Pastoral Letter 28

Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,

Grace and peace to you all in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

I hope you all had a fantastic Father’s Day last Sunday with your families and gave thanks to God for our loving and caring fathers. This year we missed celebrating together and appreciating and honouring the Fathers, because of the prevailing circumstances. We look forward to next year and hope to have a special celebration, not only on Father’s Day, but on Mother’s Day as well. Let’s look forward to the next year with great hope and anticipation. Let us be hopeful and put our trust in the Almighty and be rest assured that things will be much better. We will get through this with God’s help.

In this time of the pandemic, though we try to have our normal lives and keep doing as much as we can, we feel the pain of not being able to communicate more, face to face, have coffee more often, have fellowship together and enjoy the friendships. We are also not able to have the holidays that we used to have in normal times. These extraordinary situations cause stress, especially those who are on their own and miss being with other people as they used to. Some are having anxiety issues and finding more and more difficult coping with the circumstances. So, we are all called to think of others; our family members whom we don’t see much, our friends, who do not live in our proximity. Let’s hold fast and be rest assured that if we miss friends and family members, God is still with us, to keep us safe and protect us.

So, please again join the other members tomorrow morning in worship, following the Order of Service. Please light a candle and give a little more time for your personal prayers and pray for others. Especially remember those who are in pain, suffering, isolated, vulnerable, lonely and under constraints. If you have any prayer points, please let me know and I will include them in the next week’s letter.

Be well and safe and if you need any kind of help or support, please do not hesitate to ask and let me know.

Continue to pray and remember the following points in your prayers:

1. Pray seeking God’s help as we go through the difficult time of pandemic, here in Australia and around the world.

2. Pray for Lebanon as the country goes through a difficult time.

3. Pray for those who are struggling financially, those who have lost loved ones and are still in pain and for those who are not well and lonely.

4. Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.

Krikor

How Many Times?

Matthew 18:21-35

Our subject today is forgiveness. How many times must I forgive someone who has hurt me, abused me, or exploited me? That is Peter’s question. How many times? Would seven times be enough? Peter thought he was being generous. After all, the rabbis of his day taught that only three times were required. They said: “Forgive three times, but not the fourth.” Peter was taking what the rabbis commanded, multiplying it by two, and adding one more for good measure! Seven times, Peter thought, should be plenty of forgiveness.

But it was not enough for Jesus. In answer to how many times we should forgive, Jesus said: “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times or seventy times seven.” I doubt we will ever be in a situation to forgive someone 77 or 490 times. No, never. But that’s not what Jesus means. What Jesus is saying is that forgiveness is limitless.

I think that sometimes we miss the point that Jesus was making. The point that Jesus was trying to make is that there should be no limit to our forgiveness. Forgiveness is at the heart of our Christian faith. We aren’t supposed to hold grudges, carry resentments or harbor bitterness. It’s a tough teaching, but it is one of the most important teachings that Jesus gave us. Forgiveness is at the centre of everything we believe about Christ. Our salvation revolves around the fact that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and with that death we are able to receive forgiveness for whatever it is we have done.

One of the first things we need to realize is that refusing to forgive has terrible consequences. Have you ever thought about what happens when we refuse to forgive? When we refuse to forgive, we keep that issue or problem inside. To refuse to forgive is to choose to carry around those feelings of bitterness, resentment, and hate.

Forgiveness is one of the best gifts we can give ourselves. Sometimes we regard forgiveness as something we do for God, or something we do because it is the nice thing to do. Naturally, all of that is true. But forgiveness is ultimately a gift we give ourselves. We need to rid ourselves of negative feelings toward a co-worker, toward a family member or a church member who has hurt us. We don’t do it for them. We have to do this for our own well-being.

Forgiveness or forgiving is a choice that we should make. We do not have to carry around feelings of bitterness, resentment, anger. It’s our choice. We have to choose to forgive.

The important thing to remember is that we always have a choice. We just need to realize it is possible to forgive another person. People do it every day. We need to see that we can choose to forgive. The damage that we do to ourselves through an unforgiving heart that brings about unresolved anger and resentment is far more deadly than any damage we are likely to inflict on one who has hurt us.

Paul says: “Bearing with each other and forgiving whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13).

And Jesus stressed the importance of forgiveness and forgiving when He was teaching His disciples to pray. He taught them to say: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Math. 6:12) or “As also we have to forgive our debtors”. Forgiveness can be a hard teaching for many people. Sometimes our hurt can go so deep, we feel we cannot let go of it. But we can and we must for our own well-being. With much prayer and a clear commitment to it, we can forgive as we have been forgiven.

But the question we are looking at today is the one Peter asked Jesus: “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? “Up to seven times?” Jesus answered him: “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times (seventy times seven).”

I am sure you have asked this question “how many times” so often for things that have happened to you.

“How many times do I have to tell you what you should do?”

“How many times do I have to explain to you the situation I am in?”

“How many times do I have to ask you to do something for me?”

“How many times do I have to beg you not to go?”

“How many times do I have to tell you not to bother me?”

The interesting thing we should notice in these questions and similar questions is the “I” and the “You”. It is always “me” the good and “you” the bad.

In this passage, Jesus speaks to Peter about forgiveness, as we said earlier. Peter asks a question: “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Seven times?”

I believe that this was a sincere question from a sincere man. Peter was genuine with his question, but it seems that he was not expecting rebuke, but rather praise. He was expecting Jesus to say to him: “Excellent Peter, you do well by forgiving your brother seven times”. Because according to the Jewish Law, Peter had the right to think that he had done something good. Even something more than what it was expected. The Jewish Law clearly stated: “If a man transgresses one time, forgive him. If a man transgresses two times, forgive him. If a man transgresses three times, forgive him. If a man transgresses four times, do not forgive him”. But Peter was taking the Law further by asking “Seven times?” meaning he was extending this law of limited forgiveness. By doing that he was hoping to receive praise from his Master. But he was shocked to hear the words of Jesus who said: “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven”. He was stunned to hear those words from the Master.

To better understand the reason for this question we must look back for a moment to the beginning of chapter 18.

Jesus was teaching in Capernaum and the disciples came to Him with an important question that had been on their minds for a while. “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?” Jesus dealt with that question from that point on. He clearly explained and told them that unless they change and become a child, they will never enter into the Kingdom of the Heaven. And whoever humbles himself as a child will be greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. And then He went on saying: “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault….” In other words, He was saying: “Settle your differences and live in harmony. How can you live with me if you can’t live with your brother?”

Peter heard these words and he immediately asked: “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Seven times?” To a man as determined and as realistic as Peter, seven times seemed to be a lot, to show forgiveness for the wrongs done to him. He might be willing to forgive seven times, but not more than that. He had already gone from three to seven. This is a conditional forgiveness.

Peter did not understand what Jesus was saying. He didn’t grasp the spiritual implications. Jesus said, “Not seven times, but seventy times seven.” Jesus was not using this as an actual number; this was a number to represent an infinite number. As was so often the case, Jesus taught Peter and the others by means of a parable.

Jesus proceeded to tell the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began, he called a man who owed him 10,000 talents, the equivalent of about $10 million in today’s figures, but couldn’t pay. The king commanded that he and his family be sold to pay the debt. The man begged for compassion and the king was moved and completely forgave the man his debt. What relief! What joy! Notice, the king did not say: “Give him more time” or “let him work out a payment plan”, he forgave the debt. But that same man had someone who owed him some money, 10 denarii, about twenty dollars and demanded payment. He seized this man by the throat and told him to pay up. And when the fellow did not, this man who had been forgiven of his debt of ten million dollars had the fellow thrown into prison for failing to pay his debt of twenty dollars. Then the king heard about this and called the man in againand exclaimed with rage: “You wicked servant, I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?”

The king was merciful, compassionate and ready to forgive unconditionally.

Our sin debt to God is a debt that we could never pay. We will never have the resources to balance the account. In the parable the king forgave the debt… God forgave us this terrible debt. Christ would pay this tremendous debt for us on the cross. But, after being forgiven, we go out and like the servant, refuse to forgive our brothers and sisters who sin against us. We have been forgiven a greater debt than we could ever hope to repay and yet we refuse to forgive our brother or sister. The king cast this servant into prison… if we cannot forgive those who sin against us; we are living our lives in a bitterness that poisons our souls. We become slaves to this hatred, this bitterness.

We have dared to express our hope with a spirit received from the gospel of our Saviour Jesus Christ who died for our sins. This is “Unconditional Forgiveness”.

Each of us today can think back upon some incident, some wrong that has hurt us. Are we still bitter, still hurting? If we haven’t forgiven that person, then we are bound just as this servant.

We might say: “I can’t forget what happened to me, how can I forgive?” Jesus said forgiveness is the first step.

But that’s what Jesus is trying to teach Peter, the disciples and all His followers.

A story is told of two friends who were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand: “Today my best friend slapped me in the face”.

They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him. After he recovered from nearly drowning, he wrote on a stone: “Today my best friend saved my life”.

His friend asked him: “After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?” The other friend replied: “When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it.”

Forgiveness keeps the sins of others and our hurts in the past. Yet Jesus understands the difficulty of such forgiveness. To keep on forgiving is a God-like characteristic. It is contrary to human nature.

Forgiving is not easy. God forgave us all our many sins. By the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our account has been marked and paid in full! But that is just the beginning. Jesus wanted His disciples to understand something: how could they live with Him if they could not live with their brother? Peter asked, how often should I forgive, Lord? Jesus said: “As often as necessary, Peter.” How can we live with the Father if we can’t live with each other? Psalm 32:1-2 says: “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.”

We are blessed when our sins are forgiven. How much greater is the blessing when we can forgive those who sin against us?

When the books of a certain Scottish doctor were examined after his death, it was found that a number of accounts were crossed through with a note: “Forgiven – too poor to pay.” But the physician’s wife later decided that these accounts must be paid in full and she proceeded to sue for money. When the case came to court, the judge asked one question. Is this your husband’s handwriting? When she replied that it was, he responded: “There is no court in the land that can obtain a debt once the word forgiven has been written.”

And that is the good news that the Gospel offers us this morning.

Amen!