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Dear Friends; 
Here are some exerpts from a sermon based on Matthew 18:21-22, about forgiving.
Christianity is a religion in which the sinners have all the advantages. They can step on your foot fifty times and you are supposed to keep on smiling. They can talk bad about you every time you leave the room and it is your job to excuse them with no thought of getting even. The burden is on us, because we have been forgiven ourselves, and God expects us to do unto others as God has done unto us.
One thing that makes it hard for us to forgive is that forgiveness is not something that we do just for someone else. Forgiveness that is done for the good of someone, is not forgiveness at all, but a kind of power game. When I forgive someone, I need to forgive for my sake, too.
I think that sometimes, it has to do with our need to see that someone gets his or her just desserts. We will withhold our forgiveness in order to punish them. But this has problems of its own, doesn't it? There is a serious side-effect to it all, and it is called bitterness. Or resentment. Or what one writer has called ‘arthritis of the spirit’. Not learning how to forgive deforms us. We become the victims of our own ill will.
But forgiving is not only a good idea, or a good thing to do, although it most surely is. In the final analysis, that which creates and sustains the Christian community is forgiveness. It is the very heart of who we are.
What circumstances in our lives might Jesus address today? How might Jesus respond to 9/11? What might Jesus have to say about forgiveness and the situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians? Perhaps there are examples much closer to home, such as in our families. To forgive is not to deny the pain or the wrongness of an act. To forgive is not to excuse that which is unjust or cruel. To forgive is to make a conscious choice to be unbound by evil. When someone does an injury to us, the first injury they do is their fault but if we hold on to a feeling of vengeance and hatred in our own hearts, then that person does a second injury, and the fault for that is ours.
But Matthew is always taking us beyond the bounds of reason, like when he tells us of how Jesus said, in effect, that there is no limit to the number of times we must forgive someone. We are to learn to forgive, not on our terms, but on God's terms. Our terms are simply too small. The parable stretches everything because everything about forgiving needs to be stretched. If today you are at a point at which you simply cannot forgive, you can pray that the time will come when you can forgive. And if you cannot pray that prayer, you can be honest to God in confessing that you cannot. God can take you in whatever condition you are in. Amen.
Peace,
Rev. Pat Hall
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