The world belongs to God
The earth and all its people
How good and lovely it is
To live together in unity
Love and faith come together
Justice and peace join hands
Song “How can I keep from singing”
Let us in silence remember our faults and failings
Christ have mercy on us, and deliver us from our sins and may we amend our lives
Amen.
We say the Lords Prayer in our own language
Reflection on Matthew 18v21-35
Forgiveness depends on the belief that we all fail! It is the supreme mark of a Christian that we believe in forgiveness. Our world does not believe in forgiveness.
As Christians in theory we can’t refuse to forgive someone if they are sorry because they have failed! The Forgiveness Project shows in a remarkable way how forgiveness changes lives. http://theforgivenessproject.com/
To forgive means to let go, to release. Peter asks if you must forgive someone up to seven times. This is because in Rabbinic law the upper limit was 3 times, so Peter goes better than the Scribes and the Pharisees. Seven can also mean a great number.
But Jesus is teaching that there is no upper limit, not even seventy-seven times or 490! If we don't or can't forgive then we are seriously out of sorts with God.
A king settles his accounts with his servants. In the story, the unforgiving servant, the servant begs the king to treat the debt as a loan to be repaid. The king took pity on him and cancelled the debt. He forgave him.
The size of the debt owed by the servant is massive. In today's terms it is millions of pounds. Under Old Testament law the servant as a debtor could be sold into slavery, but must be released in the year of Jubilee, every 50th year. The master chooses to wipe the debt out.
But the servant does not carry on the good practice! He seizes a man, who owes him money, by the throat so that he began to choke, and demanded he pay back what he owed. The man asks for patience and was refused. He was in deep distress.
The servant's actions were the opposite of the master. The debt owed him was about the accumulated wage of a labourer for 100 days of work. It was far less than his own debt to the king, but he had him thrown into prison. The king found out and called him a wicked servant and had him thrown into prison.
The way the king treated the servant is an illustration of the way God will treat us and the way we must treat others.
Kosuke Koyama, the Japanese theologian wrote in the wake of Hiroshima, wrote;
"In desolate Tokyo, all things that had cluttered our lives vanished. Baptized by the all-cleansing fire-bomb, our lives were radically simplified and denuded. Silence came over us. We whispered. We sat on the ground. Our hands were empty. Our eyes gazed towards heaven. Even the summer sun failed to warm us. We were brought down to our knees by the victors. "To put one's mouth to the dust, there may yet be hope" (Lam. 3:29)…For the first three days after her unconditional surrender, Japanese people felt repentant for what Japan had done to its neighbours and to heaven. In a state of shock, the nation repented. In repentance, time stopped flowing.
It was during the war, when I was 12 years old, that I confessed the Christian faith and was baptized in a small church in Tokyo…Being baptized I affirmed, in the midst of the context of international war and violence, the universality of the gospel message - the message of forgiveness…Hiroshima has done a rough job of levelling all to the same plane. None higher. None lower…Standing on the same plane, we now say together, "And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" (Matt. 6:12).
When a person, or a community, or even a nation says, “ I have sinned against heaven and before you" (Luke 15:18), a new possibility appears on the horizon of human history…Genuine forgiveness cannot be established on a lie. Only truth can be the foundation of forgiveness. Truth holds the forgiver and the forgiven responsible to each other.” Amen
Song “Peacemaker”
Our Prayers
Song “Pilgrim”
The blessing of God be upon you
On those you love and those you meet
This day and forevermore. Amen
Song “Little things with great love”
With thanks to the ©Iona Community adapted
