- Sermon - Mickey Anders

"Conditional Forgiveness"

By Dr. Mickey Anders

First Christian Church

Pikeville, Kentucky

September 11, 2005

Ron Lee Davis in his book, Mistreated, tells about a millionaire who owned an unusual lot in an exclusive residential neighborhood. It was only a couple of yards wide and nearly 100 feet long. There was nothing he could do with such an oddly proportioned piece of property except sell it to one of the neighbors on either side. He went to the neighbor on the east side of his lot and asked if he was interested in buying it. The neighbor said, "Well, only as a favor." And then he named a ridiculously low price.

The millionaire exploded saying, "Why, that is not even one-tenth of what the lot is worth!" He stormed out and went to see the neighbor on the west side. To his dismay, this neighbor bettered the offer by only a few dollars. "Look," the neighbor said smugly, "I've got you over a barrel. You can't sell that lot to anyone else and you can't build on it. So there is my offer - take it or leave it."

The millionaire was beside himself with rage. Within a few days he hired an architect and a contractor to build one of the strangest houses ever conceived. Only 5 feet wide and running the length of his property, his house was little more than a row of tiny rooms, each barely able to accommodate a stick of furniture. When it was finished the millionaire moved into his uncomfortable and impractical house. There he stayed until his death. The house, which became known in the neighborhood as "the spite house", still stands as a monument to one man's hatred.

Some times each of us construct spite houses of our own by our unwillingness to forgive those who have wronged us. While our spite house is constructed of anger and hurt feelings, hatred and self-pity, it is every bit as uncomfortable as the one the millionaire built with brick and mortar. To live an unforgiving life of restricted mercy is to live in a cramped and crippling place where there is no ease at all. In that place, we feel only our wounds. We hear only our hearts beating with rage. We decide we will be damned before we will forgive, and that is precisely what we are. When we fail to forgive we allow our anger and resentment to imprison us.

21Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

I find it interesting that the context is when a "member of the church sins against me." Matthew is one of the later gospels written and the only gospel in which we find the word church. From the very beginning, the church was so very human that forgiveness was required. Of course, the church is still the place for forgiveness to be practiced.

Some translations of this passage list the number as 77 and others as 490. The commentaries say that the Greek number can be legitimately understood as 77 times or 490 times.

But the point is not the number. The point is whoever counts has not forgiven at all, but is only biding time. The kind of forgiveness Jesus calls for is beyond all calculation.

23“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt.

The servant is not a household slave, but a subordinate official. The debt was incurred through mismanagement of the king's resources, not by personal expenditures. In fact, that is the only way he could have amassed such a debt.

The figure is an exaggeration for effect and not a number to be taken at face value. A talent is the largest money unit - the wages of a manual laborer for fifteen years. Ten thousand is the largest possible number. Thus the combination is the largest figure that can be given. The annual tax income for all of Herod the Great's territories was 900 talents per year. Ten thousand talents would exceed the taxes for all of Syria, Phoenicia, Judea, and Samaria. The amount is fantastic, beyond all calculation.

The debt is unpayable. It is utterly beyond the realm of possibility that the servant can repay his debt, no matter how much time is given.

The point of this story is this: We have been forgiven a lifetime of sins, more sins than we can count or know. We are the forgiven children of God. The cross and resurrection give us a "new life as forgiven betrayers." And because we have been forgiven, we are to forgive.

A grandmother was celebrating her 50th anniversary with guests. A granddaughter asked the secret to a long and happy marriage. The grandmother explained, "On my wedding day I decided to make a list of ten of my husband's faults which, for the sake of the marriage, I would overlook and forgive." A guest asked for some examples of those faults, to which the grandmother replied, "To tell you the truth, I never did get around to making the list. But whenever my husband did something that made me hopping mad, I'd say to myself, 'Lucky for him, that's one of the ten!'"

Lucky for us that God has made a list of those faults which he is willing to forgive and lucky for us that every possible sin imaginable is on that list. God is infinitely loving and forgiving. There is nothing we can do that God is not willing to forgive.

There is absolutely nothing that is so heinous, so despicable, so awful that God can not forgive it. We can celebrate forgiveness today because we have been forgiven for every sin we have ever committed.

28But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt.

The parable moves from the merciful to the malicious. This, of course, is a negative example story. It is told so that we will NOT be like the unforgiving servant.

It seems ridiculous that anyone could be as foolish as this servant was. I mean according to this parable the king forgave the man an impossible debt. This man owed 10,000 talents or 150,000 years worth of wages! And yet the king forgives him. But then he runs into another servant who owes him 100 denarii, which was worth 100 days' wages for a laborer. That is not pocket change, but it is a pittance compared to what this first servant had been forgiven.

The debt of the fellow servant is microscopic compared to what the first servant had been forgiven (1/600,000 if one attempts to be literal.) Yet it is not an insignificant amount, representing 100 days' wages for an ordinary laborer.

There's a story of two shopkeepers who owned stores across the street from one another and who hated one another. One night the angel of the Lord came to the first shopkeeper and said: The Lord has sent me to you with the promise to grant one wish no matter how extravagant. There is only one catch: Whatever you receive, your rival shopkeeper will receive two-fold. The shopkeeper thought and then replied: My wish is that you would strike me blind in one eye!

31When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ 34And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

The tattle-tail servants run to tell the king what happened. The king takes back his forgiveness, and the servant is condemned to eternal torment.

I have a real problem with the part of the story where the king takes back the forgiveness he has already offered. Can forgiveness once given be retracted so easily? As I have studied various sources this week, I found several ways of dealing with the problem of the king taking back the forgiveness.

Perhaps we shouldn't press the details of this parable. The point of the story is the importance of forgiveness. It represents the awfulness of failing to forgive as God forgives.

G Campbell Morgan says, "The arrest of the man that had been released, and his imprisonment, was not for the debt which he had been forgiven, but for the brutality against his brother conveys its own teaching."

The servant that the king sends to jail is imprisoned not because of the debt he owes, but because he does not forgive the debt owed to him.

For me the best way of understanding this twist in the plot is to conclude that people who do not forgive are putting themselves in prison. When we withhold forgiveness we end up locked up by our own anger and resentment. They are locking themselves up, as surely as a jailor would, and they are torturing themselves.

A former inmate of a Nazi concentration camp was visiting a friend who had shared the ordeal with him. "Have you forgiven the Nazis?" he asked his friend. The friend said, "Yes, I have." The man replied, "Well I haven't. I'm still consumed with hatred toward them." "In that case," said his friend gently, "they still have you in prison."

The central goal of forgiveness is not to get over the guilt, although that is how we often act. The central goal of forgiveness is to reconcile, to restore communion with God, with one another, and the whole creation.

The other day I was watching "Forrest Gump" again. I was especially moved by the scene in which Jenny, Forrest’s lifelong friend, stands before the old ram shackled house where her Father abused her. She is obviously dealing with her own ram shackled life. Suddenly she begins to throw everything she can at the house in a deluge of pent up anger--her shoes, and rocks—again and again rocks hit the house--but finally Jenny falls to the ground in exhausted despair.

Underneath the scene Forrest says, "Sometimes, there just aren't enough rocks to throw." We all need some rocks to throw sometimes, but what happens when we run out of rocks? At some point we all run out of rocks, and that's when we really must turn to forgiveness. Forgiveness is the only way to find wholeness in our own broken lives.