The Road from Hurt to Healing

Matthew 18: 21-33
Romans 13: 8-14

Two years ago, when I was about to begin my first short-term pastorate, I was surprised when I saw that my final Sunday there would be on September 11.  Oohhh, I thought… I wonder what the lectionary has for the gospel reading for that day.  I was stunned when I saw that it was the passage I just read.  I couldn’t imagine preaching about forgiveness on 9/11, even though it was four years after the original event…  I felt that what we really needed was healing.  But as I thought and prayed about it, I began to see that the road from hurt to healing runs directly through forgiveness.  In fact, you can’t get there any other way.

To understand this, let’s look more closely at Jesus’ parable.  First, this wasn’t just a household servant.  This man was trusted with the king’s business… perhaps the taxes he collected.  He must have made a great error or had taken a big risk and lost, because his debt… ten thousand talents – was huge.  One talent was equivalent to more than 15 years worth of wages for a day laborer.  So, 10,000 talents represent more than 150,000 years worth of wages!  It was a humongous debt!  It’s kind of like saying he owed a bazillion dollars!

There was no way this servant could repay his debt to the king… so the king ordered that the man and his wife and children, and all that they possessed be sold so that he could recover as much as possible of what was owed to him.

The distraught slave fell to his knees and begged the king, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.”  //  And to everyone’s amazement… including the first hearers of this parable, by the way… the king had pity on him and forgave him that enormous debt. 

But then, when the servant left the room, he ran into another servant who owed him some money… a hundred denarii…  (A denarius was the value of one day’s wages for a laborer.  So, 100 denarii would represent just over 3 months wages.)

We might expect that the first servant, having just been released from a huge burden, would be feeling grateful and magnanimous.  Instead, he grabbed his co-worker by the throat and put the squeeze on him, saying, “Pay what you owe!”  His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.”

Sound familiar?  Surely, hearing the very words that he, himself, had said to the king, the first servant would be forgiving.  But no, there was no mercy in him… he had his co-worker thrown in prison until he paid off the debt.

What on earth is going on here?  Well, the first servant in the story clearly didn’t “get it.”  The problem is evident in his first plea:  “Have patience with me and I will pay you everything.”  Jesus’ hearers would immediately recognize how patently ridiculous that statement was.  There was no way he could pay!

He never figured out the magnitude of the debt he owed.  Therefore, forgiveness of the debt was not perceived as a gift of grace or mercy.  He just figured he’d bamboozled the king!  In fact, he was so angry at how he’d been treated that he took out his anger on the next guy he could get his hands on.  The amount owed to him by the other servant was not insignificant; but compared to the amount he had been forgiven, it was microscopic.

I think it’s a matter of focus…  When we focus on ourselves… on what we want or
think we deserve… or on our injury or loss, we lose perspective.  If we look from the other side – from the standpoint of what God has done for us, has given us, we see a very different picture.

Of course, that requires us to take a good look at ourselves and admit our own sinfulness, admit the magnitude of the debt that we owe.  This is a challenge for many of us… we’re here because we don’t like “hell fire and damnation” sermons.  We don’t want to hear about how “bad” or “guilty” we are.  We prefer to intellectualize and psychologize these Bible stories and think our way through them.

It’s good to use our brains… but if we do it as a way of avoiding an honest effort to take inventory of ourselves and our relationship with God, “we deceive only ourselves,” as Paul says, “and the truth is not in us.”  When we own up to the fact that we often don’t love God with all of our heart, mind and soul, and we aren’t usually as concerned for our neighbors as we are for ourselves, then we can get back on track.  For when we see how often we miss the mark and cause pain for others, then we can begin to see how much we need God’s forgiveness and healing love.

And it’s healing we’re shooting for.  Both for ourselves and for our relationships.  //  The irony of this is that we often behave in hurtful ways because of wounds we have suffered from others or just in the course of life.  We want to protect ourselves, and so we’ve developed defensive reactions.  We might keep people at a distance, or easily erupt in anger, or become controlling, or put other people down… and thereby continue the pattern of hurtful behavior.

The way out is through forgiveness… recognizing our need and allowing ourselves to receive God’s merciful acceptance AND forgiving those who have wounded us.  It takes both parts.

When we are ready to let go of the anger, the defensive reactions… whatever it is we are holding onto to “protect” ourselves… when we let them go, a space opens inside of us that can be filled with God’s love and grace.  THEN we can “get it.”  THEN healing can flood in.  THEN we can feel the gratitude that the king’s servant never felt.  THEN we can relate to others differently… even those who have hurt us.

Receiving forgiveness has to result in our forgiving others, otherwise the healing won’t be complete.  Did you get that?  In order for us to experience healing, we have to forgive those who have hurt us… who owe us a debt.

And the forgiveness, to be real, has to be unconditional.  Our point of departure is crucial here.  If we are coming from compassion and love, we will give real forgiveness.  If it is conditional… if it’s dependent on the other person doing or saying something… it isn’t forgiveness at all.  //  “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

How many times should I forgive my brother, Lord?  Seven times?  Not seven, but seventy-seven times… or seventy times seven…  depending on your translation… doesn’t matter.  Jesus is trying to make the point that if you’re keeping track of how many times you have forgiven someone, you haven’t been forgiving at all.  //  Forgiveness is an attitude… it’s a life practice… it’s an outgrowth of our gratitude to God, and it’s an essential part of the Christian life.

In her book Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean tells the story of a man whose son was murdered.  When he arrived in the field with the sheriff’s deputies to identify his son, the father immediately knelt by his boy’s body and began praying the Lord’s Prayer.  When he came to the words: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” he realized the depth of the commitment he was making. 

Later he told Sister Helen, “Whoever did this, I must forgive them.”  Though it has been difficult not to be overcome by bitterness and feelings of revenge that well up from time to time, this father said that each day, for the rest of his life, forgiveness must be prayed for and struggled for and won.

Our well-being is dependent upon our ability to seek forgiveness when he have missed the mark or caused pain for others and upon our ability to offer forgiveness to those who have hurt us.

We develop this ability by beginning with the small wounds.  So that when we come to the big ones, we will understand that it is Christ who works his forgiveness through us… and not we who generate it ourselves.

There is a powerful example of this from the life of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian whose family hid Jews from the Nazis during WWII.  When they were discovered, her family was sent to the concentration camps too.

After the war, Corrie became an evangelist often preaching on the need to forgive our enemies.  In her book, The Hiding Place, she tells about a time after one of her sermons, when she was greeted by a man whom she recognized as the SS guard at the shower room in the processing center where she and her sister had been sent.

He said to her, “How grateful I am for your message.  To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!” 

And, suddenly, it was all there for Corrie – she could see the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, [her sister’s] pain-blanched face.  She says, “His hand was thrust out to shake mine.  And I, who had preached so often [on] the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

“Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them.  Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more?  Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

“I tried to smile.  I struggled to raise my hand.  I could not.  I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity.  And so again I breathed a silent prayer.  Jesus I cannot forgive him.  Give me Your forgiveness.

“As I took his hand, a most incredible thing happened.  From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

“And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness anymore than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His.  When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

This sermon doesn’t end here…  rather, it ends here with you….

(Move down to communion table and explain…  pass out slips of paper… each person write something they need forgiveness for on one side… either a particular act or a behavior they want to be freed from, then someone they need to forgive on the other.  Come forward via the side aisles.  Burn slip of paper w/candle… prayer rising to God… drop in pot.  Then move to communion table in center, pick up a glass pebble, say a prayer for healing or blessing and drop in water-filled vase.  After all have returned to their seats, place flowers in the vase.)