Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them, take our minds and think with them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen.

For over fifteen years, George and Terry Elliot set a place at the table for Christmas Eve dinner—a place that always remains empty. You see, George and Terry have a son named Mike who left the house one Christmas Eve at the age of 17, and never returned. Mike was addicted to heroin. He could not grasp the helping hands of his friends and family who wanted nothing more than to help Mike beat his addiction. Well one Christmas Eve Mike decided he could no longer face his family so he left home. And, for over fifteen years, George and Terry have set Mike’s place at the dinner table hoping that the doorbell will ring one Christmas Eve and that Mike will be standing there, home at last.

Mike bummed rides halfway across the country to a city on the West Coast. For a time, he lived on the streets and continued to feed his addiction. Eventually, Mike was brought into a shelter for runaway teenagers. There he decided he did not want to die an addict on the streets, so he began a twelve-step program and beat his addiction. Then he attended a trade school and began a job with a future. He eventually married a lovely young woman and they had a child of their own. However, during all this time, Mike never made contact with his family. He could not face the shame he felt for walking out on them. He could not say he was sorry. There was nothing more that he wanted than his family’s forgiveness—to have reconciliation with those he loved. But he desperately feared that those he had left behind would never forgive him and take him back. So, he lived his life, a good life, completely disconnected from his family. However, the life he lived never felt complete. He lived with a pain in the center of his being that never subsided.

Today’s gospel lesson is about forgiveness. Peter asks Jesus, “Lord if another member of the church sins against me, how often shall I forgive? As many as seven times?” Now, if you really think about it, Peter is being reasonably generous. I don’t know about you, but if I was to catch someone, let’s say, lying to me six times. I might have a hard time really forgiving him or her when I discover that seventh lie. In fact, if I was really hurt—I mean seriously abused like Mike’s parents, George and Terry, after he walked out of the home and made no contact for fifteen years—if I suffered that kind of wound, I might not be able to forgive after the first offence much less the seventh. With that in mind, a reasonable person might hazard to guess that Jesus would respond to Peter’s question by saying, “Yeah, Peter, seven is a generous number.” But as you know, he doesn’t. Instead, Jesus takes Peter’s generosity to a place beyond imagine.

Jesus replies, “Not seven times, but, I tell you seventy-seven times.” Other translations of this passage read seventy times seven that’s 490 times. In others words, Jesus is saying that we are to forgive those who wrong us every single time they do it. And note what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “I tell you forgive seventy seven times if the person who hurts you says they’re sorry and really means it!” In other words, Jesus does not allow us to hinge our forgiveness on the other person’s acknowledgment of guilt. He just plainly says forgive—and do it every time. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we don’t have the luxury of determining who we forgive or what we forgive or when we forgive. Jesus calls for our forgiveness to be complete, absolute, and without reservation.

Now, this is a difficult teaching. It’s hard to forgive particular when we are still aching inside—as I imagine George and Terry ached every day that Mike was gone. The fact is we’ve all been hurt. What painful resentment are you carrying around in your heart? What wound in you is still festering caused by the insensitivity of a loved one? Let’s not romanticize our relationships. Imperfect people, who we undoubtedly are, are going to hurt one another. Philip Yancey, who is an Episcopalian and a Christian author, writes, “The word resentment expresses what happens if the cycle of pain and hurt goes on uninterrupted. It means literally, ‘to feel again.’ Resentment clings to the past, relives it over and over, picks each fresh scab so that the wound never heals.” So how do we end the painful cycle of resentment and learn to forgive—to really forgive those who have caused us injury.

I want to share with you three aspects of forgiveness that I believe might be helpful when trying to learn to forgive—to break the debilitating cycle of resentment. First, forgiveness is not earned. C.S. Lewis writes, “Forgiveness goes beyond human fairness; it is pardoning those things that can’t readily be pardoned at all.” In other words, forgiveness is a gracious act of the will that does not seek justice. When we choose to forgive someone who has hurt us we are not seeking retribution or payment for our pain or loss. Instead, we are saying that despite the injustice we have suffered the slate is wiped clean. You and I can begin again. I forgive you and it will be as if nothing ever happened. Forgiveness, therefore, is costly—but so is everything that matters. To forgive someone, is to become vulnerable to that person because they can, after all, hurt you again. Nonetheless, forgiveness is the necessary ingredient for reconciliation between two people. Even the possibility of a restored relationship is infinitely more valuable than the risk of being re-injured (2 xs). God thought so much so that he suffered unimaginable pain on the cross to bring us back within the reach of his loving embrace. Forgiveness is not earned it is graciously given.

Second, the power to forgive begins with God not us. The heart of the Christian Gospel is that if we come to God by faith genuinely confessing and acknowledging our sins we will be forgiven of every wrong—the great and the small—by grace. Our psalm assigned for today reads, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has [God] removed our sins from us.” On the cross, Jesus bore the sins of the whole world—even yours—even mine. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Forgiveness is not just an occasional act: it is a permanent attitude.” Therefore, the greater our appreciation is of God’s forgiveness in our own lives, the greater our potential is to move from an attitude of resentment to an attitude of forgiveness. The old adage is true we are creatures of habit. The more we embrace and own the forgiveness of God and others in our own lives the easier it becomes to forgive those who wrong us. Just as a lake needs water to flow in and out of it to keep from growing stagnant, so we need to let God’s grace and forgiveness flow into our lives and then out again to those who need our graciousness and our forgiveness. Otherwise, we too run the risk of becoming stagnant. The power to forgive begins by embracing God’s forgiveness in our lives.

The third aspect of forgiveness, and the most hopeful, is that forgiveness sets us free. Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch prisoner of war during WW II in Ravensbruk concentration camp. There, among other horrors, she witnessed her sister Betsie die at the hands of the guards. In her book “He Sets the Captives Free,” she recalls the moment when she came face to face with one of the former guards who was responsible for her sister’s death. The man had become a Christian and had come to her to ask for her forgiveness. Can you imagine that experience—this is one of the men responsible for her own sister’s death? I can’t? She goes on to say that only through silently calling out for God’s help could she fight back the instinct to hate this man and do the impossible. She writes, “At that moment, when I was able to forgive, my hatred disappeared. What a liberation! Forgiveness is the key, which unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It is the power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness. What a liberation it is when you can forgive.” Only through forgiveness can we be liberated from the pain caused by the ruptured relationships in our lives. The saying that time heals all wounds is only true in the context of forgiveness. Time does heal wounds but the clock will not start ticking until we have forgiven the person who caused us pain. Forgiveness sets us free.

Remember these three aspects of forgiveness. First, forgiveness is not earned it is given as an act of the will. Second, the power to forgive begins by owning God’s forgiveness in our own lives. And, third, forgiveness set us free from the bondage of resentment and shackles of hatred. If we choose to forgive, our relationships can be resurrected, the cycle of resentment can be broken, and we, alongside our loved ones, can become free to move forward into the undiscovered future with great anticipation and great joy.

Over fifteen years passed and another Christmas Eve arrived. As usual, George and Terry had set a hopeful place at the dinner table for their long lost son Mike. Just as the family sat down to bless the food the doorbell rang. George went to answer it. Standing in the door way was a grown man. George knew exactly who that man was. It was his son Mike. He screamed in excitement yelled for Terry and embraced his son in tears. Terry ran to the door and did the same. After a long tearful exchange, Mike said he was so sorry for walking out of that home—a long overdue apology. George and Terry told their son that he had been forgiven the moment he left. The whole in Mike’s life had immediately been filled by his parent’s unconditional forgiveness. Mike then stepped back and motioned to a car parked on the street. Inside the car, there was a woman and a young child. Terry knew she was seeing her daughter-in-law and her grandson for the first time. She immediately turned to the dinning room to set two more places at the table. Amen.

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