Forgiveness (PART III) by Rev Allister Lane

7th November 2021

Matthew 18:21-35

The last two weeks, we’ve been hearing about Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness.

For Jesus, forgiveness is a clear and consistent theme.

To follow him is to practice habitual and perpetual forgiveness.

Jesus teaches us to avoid our human instinct to hold on to our feelings of hurt and anger,

and instead make a decision to forgive.

How?

1) identify with the wrong-doer

2) forgiving debts

3) seeking the good of the wrong-doer

This teaching by Jesus we hear today (in the form of a parable) is about receiving forgiveness from God;

And, in recognition of the magnitude and significance of this grace, practicing forgiveness of others.

This same expectation of receiving and then extending forgiveness in our lives is summarised in the way Jesus teaches us to pray…

“Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”

Of all the things covered in the Lord’s Prayer, this is the only duty expected of us.

So, in these two examples of Jesus’ teaching, we see that forgiveness is both a gift and an obligation.

Theologian Helmut Thielike (p112):

 “what we ourselves have experienced in forgiveness immediately demands to become effective in our relationship to our neighbour.”

God has forgiven us a massive debt, we cannot be petty unforgiving servants who hold on to resentment towards those who are more like us than we will admit.

“No man is an island.”  (What about the Isle of Man?)

“I am an island” Simon & Garfunkel

Global problems are linked to the problems in our hearts.

If we look after only ourselves, we contribute to the fragmentation of our lives.

1.    Effective vaccination against the COVID virus requires us to be in good relationship with our neighbours.

2.    With the Global Climate Conference, we recognise that managing climate change requires us to be in good relationship with our neighbours.

It is what God has done through Christ that allows us to participate in the same experience of forgiving others.

Helmut Thielike (p112-114):

“I can forgive only in the royal freedom of the child of God, as the one who [myself] has been made free and therefore meets others in freedom.”

“…forgiveness provides the sole possibility of the world’s ever escaping …that dreadful, chaotic law by which nations and individuals are constantly inflaming and provoking one another because of the “other’s fault”, and swelling the avalanche of guilt and retribution to ever more gigantic proportions.”

So,

1)  we see in Jesus’ teaching forgiveness is both a gift and an obligation.

2)  And we see how forgiveness is needed for humanity to respond to existential threats.

Even so, it is important to avoid the mistake of making forgiveness too ‘transactional’.

This would be to suggest that forgiveness is about religious obligation.

I want us to remember that (the way Jesus sees it) forgiveness is mostly about freedom.

As I’ve preached in recent weeks that forgiveness is an experience of freedom, some have questioned what this means.

So, I want us to hear three personal situations where forgiveness has been an experience of freedom…

1)  In his book Compassionate Justice, Chris Marshall has the story of Ashley Austin (p284). 

In this story, freedom was experienced by Ashley, the one who caused the harm.

2)  Judi will now tell us the story of Martin Bennett, from The God Who Changes Lives – summarise the story pp217-225.

 In this story, freedom was experienced by Martin, the one who was harmed.

3)   The third story is from a friend of mine (Lynne) and how her friend Elizabeth finds freedom for her whole family, by focusing on the forgiveness for all through the Cross of Christ.

https://www.lynnebaab.com/blog/holy-spirit-disruptions-seeing-people-th

[For many years Lynne’s friend Elizabeth had experienced brokenness in her family. Unforgiveness had driven a wedge between her and her siblings.]

A few years ago, Elizabeth began meditating on Jesus’ death: the events leading up to the crucifixion, the betrayal by his friends, the pain of death on a cross, and the utter desolation of being separated from his Father. “When you really sit with those events,” Elizabeth reflects, “you can’t help but cry.”

Then she started pondering the fact that Jesus had died for her siblings, too. She imagined seeing her siblings through the cross, as if Jesus’ death is a lens. “You cannot stay mad at someone when you see them as someone Jesus died for, when you see them as connected to the cross of Jesus.”

This is forgiveness, Elizabeth believes.

She has found great freedom in this new forgiveness she experiences when she thinks about her siblings…

[Lynne reflects] Through forgiveness, the Holy Spirit disrupts our need to be right, our comfort in wallowing in the pain that we experienced in the past, and our desire to justify ourselves. When we forgive, the Holy Spirit does something new and liberating inside us, something that spills out in our relationships, especially our relationships with the people who harmed us.

Person after person has told me about the freedom they have experienced when the Holy Spirit has enabled them to forgive.

Think about a lens on a camera that is designed to filter out light of a certain colour. Maybe we could think of the cross of Jesus as a lens that filters out the things that have made us angry at someone.

Think about the lenses in binoculars that bring distant objects closer. Jesus’ cross shows us God’s love and forgiveness for each person, bringing closer a reality we often like to push away.

Seeing with eyes of Jesus gives us a new kind of relationship with each other.

Helmut Thielike (p107):

“We are always echoes. The only question is: echoes of what?

Either we are echoes of the injustice, the deception, the trickery, the meanness that is around us, and then we ourselves become scheming, cheating and mean.

Or we are echoes of Jesus Christ and therefore echoes of that forgiving, renewing, creative love that comes to us from the Father. Then we ourselves become loving, renewing, forgiving, creative, and positive.”

After the service, I will be joined by a couple of others up the front here.

And we would love you to respond today by coming up after the service so we can pray with you.

Maybe God is nudging you, stirring something in your heart.

Why not pray about it with someone else today?