The Heart of Forgiveness: Part 5

Long ago, before I came here to St. John, I taught a Bible study titled “Finding God in Harry Potter.”  It was based on the book The Gospel According to Harry Potter by Connie Neal, and I will forever remember an anecdote that Neal used in the book.  To illustrate a point that she was making, she said, “When you look at a fly through a microscope, it looks like a monster.” 

Indeed, it does.  In fact, if we saw flies from that perspective all the time, we would be terrified of them.  But we don’t.  Instead, we see flies as miserable little insects that are a minor nuisance at times and a major one at others.  We are unafraid of them, and we swat them with fly swatters with little concern for ourselves.  They are tiny and insignificant compared to how big we are in comparison.  That perspective makes a big difference–a very big difference indeed.

Sometimes in life, we are offered a choice in perspectives.  We are given an opportunity to view a problem; view a challenge; view a course of action in a different manner.  We are given a chance to change our focus; change our way of looking at things; see a new reality.  When this happens, sometimes it forever changes how we look at reality as we know it.  There are stories of atheists becoming believers; believers becoming atheists; Republicans becoming Democrats; Democrats becoming Republicans; Republicans and Democrats becoming Libertarian, and so on and so forth.  When these shifts occur, it changes the very core of a person.  They become completely and totally different, and because of this, these changes are not easy to make or undertake.  A shift in perspective is very, very difficult.

You might be wondering what this has to do with forgiveness?  Essentially everything.  To really, truly learn how to forgive requires a fundamental shift of being.  It requires a new perspective.  It requires a change of heart.

This is why the Bible does not offer any sort of 12 step process of forgiveness.  You simply can’t change a heart with any sort of program.  It’s not that easy.  I mean, let’s think about this with our working definition of forgiveness: the change in our emotional state when we choose to absorb the cost of someone else’s actions that have hurt us.  No one really wants to do this.  No one really wants to absorb the cost: the pain, the frustration, the anxiety, the misery, of someone else wronging us.  We want revenge.  We want restitution.  We want justice.  We want the other person to hurt just as badly as we hurt.  But forgiveness says, “No.”  Forgiveness says, “I will willingly bear this pain for the other person so that in the long run I will be free from it.”  Forgiveness says, “I will erase the debt that someone else owes me so that I am no longer burdened by the anger and frustration of holding onto that debt.”  That’s no easy task.  No easy task at all.  It fundamentally goes against the grain of our very being.

Generally, something has to happen to us to change our perspective.  Generally, something has to happen to us to reorient our lives and our hearts.  Generally, something has to jar us out of our anger and frustration so that we can become new beings and practice forgiveness.

This is what Jesus is fundamentally getting at when He tells the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.  We are now going to put everything together that this parable is trying to convey to us, and maybe, just maybe it will hit home to the extent that it will open our hearts and minds so that we change our perspective; change our focus; and find the path to forgiveness.

As we have worked through this parable in the past couple of weeks, we have found that God is a God of unimaginable justice and unimaginable love.  God is just.  There is no way of getting around that, and God will demand justice out of us.  This is the message of the opening scene of this parable.  A servant has racked up an extraordinary debt–10,000 talents.  In today’s money, that would be roughly $6 billion.  You’d have to spend one million dollars a day for nearly 16 and a half years in order to incur that much debt.  It’s overwhelming.  And the Master to whom this debt is owed renders judgment on the servant.  The debt is due.  Payment must be made.  That’s the way the world works.  If you owe someone, you must pay.  We all know this.  If you need a reminder, go borrow a bit of money from the bank and fail to pay a payment.  I guarantee you, you will be reminded very quickly.  The Master is rendering justice on this servant when He declares that the servant will be sold along with his family and his possessions as payment for the debt.  This is God’s justice at work.  It is only right.

But the servant is desperate.  He does not want this to happen to him.  He does not want to lose what freedom he has.  He does not want to lose his family.  He does not want to lose what he has.  His life might as well be over if these things happen.  So, the servant begs and pleads with his Master.  He falls to his knees; he kisses his Master’s feet; he lies and says, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.”  We know there is no way this can happen.  A person was lucky to make one talent in his lifetime.  This guy owes 10,000 lifetimes of debt.  There is no way he can repay.  It’s a lie.  He knows it, but he is desperate.  He has yet to understand his Master.

And speaking of the Master, the Master is deeply moved by the plight of His servant.  Despite the enormous debt; despite the lies; despite the servant’s unworthiness, the Master forgives the debt.  The Master wipes the books clean.  The Master incurs the cost of $6 billion dollars.  Can you imagine losing that much money with a simple word?  The Master’s forgiveness does not come cheap.  Not for Him at least.

And as I said last week, we know that this parable isn’t about money. It’s about sin.  It’s about our debt of sin, for we are like that servant who owes $6 billion.  We have sinned against God.  We know that God owns everything.  God created everything. He created you.  He created me. He created this world that we live on.  We know that a sin against anything or anyone is ultimately a sin against God.  Just like if our car is damaged by someone who runs into us, we are owed payment for the damages–because we own the car, we are owed when someone damages it.   Therefore if we sin against our neighbor, we sin against God.  When we sin against the planet, we sin against God.  And as we confess each Sunday, when we have an unholy thought, we sin.  When we say and unholy word, we sin. When we do an unholy deed, we sin.  But we also sin when we leave things undone.  When we do not feed the hungry, we sin. When we do not clothe the naked, we sin.  When we keep more than we need, we sin.  When we allow injustice to continue, we sin.  In this fashion. We rack up a terrible debt toward God.  Indeed, it is comparable to $6 billion worth of debt, but unlike $6 billion of inanimate currency, our sin is deadly. $6 billion can sit in a vault forever and not hurt a soul, but our sin certainly does.  Our sin harms people.  Our sin harms the planet.  Our sin harms society.  And for this reason, the Bible says, “The wages of sin is death.” 

One illustration will help us see this.  It’s an illustration that I’ve used years ago, but it is still pertinent.  There is a popular story about a man who had confessed the sin of gossip. For his penance he was told to go to the top of a nearby hill, pillow in hand, and cut it open. Shaking all the feathers into the wind, he had to go collect every last feather from the wilderness into which they had blown. Only then would his penance would be complete.  So it goes with each time we speak a word against another; we can never hope to recover all the information from whence it has been carried.  This is what our sin causes over and over and over again.

But though we deserve death, we do not have to face death, for our Master takes on human flesh.  Our Master, our God, comes to earth as Jesus of Nazareth.  He lives without sin to become the payment for our sins.  He becomes the spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  He becomes the spotless Lamb of God who takes away your sin; my sin.  God dies so that we do not have to.  God absorbs the cost of our sin.  Your debt has been paid.  It has been wiped out; forgiven.

But there is more that happens than the debt being paid.  Jesus does not only take your sin upon Himself, He also gives His righteousness to you.   2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "He [God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."  What this means is that God credits righteousness to us.  God gives us Jesus’ righteousness.  Not only is our debt wiped clean, we are given a full bank account of never ending grace. 

To show this in the parable, Jesus might have said, “And in deeper compassion for the servant, the Master granted him 10,000 talents that he may never be in debt again.”  This is the reality of life in God.  This is the reality of the grace of the Master.  It is overwhelming.  It is unbelievable.  Our debt has been paid, and we have been given the righteousness of Jesus!

And as I asked last week, so I now ask again, “What would you do if you had been forgiven such a debt?  What would you do if the Master looked at you and said, “You know that $6 billion you owe me. It’s gone.  You don’t have to pay it.  You are free to go.”?  What would your insides do?  What would you feel down deep?  What would your heart do?  And how would you feel toward the Master who had just paid that debt for you?  What would your thoughts be toward Him?  What would you think about the One who just lost $6 billion of His own money because you pleaded with Him?”  And now add: What would you think about the Master who also invested in you and credited you even more?  What would your insides do if you knew the Master then added another $6 billion to your account?  What would you feel toward your Master?

Can you feel that toward God?  Can you feel the joy welling up in you knowing that this is exactly what God has done for you in Jesus Christ?  Can you feel the deep appreciation and love of God starting at the bottom of your heart and coursing through your veins?  You have been forgiven the debt that you owed.  Jesus paid it for you.  Your account has been filled because Jesus righteousness has been given to you.  This is why grace is so doggone amazing!!

Ah, but now we are back to perspective.  For the servant who was forgiven does something rather mind boggling.  He seeks out a fellow servant who owes him a pittance–at least compared to what he once owed.  We see that forgiven servant fail to forgive.  Why?  Because all he can see is what he is owed.  All he can see is what is due him.  All he can see is what he deserves from someone else.  He has no change of heart.  Instead of focusing on what his Master has done for him; he focuses on other things.  In so doing, he is unable to extend the grace that was given to him.  And the consequences are dire.  The consequences are horrendous.  This unforgiving servant has his debt reinstated; is cast into prison; and is tortured until he can repay the debt.  And since he owes 10,000 lifetimes of debt and now has no way of earning money, that means, forever.  He can never repay what was once forgiven.  It’s tragic.

But for us, the story never has to go that far.  For us the story doesn’t have to end there.  For us, the story can end with experiencing the Master’s forgiveness.  For us the story can end when we focus on what has been done for us.  We can have that change of perspective.  We can have that change of heart, if we keep our attention; if we keep our focus in the right place.  If we realize the extent of our debt and see the graciousness of the master, we now see that the debt we are owed by others is not as significant as might think it is.  It’s not a fly in a microscope.  It’s much, much smaller.

Oh, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt.  It does.  It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make you angry.  It does.  It doesn’t mean that you haven’t been wronged.  You have.  It doesn’t mean that you will be able to forget.  You won’t.  It doesn’t mean that you will be able to let go right away.  You probably won’t.  But what it does mean is that you will not be consumed by what is owed to you.  You will not be consumed with anger.  You will not walk around in a perpetual state of depression.  Instead, you will be full of hope and joy.  You will be full of praise and thanksgiving.  You know the joy of your Master.  You know the grace of your Master.  You bask in His light.  Your focus remains on Him.  Your perspective is changed.  Your heart is changed.  And you can practice forgiveness because you have been forgiven.  Amen. 

Part 1: Why is Forgiveness so Hard?

As we begin the season of Lent, I am going to begin a sermon series on forgiveness.  Most of us realize that forgiveness is one of the cornerstones of the Christian life–one that has been proclaimed and urged for nearly 2000 years.  But it is very interesting that in the last two decades or so, a wealth of psychological studies have also come out regarding forgiveness.  Some of the conclusions are quite staggering.

Consider what Dr. Thomas G. Plante said in his article for Psychology Today titled “Seven Rules for Forgiveness,” “It is really hard to forgive, whether it is forgiving yourself or others. We all could likely use some help learning to do it better. But what we may not be aware of is that learning to forgive is good for both our mental and physical health. Quality empirical research has shown that when we are better at forgiveness we experience lower stress, tension, levels of depression, anxiety, and perhaps most important, anger. Anger is toxic to our mental and physical health, increasing our stress reactivity and our risk for illness such as heart disease. In fact, the hostility and anger associated with Type A behavior is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease. When we have trouble being able to forgive, we hold in anger, resentment, and bitterness that can harm us in multiple ways and at multiple levels.”

In another article from Psychology Today titled “The Psychology of Forgiveness”, Rubin Khoddam, a PhD student writes this, “Psychologically, when people reported higher levels of forgiveness, they also tended to report better health habits and decreased depression, anxiety, and anger levels. Even in betrayed couples, greater levels of forgiveness were associated with more satisfied relationships, a stronger parenting alliance, and children's perceptions of parenting functioning. Physiologically, higher reported levels of forgiveness were associated with lower white blood cell count and hematocrit levels. White blood cells are an integral part of fighting off diseases and infections. Together, these results highlight the importance of forgiveness - not for the other person, but for you.”

And then there are the personal testimonies by doctors.  In Salon magazine in the article “The Science of Forgiveness”, the following personal story was shared.

In 1978, Dr. Dabney Ewin, a surgeon specializing in burns, was on duty in a New Orleans emergency room when a man was brought in on a gurney. A worker at the Kaiser Aluminum plant, the patient had slipped and fallen into a vat of 950-degree molten aluminum up to his knees. Ewin did something that most would consider strange at best or the work of a charlatan at worst: He hypnotized the burned man. Without a swinging pocket watch or any other theatrical antics, the surgeon did what’s now known in the field of medical hypnosis as an “induction,” instructing the man to relax, breathe deeply, and close his eyes. He told him to imagine that his legs—scorched to the knees and now packed in ice—did not feel hot or painful but “cool and comfortable.” Ewin had found that doing this—in addition to standard treatments—improved his patients’ outcomes. And that’s what happened with the Kaiser Aluminum worker. While such severe burns would normally require months to heal, multiple skin grafts, and maybe even lead to amputation if excessive swelling cut off the blood supply, the man healed in just eighteen days—without a single skin graft.
As Ewin continued using hypnosis to expedite his burn patients’ recoveries, he added another
unorthodox practice to his regimen: He talked to his patients about anger and forgiveness. He noticed that people coming into the ER with burns were often very angry, and not without reason. They were, as he put it, “all burned up,” both literally and figuratively. Hurt and in severe pain due to their own reckless mistake or someone else’s, as they described the accident that left them burned, their words were tinged with angry guilt or blame. He concluded that their anger may have been interfering with their ability to heal by preventing them from relaxing and focusing on getting better. “I was listening to my patients and feeling what they were feeling,” Ewin told me. “It became obvious that this had to be dealt with. Their attitude affected the healing of their burns, and this was particularly true of skin grafts. With someone who’s real angry, we’d put three or four skin grafts on, but his body would reject them.” Whenever a patient seemed angry, Ewin would help them forgive themselves or the person who hurt them, either through a simple conversation or through hypnosis.
Once Ewin began helping his patients forgive, he noticed even more improvement. “What you’re thinking and feeling affects your body,” he would explain to his patients, using the analogy of something embarrassing causing someone to blush. “What you’re feeling will affect the healing of your skin, and we want you to put all your energy into healing.”...“I’d say, ‘You can still pursue damages through an attorney. You’re entitled to be angry, but for now I’m asking you to abandon your entitlement and let it go, to direct your energy toward healing, and turn this over to God or nature or whoever you worship. It’s not up to you to get revenge on yourself or someone else. When you know at a feeling level that you’re letting it go, raise your hand.’ Then I’d shut up, they’d raise their hand, and I’d know that skin graft was gonna take.”

The science behind forgiveness is powerful.  Very powerful.  However, that does not mean that forgiveness is easy.  Every article I read acknowledged this.  Every. Single. One.  And I found it interesting that few of the articles delved into this aspect very deeply.  Why is it so hard to forgive?  We know that forgiveness is good for you.  As Christians, we know forgiveness is commanded by God–in fact when we pray the Lord’s prayer, we say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  Now, usually, we think this means, “God, forgive us so that we can forgive others.”  However, a more proper reading of the Greek suggests that we are coming to God and saying, “God, forgive me just like I forgive others.”  In other words, in the overall picture, God’s forgiveness will be based in some form on how we forgive others.  All this is to say, is that we know that we are supposed to forgive, but we struggle mightily with actually forgiving.  Today, I’d like to wrestle with why that is the case, and we will begin that wrestling with defining forgiveness.

What exactly is forgiveness?

Okay, bear with me here because I’m going to give a clinical definition of forgiveness published in an article titled “Forgiveness: A Sampling of Research Results”:  Forgiveness is a process (or the result of a process) that involves a change in emotion and attitude regarding an offender. Most scholars view this an intentional and voluntary process, driven by a deliberate decision to forgive (6, 8, 26, 38). This process results in decreased motivation to retaliate or maintain estrangement from an offender despite their actions, and requires letting go of negative emotions toward the offender. Theorists differ in the extent to which they believe forgiveness also implies replacing the negative emotions with positive attitudes including compassion and benevolence (8, 17, 23, 25, 26). In any event, forgiveness occurs with the victim’s full recognition that he or she deserved better treatment, one reason why Mahatma Gandhi contended that “the weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.”1

Okay, let’s try and break that down a little bit.  Forgiveness is:
1. A change in emotion and attitude toward someone who has hurt you.
2. It’s a process that a person undertakes voluntarily and deliberately.
3. It is a process that a person undertakes with the goal to forgive someone.
4. The process leads you to where you don’t want to hurt the person who has hurt you.
5. The process leads you to get rid of negative emotions.
6. You recognize that you deserved better treatment, but you still let go anyway.
7. This is extremely difficult for a “weak” person to do.

Okay.  That’s a scientific view.  Personally, I might be able to understand forgiveness a little better, but it still doesn’t help me understand why it is so difficult to forgive.  So, let’s turn now to a biblical understanding of forgiveness.  The Greek word used for forgiveness is Aphesis, “which often has the legal sense of “release” from office, marriage, obligation, etc. as also from debt or punishment.”  I would like us to particularly focus on that last piece of the definition–a release from debt or punishment, here is why I think it is particularly hard for us to forgive.

Please note that I am not disputing anything that scientists have said about forgiveness, I’m simply adding a piece to the puzzle. Forgiveness is all the things scientists have said, but they have failed to mention that when you forgive someone, you release them from their debt to you.  Now, what does that mean?

First, let’s think about it in terms of a financial transaction.  Let’s say that one day, you needed to buy a car.  You don’t have enough money to buy a car, so you go to the bank and take out a loan.  You are now in debt, right?  Well, you purchase the car, and then you have a series of set backs.  You are unable to pay your car payment.  You go to the bank and explain your situation.  It just so happens that the CEO of the bank overhears your plight and has compassion on you.  He comes up to you and says, “I am terribly sorry to hear about all that has happened to you.  I tell you what, we are going to write off your loan.”  What did you just receive?  Forgiveness.  You have been forgiven your debt.  But here is the question: who paid the debt?  Who absorbed the cost?  The bank did.  The bank paid for your car in forgiving your debt. 

Now, let’s think about it in terms of an emotional transaction.  Let’s say that a coworker of yours spreads malicious rumors about you.  Soon, everyone is looking at you suspiciously.  Where once you had numerous friends around the office, suddenly you find yourself eating lunch alone.  Finally, someone asks you if the rumors are true.  You are taken aback at what was said about you.  You discover the source of the rumors and are even further taken aback at the person who started them.  You are hurt.  You are wounded.  Your reputation has taken a nasty shot.  And you decide to forgive.  You decide that instead of seeking revenge and restitution, you will simply go about your life and your job.  You know that something is owed to you, but rather than demand it, you move on with your life.  Now, you were owed a debt.  This time, it wasn’t financial, was it?  It was emotional.  Who paid the debt?  Who absorbed the cost?  You did.  You paid the price for someone else’s wrong. 

Do you now see why forgiveness is so difficult?  Do you see now why, even though we know it is good for us; even though we know it is commanded by God; even thought it is a cornerstone of the Christian life; it is extremely hard to practice.  It is extremely hard to accomplish.  We pay for someone else’s wrong doing.  So, let’s put forth a working definition of forgiveness that will guide us for the next several weeks: Forgiveness is the change in our emotional state when we choose to absorb the cost of someone else’s actions that have hurt us. 

Given that definition, it is easy to see why the old adage is so true: to err is human, but to forgive is divine.  Indeed, forgiveness is divine, and I invite you to journey with me in the next few weeks as we see this: as we see divine forgiveness and then how it translates into human forgiveness.  In invite you to join me as we learn how to forgive.  Amen.

1. American Psychological Association, (2006). Forgiveness: A Sampling of Research Results. Washington, DC: Office of International Affairs. Reprinted, 2008.