Settling Accounts

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Genesis 33:1-9; Matthew 18:23-34

May 12/13, 2012 • Portage First UMC

He’s been running for years. Ever since that day he stole his older brother’s inheritance. He took what was not supposed to be his, and he did it even before their father was dead. His brother found out, and vowed to kill him, so he took off. He ran as far as he could, and while some say he had a sort of religious conversion on the way, he never really gave up his conniving and deceitful ways. So he’s been gone from home for more than fifteen years, but his brother has never forgotten. The memory of that day, so long ago, is seared into his mind, and when he gets word that his cheating, lying, no-good brother is headed for home, he gathers up a group of friends to go meet him. It’s time for a reckoning. Esau is coming to meet his brother, Jacob.

And, we should note, as the story is told in Genesis, Jacob is only headed home because he cheated his father-in-law. He was no longer welcome in the place he’s been living and working all these years, in the place where he made his fortune. So he loads up his two wives and all their children and heads back to the only other place he knows. But when he gets word that Esau, the brother he cheated, is coming to meet him, he immediately turns to prayer. “Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau” (32:11). Don’t we often pray like that? “God, I’m in trouble, and I know we haven’t talked much lately, but I’d really appreciate it if you could help me out now!” That’s in essence Jacob’s prayer. Save me now, God, because Esau has every right to be angry with me, to hold a grudge against me, to kill me. And so the day arrives. The time has come for settling accounts between these two brothers. Esau is on the horizon. There’s nowhere for Jacob to run. His past has come full circle, and there are really only two options at this point: revenge or reconciliation.

Maybe our lives don’t contain such dramatic scenes (I hope not!), but into each of our lives come moments when we have the same choice as Esau and Jacob did there in the desert. Something happened, a relationship was broken, someone hurt someone else, maybe both persons hurt each other, and damage was done. And we have the same choice: revenge or reconciliation. Which will we choose? For the last several weeks, we’ve been exploring these various Biblical images of the church and who we are. We’ve talked about how we’re peculiar, and hopeful, and service-oriented. And last week, we talked about being Christ-centered, how we learn to love even those we disagree with. And that, then, leads us to the next image of the good and beautiful community. When we are fully Christ-centered, we must then be a reconciling community, a people rooted in forgiving one another.

Jesus once told a dramatic parable in response to a question Peter asked. We should really be thankful for all the times Peter puts his foot in his mouth and says things no one else will say, because it’s often in those moments we get very profound teaching from Jesus. This is one of those moments. In Matthew 18, Peter wants to know how often he should forgive someone. Seven times? he asks. Peter’s being generous here. The rabbis taught God would forgive someone three times and on the fourth time they commit the same sin, God would send punishment. Since human beings could not be expected to forgive more often than God, forgiveness was to be limited to three times. Peter doubles the expectation and adds one. Seven is incredibly generous when it comes to forgiveness. And yet, Jesus turns that teaching upside down. “I tell you,” he says, “not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (18:22). In other words, if you’re counting the number of times you’ve forgiven someone, you’ve missed the point and you’re not really forgiving them (Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2, pg. 193; Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part Two, pg. 40).

To illustrate this, to really drive home his point, Jesus tells this story. There was a servant who owed his king a huge amount of money. Ten thousand bags of gold; the text literally says “ten thousand talents.” Now, a “talent” was the equivalent of the wages of an average worker who worked steadily for twenty years. So each year, they earned 1/20th of a talent. The debt of the servant is the equivalent of 200,000 years’ worth of salary. It’s an unimaginable amount. But the king has decided to settle accounts, and so he calls this man before him and commands him to repay his debt. But there’s no way this man could ever repay that amount. He owes more than the king has. He has no means for paying it back, and so the king orders he and his family to be sold. Now, a really valuable slave in those days might bring 1 talent; usually, they got about 10% of that amount. So the king, even if he sells the whole family, isn’t going to come anywhere close to getting back what is owed him (Carson, “Matthew,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 406). It’s impossible. So when the servant begs him to have patience, the king relents. He doesn’t give him more time, he gives him his life back. He cancels the entire debt and lets him go. Can you imagine the relief that would have flooded that man’s heart at that moment? To be forgiven such an enormous amount! It would change your life, wouldn’t it?

Well, it should have, but Jesus goes on with the story as he follows the servant who, outside of the palace, runs into a fellow slave who owes him some money—“a few hundred silver coins,” or literally, “a hundred denarii.” A denarius was the normal daily wage for a laborer, so he owed this fellow servant less than a year’s paycheck. It’s an amount you could carry in your pocket, and it’s a tiny amount compared to what the first man had just been forgiven—500,000 times less, actually (Augsburger, Communicator’s Commentary: Matthew, pg. 224). And so how does the first servant treat his equal? He grabs him by the neck and demands, “Pay back what you owe me!” (18:28). And when the second servant begs for patience, using the same words the first servant used when he was before the king, the first servant refuses. He throws him in jail—and in fact, the word used there means more than just sitting in a cell. He turned his fellow servant over to those who would torture him until he paid back the debt (18:30; Carson 407). The end of the story is that the king finds out what happens, calls the forgiven servant back in and says, “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” (18:33). Of course he should have, so the king hands him over to the torturers “until he should pay back all he owed,” which we know is not possible (18:34). His failure to forgive, to reconcile, results in a horrible end.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are intertwined, and they are not easy things to practice. We talked about this during Lent when we considered Jesus’ word from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Jesus was busy forgiving those who nailed him to the cross, those who did the most harm to him. It’s hard to follow in his footsteps, especially because we often believe a false narrative about forgiveness and reconciliation, and by doing so, we make it harder on ourselves. The false narrative sounds something like this: only when we forgive will we be forgiven and healed. Now, see, it’s tricky, because that sounds right. It sounds like a lot of pop psychology we hear on daytime television and even some Christian programs and books. But the false assumption under all it is that somehow, by an act of our will, we should be able to summon up the strength on our own to forgive. Therefore, if we forgive, we will find forgiveness and healing, all on our own. The false narrative says forgiveness is something we must do. And therefore, if we buy into this, if and when we do forgive, we get the credit for succeeding. So the American Christian mindset it this: just grit your teeth and try to feel forgiveness toward someone who has harmed you, or act like you forgive them even if you don’t. Because the problem is we can’t do it in our own strength (Smith, The Good and Beautiful Community, pg. 109-110).

That’s why the New Testament story, the story of Jesus, is about a different narrative. The first servant in Jesus’ story didn’t ask to be forgiven. He begged for more time, a chance to work off the debt or pay it back, to do it on his own. Maybe he hoped to hit the lottery or get an inheritance somehow. Logically, he knew there was no way he could ever really repay it. But the beauty of Jesus’ story is that the king offered forgiveness even when it wasn’t asked for. And that act should have changed the servant’s heart. The narrative of the New Testament is this: “Only when we know we have been forgiven will we find healing and become able to forgive” (Smith 111). Only when we know we have been forgiven—when the truth, that on the cross Jesus did everything we needed to have forgiveness, gets from our head to our hearts, when we know we have been forgiven—then we can forgive others. At that moment, God stopped counting our sins against us and offered forgiveness to all who would accept it. He’s not keeping track every time you mess up. He doesn’t have a ledger. He’s constantly offering you forgiveness—not because of anything you’ve done or earned. We owe God a debt we could never repay. We’ve sinned against him. We’ve broken his law. We’ve done what we should not—and sometimes we keep doing it. And still, God the king offers forgiveness. It’s a gift; we have only to receive it. And when we do, it should change our hearts. Only when we know we have been forgiven will we find healing and become able to forgive.

Do you see the difference between the two stories? Trying to summon up forgiveness on our own will never work; we’ll be like the first servant in Jesus’ parable. We simply do not have the resources on our own to produce forgiveness and so, even though we are offered forgiveness, reconciliation with others is difficult if not impossible. It’s easier to grab them by the collar and demand they pay back what they owe us. We’ll never be able to practice preemptive forgiveness as Jesus did on the cross on our own because our tendency is to always keep track. And so we fake forgiveness and we fake reconciliation. But what if we really believe we are forgiven people? Then Jesus’ parable would end with the second servant being forgiven as well and the two being reconciled because hearts rather than mere outward actions have been changed. When we know we have been forgiven, how can we help but forgive others? It becomes a response of gratitude for all that God has forgiven us. James Bryan Smith puts it this way: “As Christ forgave us, so we also forgive. It is not something we do—it is something we participate in” (117). Or listen to Tom Wright’s challenge: “It is highly presumptuous to refuse to forgive one whom Christ has already forgiven” (qtd. in Smith 117).

Now, by saying that, I don’t mean forgiveness is an instant response or an easy thing to do, like flipping a switch in our brains. In fact, forgiveness often takes a long time, maybe years, to work out. What I am talking about is a commitment on our part to refuse to demonize the other person, to seek always to treat them as someone for whom Jesus died, as in need of forgiveness as I am. Certainly, there are times, such as when an adult takes advantage of a child, or an aggressor harms another person, when one person is horribly in the wrong. But in most day-to-day situations, we’re not completely innocent and the other person is not completely guilty. Several years ago, I received an e-mail one afternoon that said, “I need to meet with you. I have a grievance against you.” Normally I don’t get e-mails with such formal language, but I responded that I could meet as soon as she was able, and so we sat down together in the church office the next morning, and she proceeded to lay out all the ways I had, unknowingly, hurt her. My first inclination was to explain those things away, tell her she had misinterpreted what I did or said, and I did some of that. I think we all want to justify ourselves. But somewhere in that conversation, I was reminded that this woman was someone Jesus died for, just like me. And despite our differences, I had a choice. I could treat her with justice, and demand she see things my way, or mercy, and offer forgiveness along with an apology. Now, we never did see eye-to-eye, but something within me changed as I was able to see her, at least on a small scale, the way Jesus saw her. I could not have worked toward reconciliation on my own strength, because my tendency is to always justify myself. But knowing I have been forgiven—really knowing that—changed that morning for me.

This story Jesus tells is really about the absurdity of our accepting God’s forgiveness for our countless sins and yet refusing to forgive one or two or even a hundred sins against us (Smith 116). We love being forgiven; we’re not always crazy about being forgiving. But in the parable, freedom comes by virtue of the king’s forgiveness, not because of anything the servant did (cf. Carson 407). It’s all a gift, and if we want to find true freedom, forgiveness is the path we have to walk. Tom Wright says, “Forgiveness is more like the air in your lungs. There’s only room for you to inhale the next lungful when you’ve just breathed out the previous one” (39-40). You know, you can suffocate even with your lungs full because after our body takes out of the air what it needs, what is left is toxic. If we refuse to take in what we need and hold onto what we already have, we can die. The same is true in our spiritual life. If we hold onto unforgiveness, if we fail to allow that truth of our forgiveness to transform us from the inside out, we will die spiritually. We will be, so to speak, “tortured” because we’ve failed to allow God’s goodness to affect everything else in our lives.

So the church, the good and beautiful community, is called to be in the business of reconciliation, of forgiveness. “A community who has been forgiven must become a community who forgives” (Smith 116). Just as we discussed during Lent, Jesus is our pattern for this, not only as individuals, but as a community. He who prayed for his murderers says we can do no less. And we pray the way he taught us when we use the Lord’s prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The church is a reconciling community, calling people to forgiveness so that relationships, marriages, families, communities can be put back together, can be made whole. Underlying the dissolution of many marriages and families today, especially among Christian people, is a lack of forgiveness. Whether the presenting issue is finances or infidelity or communication, there is very often an issue or issues that one or both simply could not or would not forgive. The church has to be a reconciling community, one which has at its heart the model of Jesus who forgave so that we could forgive.

So I’m sure you’re not surprised at this point to find that our Soul Training exercise—our homework—is to experience reconciliation. I don’t know of a practice that more lives out the life of Jesus in our own lives than this one. So how do we forgive? How do we pursue reconciliation? Well, first of all, we have to know we are forgiven, that what Jesus did on the cross provides forgiveness to us for everything we’ve ever done. We can be forgiven ourselves. Do you know that truth? And I don’t mean just do you know it in your head? Do you know it with your heart? Are you living as a forgiven person? Have you allowed Jesus into your life so that he can forgive you? I accepted Jesus into my heart when I was about ten years old, a long time ago, and in that moment, I believed and I knew in my heart he had forgiven me. But that doesn’t mean the nearly 35 years since then have been easy. Not at all. I have to continue to remember that I am forgiven, continue to come back to him and allow him to remind me again that what he did on the cross was enough to cover whatever I do. I have to remember that wonderful passage in the Psalms: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (103:12). And I remember the promise from the prophet Micah: “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (7:18-19). And my own addition? He hurls our sins into the sea and puts up a “No Fishing” sign.

The first movement we make, then, is to know we have been forgiven, to remember who we are in Christ, what our identity is. One way to remember that is to recall a Bible passage that reminds you of God’s great love for you. If you follow the weekly readings, there are several stories and passages that will hopefully help you with that this week. You might even consider memorizing something like 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” That’s a great reminder of who we are—the old has gone, the new is here. Identity is the first step.

Then, perspective. Pray for that person you are trying to forgive. It is hard to hate someone you are praying for. Not impossible, just hard. This person I mentioned earlier who had “a grievance” against me—I made that a matter of prayer for some time. And I began asking God to help me see this person the way he sees them, to end the hurting that was on both sides. You see, hurt people hurt others. We all react badly out of our own hurt. But as I prayed for that person, God slowly took away the desire I had to lash back, to hurt them as much as they had hurt me. I believe that was one of God’s ways of helping me see them through his eyes. Now, I’m not trying to say I’m perfect. There are other situations in my own life right now where I’m still having to pray for that.

In fact, you may be there, too. You may not be ready to even work toward forgiving that other person who has hurt you. Maybe there’s an ex-spouse or an abuser or an employer who used your talents and then fired you. Maybe there’s a person who has caused such deep hurt you don’t even know how to give words to it. You may need someone to come alongside and hold you up, walk through this process with you. There are numerous examples of this in the Scriptures. When the people of Israel were fighting a battle for their survival, Moses stood over them and held his hands up. The Bible says as long as he held his hands up, Israel was winning. But Moses got tired, and his arms drooped, and then Israel began losing. That’s when Moses’ brother Aaron and Hur, a friend, came alongside and held his arms up “steady till sunset” (Exodus 17). They held Moses up. When a man needed to see Jesus, to see if he could be healed of his paralysis, his friends carried him to the crowded house, and when they couldn’t get close to Jesus, they went up on the flat roof, dug a hole and let the man down through the roof to see Jesus. His friends made healing possible (Luke 5). They held him up. And Paul, the great apostle and shaper of the Christian faith, often traveled with friends, and in his darkest hour, near the end of his life, he asked his young friend, Timothy, to come and see him, be with him (2 Timothy 4:9), to hold him up. We need people who will come alongside us, even in this area of forgiveness, and walk with us, who will help us remember and feel and sense our own forgiveness so that we can find healing and hope. Maybe that’s a close friend, maybe a Stephen Minister, maybe a counselor, maybe a family member. If you can’t forgive, ask someone to pray with you for the willingness to take steps in that direction. Have them pray with and for you often.

Now, having said that, I also want to give a warning of sorts. There are a lot of things forgiveness is. It is choosing not to actively remember, choosing not to live out of the hurt that was caused. It is refusing to allow that hurt to define you. Someone described it as evicting the other person who, otherwise, lives rent-free in your head. But one thing forgiveness does not entail is putting yourself back in a situation where you can be hurt again. This is especially true if the act you’re working to forgive is abuse or rape or other sorts of serious injury. You can forgive without putting yourself back in a situation where you can be abused—physically, verbally, or any other way—or harmed by someone again and again. You can forgive out because you know you have been forgiven. To put yourself back in a harmful situation does not demonstrate forgiveness; it demonstrates a serious lack of judgment (Smith 119). And so, in situations like that, it’s especially important to have folks who will give you perspective, who will pray with you and for you, and walk with you as you forgive. No matter what the situation is, though, Tom Wright puts it this way: “One should never, ever give up making forgiveness and reconciliation one’s goal. If confrontation has to happen, as it often does, it must always be with forgiveness in mind, never revenge” (Wright 39).

So Jacob watches the horizon, and he can see the dust of Esau’s caravan approaching. He had spent the night before alone on the shores of the Jabbok River. Actually, he wasn’t alone; he just wasn’t with his family. Them he had sent ahead, and all night long, we are told, he wrestled with God there near the river. All night long, they struggled, until finally God put Jacob’s hip out of joint and blessed him. From that moment on, Jacob walked with a limp, but out of that struggling with God he got a new name (Israel) and a new perspective. When he finally does see Esau, he is much more humble than when he left, and he and Esau are able to find common ground. They aren’t able to settle together, but they can live peaceably with each other. And while I have no doubt about the truth of the story of Jacob wrestling by the river, I also see in that a powerful parable of our lives. The deepest change, the most significant forward movement in our spiritual lives comes as we wrestle—honestly, deeply wrestle—with what God is calling us to do. The things that bring us the most growth—like forgiveness—are hard. They involve struggle. Jacob didn’t want to confront Esau any more than we want to forgive those who have hurt us. But Jacob learned that the way forward, the way to healing was not to revert to the old, conniving ways of the past, but to let God touch him, change him, heal him. Oddly enough, Jacob’s healing was represented by a limp, because it wasn’t physical healing he was after. It was spiritual. He needed to learn to be a reconciler. In that same spirit, Jesus calls us to be people who struggle with God, who know we have been forgiven much, and who therefore, out of gratitude, offer forgiveness to others. Jesus calls us to be a reconciling community, for forgiveness is the only way our accounts can be settled for good. In what good and beautiful ways will you begin (or continue) the hard work of reconciliation this week? Let’s pray.