it proved to be,” she wrote. “There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations, but the force — which was my willingness in the matter — had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at the last stopped altogether.”

As you come to the Table today, who do you need help forgiving? From whom do you need to seek forgiveness? It doesn’t take great faith for it to be possible, it takes faith that God is great, and an understanding that we are part of God’s household, and it is expected of us.