That "Trespasses" Thing!

Text:  Matthew 18:21-35

Theme:  “That ‘Trespasses’ Thing”

14^th Sunday After Pentecost

September 14, 2014

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.[a]

23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold[b] was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.[c] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Once should be enough.  If someone has done a bad, bad thing to you, then, by all means, be a fine and upstanding Christian.  Forgive them.  Just once.   Then get on with your life.  You’ve done the right thing and done your duty.  There’s no need to belabor the point.  

That bad, bad things do happen is obvious to just about anyone who is not a moral “Rip Van Winkle” who has been sound asleep as the world turns.  Read the papers.  Watch the news.  Most recently, we’ve had bad, bad behavior referenced in the NFL, and the media is right there to tell us all about Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson.   The video with the former has gone viral.   Who is next?  We don’t know.  We surmise that bad, bad things happen every day – and it doesn’t just involve popular, professional athletes with seven figure contracts.   Even John and Jane Doe can do bad, bad things in an elevator when they’re falling down drunk.

Eventually, a bad, bad thing – or things – might happen to us, and we will then be positioned to offer forgiveness (the Christian thing to do).  That would be our Christian duty, right?  Brian Birdwell, the military officer who suffered third degree burns over a significant percentage of his body after the plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, was asked whether, as a Christian, he could forgive the perpetrators.  His answer – and you could almost hear a pin drop as he prepared to give it – was:  there’s no one to forgive; they all died in the crash.  Did he evade the question?  Whatever the case, sin and forgiveness is a tough thing.  It’s best to know the basic duty. 

Peter was big into duty.  In today’s Gospel, he just wants to make sure he knows exactly what that duty entails.  The subject is forgiveness.   Forgiveness, among other things, is a response to the bad, bad thing.  The Bible calls it “sin”.  Nobody really likes to talk about that anymore.  There’s even a book with a telling title:  Whatever Became of Sin?  Other terms used are “trespasses” and/or “debts”.  In the history of the Lord’s Prayer, some have used “trespasses” – as in “forgive us our trespasses”.  We Presbyterians use “debts” – as in “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”  This runs with today’s Gospel.   “Sin” works just fine – as in “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”   “Sin”, the Bible declares, “is lawlessness.”  Linguistically, it’s “missing the mark”, not hitting the target – with the mark and target being perfection.  “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” declares Jesus.    Believe it or not, debates have raged over the semantics of sin.  I call it  “That ‘Trespasses’ Thing.”  .  Meanwhile, as Christ’s church fusses over words, bad, bad things continue to happen. 

We are not hard-wired to respond to bad, bad things with forgiveness.  What runs roughshod through our heads and hearts, almost by nature, is justice and fairness.  In other words, “Don’t get mad (when a bad thing happens to you), get even.”  It doesn’t matter how long it takes you; just settle the score.   Billy the Kid did a bad, bad thing in the movie, Chisum. He shot the sheriff.  (He didn’t shoot the deputy.)  But the real bad guy was the antagonist, Lawrence G. Murphy.  Our protagonist, John Chisum (played by John Wayne), responds to Mr. Murphy:  “What Billy did balanced the books for now.  But if you, or any one of your men, crosses my land, touches one of my cows, or does anything to that store, I’m not going to the sheriff, the governor, or the president of the United States:  I’m comin’ to see you.”  In other words, he was going to render justice if any bad, bad things, sins, trespasses, or debts came his way again.  Forgiveness wasn’t part of the equation. 

Peter knew that forgiveness was – or, at least, would be – part of the equation, and he wants to do his duty.  But before that, he needs to fine tune and tweak just what that duty is.  So out comes the question:  “How many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?  Up to seven times?” Good job, Peter.  Take a shot at the answer!   Seven, of course, is the Biblical number of completeness.  Jesus fires back:  “Seventy-seven” times.   And here is where the text isn’t quite mathematically clear.  It could be seven times seven times which would be forty nine.  Or it could be seventy times seven times which would be four hundred ninety.  So if you really want to go all out, forgive the person four hundred ninety times.  But if he/she does a bad, bad thing for the four hundred ninety first time, then, by all means, don’t get mad; get even.  There’s only so much a person can take, only so much forgiveness he/she can grant.  Let’s be real!

Sensing a teaching moment, Jesus tells a story.  The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wished to settle accounts. He had extended credit; he wants it back.   A man owed the king a big pile of money that he could not repay.  The king orders that the man – and his family! – be sold into slavery to pay the debt.  The man whose credit cards were maxed out (to put it in contemporary vernacular) did not beg for forgiveness.  You see, that wasn’t part of the equation.   All he wanted was patience.  He knew that the world was pretty much ruled by justice and fairness and all that.  He would play his part; he would do his duty.  He just needed time to pay down the debt.  Maybe there was a Dave Ramsey “Financial University” course he could take, etc.

The king, or master, had no patience to give.  What he did, immediately, was cancel the entire debt.  In short, he forgave him.  To use another popular phrase, the king “ate” the debt – swallowed it whole.

Before Peter and the others even had time to marvel at this all but ridiculous, unheard of gesture, Jesus goes on with more of the story.  It turns out that the forgiven servant had a servant of his own who owed him some money.  Compared to the debt the first servant owed, it was chicken feed or pennies on the dollar.  The servant of the servant owed a dollar; the first servant owed one hundred thousand dollars.  You get the idea.  What does the first servant do?  Throws his own servant into jail until he could pay off the debt.  How can you pay off a debt when you’re in jail?  How many license plates do you have to make?

The king gets wind of this, and he is enraged.  The servant who received forgiveness gave none.  That’s not how it works for this king.  That’s not how it works in this kingdom.  For those who receive mercy but then share none of it with others, there is only jail and torture to look forward to. 

The great news of the Gospel, the essence of Christianity if you will, is that it was Jesus who ended up in the jail and the torture of the cross.  He ate the debt; He swallowed it whole.    All of the debt He chose to bear because, in His scheme of things, mercy was the name of the game. 

Justice can be quantified and measured out.  But mercy cannot.  As with the Gospel itself, there is always more. 

I have said these things this morning not so that you might do your duty.  I’ve said them so that we might marvel at the infinite mercy of our creator, our redeemer, our king, and our friend.  So, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Amen.