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Sunday, December
5, 2004
Rev.
Dr. Harold E Kidd
THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS
'Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" Matthew 18: 21
One of the major themes during this Advent season is the theme of Peace. Jesus is known to be our Prince of Peace, who has come to bring peace into our hearts. Peace from the storms of life, peace from the cares and troubles of this world, peace in the midst of world confusion and chaos. Yes, the Bible declares that He Is Our Peace (Ephesians 2:14). As I thought about the biblical usages of the word peace and its meaning, the Lord helped me to see that peace is a result of reconciliation.
Whether we are speaking of inner soul peace or peace among friends, this kind of peace comes after we have been reconciled. We have peace with God because we have been reconciled to God through the redemptive ministry of Jesus Christ. Yes, as God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself and unto us, has he given the ministry of reconciliation.
Reconciliation occurs when forgiveness has been offered and received. To put it another way: If one were to use the linear process of A + B =C, then Forgiveness + Reconciliation = Peace. Soul peace and peace among individuals and peoples. There can be no true peace in our world until we have been reconciled. And there can be no true reconciliation unless we are willing to forgive. Amen.
And so this morning the Lord has led me to preach on Forgiveness. Matthew 18, in which the words of our text are found, focuses on qualities which should characterize the personal relationships of a believer. When you read this chapter in its entirety, the Lord lifts up seven qualities by which others will know that we are Christians.
Wouldn't you know the person who asked the Lord how many times he should forgive someone who had wronged him would be Simon Peter. This kind of question to the master -- can't you visualize Peter being the disciple to ask this question? For Peter by nature was impulsive, tactless, quick tempered, often tempted into speaking before he thought, of putting his foot in his mouth, so to speak, of making statements that he might have been sorry for later on. There are several examples of where Jesus had to correct Peter because of what he said.
The power of words. Words have the power to build up or to tear down depending upon how we use them. James speaks of the tongue as like unto a horse without a bit, or a mighty ship without a rudder. He says all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. “With the tongue we praise our Lord and father, and with it we curse men who have been made in God's likeness."
Yes, I'm not surprised that it was Simon Peter who asked the Lord about forgiveness. Peter probably ruffled a lot of feathers and hurt his share of feelings because of his tongue. The question that Peter asks the Lord is,
How many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who
sins against me? UP to seven times? Jesus answered him, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven."
There's nothing especially new about Peter's question. Because the longer we live in an imperfect world, being the imperfect people that we are, the more we come to experience that forgiveness is a continuous part of our living. Either we need to receive it or we need to offer it. The things we said that came out not the way we meant them. What we didn't do that hurt some body’s feelings. The fact is that like Peter, sometimes we can jump the gun, when we should have held our peace.
Sometimes our insensitivity to others feelings and their needs causes us to be unaware of what we have done. The anniversary we missed, the card we did not send, the call we did not make, the special day we forgot, the words we said which did more harm than good. And so we find ourselves asking someone to forgive us.
Then there are those things that happen to us, that hurt our feelings, that mess with our inner sanctum of peace. Some are trivial and unintentional, and yet some can be major and traumatic which have the razor's edge of a knife that cut us to the quick, and leave scar tissue if left without a healing solution.
In the December issue of Essence magazine, the Rev. Ronita Weems, AME minister and visiting professor of humanities at Spelman College, writing an article entitled “Sanctified and Suffering” (I encourage you to read it) shares the personal story of how for years she was angry with her mother for leaving a marriage where there was physical abuse, but her mother left the children with the father. Listen to what she writes: "I resented my Christian mother for years because she wouldn't play that role. She refused to remain in an abusive marriage and ignore my father's promises to kill her. She left him when the abuse became unbearable. And she left us, her five children, with him when he threatened to kill her if she took us with her. A good mother literally dies trying to keep her marriage and children together, I thought."
Rev. Weems says that for years she was angry with her mother for abandoning them. But she had to reconcile and forgive her mother. As she grew older she has come to understand. "I know now that my mother made the right choice for her and for us. I was better off with a mother who was alive, living in a house across town, who saw me when she could, than with a dead mother who had lacked enough self-worth to know when enough is enough."
We ought to thank God this morning for ministries like Su Casa, in which some of our own members are involved and which ministers to women and children in abusive relationships. Lord, to whom shall we go, when our very own begin to treat us abusively?
In many divorces, where our children become the victims of what we could not work out, there is some forgiveness that God is still working out.
For children who have not known their father or mother's love growing up, forgiveness becomes the only doorway to healing and freedom from negative memories and experiences of the past.
The Lord is helping me to paint a background for His response to Simon Peter. Peter asked how many times, seven? Jesus said, seventy times seven.
Rabbinical teaching said that we must forgive our brother or sister three times. In Jewish law there was a limitation on the number of times one needed to offer forgiveness. Peter said seven, thinking he would get a high commendation from the Lord, for his generosity. Jesus however, replied, "Simon if a brother or sister offend you, forgive them seventy times seven." Meaning, Simon it does not matter how many times people do you wrong to you, offend you, forgive them.
In other words, forgiveness needs to be unlimited. One of the reasons I believe Jesus told Simon that our forgiveness of others needs to be unlimited is because forgiveness releases God's power to break and heal the pain, hurt and anger that a negative experience has held over us. When we fail to offer forgiveness from our hearts, we are spiritually allowing that person or experience to still have control over our lives. Why allow something that happened to us 10 or 20 years ago, control our behavior, distort our self-esteem or quench the joy bells in our life that God wants to ring today?
If you've ever seen the movie Antwone Fisher, starring Denzel Washington,
Antwone Fisher is a young naval seaman who is counseled by Denzel Washington, a Navy psychiatrist, because when people push the wrong buttons Fisher goes into uncontrollable fits of rage. As the story unfolds, Fisher's mother had him while in prison, and he does not know what happened to his absentee father. So he grew up being passed from home to home.
He has become a young man who has all of this rage and anger bottled up within him. And as Denzel Washington continues to counsel him, Fisher finally reaches the point where Denzel tells him he needs to go back to Cleveland and seek to find any remnant of his family and make peace with the past. Washington recognizes that forgiveness releases one from the prison of bad memories, which in this case are eating away a Fisher on the inside. I wish I knew how to make it plain.
Yes, like Antwone Fisher, some may have come up in some tough circumstances, came up fighting. Fighting has become a way of survival. Fighting memories and experiences one can never be free of without offering forgiveness. Sometimes we may find ourselves fighting those that love us, fighting those who just want to be our friend, fighting hurt and pain that can only be healed when forgiveness is given. Well, the Lord wants us to know this morning that forgiveness is his solution to promote our spiritual, emotional, and psychic healing.
"You beat my self-esteem into the ground so that you could feel good about your own rotten life, but I forgive you. I forgive you because I refuse to let the power of what you did, and did not do, have control over who I am."
Many who have come up the rough side of the mountain would tell us that forgiveness does not come easy. Easier said than done, there's a lot of healing that still has to take place, but forgiveness is … the only way.
Someone who did us wrong a long time ago -- why let them still have power over our emotions, we can't let go of the pain, because we have not forgiven them. Forgiveness releases God's power to break the hold a negative experience has held over us, and it begins the process of God healing a broken heart or wounded spirit.
It’s not important that they come to us and confess they've done wrong by us. Some will never own up to their wrong doings. Just pray for those who misuse and abuse you, that God would someday touch their hearts. Yes, we must forgive, so that God will give us the grace to move on with our lives free -- free from the negativity that memory, that person, or that experience has held over us.
Yes, if there is going to be peace in this world, it must come by way of forgiveness. If there is going to be a peace movement in our homes, in our communities, on our neighborhood playgrounds, in our work places, in our schools, on the playing field of athleticism as well as on the playing field of international politics, it must begin with forgiveness.
Lord, help. I've preached all of this and still haven't gotten to the parable in this text. Time will not permit us to examine it in its fullness, but we know that God has no limits on the forgiveness that he offers us. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." One of the themes of this parable is that, if God is so merciful and gracious in forgiving us, we ought to go and do likewise. If the Lord of Glory does not keep a record of how often we let him down, how much should we be willing to forgive those who let us down? He looked beyond our fault … and saw our need.
Yes, pray for those who despitefully use you. And not only pray but hymn writer Charles H. Gabriel has suggested in An Evening Prayer,
"If I have wounded any soul today, If I have
caused one foot to go astray, If I have walked in my own willful way, Dear
Lord, Forgive.
If I have uttered idle words or vain, If I
have turned a side from want or pain, Lest I offend some other thru the strain,
Dear Lord Forgive."