He marched up to me, stopped me in my tracks, fixed my eyes with his eagle look. And then slowly he raised both arms and clapped both hands on my shoulders, cleared his throat slightly, and intoned, "I forgive you.”
And then, as quickly as he had encountered me, he walked away. Just dropped his arms and walked away.
And when I got my wits together at all, all I could say was, "Forgive me for what?" "What did I do and for what am I being forgiven?" But there was no answer -- he just walked away with a sort of knowing smile on his face, leaving me to figure out how to accept my acceptance, how to face my forgiveness when I didn’t even know I had sinned!
It was a very strange feeling! I felt a kind of numb guilt. Obviously I had done something to offend my friend, but I did not have the slightest idea what it was. So I got to feeling guilty over things I didn’t know you could feel guilty for. A numb guilt.
But then I also felt, after a while, a pounding, pulsing power. I felt, after a while, a thrill. Because, though I suspected that it was all a joke, sane sort of put-on, still it felt wonderful -- just to be forgiven. Just to be forgiven, that’s all. No conditions, no contract to fulfill, no specifics -- just forgiveness. Blanket forgiveness. As if anything and everything I might have done or said was already forgiven. You know, if that could be true, that would make all the difference.
Without question one of the most difficult of the teachings of Jesus is His word, "Be perfect … as your heavenly Father is perfect." or, as some would prefer to read it, "Be whole, be complete … as your heavenly Father is whole and complete." Whatever word you insert there, the result is the same. It seems impossible. It seems too demanding. It seems even unreasonable that Jesus would say such a thing. "Be perfect …".
I am not going to engage today in a discussion of the meanings that He may have intended. That is an important thing to do, but that is not my goal today. There is a great deal in this word "perfect", and it deserves sane careful study, but that is not what I am after today.. What I am going to do is to lay it alongside the Lord’s Prayer and ask you to feel with me what you do in your own life with the demand for perfection.. I am going to ask you to recognize that we do feel this demand for perfection, but that we react to it in different ways. And I am going to ask you to see that no matter how you react to this thing of being perfect, Jesus the Christ offers us a wonderful gift when He teaches us to pray for forgiveness.
"Be perfect … as your heavenly Father is perfect." And since we’re not perfect, we are to pray, "Forgive us …". The bumper sticker I see occasionally has it right: "I’m not perfect, just forgiven." I think that’s on target, even though sometimes the folks who have it on their cars seem to use it as an excuse for cutting in line ahead of me. I think it’s on target: "Not perfect, just forgiven."
Now I believe we all know that the petition for forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer is said two different ways. Sometimes we say it like Matthew says it, "Forgive us our debts."
And sometimes we say it like Luke says it, "Forgive us our trespasses" •
Trespasses and debts. Debts and trespasses. Two different words. Luke has used the Greek word, and Matthew an Aramaic one, and we get two slightly different readings of the Lord’s Prayer. Different churches recite it in different ways.
When I was involved in a lot of supply preaching and working as an interim pastor, if the church where I was serving on any given Sunday had it in the bulletin for me to lead the Lord’s Prayer, I would always have to ask, "Are you a debtor church or a trespassing church?"
By the way, the best answer I ever got came from a deacon who thought a minute and then said, "Well, the church is a debtor church because the people have trespassed against the offerings"
But what I want you to see today is that these two words, these two things for which we need to be forgiven, are of course two sides of the same coin. But they are two different ways of responding to the Lord’s demand that we be perfect.
Let me say that for you again. The Lord calls us to be perfect. And some of us respond to that like trespassers and some of us respond like debtors. These are two different ways of responding to the call to be perfect; they are two sides of the same coin. But whether you are a trespasser person or a debtor person, the Lord Christ calls you, in the midst of recognizing that you are not perfect, to know the joy of being forgiven. Not perfect, just forgiven.
I
First, then, some of us are trespassers. Some of us are naturally trespasser kinds of people. Some of us respond to Christ’s call to perfection like the little engine that could, "I think I can, I think I can.” And pretty soon it gets to be “I know I can, I know I can”, and eventually, “I knew I could, I knew I could."
Well, that means that some of us need to pray with Luke, "Forgive us our trespasses", because we experience Christ’s demand for perfection as a demand that drives us and pushes us, and we really think we can achieve it, all on our own.
Why do I call this trespassing? Because we end up rebelling against· God. We end up believing ourselves to be self-sufficient and self-determined. We suffer from an overblown ego. And so we need to pray for forgiveness from trespasses.
A trespass, you see, means that we’ve gone too far. The kind of sin that is implied in the word trespass is the sin of going too far. If I trespass on your property, it means I’ve stepped across the line and have gone too far. If you don’t want to let me in your front door, but I push in anyway, I am guilty of trespass -- going too far.
And that’s exactly what some of us do with God. We go too far. That’s what we do with God’s demand for perfection. We go too far. We push too hard. We try too hard. We try to do it ourselves. We try to push in where God belongs.
And when we hear Christ say to us, "Be perfect", down in our heart of hearts we do not say, "I can’t". Instead we say, "I can and I will". I will take care of this. By sheer act of will and by lots of hard work and by just doing and going and keeping at it, I’ll show you. I’ll be perfect.
And when we do that, we have trespassed. We have gone too far. We have invaded the territory that belongs to God Himself. And so we need to be forgiven. "Forgive us our trespasses."
If you want to know whether you are a trespassing person more than you are a debtor person, ask yourself how much approval you need. Ask yourself how important it is to be well thought of. Ask yourself if in the parable that Jesus told about the two men who went into the Temple to pray, and the one stood and prayed, "Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are" – ask yourself if you see you in that man.
I am going to confess to you that I am a trespass person. I need to feel on top of everything. And I need to be approved. And so I approach each day with a long list of things that need to be done, and convince myself that if I just put in enough hours and just keep at it long enough, I’ll do it. I’ll do it. And I trespass, you see. I trespass because I have gotten on to God’s turf and I’ve not depended on God’s timing and I’ve not invited anybody into this thing but me. And worst of all, in some kind of way I have thanked God that I am not as other men are and have begged off of forgiveness.
I am a trespasser. I need to be approved of. I need to have somebody telling me I’m doing a good job. I need to be told that I’m achieving perfection, all by my lonesome. And if I get 98 percent approval, I want to know where the other two percent are.
And I’m telling you that that is the sin of trespass. That is the sin of going too far and encroaching on God’s place. And it is so subtle, to be honest about it, that I am afraid I may be telling you about that sin of mine just so that you will tell me I’m not guilty of it and that you will all file out and tell me I am doing a good job!
And if you do that, you will only feed my ego need, my approval need, and you will probably help me trespass some more.
Oh, do you see how dangerous this thing is? And do you see why in the moments in which we trespassers face ourselves, we cry out with Paul, "Who will deliver me from the body of this death?!" Who will deliver me
and who will forgive me my trespassing?
But, my fellow trespassers, we are not perfect. We are not perfect. And we are not going to get there just by working harder and putting in more hours and being the fastest gun in the West. There is only one way we trespassers are going to get there; who will deliver us from the body of this death? Says the Apostle Paul, "Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord"!
Even a trespasser can be forgiven. Even one who goes too far can be forgiven. And once we see that a loving, caring God, whom we meet in the face of Jesus Christ, offers forgiveness in the same measure as He demands perfection, we can be at peace with ourselves. Not perfect, no, not through our own efforts, not perfect. But just forgiven. Forgiven. And therefore at peace.
II
Some of us are trespassers. But then some of us are debtors. Some of us are naturally debtor kinds of people. Some of us do better to pray with Matthew, "Forgive us our debts", because we respond to Christ’s call to be perfect with the "poor little me" syndrome.
Who me? Be perfect? Not me. Poor little me. I’m so inadequate. I’m so deficient. I’m such a mess. I could never be perfect. God short-changed me. Poor little me.
Some of us need to pray, "Forgive us our debts", because our sin is in not believing that God loves us enough to endow us with whatever we need to be complete. We need to pray for forgiveness not because our ego is too big, but because it is too small. We need, some of us, to pray for forgiveness for our nobodiness.
In talking a moment ago about the trespasser, and in asking you to test whether you are a trespasser person, I asked you if you could see yourself in the man who went up into the Temple to pray and thanked God that he was not like other people. But now if you want to test whether you are a debtor person, try this one out: do you find yourself sometimes thanking God that you are as other men? Did you get that?
The fellow in the parable, the trespasser fellow, thanked God that he was not like others. But if you are a debtor personality, you will pray a different but equally discordant prayer, “Lord, I thank Thee that I am as other men." Lord, I thank you that You didn’t make me stand out. Lord, thank you for making me the kind of person who blends in with the wallpaper. Lord, I don’t want to be different, I don’t want to be special, I don’t want to stand out. Thank you, Lord, for making me plain vanilla.”
Ah, but do you see that that too is sin? That too is sin, for debtor personalities give up too soon on the call to be perfect. Debtor personalities are always showing a deficit – that’s what a debt is, isn’t it? If I’m a debtor, it ‘s because I didn’t have enough resources in the bank account to do what I wanted to do, so I had to borrow. I had more month than money, and so I became a debtor.
But now debtor personalities are always running on empty, always a day late and a dollar short, always feeling so inadequate. And so they come across as defensive personalities. Defensive personalities.
Don’t get caught by this psychological language. Of all the sins I have committed, one of them is not practicing psychology without a license! I’m just trying to say that when you get caught up in the debtor syndrome, when you feel as though you can never measure up to what God expects of you, then you begin to be defensive. You begin to say things like, "Well, I’m not perfect, but …" "I may not have done this right, but … " "I guess I don’t know much about this, but I’m trying. All you can do is try". And so debtor personalities run on through life making excuses for themselves, defending themselves, and, folks, that is sin. That is a sin that needs to be forgiven.
And why is that sin? Why does that need to be forgiven? Why is it necessary for such a person to pray, "Forgive us our debts”? Because the sin is in assuming that God didn’t give you enough fuel to run on. The sin is in feeling that God did not equip you with what it takes to do His will. The sin is in charging God with making you a nobody, and you are not a nobody, you are His child. You are His child. And so He will forgive you that debt, if you’ll ask Him, and He‘ll keep on calling you to be perfect. But remember, it’s not so much whether you are perfect, but that you are just forgiven.
III
This morning I want to call us to the wonder and the joy of being forgiven and accepted.
I want to say to my fellow trespassers, let’s pray with Luke’s word, "Forgive us our trespasses". And receive the love and forgiveness of a God who will hold the boundaries on us and who will teach us that if we achieve anything at all approaching perfection, it is His doing and not ours. And we really don’t have to compete any more. We don’t have to spend any more energy on looking good. We are not perfect. But we are forgiven.
And I want to say to the debtor folks out here, you pray with Matthew’s word, “Forgive us our debts". And receive the affirmation and generous forgiveness of a God who will keep on calling you to become what He made you to become, perfect and complete in Him. You really don’t have to badmouth yourselves any more. You don’t have to spend any more energy on looking bad. You may not be perfect, true. But you are forgiven.
As a few moments ago the waters of baptism opened up to receive some folks, whether they be trespassers or debtors, I thought I saw someone march up and stop them in their tracks, fix His eye upon them with His eagle look, and then raise strong arms and grasp them and proclaim, "I forgive you.”
Do you hear that right now? Whether trespasser or debtor you be, do you that right now, spoken to you? The same God who says, "Be perfect", says to you right now, “You are not perfect, but you can be forgiven.” Will you accept your acceptance and receive your forgiveness, right now?
