16th Sunday after Pentecost
September 24, 2017
Matthew 18:21-35
The summer that I was 19 I bought my first car. It was a
1996 Honda Civic, silver, four-door, and stick shift. I drove it all summer
long. A couple weeks before the fall semester started, we went to the beach for
a week, in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. The same week some relatives were at
the beach in Garden City, South Carolina, just south of Myrtle Beach. My
sisters and I wanted to spend time with them, too, so we planned to spend the
first part of the week in Atlantic Beach and drive the four hours on Thursday down
to Garden City. My car never made it to Garden City. Instead, driving through
Myrtle Beach, another driver had turned left out of a shopping center and had
paused in the median, waiting for traffic the other direction to clear. Except,
he wasn’t completely in the median; he was partly in the median and partly in
my lane. The median to my left was a ditch; the two lanes to my right were full
of cars, so… I hit him head on. I left a good 12 feet of skid marks, although I
don’t remember braking. I don’t remember the accident itself at all. What I
know is that God had guardian angels all around my sisters and me. The first
person on the scene was a good Samaritan, she told me her credentials, doctor
or nurse or something, and she helped us until the police and paramedics
arrived. My sisters got ambulance rides to the hospital. My first car was
totaled. The police and insurance companies ruled that the other drive was
completely at fault, and his insurance paid for everything: the value of my
car, all of our medical bills, and additional money to my sisters for grief and
suffering because they both had scars on their faces from their injuries. The police
officer at the scene told me that he had seen people die in accidents that bad.
And my Grandma, a long-time pastor’s wife, told me that the accident was now
part of my story, part of my witness of what God has done in my life. There
were guardian angels surrounding us that day, because we should have been hurt
a lot worse than we were, if not killed. We shouldn’t have walked away from
that accident. But God was taking care of us and protecting us. Grandma told me
that this was now part of my witness of what God has done in my life and that I
needed to share it. So, I do, from time to time.
However, there’s one part of that story that I’ve never
told, and that is about forgiving that other driver. Before we left the beach
to come home, I went out one evening to walk on the beach by myself. And, this
may sound a little crazy, but I felt like God gave me three curses to use on
this other driver, this guy who had totaled my first car, who had caused such
harm to my sisters and me, who had taken away a level of my innocence, since
I’d never even been in a car accident before, much less one that bad. I was mad
at this guy. And that night, at the beach, I cursed him, twice. This may not
sound like much to you, but even before becoming a pastor, I never cursed.
That’s just who I was. So, I used two curses that night, and saved one for
later. Because human nature is like that, right? We like to hold on to grudges,
we like to have vengeance. I held on to one. In college I was part of the
Wesley Foundation, which is the United Methodist campus ministry. It’s part of
what our apportionment money helps to fund. And at that point in time, we had a
monthly worship service on campus. I don’t remember the details, whether it was
the scripture or the music or something the campus minister said, or maybe a
combination, or just simply God moving in my heart. But one night, at that
monthly worship service, I broke down and I gave back to God that curse. I
don’t know what caused it, if I’d been thinking about it, if I’d been looking
for a good reason to use it, or a good reason to hold onto it, but God moved,
and I released that last curse, without using it. I forgave the guy. And I’ve
never shared that part of the story. I’ve always talked about God keeping us
safe in the accident that should have seriously hurt us. I’ve talked about the
guardian angels and the good Samaritan person at the scene. I’ve never talked
about forgiving the other driver. Probably because the idea of God giving me
three curses sounds a little crazy. But that’s the story of how I forgave the
other driver who totaled my first car. I gave it back to God. I released it,
and let it go.
Our Gospel lesson today is one about forgiveness. Jesus
and the disciples are still talking about life in community, about church life.
Peter asks Jesus, “How often do I have to forgive someone who sins against me?”
Seven is a holy number, the number of completion, so perhaps we are to practice
perfect forgiveness. Yet Jesus says, “Not seven, but seventy-seven or seventy
times seven times.” “Your forgiveness must be beyond perfect; it must be beyond
counting.”[1]
This is forgiveness without limits, infinite forgiveness, which is, after all,
how God forgives us. Three things about forgiveness this morning:
First,
forgiveness is not conditional upon the
other person apologizing first. I never met the other driver in Myrtle
Beach. We had zero communication. We didn’t talk at the scene of the accident,
and we certainly didn’t talk after that. I only ever found out his name because
it was on one of the insurance documents. He didn’t apologize to me. We tend to
think that the other person should say or do something first before we have to
forgive them. We tend to think that we’re owed something when we’ve been
wronged, and only once we’ve received that reparation, then we can forgive the
wrong. But that’s not how it has to work. And, considering you will never get
apologies for some things, if that’s what you’re waiting for, then you’ll never
forgive them. That, then, in turn, hurts you
the most. When we hold on to past hurts and resentments, our emotional and physical health are deeply affected.[2]
And we are hurt the most by our unwillingness to forgive.
Presbyterian
minister and author, Marjorie Thompson, wrote, “To forgive is to make a
conscious choice to release the person who has wounded us from the sentence of
our judgment, however justified that judgment may be… Forgiveness means the
power of the original wound’s power to hold us trapped is broken.”[3]
Don’t let whoever wronged you control your life. Don’t let them live in your
head and make you bitter and angry. Get them out of your emotional life. You’re
hurting yourself by holding on to that resentment. Don’t wait for an apology.
It’s not necessary. You don’t need one in order to forgive. Forgive them now
and free yourself from that hurt.
Second,
forgive does not always mean forget.
In healthy relationships, yes. 1 Corinthians 13 does say that love keeps no
record of wrongs. However, in unhealthy relationships, unstable relationships,
abusive relationships, no. Shake the dust off your feet and move on. To forgive
someone does not mean that you have to have a relationship with them. I said
last week that there are some folks from whom we have to keep your distance in
order to keep our mental and emotional health. People change, yes. As
Christians, we believe in redemption and second chances. However, it’s not
worth putting yourself at risk. Let the person be redeemed, reformed, changed
and let them do it with new people in their life. It doesn’t have to be you.
Let it go. It was 12 years before I returned to Myrtle Beach. Enough time had
passed that when a friend invited me to the beach with her, I didn’t even make
the connection with the accident until I was back on US-17 in Myrtle Beach. It’s
okay to forgive and not forget.
Finally,
“forgiveness means to release, to
let go… [It’s] not denying our hurt,” or minimizing it or glossing over it.
Something happened that shouldn’t have happened. We were hurt. Forgiveness
requires us to “acknowledge the negative impact of another person’s actions or
attitudes in our lives.”[4]
We acknowledge it, scream about it, write about it, vent about it. And then we
release it, so that it no longer has control over us. So that we do not begin
to think that it defines us. One of my favorite parts of the Disney movie Moana is when Moana approaches the
monster Te Ka with the heart that was stolen from her.
Moana sings to her, “I
have crossed the horizon to find you. I know your name. They have stolen the
heart from inside you. But this does not define you. This is not who you are.
You know who you are.” This evil thing that was done to you is not who you are.
Te Ka calms down, Moana puts her heart back, and the lava rock of the monster
falls away to reveal Te Fiti, the missing goddess.
Let
go of the hurt. Let go of the pain. It does not define you. It is not who you
are. Whether or not you receive an apology, whether or not you forget as you move
on, move on. Don’t let that limit you
today. Forgiveness is important for your health and well-being. Even more,
Jesus tells us that we are to forgive because we have been forgiven. Our
forgiving others is in response to our receiving God’s forgiveness. In the parable Jesus told in response
to Peter’s question about forgiveness, the king says, “Shouldn’t you have had
mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?”[5]
In the Lord’s prayer we pray, “Forgive us our sins, just as we forgive those
who sin against us.”[6]
Forgiveness should cause more forgiveness. Those who have received forgiveness
are to forgive others. And each one of us here has been forgiven. You have already been forgiven. You may
or may not have accepted that, but you have already been forgiven. Go and do likewise. Return to God the curses
you’re holding onto, the grudges you’ve been nursing, your list of all the
times you’ve been slighted. It’s time. Forgive yourself, forgive God, forgive
your neighbor, forgive reality for being what it is. Forgive. I don’t do many
altar calls, but this is one I feel called to do this morning. If no one comes,
that’s fine. However, if there is someone on your mind this morning whom you
have not forgiven, now is the time to do it. If you need help doing it, please come
forward and I’ll come pray with you. Or raise your hand, and I’ll come to your
pew. Let us pray…
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