Forgive Me As I Forgive Others?                  3/14/10

         Finally the mystery of the ages will be solved today!   Today’s the day when you will finally learn why Presbyterians pray forgive us our “debts”, while everyone else is praying forgive us our “trespasses”.

I personally thought there must be some really interesting, deep, dark theological reason that I could turn into a really good sermon, but that’s not true.

         The most exciting thing that happened during my entire search was that everyone I asked kept coming up with wild, wonderful, and wacky guesses behind it all.  One Methodist friend told me it was because Presbyterians were always a lot more concerned about getting their debts paid off than the rest of Christendom.  And an unnamed member of the Christian Church actually had the audacity to suggest it was because debts was a shorter word than trespasses and we like getting out so early that every second saved is considered a plus in the service.  Still another person told me that it was because we just liked being different. 

         The real reason is much more boring and has more to do with history and timing than anything else, but inquiring minds want to know so here it is:

         When the Church of England broke off from the Roman Catholic Church the first thing they did was to write a service book called the Book of Common Prayer, and when they did that they translated the Lord’s Prayer using the word “trespasses”.  That book was written so early in the break off with Rome that it was done even before the King James Bible, and it was so popular that even churches that didn’t use the Book of Common Prayer kept saying “trespasses.”

         Except for the Presbyterians --- the most significant thing that happened for us when we started as a denomination was a conference called the Westminster Assembly that was held to write down the tenets of our faith --- what we believed and what made us different from our churches.  That conference happened thirty-two years after the King James Bible came out.  Well, everyone knows that the King James Version is THE version of scripture, and it translated the Lord’s Prayer using the word “debts”.  So naturally, when the Presbyterians wrote out their service books they used what they found in scripture:  “debts” not “trespasses”.  And we’ve been at it ever since.

         Until recently.  Recently, all of the denominations have tried to make sense out of this whole affair by coming together and using one word – a word we don’t like don’t like to say very much, a word that makes us uncomfortable, a word that is much closer to what Jesus originally meant than either “trespasses” or “debts” – the word “sin”.  “Forgive us our sins as we forgive others.”  Even though this is more accurate, even though we all agreed to use this, it just hasn’t caught on.  Old habits die hard, but more than that, this word “sin” gives us trouble.  It sounds so judgmental, so much worse than just “debts” and “trespasses”.  And yet we do sin --- against God and against other people and we are sinned against. 

         I like Buechner’s definition of sin: Sin is anything that pushes us away from God or other people.  Those things that we do or don’t do, say or don’t say, that hurt or wound the heart of God and wound the people around us --- people we know, people we love, people we will never meet --- people like us, including us. 

         Sin is whatever does damage to the gift of life and love, anything that hurts God’s good creation.  It must be stopped, and it must be forgiven.

         Forgiveness is so important that Christ asks us to pray, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  This has always been a frightening part of the Lord’s Prayer for me.  What happens if I don’t or can’t, or won’t forgive someone else for what they have done?  Does this mean God won’t forgive me?  That just doesn’t make sense with what I know about God.  God’s forgiveness comes without conditions, just like His love does. 

         But maybe what this does mean is that if I don’t, can’t, won’t forgive someone else, then I won’t be able to believe or accept the forgiveness that God is so willing to give to me.  Now that makes sense to me.

I can see how that would work.  If I can’t forgive what someone else has done, then how can I believe that God would forgive me for all the things I know I have done?  And so, somehow, to really believe that God has forgiven me, to make that real in my life, I must forgive as I want to be forgiven.

And how is that?  Well, I want God to forgive me forever, without the threat that the same old sins will keep on being held against me.  So, I guess I need to forgive others, and myself, without keeping some secret slate in my mind of all their past wrongs so I can bring them up whenever it’s convenient.

And, while this might sound odd, I want to be forgiven without being told that it didn’t matter, that what I did had no consequences.  I want to know that what I did was important enough to hurt God, to hurt someone else, because I am important to them.

I guess I want to know the consequences of my actions so I won’t be tempted to do it again.  I don’t want forgiveness without repentance.  The best way I can think of to explain this is in the words of a young boy I heard on a radio talk show.

He was in a detention center and he was talking about how much he appreciated the rules and structure there, and even how much he liked knowing there were consequences for breaking the rules.  At home, he said, if he stayed out too late, his Mom didn’t care.  She didn’t even ask why he broke curfew.  “She was supposed to care,” he said.  “It’s a Mom’s job to care.  So I just broke more and more rules trying to get her to care.”

For some strange reason, we need to know that forgiveness doesn’t come cheap, because when it does, it means too little.  It means WE mean too little, that no one really cared.  Which brings up another point about forgiveness.

Forgiveness doesn’t wipe away the hurt, the pain of what we’ve done.  It just says that in spite of the pain I still love you, and I’m willing to go on loving you, but don’t do it again and again and again.  When Christ looked at the woman caught in adultery, He said, “You are forgiven.  Go and sin no more.”  That’s how I want to be forgiven – knowing that I’ve done something wrong, knowing how it hurt, but knowing I am still loved in spite of it and resolving never to do it again.

For us, that kind of forgiveness comes hard:  to forgive even when our pain is deep, to go on loving in spite of that pain.  It’s hard.  Too hard at times.  So what do we do when we find that forgiveness is just too hard?

I think first we must make the intellectual decision to be willing to forgive --- to let it go --- to open ourselves up to receive the gift of forgiveness that can come from God, and to relinquish the power that comes with not forgiving, allowing ourselves to be able to forgive through God’s grace instead of our own. 

When we do that, I think we will find that forgiveness comes --- perhaps not quickly --- perhaps not immediately --- [perhaps without our even knowing.  But I do believe that if we are willing, truly willing, and pray the prayer honestly, we will find in time that we have forgiven even as we want God to forgive us.

That’s when God’s kingdom will come, when His will will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.