Forgiveness: Freedom, Reconciliation, and Healing Communities

There was a young woman who was in the hospital dying, and she had been estranged from her family. You see her sister and she had gotten into an argument, and she had asked her parents to take her side against her sister. And her parents said, no. The two of you need to work this out together. You can do this. And so she wrote off her parents, wrote off her siblings, and never spoke to them again. [00:43:29] (33 seconds)  #EstrangedFamily

And so while she was dying, a pastor went in to talk to her to see how she was doing. And he said he found it very ironic that she said that her faith was giving her so much strength because he thought, you know, forgiveness is a key foundation to our faith. How can you celebrate your Christian faith if you can't forgive? And do you know that you are forgiven? [00:44:21] (36 seconds)  #FaithAndForgiveness

She claimed that she knew that she was forgiven and still refused to forgive her family. And in fact, her dying wish was that her family would be kept from her funeral. And so out of respect for her and love for her, they didn't go. What a heartbreaking story. What a heartbreaking sense of how in the world did this unfold? Unfold? How did she let it get so incredibly bad? And what can we do to make sure that doesn't happen again? [00:44:57] (39 seconds)  #ForgivenButUnforgiving

And I think part of this parable is a reminder, like Joy told the kids, that forgiveness is a flow. It's a cycle. And so when you have been forgiven, you can forgive others. And when you forgive others, you can accept a sense of forgiveness far more easily. And so it's this give and take, this flow that just continues on and on and on. And that's what I think the scripture was trying to demonstrate. [00:45:36] (31 seconds)  #ForgivenessIsAFlow

Jesus is telling this parable about a king and a servant who owed him a lot of money. In today's money, it would be closer to 1,000,000 than a thousand dollars, which I just thought was very cute that that was the large number, a thousand dollars. But he owed them, like, a million dollars. And so the king did what kings did then. So this was not Jesus making this up. [00:46:07] (25 seconds)  #ParableOfForgiveness

If you owed someone money, they could sell you, your family, and and take all of your possessions to repay that debt. And so Jesus was just saying, this is what happens when in the world, when we owe a debt. But then he flipped the script because the servant comes and says, please, please, please, just be patient. I will pay you everything. Just be patient and have mercy on me. [00:46:33] (30 seconds)  #DebtAndMercy

And then, of course, the other servants hear about it, and they're pretty mad. Like, how could you be forgiven this huge debt and then not forgive your fellow servant? And so they went back to the king, and the king was furious. How could I have forgiven you this huge debt and you can't forgive another? And we hear later on in another verse that, you know, the king then allowed that other servant that servant to be tormented. [00:48:05] (32 seconds)  #UnforgivenessIsPoison

And we struggle with that because we, you know, don't think of God being a tormentor. But I think it's a beautiful reminder that it's not God who torments, it's the act of unforgiveness that torments us. When we refuse to forgive someone else, I remember reading a long time ago, it's like we're drinking poison and expecting the other person to get sick. And that doesn't work, does it? [00:48:37] (30 seconds)  #ForgiveForYourself