Sermon – Trespassing Debts with Debtors
Leviticus 25:25-28; Matthew 6:5-13
Farmville Presbyterian Church
July 23, 2023
– Forgiving those who owe us
An older, nervous man was nearing the end of his life. He called his doctor, his pastor, and his lawyer and gave them each an envelope with $50,000. He asked each of them as trusted people to hold his money that he might take some cash with him into the next life. When it was time, they were each to place the envelopes in the coffin with his remains.
The next week, the gentleman died and each of his trusted friends placed their envelopes in the coffin before it was buried. Months later, the three men met by coincidence. The pastor began by asking for their forgiveness. “I need to confess that instead of placing the entire amount in the coffin, I only put $12,000 in there. It seemed like such a waste, and there is a children’s hospital being built as a mission project that really needed those funds.” The doctor then answered, “I also need to confess that I only put $10,000 in the coffin. The rest I used to start a free clinic for underserved, at-risk populations.” The lawyer was furious with them both, “I cannot believe you withheld some of the funds. I placed my envelope with the entire $50, 000 as a cashier’s check in the coffin.”
We are here today to appreciate the gift of forgiveness, even for lawyers. There are three types of people in the world: those who understand the importance and need for forgiveness – those who really get it; those who don’t at all but instead hold onto grudges and hurts and never seem to need to ask for themselves; and then, there are those who like to think they are people of forgiveness but who take for granted just how powerful and precious the gift is.
In fact, I will go ahead and tell you that forgiveness is the single most profound way that we can be blessed and also bless others, but it is not an easy thing to do.
The first people, the people who absolutely get this, the ones who can preach this sermon better than I can, are the ones who have been to the cross in their own lives. They are the ones who have been utterly broken, the ones who know how wrong and sinful and evil human beings can be, but they have found help and hope in the grace of Jesus. They still have the scars, but they also know deep and abiding grace. The wounds have been healed; they have been made whole. These people have the most beautiful stories of redemption and God’s love. You can hear the emotion in their stories as they express their love for God’s strong help. It is easy to for them to reflect God’s heart in the lives of others. There is that parable about a king who forgives his servant a great amount of debt, but the servant holds his creditor accountable for what he owes him, even sending him to prison for his inability to pray. The king, of course, is furious when he learns what the servant has done. That is not the way God has designed the world.
In fact, from the very beginning, God has designed a world for forgiveness. The Leviticus passage is a fascinating example of the Bible passages that we ignore. This is the Jubilee section in which the children of God are supposed to give each other time to repay their debts, but eventually, they just let the debts go if people are unable to pay it back. When we are indebted to each other, it should never be a terrible burden. It should never break us or keep us in poverty.
I work pretty hard to be that first kind of person that I mentioned, but I know I grew up more as the second. You may have, too. When we are younger, I think it is easier to believe that basically we are good and do what is right as far as we can tell. Pride, ego, and ignorance prevent us from admitting our faults and failings. Everyone else is full of errors or mistakes, but we are different. We are right and everyone else is wrong. That is an overgeneralization, but this attitude is on clear display in politics, for example, where people have such a hard time admitting their errors. And when they do try to apologize, it is a half-hearted, political speech kind of apology. It is seen as weakness to express our need for forgiveness. We have even had a former president who publicly admitted that he never asks God for forgiveness. Our Prayer of Confession is just one opportunity each week, and I say OPPORTUNITY, to publicly express our deep need to be steered closer to the will and ways of God. There are plenty of people who see no need for it, who find that prayer a pointless gesture. I cannot help but feel differently. I am a sinner and have offended my Lord and our Lord’s people. I need help all the time, and we have a God who freely gives that help.
Time for that help: I think most of us understand that this is important from time to time, but we lose just how tremendous a gift this. We take a narrow view of forgiveness and think of it as just one blessing among others. This is literally the one way that we can be most like God. I cannot give, create, speak, or know like God, but I can have a heart of radical forgiveness. Jesus tells us how important forgiveness is right here in this prayer by dwelling on it again and again. He ties our forgiveness to how we forgive others.
How many times have you been in that situation where you are praying the Lord’s Prayer out in public, and you are the one person trying to say debts and debtors (instead of trespasses)? I do not understand this as the King James Version even has debts and debtors, but there is a reason for those words. The words that Matthew uses is literally about money. It is impressing on us that same Jubilee idea of financially forgiving each other. In fact, I have heard it said you should never personally loan money to anyone else without the willingness to forgive the debt. That is not the easiest thing to hear because that is not the way the world works, but we have never been asked to be like the world, have we?
Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer says “sins,” and with “trespasses” that Matthew also uses after the prayer, we see the larger, more general scope of our need for forgiveness. Anytime we wrong someone else in any way, that is a kind of debt. If someone wrongs you, they owe you for that injury, insult, or harm. Our society is obsessed with the legal system’s favorite girls’ name which is also reflected on every other highway sign: sue, sue, sue. Ok, Johnny Cash would object to my use of Sue as strictly feminine, but regardless, personal injury lawyers used to be the lowest form of lawyering – ambulance chasers. Once, however, people realized how lucrative it could be to sue, it became huge. I don’t need to tell you how big some of those dollar amounts for court awards can be, but we do need to consider how we as followers of Jesus hold what people owe us, however we might feel they owe us.
Imagine a yard sale at 2:00 p.m. You had 8:00 a.m. as the start time, but people still came an hour early to sort through your stuff needing another home. The day rolled on, but there is always stuff sitting around at the end that no one seems to want. At that point, you just want to get rid of it. I cannot remember how many times I have done a run to Goodwill or made the leftovers “free to a good home.” Give it away. Holding on to resentments, debts, things that you feel you are owed for how you were treated in life are leftovers at a yard sale. Give it away. As freely as God has given to us (including mercy), we should also give to others.
This is why it is tough to be in that third kind of person category. Remember them – the ones who think they get forgiveness but might not? These folk don’t think enough about what God has done for us, what God has given to us, or how we are invited to follow suit. Even the best Prayer of Confession is not going to stick with us for long as we contemplate how our sins against God and neighbor are ripe for forgiveness. Sure, we cannot dictate the forgiveness of others toward us, but our forgiveness toward others is entirely on us. It is completely in our power.
And nothing can stop us. As long as we harbor resentment and hold our debts, we are giving power to those other things, letting them dictate our lives. The 1995 movie Dead Man Walking was based on the true story of Debbie Cuevas, her boyfriend at the time, and a couple of very bad people who found the teenage couple in a parked car. They kidnapped the couple, brutalized the boy, leaving him for dead, and they kept the girl for more than a day, repeatedly abusing her. When she finally got away, she was consumed with rage toward her abusers. She kept thinking that she would find peace after conviction, sentencing, and execution, but the peace never came. As much hurt as she carried, she realized that it was a burden she chose to keep. She was a Christian, but her faith had never been tested as it was then. When she did extend the grace of God to those who had given her evil, when she forgave them in her heart, she finally found hope and peace for herself. She has since been a champion for forgiveness, the kind of forgiveness that seems impossible but is freely there for us all to share.
Giving away our debts frees us from having to keep the tally. It frees us from having to keep the record, what people owe us. It frees us from having to collect in a world where too much will never be collected. Justice is ultimately in God’s hands. Forgiveness is in ours. Freedom is for us all.
Let’s pray… Thank you Jesus for what you have done to make this day possible, what you have done to make our lives possible, what you have done to make this congregation possible, what you have done to give us the true and ultimate freedom that we know. Thank you for the grace that is our life and hope and way. See through the hardness and tightness of our lives that harbors resentment, hate, and debts. Show us a better way to reflect your heart in this world. Show us how much we can do to be like you, the very one who forgave the people who were nailing you to the cross. In your life, we live; in your freedom, we forgive. To you be the glory. Amen.