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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity |
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Philippians
1:3, St. Matthew 18:15-20 “I
forgive.” Even the words
are difficult for us. Oh,
they are easy in this protected environment of worship.
But in real life, while the sting and wickedness of intentional
offense weigh heavy on our hearts, even the words are difficult to say,
let alone can we truly forgive. Even
when the offender earnestly repents and begs our forgiveness, our prideful
hearts resist him; desire to make him suffer as he made us suffer, and the
words cannot escape from our lips. We
know we must forgive. We try
to say the words, but our teeth clench like prison bars and the words are
incarcerated within us. We,
of course understand the nature of forgiveness. It means to put offenses behind us, as if they never
happened, and to treat the offending person as if he had never offended.
In short, it means to treat those who “trespass against us” as
Christ treats our trespasses against Him.
He bore the cost of our reconciliation in Himself, requiring
nothing of us but to accept forgiveness.
Christ paid the price for our forgiveness on the Cross, and we, if
we would forgive another, must go to our own crosses and crucify there our
rights and desires and our pride and our egos, and even crucify the
offense itself so that we see it no more, forever.
That is forgiveness. Our
Gospel Lesson for today is part of a larger passage of Our Lord’s
instructions to the twelve. They
are on the shores of Lake Galilee, far away from the elitists of
Jerusalem, and the disciples have asked the revealing question, “Who is
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
I say “revealing” because this question tells us first that the
disciples don’t understand the Kingdom yet.
They still think of a worldly kingdom, and expect Jesus to be a
military Messiah who will lead the Jews to victory in world conquest.
Second it shows they have not yet understood the personal nature of
Christ Himself, who came not to be served but to serve, who came in the
form of a servant, who humbled Himself in every way.
The disciples are asking Him to exalt them to golden thrones of
glory and privilege in the kingdom. They
assume they will be great in the Kingdom, far above all others in power
and wealth and privilege. But
that is not enough. Each
wants to be the greatest of the great, even among the twelve, like
children who have no idea where they are going, but want to be first in
line. In
reply, our Lord begins to teach about the nature of the kingdom of God,
and those who would be a part of it.
It is here that He gives the instructions on the mechanics of
reconciliation among Christians beginning in Mathew 18:15.
Forgiveness is the heart of the matter.
I think we miss the point of this passage by emphasizing the
process of going to the person, taking two witnesses, and taking it before
the church and letting him “be unto thee as an heathen man and a
publican.” But Peter gets
the point. Peter sees that he
is required to forgive those who trespass against him whether the person
repents or not. If he does
not repent of the trespass, and accept reconciliation, there is a process
within the Church designed to impress upon him that he is outside of
Christ. That is the process
set forth in Matthew 18:15-20. But,
whether he repents or not, you must still forgive him completely and
absolutely. And, Peter,
realizing this, prudently asks, “Lord,
how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven
times?” I
think this is a wise question. Have you ever been in a situation where a
person repeatedly offended you, and there was no recourse or structure to
deal with it other than between that person and yourself?
Did you wonder, after a while, how many times you have to keep
forgiving that person over and over, and over?
But even where a system exists, as in the Church of Jesus Christ,
how many times must I forgive the same brother?
Isn’t there ever a point when I can say, “That’s all. I don’t forgive you anymore.
Our relationship is permanently severed?” Let me say here that our Lord does not allow that.
He does not say we must continue to allow the person to abuse us.
We might avoid him or take other Scriptural steps to keep from
being harmed by that person. But
we must always forgive. Christ
answers the question with a parable.
A parable is not a literal historical event, it is a sermon
illustration. It is an
example, and like Aesop’s Fables, it has a moral. The main characters in
the parable are the King and the servant. The servant is not a slave, but
a high ranking official in the King’s government, a member of the upper
class, as the disciples hope to be in the Messiah’s Kingdom.
This official has either borrowed money from, or owes tribute to
the king. The King, or
course, represents God. The
servant represents the disciples, and, by extension, all Christians, and
he owes a debt of 10,000 talents of silver. This is an enormous debt.
Matthew Henry called it, “a king’s ransom.”
The average wage of the time was one denari per day, or six denarii
per week. It took 6,000 denarrii to make one talent (William Hendriksen, The
Gospel of Matthew, p. 705). So,
one talent equaled the wages for 1,000 weeks, or, about 19 years and two
months. At that rate it
would take the normal person 192 years to earn 10,000 talents.
Of course, a high ranking official would make well above the
average wage, but even he would not earn more than one or two thousand
talents in a lifetime. Christ’s
point is that this is a sum the servant can never pay.
It would be to him what ten trillion dollars would be to us.
We could never raise that much money, or even make a noticeable
dent in that kind of debt. The
debt is our debt of sin. By
our own actions and by our own choice we have trespassed against The High
and Holy King and God of All, creating a debt of justice which we owe to
God. We have offended Him,
and justice tells us He has the right to offend us.
He has the right to demand “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth.” Being
delivered to the tormentors, in verse 34 is the satisfaction of the debt.
It does not “pay the debt.”
The king received only a small portion of the money he was owed.
Prison is what we might call “punitive damages.”
The debtor cannot pay in money so he is forced to pay by
punishment. The punishment in
the parable is prison; a terrible, hopeless prison with “tormentors.”
It is symbolic, as you know, of hell. I
believe the parable emphasizes two main points. The first is found in St Matthew 18: 27, which says; Then the lord of that servant was moved
with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. Christ
reminds us that we are the debtors, but our accounts have been cleared and
our debts have been forgiven. We
could never pay our debt. Nothing
we could ever give would come close to our debt to God.
But God in His mercy forgives our sins.
God in His mercy took them upon Himself on the Cross, and paid for
them in His own suffering in Christ Jesus.
He bore the cost in Himself. He
opened the gates of hell, let the prisoners free, and threw away the key.
We are forgiven. The
second point is found in Matthew 18:23. Shouldst not thou also have had compassion
on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? The
point is this; we have been forgiven a terrible debt that would have cost
our souls. We, therefore,
should easily forgive the tiny debts of others against us.
We have been forgiven trillions, how can we not forgive pennies?
I
think there is yet another point. Those
who are great in the Kingdom of Heaven are those whose hearts have been
transformed and made new by the Spirit and the blood. We have been changed by the mercies and compassions of God
toward us, and we can not help but have mercy and compassion upon others,
especially those of the household of faith.
Those who will not forgive are proving to themselves that they are
not really a part of the Kingdom of Heaven.
No matter how many times they have taken Holy Communion, or how
much money they have given to the Church, or been confirmed, or baptized,
or gone to church, they lack the one thing that makes them a Christian.
They lack the changed life and transformed heart that is the mark
of those who are truly “in Christ.”
We
understand this on a theoretical level, and we want to freely forgive as
we have been forgiven. But in
real life in the real world, it isn’t that easy.
Of course not. To
forgive another requires us to crucify our selves.
I repeat that here because it is the only way to forgive.
That’s why Jesus had to go to the cross. God had to crucify Himself, His rights, His justice, to
forgive us. It was the only
way He could forgive us, and it is the only way we can forgive others.
Christ requires of us an attitude
of forgiveness and compassion that always finds us not only forgiving new
offenses, but also, often re-forgiving offenses long past.
And this is a difficult thing.
Let me share with you the insights of C. S. Lewis on this matter
from his Reflections on the Psalms: There is no use in talking as if forgiveness were easy. We all know the old joke, “You’ve given up smoking once; I’ve given it up a dozen times.” In the same way I could say of a certain man, “Have I forgiven him for what he did that day? I’ve forgiven him more times that I can count.” For we find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over and over again. We forgive, we mortify our resentment; a week later some chain of thought carries us back to the original offense and we discover the old resentment blazing away as if nothing had been done about it at all. We need to forgive our brother seventy times seven not only for 490 offenses but for one offense. God grant
to us attitudes of forgiveness.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
The Anglican Orthodox Church P.O. Box 128 Statesville, NC 28687 The Most Rev. Jerry Ogles, Bishop Metropolitan The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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