St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, February 13, 2011
Debt Free! Rev. David Mundy
Leviticus 25: 1, 8-17 Matthew 18:23-35
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Do you remember back in the 1990's when the debts of the world were going to be forgiven? As we approached the new millennium, a movement began through a coalition of church groups, aid agencies and high profile celebrities called Jubilee 2000. The concept was that many of the poorer nations of the world were crushed by debt to the wealthier nations, debt they would never be able to repay. The call was for an international “do-over,” the cancellation of these massive debts so that the economies of the developing countries would have a chance for recovery.
The Jubilee in the name of this movement came from the bible, the passage we heard this morning from the book of Leviticus in the First Testament. Any of you who have made the effort to read through Leviticus know that it can be pretty “heavy sledding” at times, but this chapter is intriguing. According to what we heard, Moses gets the word from God on Mount Sinai, the same place he received the Ten Commandments, that every fiftieth year slaves should be set free, agricultural land should be given a rest, and debts should be forgiven. It doesn’t say it in quite this way, but it is the intent. In the Biblical view, debt is always a two-way street, the responsibility of creditors as well as debtors.
One of the celebrities who got behind Jubilee 2000 was a rock star whose stage name is Bono. He is the front man for the hugely popular Irish rock band, U2. Bono jetted around the world speaking with heads of state on this issue, and it can be argued that he gave the public profile to the campaign which caught the world’s attention. You might be surprised to know that Bono has a long-standing connection with Christianity. His songs reflect his faith and he has urged Christians to get involved in human rights issues, including poverty and AIDS. So his willingness to get involved with a movement is not out of character at all. He has a passion for God’s justice in the world which is consistent with Christian faith.
I should add that in some respects the movement worked. Many of the creditor nations released the debtor nations from part or all of their debts.
Do you know that some scholars believe that Jesus was offering us a Jubilee prayer in the Lord’s Prayer? This is sermon five of six in the series on the Lord’s Prayer, and we come to that phrase “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” You might be thinking, “that’s not what we pray.” We say “forgive us our trespasses,” but if we took a short walk down the street this morning to the Presbyterian church, we would hear them say, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debts.”
Perhaps that would be more helpful, because we probably aren’t all that sure what a trespass is. Is a trespass a sin, something we have done wrong? Or is it actually a debt, like money we borrow from the bank or our parents or a loan shark, if you are really unlucky?
Did you notice that our gospel passage was about the forgiveness of debt this morning, and at the same time it was about the forgiveness of sin? If we had started reading a little earlier in Matthew 18, we would have heard the disciple Peter ask Jesus how many times we are expected to forgive someone else - is seven times reasonable? Jesus answers seventy times seven, which is meant to be an absurd “out there” number. We are to be lavish in our forgiveness.
Then Jesus tells the parable about a king who is about to sell a slave and his family to get some return on a huge debt that the slave owes him, a ridiculous amount the equivalent of thousands of years of wages. The slave pleads for mercy, and the king relents and wipes the slate clean. Happy ending. Except that this same slave, who has just been let off the hook, sees another slave who owes him money, about three month’s salary. The first slave pins him up against the wall and demands that he “pay up.” When he can’t, he is thrown into debtor’s prison. When the king hears about this great injustice he hands the first slave over for torture until he has paid everything.
Jesus tells Peter and his other listeners that this story isn’t actually about owing money, but about the forgiveness of God, and the way we forgive others. This parable is rather scary in its depiction of the torture and condemnation of the king, but we need to remember that Jesus never saw God as being like an earthly king, but it was an example that people could understand.
Are you thoroughly confused yet? Is that phrase in the Lord’s Prayer about the larger picture of forgiving debt for nations, or is it about the forgiveness of our individual debts, or trespasses or sins – depending on what term we want to use? The good United Church answer is “yes!”
Each time we offer this prayer to God, it can be a reminder of the inequities and injustices of this world, and the choices we make to address them, collectively and individually. I’m still not sure why I had the blessing or good fortune to be born in this country, but I am convinced that I shouldn’t be arrogant about it, now or ever. I am grateful to God for being a Canadian, as I’m sure you are, whether you were born here or not. This gratitude means I must always look to the macro picture, the big picture of the world I live in.
A few years ago my wife Ruth and I bought a bond in an organization called Oikocredit, which makes small loans to people who are trying to establish businesses and better their lives in developing countries. At the time we bought our bond, we were asked whether we wanted it to be interest bearing or non-interest bearing. In other words, did we expect repayment or some eventual benefit? The answer was no. Even though legally this had to be in the form of a bond or a share, in our hearts this was a gift.
We can support the notion of our relatively wealthy nation forgiving the debts of poorer nations and we can make the personal choices to allow others to live with dignity and without “strings attached.”
At the same time, when we pray for the relinquishing of debts or trespasses or sins, we bring it to the personal level of the forgiveness we receive in Christ and the forgiveness we offer to others.
Each week I am aware about some aspect of the Lord’s Prayer I hadn’t noticed before, and this time I realize that the prayer suggests that we must forgive others in order to be forgiven.
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Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come Your will be done in heaven . . . |
as on earth . . . Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive our debts, as we have also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. |
In the Lord’s Prayer, or the Abba Prayer, there are poetic parallels of three. First of all, we direct praise to God – our Father in heaven, your kingdom come, your will be done. Then we make requests or petitions – give us our daily bread first, and, finally, deliver us from evil. But today’s phrase is a request that we will be forgiven as we are willing forgive others.
We come to God seeking forgiveness for the wrongs and mistakes of our lives, and we are invited to do so with the confidence that, no matter what we have done, God will cancel our debts. We all hope and pray that God will forgive our mess-ups, cruelty, and even the pettiness and mean-spiritedness of our inner lives.
When I was at the conference in Victoria recently, the author Philip Yancey shared the experience of going to the express line in the grocery store hoping to quickly pay for the two items he had in his hands. Up ahead, there was someone who obviously had more than “ten items or less.” To make it worse, the cashier was young and inexperienced, and was taking forever to check things through. He could feel his annoyance rising, even though he wasn’t in any great hurry. He realized that no one was aware of how uncharitable and un-Christian his inner chatter was. He realized he needed to change that inner conversation to something that was more Christ-like.
Well, the Good News of the Lord’s Prayer and of the gospel is that we are loved and accepted and forgiven. In a way we, as individuals, are like the developing nations which will never be able to repay even the interest on their loans, yet God in Christ is willing to declare us debt free. What a powerful message of reconciliation.
But isn’t the part after the comma the really hard part? Anyone can yell “Yay, God loves me!” The real challenge is for us to somehow connect with the compassion of Christ, to forgive the debts of others to us which may seem unforgivable. And perhaps that’s why it is important to repeat the Lord’s Prayer over and over again. Each Sunday during this series I have been offering a reflection question and this week it is: “Are you able to forgive the debts or hurts and injustices committed against you, or do you have a ‘secret bank account’ of grudges and resentments that you aren’t willing to close?”
What are you ready to let go of today in order to let this prayer be real for you? Is today the day you are willing to take the first steps toward shutting down that account, the first steps toward relinquishing the anger which may be holding you back from the fullness of life?
Folks, we are jubilee people and we are resurrection people. We say, and hopefully we live, our deep conviction that through the cross of Christ and the empty tomb our debts are cancelled, and we are invited to do the same. According to the gospel of John, on the evening of the day of resurrection Jesus came to his sad and discouraged disciples and offered them assurance:
Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
This morning, we hear Jesus’ invitation to live in peace, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and through Christ’s forgiving love, we declare “Debt free!”