We Can't Expect Forgiveness If We Ourselves Do Not Forgive

Our Gospel account this morning is taken from Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. It’s often referred to as the Sermon on the Plain (which in Matthew’s account of the Beatitudes is usually referred to as the Sermon on the Mount). And there are times that people will use these differences to discredit the veracity of the Gospel accounts saying that “why don’t they match? shouldn’t they be exactly the same?” And exactly the opposite is true. It’s because these differences exist that we know that the Gospel accounts can be trusted. 

First off, not a single one of the Gospels was written at the time that they happened; all of them were written 35, 40, 50 years after Jesus. but that’s not the important part. The important part that everybody knows is that eyewitnesses aren’t always trustworthy. Anybody that’s ever investigated anything and asked people what they saw will tell you if you have four people that you’re asking and they all tell you exactly the same thing, they’re all four lying. Because we don’t see things the same way, especially not years and years later. And so it’s the very fact that Luke (who was not an eyewitness) who went around and asked the people who had witnessed this what they had seen and heard and wrote it down, his account is going to be slightly different from that of Matthew (who was there). And it’s the very fact that no one ever tried to make the accounts exactly the same that we know that they recorded what they heard. They recorded what they saw. And the important part of this Gospel account, just as it is in Matthew’s, is what it’s telling us. And basically what it’s telling us is that we have a choice: we can be earthly people or we can be heavenly people, and the choice is ours. 

In our first reading, we have the familiar story of David being chased through the desert by Saul’s army. Saul wants to kill him! As luck would have it, God renders Saul into David’s hands and conveniently, at Saul’s head there’s a spear stuck in the ground. And Abishai wants to do what comes naturally: pick up the spear and end David’s enemy (the earthly thing to do). But David has other ideas. David tells Abishai, “I would not lay hand on God’s anointed” in spite of the fact that Saul is trying to kill him. He does what Jesus calls for us to do in the Gospel reading: not to do what comes naturally but to do what comes supernaturally. 

The challenge of the Sermon on the Plain is one all of us struggle with, I can guarantee you. I know for sure that turning the other cheek does not come naturally to me, and yet that’s what God calls us to do: forgive our enemies. Love our enemies. It doesn’t come natural, and that’s exactly the point. We’re to do what is supernatural. We’re to be the children of God. Because that’s what our Gospel reading tells us happens when we stop thinking in earthly ways and start thinking in heavenly ways. “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” And the way that it’s laid out in our Gospel, that’s exactly what this calls us to do because the Gospel reading tells us that we are measured by how we measure out. 

Every time we pray the Our Father, and we get to the part “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” … “as” is the most dangerous word in the Bible. Because it tells God that we expect to be held to the same standard that we practice in our life. And this is what Jesus is telling us in the Gospel reading; the way that we forgive, we are forgiven; the way that we give, we will be given. 

When Jesus is hanging on the cross, some of His last words are “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Who is He asking to be forgiven?

The men who spat on Him in the praetorium. 

The soldiers who placed a crown of thorns on His head and mocked Him. 

The centurions who kicked Him when He fell three times to make Him get up. 

The men wielding the hammers that drove the nails into His wrists. 

And the centurion who pierced His side with a spear. 

And every single one of us. 

“Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” 

But we should know what to do, because that’s what the Gospel reading is all about. It calls us to see what the standard is, and the standard is the supernatural, the heavenly, not the earthly. And we tell God that “the way we respond to this Gospel reading determines how You respond to us.” “For the measure with which you measure will be in return measured out to you.” But luckily, it also says this, “just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one.” 

Because we are the children of God. All we have to do is follow His example. And Jesus, I trust in you. Amen.