Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Forgive . . . Again and Again . . . "
Date: November 11, 2007
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lessons:  Matthew 18:21-22; Luke 17:1-4

Sermon requests: 

“Forgiving quickly others who slight us or who do harm against us.”

“How does one accept the sinner but not the sin?  What if the sinner is evil?  Does he then have a soul?  Is the evil sinner redeemable?”

All of us, in ways large and small, are called to wrestle with forgiveness, be it for the slightest slight, or for the greatest sin.  Depending on how we have been wronged determines how quickly, if at all, we are able to grant forgiveness. 

We are all prone to fall short of perfection.  Jesus declares to his disciples:  “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come…”  I prefer today’s translation to the New International Version, which says, “Things that cause us to sin are bound to come…”  True enough; but some of the slights that are deserving of quick forgiveness might not qualify to be called sins.

If your average person of school-age, anywhere from elementary to high school, were to keep track of all the petty slights their friends heap upon them in a given year, why, none of them would have any friends at all!  We realize there is tremendous pressure in school:  to be popular, to excel, yet not to be singled-out as the class ‘brainiac’.  So school-aged persons go through a litany of being turned-off to a friend one day, or for one whole week, and then it is forgiven, forgotten, and it’s over.

Yet in the rest of life, there are far more serious sins of commission that test the limits to which we are willing to forgive.  What about the person who cheats at work, perhaps causing you to lose the promotion or position to which you aspired?  Do you, and how do you, forgive them?  What of the person who commits infidelity against their spouse or long-time partner?  Does that forgiveness come easily, or at all?  What if the infidelity is repeated again . . . and again?  I believe either Ladies Home Journal or Good Housekeeping magazine used to have an article entitled “Can This Marriage Be Saved?”, in which a counselor would write of her experience in interviewing the couple separately, and tried to determined what was needed and necessary for the other to receive to work on forgiveness.

Another severe situation where forgiveness is often asked but must be carefully analyzed before it is too quickly—or too often—given is that of abuse.  It might be verbal, physical or sexual abuse.  It may be spousal abuse or between two persons unequal in their relationship.  In spousal abuse, a pattern is often repeated:  the abuser, often the husband, but sometimes the wife, will abuse their partner.  The abuser will then realize the effect of what they have done and profusely apologize.  The abuser might offer gifts to win back the affection of the abused, and swear they’ll never do it again.  They beg for forgiveness.  This is followed by what’s called the “honeymoon period,” in which things in the relationship reach a cautious peace.  And then, the cycle begins all over again.  How many times does one forgive, before deciding to get out is the wiser decision?

Jesus’ admonitions on the number of times to forgive in today’s two lessons must be taken into consideration.  Peter asks how many times he must forgive another church member; is seven sufficient?  Jesus replies, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”

Now Jesus was not offering a precise enumeration.  He did not expect Peter to count 53, 54 . . . 71, 72 . . . before he could give up on the whole forgiveness thing.  The difference between Peter’s proposal and Jesus’ pronouncement is not a matter of math or linguistics, but of the nature of forgiveness.  Whoever counts has not forgiven at all, but is only biding his or her time.  The kind of forgiveness called for is beyond all calculation.

Yet wholesale forgiveness of everything is not what is meant.  This is forgiveness for a “member of the church,” or as the Greek translates, “my brother.”  I hardly think Jesus would advocate someone suffering under verbal, physical, or sexual abuse should be required to forgive again and again.  There are severities of hurt that may transcend forgiveness, especially those inflicted upon a child.  In Matthew, Jesus is quoted as saying, “It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”

In the lesson from Luke, the dean of a theological school writes in a commentary:  “The necessity of unstinting forgiveness is driven home by the demand that the disciple be prepared to forgive the same person for seven offenses in a single day if that fellow disciple asks for your forgiveness.  The responsibility is thereby placed not on the penitent person to demonstrate that his or her repentance is genuine, but on the disciple to demonstrate that he or she is capable of following Jesus’ command to forgive one who repents.  Jesus’ admonition is emphatic; ‘you must forgive.’”  (R. Alan Culpepper, Dean of the School of Theology, Mercer University, Atlanta)  However, I would add just as emphatically, that a sense of repentance on the one asking for forgiveness is basic to the equation.

Today’s second prayer request I linked with the first, for it seemed to me that questions about accepting the sinner but not the sin is not unlike forgiving a person, even though you did not like, appreciate—or were even hurt by—what they said or did.

I am going to use as illustration the forgiveness granted by the Amish people in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania a year ago October, when a man barricaded himself in an Amish school, lined the little girls up, and shot them one by one, killing five and injuring several more.  Yet the Amish forgave the shooter, who took his own life at the time of the tragedy.

Steve Nolt, co-author of the new book, Amish Grace:  How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy, says:  “The Amish believe in a real sense that God’s forgiveness of them is dependent on their extending forgiveness to other people.

“Their understanding of forgiveness is embedded in their culture and their 500-year history that includes martyrs that did not seek revenge but asked for forgiveness for their persecutors.  In one sense, this is part of their cultural DNA.

“Their understanding of forgiveness is that it is a long process, that it is difficult, that it is painful, that replacing bitter feelings toward someone is something that takes time, and they would say that happens only through God’s grace.  But they begin with expressing their intention to forgive, with the faith that the emotional forgiveness will follow over months and years.  They don’t begin with trying to blame someone or something.

“The Amish verbally expressed their forgiveness to the memory of the killer.  They refused to talk badly about him or degrade his character.  They reached out to his family as fellow victims; they wanted to extend compassion to his family.  Half of the people who attended his funeral were Amish.  They designated a portion of the fund that poured in from around the world for the Amish schoolgirls to the widow and the children of the shooter.”

When asked what can Americans learn from the Amish understanding of forgiveness, most recently demonstrated at the time of the Nickel Mines shooting, Nolt said:  “Even though forgiveness is a complicated and difficult thing, if we approach it with the support of other people…and if we don’t feel like we have to have all the emotions sorted out before we extend compassion, the road to forgiveness is easier.  Reaching out in compassion to others in faith that the difficult emotional work will follow…is one of the things they demonstrate.”  (USA Today, 10/2/2007, 9D)

We discussed at Wednesday’s Bible study whether the shooter was evil.  How premeditated was his horrific crime?  Does he deserve to be condemned as much as a habitually evil person?

The truth is that only God knows.  In selecting today’s hymns—each of which have something to say about this theme—I took note of these words of Fanny Crosby from our closing hymn:  “O perfect redemption…to every believer the promise of God; the vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.”  (To God Be the Glory, verse 2)

I’m not sure how quick forgiveness can ever be.  But it seems accepted that it is difficult, it takes time, it requires emotional healing.  And sometimes one works toward forgiveness before one is ready to offer it.  Jesus himself prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”