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Rev. Will Malambri - "Remembering and Forgiving" · Belin Memorial UMC

• Belin Memorial UMC: hear it now by standing to receive the gospel in word. Then Peter came and said to Jesus, Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy seven times. For this reason, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand. A thousand talents was brought to him, and as he could not pay, the Lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and his children and all his possessions, and a payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, Have patience with me and I will repay you everything. And out of pity for him the Lord of that slave released him and forgave him his debt. But that but that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him by the throat he said to him, Pay me what you owe. Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you. But he refused. Then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. The fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported that their l to their lord all that had taken place. Then the Lord summoned him and said to him, You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have mercy on your fellow slave as I had mercy on you? And in anger his Lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So the Heavenly Father will also do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. It's a day when we're thinking about forgiveness, but before we do I want to get ahead of some rumors that may be out there. I need to tell you that Sally and I put our house on the market this week. Now, if I were not United Methodists, we were not a Methodist pastoral family, I wouldn't feel the need to tell you that. But in the Methodist world, when a pastor says, I'm moving, people quickly move to the idea that they're moving to a new church. So I want to tell you that is not what is behind our decision. Please hear that clearly. Our intention is to move closer to Blaine Memorial, not further away. We want to be part of this church family for a long, long time. That's the reaction I was hoping for, thank you. We're moving because we were told that if we put into the contract that we come with the house, it would not sell as quickly. So we put it on the market. It's been a great home for us. We have enjoyed it. It's right between where the two schools our children wanted to go to high school are. It's been the kind of house that was big enough for them and their friends to enjoy these years, but now they're off in college. And we don't want to send them the wrong message that there's room for them to return to. So it's going on the market. Besides, Sally and I needed a project. You've been concerned about what we would do as empty nesters. Well, we figured out what we would do. We'd refresh our nest so we could get rid of our nests, so we could get another nest nearer here. Preparing for that has been a good distraction for us. It's also been a little bit costly. Like this Fast Friday night when I was trying to vacuum. portion of the house that doesn't get vacuumed as often. I was leaning in to get that. The vacuum leaned with me, the lamp leaned with it. Psh shattered. Sally stepped into the kitchen, looked at it, walked out. Few minutes later she came back and said, It's all right, I broke the peppermill last week. I said thank you for being so forgiving. By the way, I broke the soap dish this morning too. She was gracious about both. She always has been. That's we wouldn't our marriage would have shattered if she took every one of my mistakes and climb clumsiness and held it against us me. Sh she's always been forgiving about those kinds of things. That's where I'm grateful that she is one who does not keep a record of wrongs. Is able to forgive and forget. Sometimes forgiving and forgetting is the right way to treat. another. But not always. Sometimes we need to remember. Sometimes it's not good to forget. It's one thing to lose a lamp in a soap dish, even in a single day. Some things you live with. They cost a little, but they're not harmful. Other actions do harm and need to be remembered so as to not be repeated. Sometimes it's not forgive and forget, sometimes it's forgive and remember for everyone's sake. There are at least two challenges to that. The actual forgiving is difficult for us. So is figuring out which things I should remember and which things I should Both are difficult. Forgiveness is difficult. If it were not, Jesus would not have commanded us that we are to forgive as we've been forgiven. He would not have prayed for forgiveness because he knew that we need to be forgiven and that we need to forgive. He would not have taught us to pray for it, recognizing that it's by God's grace that we are forgiven and able to forgive. And we'd not affirm this belief in forgiveness as we did this very day when we get up together and say the Apostles' Creed, this defining mark of what it means to be a person in the family of God. So being people of forgiveness is part of our calling as Jesus followers, but that does not make it easy. There is a lot about following Jesus that is not easy. When Jesus says that to be his disciple means to take up our cross, that reminds us how heavy a load it can be to be one of his followers. Forgiveness is one of the heavier parts of it. Which is why remembering is not antithetical to forgiveness. It's often essential. Th there's surely times when Jesus forgave and forgot. Scripture tells us that as far as the East is from the West, so far God removes our transgressions from us. That is a long, long away, even for God to go back and and bring those forward. It's model for us about how we might forgive. But so is this. Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of those who betrayed him, denied him, mocked him, put him on the cross, tortured him, killed him. After he was resurrected, Jesus showed the disciples the injury in his side and in his hands. He did not forget what happened to him on the other side of the cross. Jesus after he was raised asked Peter three times, Do you love me? A sure reminder that Peter had denied him three times before. You don't think Jesus remembered? How could he forget? Y yeah, but that's Jesus. We argue, what else would he do but forgive even when he remembered? Show me some less divine someone who's less divine who's forgiven something big, like like say a family's betrayal. How about ten family members' betrayal, as Pastor Sandra read to us today from Genesis? How about Joseph, whose brothers were planning to kill him until they realized they could get some money for him, so they sold him into slavery, then lied to their father about what had happened to him, causing their father additional grief in his life. Then when Joseph figured it all out, lied to Joseph again about what they said their father had said, all to protect themselves. And Joseph. Forgave that. Yeah, but those are Bible people. What about in the real world? you mean like the Amish people who immediately forgave the man who walked into their one room schoolhouse and killed the five schoolgirls? Or or the many family members of the Mother Emmanuel AME shooting who forgave their murderer, or Erica Chirk Kirk whose impulse was to say that Jesus calls her to forgive Charlie's assassin. Horrible events that are worth remembering so that we can do our best to prevent them from happening again, and are worth remembering so that we have real models of real forgiveness. Listen, I don't know what horrible event has happened in your life that feels unforgivable. I I do know that Jesus' command to forgive is not a command to pretend like it ha never happened, not a command to perpetuate it happening again. His command to forgive is so that the harm won't be multiplied. Forgiveness does not multiply harm, it contains it. To hold a grudge, to not forgive, as Anne Lamont wrote, is like drinking rat poisoning poison and hoping the rat. We poison ourselves when we refuse to forgive. We multiply the harm done to us when we hold grudges. Forgiveness is as much for the one who has been harmed as it is for the one who did the harm. I know grown people who will not go back to their hometown because of something that happened to them fifty years ago there. They they fixate on the bad that happened. don't remember all the good. I'm confident that the people who did those bad things to them rarely if ever think of those things fifty years later. That's all the ones who were harmed can think of. The ones harmed let the harm be multiplied. If they were to forgive, i it may or may not be appreciated by the one who did the harm along But it might just free them from this weight, this baggage that they've been carrying around for all these years. Free them to let go of what happened in their past so that they could live more fully in the present. I think they get there by remembering. Not just remembering the harmful acts, they've been doing plenty of that. But by remembering the ways that they have been forgiven in their life along the way. I want you to hear me out. I am not saying that since we are all sinners, that there is all harm is equivalent, and since all harm is equivalent, that there's no reason to hold anybody accountable, I am not saying that at all. I'm saying that if we forget that we've broken a peppermint will be less likely to forgive the one who shatters the lamp. Or to put it in Jesus' terms, if we forget that we've been forgiven more than we can ever repay our Lord, we are less likely to offer forgiveness to those who've harmed us. Jesus said it in extreme terms. We we can't even get our minds around it. It's why you didn't react when I read those those numbers, the ten thousand talents and the one hundred denary, that didn't mean much to you, doesn't mean much to me. We we we think of it maybe as like a thousand dollars versus a hundred dollars. It is far bigger than that. Scholars disagree about exactly how big the difference is. One I read said that ten thousand talents is worth twenty years of wages and one hundred denary is worth about a hundred days. Another calculated it as being that one is half a million times greater than the other. And still another said that a single talent represented many years of wages for labor. Ten thousand talents represents an impossible amount. And that's where they all agree. That the debt the owner is willing to forgive is unfathomable. What we might call a cajillion. And the amount the slave would not forgive is a relative penance, maybe that $100 you were imagining. Which is to make the point that however much you have been forgiven by God, however much you have needed that forgiveness along your life, it is more than you could have paid back yourself. And since it's you've been forgiven, it's reminding us, for God's sake, remember that. As a way to help you forgive another. Do remember what inspired Jesus to tell that story? D do you remember what had him bring up this parable of unimaginable number? It was Peter trying to figure out how much he should forgive. He he was feeling generous. Lord should I forgive even up to seven times? And Jesus told him that exaggerated story so that he and we might realize that a better use of time than remembering how many times you have forgiven another. Is to give thanks for how many times you have been forgiven. That doesn't mean you put yourself back in harm's way. It means you put yourself and others in the way of grace. Free yourself from holding the grudge. Free the other from the grudge that they've been held against. When it is for your well being? Remember the harm that was done. Since it always always for your well being. Remember what Jesus has done. It's not forgive and forget. It's remember that you might forgive.