As we forgive...

 

I have to admit that the gospel passage set for today is not one of my favourites. I find it gives a very odd picture of God, as though God is only waiting for us to feel the slightest bit of resentment against someone as an excuse not to forgive us.

Well, that isn't like the God I know, so why did Jesus tell this story? We know from elsewhere, the Lord's prayer, for instance, that we need to forgive before we are forgiven, but why? What difference does it make to us?

Well, let's look at the story in context.

The story comes in a selection of Jesus' teaching, including the story of the lost sheep, and the bit where Jesus says what to do if someone sins against you. You may have thought about this last week: first of all you talk to them privately, then if they won't listen, you take someone else along for moral support, then you take the matter to the church, and if all else fails, you, quote, treat him as though he were a pagan or tax collector, unquote. Although given how Jesus was prone to treat pagans and tax collectors, loving them into the Kingdom of God, I don’t think he actually meant to shun them!

But then Peter comes along, probably in a tearing rage, and wants to know how many times you have to forgive someone. I wonder who'd been getting on his nerves! It sounds like someone had. And Jesus says, not just seven times, the way the Jewish law says, but uncountable times. Seventy times seven; you'd lose count long before you got that far. And then he tells this story.

So, what does this story mean?

I think we are supposed to see ourselves as the person who owed the king a fortune, and the other servant is someone who has hurt or upset us in some way. I suppose that Jesus is saying that no matter how much someone else may offend us or hurt us, it's nothing compared with how much we need God's forgiveness.

But then, what is forgiveness? In this context, it is described as letting someone off a debt. But, like everything to do with Christianity, there is a lot more to it than that. It is more than just allowing us not to pay the penalty for what we have done wrong. It has to do with healing and reinstatement and generally being made whole.

Because sin isn't so much about what we do – although that too, of course - but also about who we are. Let's face it, most of us here today would not go out and deliberately commit a dreadful sin, or not most of the time, anyway. But we know that deep down we are not whole. We are not perfect. We need God's grace, and his healing, and his love if we are to come anywhere near being the person he designed us to be.

For me, confession isn't so much a matter of saying "I'm sorry," but more a matter of facing up to who I am: yes I am the kind of person who would do this; no I'm not perfect; yes, I do need Jesus. And, of course, so does everyone else.

As I'm sure you know, most people who commit crimes seem to do so out of their own inadequacy. That doesn't excuse them, or anything, but it does help to explain it. Because we, too, are inadequate people, although possibly less inadequate than someone who goes round knocking old women on the head.

Everyone needs God. You do, I do, those who attack people simply because of the colour of their skin do. Because it is only through God that we can become whole people. And, just as we need to accept ourselves for who we are, so we need to accept other people for who they are. In fact more so, because while we can decide we need to change, and we can do something about ourselves, with God's help, we cannot make that decision for others. Other people must make their own decision. We can't force someone else to become a Christian, or to stop drinking, or lose weight, or come off drugs, or anything else. We can, of course, ensure they do no harm to others, and we can offer them opportunities to change, but we can't force them to.

You remember the story of the Prodigal son, I expect. The son who asked for his share of inheritance and went into the world to have some fun, and when he was in the gutter decided to go home again. And the father ran to meet him, and put on a massive celebration for him, and had obviously been longing and longing and longing for his son to come home again.

But the father couldn't make the son come home. He had to wait until the son chose to come home of his own free will. What's more, the son had to accept that his father wanted him home again. He could have said "Well, no, I don't deserve all this," and rushed off to live in the stables, behaving like a servant, although his father wanted to treat him as the son he was. The son had to receive his father's forgiveness, just as we do.

And don't forget, either, the elder brother, who simply couldn't join in the celebrations because he couldn't forgive his brother. How dare they celebrate for that lousy rotter! I don't know whether he was crosser with his father for having a party, or with his brother for daring to come home. I feel sorry for him, because he allowed his bitterness to spoil what could have been a good time.

And that is exactly what happens to us when we do not forgive one another. We allow our bitterness to spoil what could have been a good time with God.

So how do we forgive others? Sometimes it just doesn't seem possible that we can ever manage to forgive someone. But we must, or we can't make any further progress in our journey towards wholeness. Well, the only way I have ever found that works is to pray about it. God is a terrific person to pour all your bitterness and anger out on to. God can take it. And if you are really honest with him about your feelings, some surprising things can happen. You might find, for instance, that it isn't really the other person you are angry with, it is you. Or perhaps it's God himself you need to forgive, and that can be difficult, too.

I remember, years ago, being very angry with God after someone I loved had died in an accident – God could have prevented the accident, God could have healed her, and so on. I remember saying to someone that I hoped I managed to work through my grief soon because it would be nice to be able to pray about something else for a change!

The thing is, when we come to God and admit we are angry, or hurt, or upset, by someone or something that has happened, God doesn't tell us that we mustn't feel like that, or that we are very wrong to feel like that, or even that this isn't how we're really feeling. God isn't like that. God enters into our pain, and shares it. Oh, it might be pointed out that you are indulging in a fit of self-pity, if that's what is happening – all too easy, don't you agree! – but he does sympathise and he does listen.

And as we go on praying, something happens. We let go of the self-pity – that is always the first to go – and we gradually work through the anger, and the pain, and the sorrow, and, next thing we know, we have forgiven whoever it was we needed to forgive.

The acid test for me is if I can ask God to bless someone who hurt me, and mean it. And could I see them at a Communion service and wish them God's peace? It's surprising how often I can, if I have prayed.

So, then. We need to forgive other people, we need to forgive ourselves, and occasionally we need to forgive God himself before we can receive God's forgiveness. It isn't that God won't forgive us - heavens, God's forgiveness is as constant and unremitting as all of God's character – it is that we can't receive God's forgiveness if we are full of bitterness and pain and anger. There's no room to let God in if we are too busy holding on to our own feelings.

The debtor, in Jesus' story, hadn't really grasped what the King had done for him. He hadn't hauled in that he had been forgiven his debt. He went on acting as though nothing had happened, which is why he required his debtor to pay him back. He was too busy focussing on his own feelings, and hadn't really grasped that he was now free from debt, his burden had rolled away, so he should help other people lose their burdens.

It's only really when we are prepared to put our own feelings down that there is room for God to act. I remind you, too, that in our first reading Paul tells us not to be snooty about our brothers and sisters who are Christians in a different way from us, or who have scruples about things that we don't have scruples about, like sex or divorce, or same sex marriage, for instance. "Who are you to pass judgement on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand." In other words, what they do is none of our business, and we need not to judge them.

Basically, when it comes to other people, we must put down our own feelings and think of theirs. And that way, we make room for God to act.

So, is there anyone you need to forgive this morning? Do you need to forgive yourself? Do you need to forgive God?

You may have noticed that we haven't had a prayer of penitence yet. We're going to, now. Let's take a few moments of quietness, and then I'll lead us in prayer.

In peace, let us pray to the Lord.

Being Together

 I expect you know that the Gospels were only written down about 50 or 60 years after Jesus’ death. A lot of things happened during those years, of course, and although we know how accurate oral transmission can be, there are a few places where it looks as though an extraneous passage got inserted. I don’t quite mean extraneous, I don’t think – but a passage attributed to Jesus that perhaps wasn’t what he actually said, but what the early Church thought he ought to have said. And part of the passage we heard just now is, I think, one of those passages, mostly because it talks about the Church, a gathering of Christians – and such a thing didn’t exist in Jesus’ day. But whatever, it got into our Bibles, so we need to read it and learn from it.

It does seem, at first reading, extraordinary, though. We know from elsewhere that Jesus tells us never to put limits on our forgiveness. We know we must forgive, or it’s impossible for us to receive God’s forgiveness, we block ourselves off from it.

And we are told never to judge. We’re told to sort out what’s wrong with ourselves first – you remember how Jesus graphically told us to remove the very large log from our own eyes before we could possibly deal with the tiny speck that bothered us in someone else’s.

But we are human. No matter how much we want to love our neighbours as ourselves, it’s difficult. It’s easy enough to love suffering humanity en masse, to send a text to a certain number to give three pounds towards relieving some kind of community suffering somewhere else. It’s easy enough to throw an extra box of tea-bags into the food bank box at Tesco’s, or to donate to the Brixton soup kitchen. It’s even relatively easy to do small things to lower your carbon footprint – to take reusable produce bags to the supermarket, to be scrupulous about recycling, and so on.

Now, don’t get me wrong, all these are good and right and proper things to be doing, and we should probably all do them more than we actually do. But they are all relatively easy – the difficult bit comes when we have to start interacting with other people, and loving them.  “To love the world to me’s no chore. My problem is that lot next door!” That’s when we’re apt to forget to be loving, when we are apt to go our own way, when we’re apt to hurt people, most probably totally unintentionally. The careless word, the accidental insult – or even, sadly, the intentional one.

Now, obviously, if we realise we’ve hurt someone, the thing to do is to apologise at once. Sometimes there are times when we don’t really want to apologise – they started it, it was their fault. Well, even if it is, we are the ones who need to apologise, if only because it makes us bigger than them…. Well, perhaps not for that reason, but you know what I mean.

But what if it is they who hurt you? The human thing to do is to hit out and hurt them back, but we’re not supposed to do that, and with God’s help we won’t. This passage tells us what to do – first, go and explain what has gone wrong, and if they agree and apologise, all is well and no harm done. Then you take a couple of friends along to witness that you had a problem and to try and help you be reconciled, and then, finally, take it to the church. The church, note – not the world! And then, the passage says, if they still won’t listen, let them be to you as a tax gatherer or a gentile. Which, on first reading, sounds as if you should shun them completely, which was how Jewish people of the time behaved towards them.

But Jesus didn’t, did he? Remember the story of Levi, who was a tax collector, and Jesus called him to become one of the disciples. Remember Zaccheus, who resolved to pay back anybody he had cheated after Jesus loved and forgave him and went to eat with him. Remember how many times he talked with, and healed, Gentiles, non-Jews, people who observant Jews would have nothing to do with.

So what is the church to do with those who won’t see that they’ve hurt someone, or if they do see it, don’t care? From Jesus’ example, it looks as though we have to go on loving them, trusting them, and caring for them. Heaven, as one paraphrase puts it, will back us up. Obviously, there are very rare occasions when steps have to be taken, if a child or a vulnerable adult is at risk, for example, but mostly things can be put right without that. And even when steps do have to be taken – and the Methodist church has systems in place to organise such steps, so our safeguarding people know what to do – we still have a duty to love and care for the perpetrator.

Now, the next part of the passage is really not easy to understand. If, says Jesus, or the Church speaking in Jesus’ name, two or three agree on anything in prayer, it will be granted. But we know that, with the best will in the world, this doesn’t always happen. We have all seen times when our prayers, far from being answered, appear to have gone no further than the ceiling. But then again, were we only looking for one answer to our prayer? Were we telling God what to do, as, I don’t know about you, but I find I’m rather apt to. Were we just talking at God, and not trying to listen, trying to be part of what God is doing in the world? All too easily done, I’m afraid.

But the final sentence – ah, now that brings hope. “For where two or three come together in my name, I am there with them.”

You see, in the Jewish faith, you need what’s called a minyan, a minimum of ten people – in many traditions, ten men, not people. If there are only nine of you, you can’t go ahead with the service. But not for we Christians. We know that even if there are only a couple of us, Jesus will be there with us and enabling our worship.

And that, in these strange times, is very comforting. We haven’t been able to meet together for worship for so long – I was supposed to be coming to you on March the 29^th of this year, but of course I couldn’t. Couldn’t have, anyway, as I was ill with this wretched virus and couldn’t even get out of bed at that stage! And now it is September, five months later, and at last I can be with you. But we are still restricted, and if the pandemic gets worse again, we may well be stopped from meeting again for a time. But even if we have to restrict ourselves to our so-called “bubbles”, we know that Jesus will be there with us.

I noticed, didn’t you, how much God was there during the worst of the pandemic. The ministers of the various denominations, and often the congregation, too, worked so very hard to stream services so that we could join in from home. We sometimes watched three services in one day – the one David and his cohorts put on from the Southwark and Deptford circuit, then I very often watched the service my mother’s church put out – especially if my mother or sister were reading the lesson – and a couple of times watched the service from my daughter’s church, as she was terribly clever about mixing the choir’s solo singing so it sounded like the choir, and once one of my grandsons was leading the Lord’s Prayer. And I know there were many, many other services we could have watched – and an awful lot of people did, people who perhaps wouldn’t have dreamt of going to church under normal circumstances.

And there were – and still are – Zoom fellowship meetings, and on other platforms, people have met for worship from many different countries around the world. It is amazing how God has kept his people together in these difficult times. I do wonder, don’t you, what this is saying about being Church, not just in the middle of a pandemic, but going forward. Many churches, I think, will continue to stream their services as a matter of course. Many more will consider having their various committee meetings on Zoom, which, quite apart from anything else, means you don’t have to rush through your supper and have indigestion, and the meetings finish much earlier!

But, and of course there’s a but, because there’s always a but, this is reserved for those who have the technology to join in – not everybody has broadband at home, or unlimited data on their phones. In some countries, even having a phone would be a privilege. We say “This is where God was in the pandemic”, and I think that’s true – but we also have to remember those places where they really did have to rely on just their immediate families for fellowship, as there was no other option. And we know that, even if it was just a husband and wife together, Jesus was there with them. As he is with us now, and will be whenever two or three of us meet in worship. Amen.