Realized Forgiveness: The Key
Matthew 18:21-35
by Jim Westmoreland
In the "The Star-Splitter", a poem by Robert Frost he reflects:
But forgiveness is not our most natural instinct. Getting even is much more natural. It is a rut you can get into and stay in. Forgiveness is intentional and goes against our hurts.If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long
To get so we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving.(1)
Through Peter's discussion with Jesus we find out that our forgiveness is to be without limits. Not three times as scribal law prescribed. Not seven times as Peter generously expanded it. Seventy-times seven is Jesus way of saying, don't bother to count. Just keep on forgiving.
The second section exposes our own weakness and hypocrisy. While we want God's forgiveness, we have serious troubles in giving forgiveness to others. Jesus tells us a story about a man who owed a great debt, equal to 15 years salary times 10,000, to the king. When he couldn't repay it on time, the king ordered that he, his wife and children and all of his possessions be sold to pay against his debt. He pleaded to the king for mercy, which the king granted to him. But, instead of receiving the cup of mercy and sharing it with others in his life, he found someone who owed him an insignificant amount, a denarii, one day's wage, and had him thrown in jail when he couldn't pay it.
People notice what we do, both the good and the bad. They reported to the king what had happened. The king was angry and handed him over to be tortured until he could repay the debt. How that works, I'll never figure out!
I've been thinking about the idea of God (the king) taking back forgiveness as some suggest, and it presents a tough theological problem. For me the focus is that God views the unforgiving servant's behavior in being unforgiving and judges the man for that behavior. God's judgment is not an undoing of a past forgiveness, but a judgment on a subsequent behavior, made more onerous by having been pardoned such a great debt himself.
As I look at the breakdown at what should have been an overflowing cup of mercy passed from one debtor to another, I wonder why passing the cup of mercy did not happen. For me it seems that forgiveness was not realized. Realized Forgiveness is the key . . . to forgiving. The man was off the hook for his debts, but it was a heartless transaction for him. Something had happened, but he still did not know mercy nor show it to others. And so, the harshness that was in his heart before was still there. Mercy, or forgiveness, had been unrealized by him, and he was unchanged. What does it take to change us?
The following is a story from Guideposts Magazine, as told by nurse Sue Kidd. The hospital was unusually quiet that bleak January evening, quiet and still like the air before a storm. I stood in the nurses' station on the 7th floor and glanced at the clock. It was 9 p.m. I threw a stethoscope around my neck and headed for room 712, last room on the hall. Room 712 had a new patient. Mr. Williams. A man all alone. A man strangely silent about his family.
As I entered the room, Mr. Williams looked up eagerly, but dropped his eyes when he saw it was only me, his nurse. I pressed the stethoscope over his chest and listened. Strong, slow, even beating. Just what I wanted to hear. There seemed little indication he had suffered a slight heart attack a few hours earlier.
He looked up from his starched white bed. "Nurse, would you-" He hesitated, tears filling his eyes. Once before he had started to ask me a question, but had changed his mind. I touched his hand, waiting. He brushed away a tear. "Would you call my daughter? Tell her I've had a heart attack. A slight one. You see, I live alone and she is the only family I have." His respiration suddenly speeded up. I turned his nasal oxygen up to eight liters a minute. "Of course I'll call her." I said, studying his face. He gripped the sheets and pulled himself forward, his face tense with urgency. "Will you call her right away-as soon as you can?" He was breathing fast, too fast. "I'll call her the very first thing," I said, patting his shoulder. I flipped off the light. He closed his eyes, such young blue eyes in his 50-year-old face.
"Nurse," he called, "could you get me a pencil and paper?" I dug a scrap of yellow paper and a pen from my pocket and set it on the bedside table. I walked back to the nurses' station and sat in a squeaky swivel chair by the phone. Mr. Williams daughter was listed on his chart as the next of kin. I got her number from information and dialed. Her soft voice answered.
"Janie, this is Sue Kidd, a registered nurse at the hospital. I'm calling about your father. He was admitted tonight with a slight heart attack and . . ."
"No!" she screamed into the phone, startling me. "He's not dying is he?"
"His condition is stable at the moment," I said, trying hard to sound convincing..
"You must not let him die!" she said. Her voice was so utterly compelling that my hand trembled on the phone.
"He is getting the very best care."
"But you don't understand," she pleaded. "My daddy and I haven't spoken in almost a year. We had a terrible argument on my 21st birthday, over my boyfriend. I ran out of the house. I haven't been back. All these months I've wanted to go to him for forgiveness. The last thing I said to him was, `I hate you.'" Her voice cracked and I heard her heave great, agonizing sobs. I sat, listening, tears burning my eyes. A father and a daughter, so lost to each other. Then I was thinking of my father, many miles away. It has been so long since I had said, "I love you. As Janie struggled to control her tears, I breathed a prayer. "Please, God, let this daughter find forgiveness."
"I'm coming. Now! I'll be there in 30 minutes," she said. Click. She had hung up.
I tried to busy myself with a stack of charts on the desk. I knew I had to get back to 712. I hurried down the hall nearly in a run. I opened the door. Mr. Williams lay unmoving. I reached for his pulse. there was none. "Code 99. Room 712. Code 99. Stat." The alert was shooting through the hospital within seconds after I called the switchboard through the intercom by the bed.
Mr. Williams had had a cardiac arrest. With lightning speed I leveled the bed and bent over his mouth, breathing air into his lungs. I positioned my hands over his chest and compressed. One, two, three. I tried to count.
"O God," I prayed. "His daughter is coming. Don't let it end this way." The door burst open. Doctors and nurses poured into the room pushing emergency equipment. A doctor took over the manual compression of the heart. A tube was inserted through his mouth as an airway. Nurses plunged syringes of medicine into the intravenous tubing. I connected the heart monitor. Nothing. Not a beat. My own heart pounded. "God, don't let it end like this. Not in bitterness and hatred. His daughter is coming. Let her find peace."
"Stand back," cried a doctor. I handed him the paddles for the electrical shock to the heart. He placed them on Mr. William's chest. Over and over we tried. But nothing. No response. Mr. Williams was dead. A nurse unplugged the oxygen. One by one they left, grim and silent.
How could this happen? How? When I left the room, I saw his daughter against the wall by a water fountain. A doctor who had been inside 712 only moments before, stood at her side, talking to her, gripping her elbow. Then he moved on, leaving her slumped against the wall. Such pathetic hurt reflected from her face. Such wounded eyes. She knew. The doctor had told her that her father was gone.
I took her hand and led her into the nurses' lounge. We sat on little green stools, neither saying a word. She stared straight ahead at a pharmaceutical calendar, glass-faced, almost breakable-looking. "Janie, I'm so sorry," I said. It was pitifully inadequate.
"I never hated him, you know. I loved him," she said.
God, please help her, I thought. Suddenly she whirled toward me. "I want to see him."
My first thought was, Why put yourself through more pain? Seeing him will only make it worse. But I got up and wrapped my arm around her. We walked slowly down the corridor to 712. Outside the door I squeezed her hand, wishing she would change her mind about going inside. She pushed open the door. We moved to the bed, huddled together, taking small steps in unison. Janie leaned over the bed and buried her face in the sheets. I tried not to look at her, at this sad, sad good-bye. I backed against the bedside table. My hand fell upon a scrap of yellow paper. I picked it up. It read:
My dearest Janie, I forgive you. I pray you will also forgive me. I know that you love me. I love you too. Daddy
The note was shaking in my hands as I thrust it toward Janie. She read it once. Then twice. She sobbed for a few minutes. Then, she began breathing slower and deeper. Her tormented face grew radiant, and peace began to glisten in her eyes. She hugged the scrap of paper to her breast.
"Thank You, God," I whispered, looking up at the window. A snowflake hit the window and melted away, gone forever. Life seemed as fragile as a snowflake on the window. But thank You, God, that relationships, sometimes fragile as snowflakes, can be mended together again . . . but there is not a moment to spare.
Nurse Kidd said she crept from the room and hurried to the phone. She called her father to say, "I love you."(2)
Who has hurt you? Who are you estranged from? Who do you have trouble picking up the phone to call? This morning or before this day is over, let us fully receive God's forgiveness. Let it not be just a transaction to cancel debts, but let it be a heartfelt, stone-rolling, cloud-moving, life-changing, kind of forgiveness, one that we can say is fully realized. When we have received and drunk from the cup of mercy, then let us share the cup of mercy with any who have offended and wronged us. You see, the cup of mercy gets passed around only when forgiveness is realized. Amen.
Century Christian Church, September 11, 2005 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
www.centurychristian.org
1. Robert Frost, "The Star-Splitter," The Literature Network, http://www.online-literature.com/frost/756/.
2. Guideposts Magazine, 1979.