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A little girl was overheard
trying to explain to her younger brother a part of the meaning
of the Lord’s Prayer on forgiveness. She said, “You see, it’s
God’s job to forgive us… so it’s our job to sin.” That’s not
quite the way the petition goes, I don’t think.
“Forgive us our trespasses, as
we forgive those who trespass against us.” Or is it “debts?”
Or is it “sins?” At this point in the Lord’s Prayer we arrive
at what some have called the “ecumenical mumble.”
I really hate to break the news
to all of you lifelong Methodists, but the Bible really does
say “debts.” Or in Luke’s version, “sins.” In either case we
Methodists are left holding our trespasses.
Why are there differences? As
you might expect, there are language issues. In Matthew, the
word used means a money debt. It is basically a financial
term. In Luke, the word used means “missing the mark.” It
would be like shooting an arrow at a target and missing the
bull’s-eye. There is only one place that the word “trespasses”
appears in the Lord’s Prayer in the English Bible, and that’s
the Tyndale version.
But before you all rush out to
join the Presbyterian Church down the street, let me add that
it really doesn’t matter. The translation is not a substantive
issue. What matters is the meaning. We need to know what it
means.
FORGIVE US OUR SINS
The first part of the prayer is
a petition for God to forgive us our sins. What is sin? We
don’t talk about sin all that much any more. Jesus doesn’t
dwell on it all that much. In one place he says, rather
radically, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is
better to lose your hand than for your whole body to be thrown
into the fire.” But that doesn’t explain what sin is. Paul
talks about sin to a much greater degree. In fact, some people
think that the apostle Paul was preoccupied with issues of sin
and guilt.
We don’t quite know what to do
with sin. We’re still living in the wake of Karl Menninger’s
groundbreaking book of a number of years ago entitled
Whatever Became of Sin?
The fact is, we don’t feel all
that much like sinners. Compared to someone like Hitler or
Stalin or Mussolini or even Saddam Hussein, we all come off
looking pretty good. We can say to God, “Compared to them,
Lord, I’m not so bad.”
Bill Hybels, the pastor of the
Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago, tells how people
come to him and say something like this: “I admit it. I’ve
sinned a few times. Yeah, I’ve slipped up. But I can hold my
own against the competition.”
We tend to judge others and
therefore don’t feel so bad about ourselves. We do look pretty
holy alongside some of the competition. I can still remember
my own wrestling with the Anglican prayer of confession, said
every night at the service of evening prayer when I was in
seminary. The line that really took me back a bit goes like
this: “Almighty God, we have left undone those things we ought
to have done, and we have done those things we ought not to
have done, and there is no health in us.” I can still remember
walking out of that service many evenings asking myself, “Am I
really all that bad? Am I basically an unhealthy person?”
I would have you note this
morning that the Biblical witness says something quite clear.
God does not compare us against the rapists, murderers, and
Jeffrey Dahmers of our age. Rather, God is the standard. More
specifically, Jesus is the model. Others are not the
standard against which we need forgiveness. He is.
Therefore, every disciple at
every stage of Christian growth and maturity needs to pray,
“Forgive us.” Remember that Jesus is teaching the disciples
here, not the rabble. In other words, Jesus is not talking to
the world, but to the church. Against this standard of Jesus,
all of us have a ways to go.
There’s one other small piece of
detail in this first phrase in the petition for today. I can
remember a New Testament seminary professor teaching us about
this saying of Jesus: “I did not come to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance.” The professor said that in this
context the word “sinners” means those who are apathetic.
Jesus wasn’t talking about the evil people, nor was he talking
about the hard core. He was speaking to those who didn’t care
enough, who were too apathetic. He was speaking to those too
busy or too preoccupied to care.
There’s a story of a man who
was introduced as a speaker to a large group. The person doing
the introduction used some very flowery words in his comments.
When the man finally got up to speak he said something like
this: “May God forgive this man for all his excesses. And may
God forgive me for enjoying them so much.” When we pray the
Lord’s Prayer, we pray not for our excesses, but for our
neglect. We pray that God will forgive our not caring, that
God will forgive our “I can’t be bothered”, that God will
forgive our being content with the status quo.
Forgive us for setting the wrong
standards. Forgive our lack of serious attention to life with
you. Forgive our blasé attitude toward discipleship. All of us
can pray that prayer.
FORGIVE US AS WE FORGIVE
Then Jesus says, “Forgive us
as we forgive those who sin against us.” Here’s the rub in
the Lord’s Prayer. It’s not just a vertical prayer, it’s a
horizontal prayer as well. Forgive me as I forgive.
This is the hard part. Can I
forgive those who have hurt me, who have maligned me, or who
have offended me? We put a lot of emphasis on the vertical.
But we ignore or downplay or avoid the horizontal. God wants
you not only to build your relationship with him, but also
your relationship with each other.
Did you see the article in the
inside pages of the Reporter this week, about a man by the
name of Tom Streett? When Tom was 15 years old, he tragically
witnessed the killing of his father by a team of two robbers.
Both men were apprehended and put in jail. At the trial, the
one who actually fired the fatal shot was put on death row.
The man who was the driver of the getaway car was serving 90
years in prison.
More than 20 years after the
tragic killing of his father, Tom Streett was prompted to
write letters to the two men in prison. In essence he said to
both men, “I want you to know that I forgive you.” The man who
had been the driver of the getaway car asked Tom to visit him
in prison. He apologized to him face-to-face. Tom reiterated
his statement. “I want you to know that I forgive you.”
This man was released from jail
after a period of time. Tom actually helped him find a job,
and he is now active in a local church. Tom remembered what
his father had taught him: “Forgiveness is from the heart. It
does not demand anything in return.”
Forgive us, as we forgive
those who sin against us.
THE BIG QUESTION
Now here’s the biggest question
of all. Do you forgive others so that God forgives you? Or do
you forgive others because you know God forgives you?
Jesus puts an interesting twist
in the prayer that is not always immediately obvious. The way
Jesus put the prayer literally means, “Forgive us as we
have already forgiven others.”
As I understand this prayer, it
is not a matter of who forgives first. It is not a question
of, “Lord, forgive me so I can forgive.” It is not a matter of
me forgiving my neighbor so I can receive God’s forgiveness.
Rather, it suggests that forgiveness is God’s design for all
of life. The flow of this prayer might be best represented in
a word from Ephesians 4:32: “Be kind to one another, tender
hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven
you.”
Two boys were having pancakes
for breakfast, prepared by their mother. They were arguing
about who would receive the first pancake. Finally the
exasperated mother said to them, “Roger and Tommy, do you know
that if Jesus were here he would say, ‘Let my brother have the
first pancake?’” Whereupon Roger called out, “Okay, Tommy, you
be Jesus.”
Forgiveness is the lifestyle of
the universe. It is God’s model for kingdom giving. When Jesus
teaches us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” he
is teaching us to pray for a kingdom in which forgiveness
reigns. He is saying, “May the sense of God’s presence come so
that forgiveness flows.”
As the war moves on in Iraq, I
was reflecting on some things I heard in the news this past
week. Can you and I understand why the Iraqi people protect
their homeland? Can you understand why they love their
country, even though they’ve known nothing else except Saddam
Hussein for 35 years? As we engage them in what we hope is a
just war, can we forgive them for loving their country and
maybe even honoring their ruthless leader? Can forgiveness
flow from us at that depth?
God is the initiator of all
forgiveness. That is always the case. This is why John Wesley
talked so much about something called “prevenient grace.” God
is always ready to forgive us more than we realize. We are the
echoes of that forgiveness. We are imperfect echoes, but
echoes nonetheless. The more we work at forgiveness, the more
we are attuned to God’s prevenient grace.
This week I read a story about a
man who lost his daughter in the Oklahoma City Federal
Building bombing. Listen to these words.
Bud Welch’s daughter Julie
was killed in the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing. When
he heard of Timothy McVeigh’s arrest, he felt only rage and a
desire for vengeance. McVeigh’s lack of repentance only made
his anger hotter. He said, “I just want him fried.”
Bud’s hate took him on a
journey of sleepless nights and drunken binges to numb the
pain. It also led him to visit the bombing site. On that visit
he vowed to change. He remembered watching Bill McVeigh, the
bomber’s father, on television, and suddenly recognized his
own pain and grief in that father’s eyes.
He arranged to meet Bill
McVeigh. They sat together and talked about their children,
one who was dead and one who soon would be. Forgiveness and
mercy overwhelmed Bud Welch. He said, “I never felt closer to
God than I did at that moment.”[i]
God has committed to us (that
is, the church) the direction of the world. We walk forgiving
in a world bent on retaliation and reprisal. We walk forgiving
in a world that seems to have a short fuse. We walk forgiving
in a world often drunk with power.
Forgive us, Lord. Help us to be
catalysts—echoes—of your great forgiveness. Forgive us, as we
forgive along the way.
There is healing power in these
words—healing power beyond all imagination.
Amen.
[i]
Praying Like Jesus, James Mulholland, p. 97
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