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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Forgiveness is about refusing to allow anger, frustration, hurt, or pain to define any of us any longer than it needs to. I mean, to forgive is ultimately for your good. Right? But still, we also have to balance that with what is also good for us, which is not being hurt in the first place. Today though, we push forward in our journey through the Lord's prayer.
Jeremy Duncan:And last week, Bobby walked us through seven words. That's right. That's all that we covered last week, seven words. And yet, I think those are perhaps maybe the hardest seven words in this entire prayer. Give us this day our daily bread.
Jeremy Duncan:Now, I love what Bobby did with the sermon last week, to remind us that to pray for our daily bread is in itself to remind ourselves of our interconnectedness together. The farmer grows our wheat. The baker breaks our bread. And to pray for what we need, then to trust God for that need, this is really to depend on a whole community around us that looks after us. So, some sense, to trust God for the entire community's needs as well.
Jeremy Duncan:Bread is a community effort. There's this quote that I love from one of my favorite American theologians, Stanley Howerwas. He says this, Jesus is good news to the poor precisely because he has brought into existence a people who ask for no more than their daily bread. And so to pray for what we need, to ask for what we need, to teach ourselves to ask for everything we need and no more, this is an absolutely remarkably succinct way to express our dependence, but also to help constrain the excess that can so quickly confuse us about what it is we really need. See, I firmly believe that everything about this prayer is for us and for our good, and that means both the invitation to ask, but also the constraint on that petition.
Jeremy Duncan:Both of these are a gift to us. To know that we can ask, to know that we can cry out and express our need, to know that in the kingdom come, the world that looks like heaven, everyone including us will have our needs met. That actually rejoins us in the effort to make that world possible for all of us. Now, at the same time, to pray for what some scholars might suggest should be better translated enough bread for tomorrow, that treads this incredibly delicate line, calling us to evaluate our needs honestly, to plan for tomorrow diligently, but to never want for so much that our trust becomes auxiliary. See, in my experience, it's very easy for today's luxuries to become tomorrow's needs, to become next week's obsession.
Jeremy Duncan:And perhaps, the only antidote to that progression is to want, to need, to trust always. Now, I'm not suggesting you can't have nice things. I have lots of nice things in my life. I'm incredibly grateful for them. But, I am suggesting that learning to constrain our prayers to what we actually need.
Jeremy Duncan:This is medicine for the creeping greed that will slowly become us if it's left unchecked. So, give us this day our daily bread. And today, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. First, let's pray. Our gracious and loving God, who cares not only for our needs, but for how we are shaped by them and within our own desires.
Jeremy Duncan:He welcomes us to come with arms wide open, embracing our full story, in our lack and in our want, and in our complete dependence on you. Might we truly come to believe that needing you and depending on each other, that abandoning any of our illusions of self sufficiency, this is actually good for us, and that it connects us with the reality of our experience. A reality that we often run from or try to turn our back on, but a reality that is part of how you have created us together. Might that awareness of interdependence both humble us and motivate us to work for the good of ourselves and our families, our neighbors and our neighborhoods. In that, might begin to glimpse some small piece of your kingdom come.
Jeremy Duncan:In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Today, we ask to be forgiven. Perhaps, however, only as far as we have learned to forgive. And I guess if we thought that praying for our daily bread and nothing more was hard, maybe we're in for another wake up call this morning.
Jeremy Duncan:But we'll cover debts or trespasses, all of our obligations, broken boundaries, and what's really possible between us. First though, quick story. I my wife and I Rachel have two kids, A daughter who's five, which means she will be starting kindergarten in the fall, so big days ahead. And our son who is 11, which means he is currently in grade six. And for our family, as probably many of us here in the room in Calgary, this past week was spring break.
Jeremy Duncan:That meant that my son was off school while my daughter remained in her childcare program. However, at some point throughout the week, about midweek, she learned about spring break, Which meant she knew that her brother was not going to school in the morning and she was. So, as we're getting ready for our bedtime routine, she turns to me and she says, daddy, I want spring break too. I don't wanna go to school tomorrow. I want to stay home and go bike riding with Ethan.
Jeremy Duncan:Now that was a perfectly reasonable request. This was before the snow had blanketed Calgary again. Except that Rachel and I, I mean, we don't get a spring break. We have to keep working, and an 11 year old sidekick is hard enough to manage for the week. So I denied her request.
Jeremy Duncan:To which she said, but that's not fair. And she was right. It was not fair, and I did not have a good answer for her. Now, for the time being at least, I resisted the urge to respond to her inquiry with what my mother would always say to me whenever I brought up the topic of fairness, which was whoever told you life was fair. I'll save that for when she's a little older.
Jeremy Duncan:Still, it does bring up a question of fairness. Right? Reciprocity. Is that what Jesus is getting at here? Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Jeremy Duncan:Is the kingdom of God fair? Well, we'll have to talk about that today. But first, let's look at some of the details here because you may have noticed that I read this line two different ways already today. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Now, us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Jeremy Duncan:I mean, broadly similar, I think we get the point, but it is interesting that we have two different metaphors for forgiveness that we employ in this prayer. So where does that come from? Well, it actually comes directly from gospel of Matthew. There is a traditional liturgical reading of the Lord's prayer. It's the one that we use at Commons.
Jeremy Duncan:It's generally used in both Protestant and Catholic traditions. That uses the line, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. But if you actually open the book of Matthew and you flip to chapter six verse 12, you will read, forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. Now, that's not the only difference between these two versions of the prayer. The public reading of the prayer is usually followed with a closing benediction.
Jeremy Duncan:For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. A n. That's not present in Jesus' prayer in Matthew. We'll talk about that line where it came from next week as we wrap up the series, but for today in front of us, we have this discrepancy between debts and trespasses. However, as I said, that disparity comes directly from the gospel of Matthew.
Jeremy Duncan:See, this is the only line in the prayer, in the Lord's prayer that Jesus offers a commentary on. So we read verse 12. Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. Verse 13, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. That's the end of the prayer in the gospel.
Jeremy Duncan:But then the very next line, Jesus sort of switches, jumps into teaching mode. He continues, for if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive their sins, your father will not forgive yours. Now one, some heavy stuff here that we're gonna have to face into today about the relationship between our forgiveness and our forgivenness. But two, this is precisely where the trespass language comes from.
Jeremy Duncan:See, in verse 12, Jesus says, forgive us our debts. In verse 14, he says, forgive us our paraptoma, our trespasses. What's interesting is that both of these are metaphors for sin. Despite what modern Bibles like the NIV say, Jesus doesn't use the word for sin in either verse. He doesn't use that normal word we would expect to see here.
Jeremy Duncan:That would be hamartia. Romans three twenty three, for example. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's hamartia. Now, in broader Greek literature, that word refers to a fatal flaw in your character.
Jeremy Duncan:In ancient Greek literature, it pointed directly at missing the mark. But in Christian usage, that's the normal word we translate sin. Here, Jesus, however, uses two different words, debts and trespasses. Now, it's pretty clear what he's getting at. The larger category of sin is in mind.
Jeremy Duncan:In verse twelve and fourteen, he uses the Greek word forgive or ephemi. And most often throughout the New Testament, to forgive is paired with sins. So that's why the NIV just takes some liberty and translates trespasses into sins here using a word that we're more familiar with. It's fine. But to be clear though, Jesus uses two metaphors here, our debts and our trespasses.
Jeremy Duncan:Now, the question of why we tend to go with trespasses instead of debts in liturgical readings, if I had to guess, it would be because very few of us feel like we owe God any money. Ophemata is very much a financial term. It refers very specifically to financial debts. And in terms of our interpersonal relationships, I think that can be a powerful metaphor for sin. What do I owe you?
Jeremy Duncan:When this prayer is used in a more liturgical setting, we tend to speak of our relationship through the divine, and perhaps that broader metaphor of offenses or trespasses just makes a little more sense. So that's what became common in our public readings. Still, all of this does something really interesting for me when I read the prayer. Because when Jesus prays, he doesn't talk about sin. At least not in that abstracted sense that say Paul likes to use in his writings.
Jeremy Duncan:Jesus wants to get practical. Maybe we could even say personal with it. So let's look at these metaphors here quickly and think about what Jesus might be trying to tell us about our relationships with each other. First, we have ophlegmaton, our debts. And as I mentioned, this is very much a financial term.
Jeremy Duncan:In Greek, its primary meaning was to speak about money that you owed to somebody else. Therefore, to be forgiven of that debt was just as simple as being told you don't have to pay it back. That's what it was about. There is, however, a later secondary meaning. And that secondary meaning was actually derived from how the Greek word was used to translate an old Semitic word.
Jeremy Duncan:See, our boy Matthew here is in kind of a tough spot. The audience for all of the gospels really was primarily Greek speaking. At the time of Jesus and increasingly over the next century, even Jewish communities were being Hellenized. That meant they were beginning to speak Greek as their primary language, and they're even being kind of Greekified in their way of thinking about the world. So for example, Paul, when he quotes from the Hebrew scriptures, generally does that quoting from something called the Septuagint, which was a Greek translation of the Old Testament.
Jeremy Duncan:And, all four of our gospels are written in Greek, because that's what the audience could read. Even though Jesus primarily spoke in Hebrew and Aramaic. That means Matthew isn't just writing down what Jesus said, Matthew is translating what Jesus said into a new language. That's even before we come along millennia later and try to translate that Greek now into English. Now, Jesus absolutely would have spoken Hebrew.
Jeremy Duncan:Anytime he read scriptures and likely anytime he prayed in a liturgical setting. But conversationally, in Galilee in the first century, it's probably for the most part in conversation and even in public teaching, Jesus would have been speaking a related language called Aramaic. And, we know this because there are a couple points throughout the gospels where Jesus uses lines that are really puns that really only work in Aramaic. One of the famous ones comes later in this gospel, chapter 23. Jesus is critiquing some of the religious leaders because they're getting too caught up on the rules.
Jeremy Duncan:And he says, look, you guys would strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel. It's a good line. Really provocative image here, but it's a really good line when you realize that in Aramaic, the word gnat is the word galma, and the word camel is the word gammla. So you strain out a, but you swallow a. That's a really good line.
Jeremy Duncan:Well, something like that is probably happening here. You see debts spoke about financial arrangements, but it was also the Greek word used to translate the Aramaic word, khobah. And khobah could mean financial debts, but it had a broader meaning. It could also mean your responsibilities. So you can still think debts, but expand that in a broader, more relational community sense.
Jeremy Duncan:What do I owe you as a friend? What does a parent owe in responsibility to their children? As part of community, what is your duty to the whole, to your neighbor, to the stranger in your midst? What do we owe each other as human beings? That's what kobo was about.
Jeremy Duncan:And that kind of debt is very likely not just the idea, but perhaps even the specific word that Jesus was using when he first offered this prayer. Forgive us those responsibilities we didn't quite live up to. As we learn to let go of those expectations that perhaps we've held over each other for a little too long. There's a profound grace in that. Right?
Jeremy Duncan:It's not just forgive me the terrible things that I've done. It's God, forgive me all the little things I lost sight of, which seems small to me, but maybe wasn't for someone else. Maybe the times everyone got a spring break except for my daughter and I didn't notice until bedtime. Still, there's another way to think about this on the other side because maybe you've done this. Have you ever held on to a slight for a little too long?
Jeremy Duncan:Maybe someone said something, and it was an offhand comment, but over time, after you repeated it to yourself enough, it began to take on gargantuan proportions? Became a sin that demanded retribution, but then when you had a chance to talk to that person, they didn't even remember what you were talking about? By the way, that doesn't mean for a second you should just let it go, or that it didn't matter, or that it didn't hurt you. In fact, we've hurt someone, even unintentionally, we injured someone, it's a profound kindness when they come back to us and they let us know so that we can change our habits. But in the broader sense of our debt to each other, in a sense of learning to let each other off the hook for what is owed, I think perhaps what we come to understand is that forgiveness isn't just the ways that someone has wronged us or injured us.
Jeremy Duncan:It's for all the ways that someone has let us down. Perhaps even the ways that someone has failed to live up to our expectations for them. Now, the truth is forgiveness doesn't lie only in objective reality. It lives in the space between us, which is often kind of fuzzy. I've been married for twenty four years now, and one of the things I have had to learn is to forgive even when my wife hasn't done anything wrong.
Jeremy Duncan:See, sometimes the problem isn't actually that Rachel did something. The problem is I'm holding on to an expectation that wasn't met. And if I keep holding on thinking I'm owed that debt, if I don't find a way to get past it for me, then I'm the one who's going to suffer for that. Here's an example. It's a silly one.
Jeremy Duncan:But I remember, like this must have been a decade ago. I was with my son who was an infant at the time, and I was sitting in a coffee shop when he started crying. And so running through my mental checklist, I went to plan a, which was to pull out a bottle and mix some formula and give him a snack, and that seemed to work. However, while I'm doing this, a stranger person comes up to me and offers me a suggestion. They said, look, formula is never the best option.
Jeremy Duncan:Milk is always better. Maybe you could ask your wife to pump before you leave the house. Now I didn't feel like explaining that my kids were adopted, and so they were gonna be getting a lot of formula regardless of our pumping strategies. So I just said thanks and went back to working on whatever I was doing. Here's a question.
Jeremy Duncan:Do I need to forgive that person? Well, in one sense, of course not. Right? Like, haven't done anything wrong, maybe a little aggressively helpful, but in no world could I ever possibly describe that interaction as sinful. And yet, if that person was a part of my life and they're part of this community, if I saw them regularly, then, yeah, I probably would have to let go of that interaction.
Jeremy Duncan:I mean, it's been a decade, and I'm still talking about it. So clearly, there's a little work I've got to do in here. But this is my point. Right? Sometimes to forgive is important for our well-being as it is to be forgiven.
Jeremy Duncan:Which is precisely, I think, why Jesus links these things together. Now, we'll come back to that in a second. Because after talking about our obligations, our debts in the broadest sense possible, Jesus does narrow in a little tighter here in the explanation. If debts or really does speak to communal obligation, responsibility, the way that we don't always live up to them, perhaps we could say it's the passive ways we let each other down. Well, trespass is essentially what it sounds like.
Jeremy Duncan:Now, parapthoma in Greek had moral and ethical connotations. It spoke to all the ways that we might violate the standards of social convention, but the root of this word is exactly what it sounds like. It's anytime we slip past a boundary. Specifically, to step foot across a line, to step on your property, to cross your lines, that's to trespass. And that makes me think that Jesus knows exactly what he's doing here.
Jeremy Duncan:He uses debts in the broad expanse of sense of community, all the ways we fall short of our obligations, and we let each other down, and how grace is always going to be an essential component of any community's ability to live together. He starts there, but he also anticipates the rejoinder. Right? Okay, Jesus. I'm with you.
Jeremy Duncan:I can forgive all that. But what about when they did it on purpose? What about when they tried to hurt me? When I know it was malicious? What about when it's not about perception?
Jeremy Duncan:It's about right and wrong, and they crossed the line. What then? Well, what's interesting to me here is that when the stakes raise, that's where Jesus leans in even farther. And, I think the basic lesson here is no. Even when someone else is in the wrong, you don't get to not forgive.
Jeremy Duncan:And that would be an incredibly hard pill to swallow if it wasn't just for what Jesus had talked about. Because remember, forgiveness isn't about condoning or forgetting or importantly here about ignoring consequence for bad behavior. Forgiveness is about refusing to allow anger, frustration, hurt, or pain to define any of us any longer than it needs to. I mean, to forgive is ultimately for your good. Right?
Jeremy Duncan:But still, we also have to balance that with what is also good for us, which is not being hurt in the first place. In another passage, this time at the end of Luke six, Jesus actually talks about how to manage toxic relationships. He says this, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who miss mistreat you. And notice here, that for followers of Jesus, we never get off the hook. We never get to hate.
Jeremy Duncan:We never get to define ourselves over and against the evil that someone else might do to us. K. But there's also a pretty clear protocol here for how to limit someone's access to us when they're toxic. If someone doesn't like you, you can try to show them who you really are, do good for them, change their perception through kindness. If they take things farther than that and they begin to curse you, say bad things about you, malign your reputation, well, maybe it's time to take a step back, but don't fall into the trap of becoming the worst of what's been done to you.
Jeremy Duncan:Don't return curse with curse. Bless them. Speak well of them at least as best you can honestly, but maybe don't put yourself in their space anymore. And if they go even farther and they mistreat you and they hurt you, if they're actively going out of their way to injure you, well now it's time to take another step back. Maybe now you need more robust boundaries in your life.
Jeremy Duncan:Maybe you need to cut their access off to you. Maybe you need to stop speaking to them altogether at this point. But you still don't become them. You don't allow them to force you to become a person you don't recognize anymore. You pray for those who mistreat you, even if all you can do is say, God, this is in your hands now.
Jeremy Duncan:It's important to understand that when Jesus talks about forgiveness here, he's not talking about a complete lack of discernment or about offering unfettered access to anyone who might want it from us no matter how they act. If forgiveness is for your good, that means it's not forgetting, it's not condoning. Forgiveness is about refusing to allow someone else's mistakes to determine what's possible tomorrow. For you or for them. But then still, what do we do with this line?
Jeremy Duncan:If you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive yours. Is our relationship to the divine really as transactional as that? Does our welcome really depend on our wisdom, our maturity, our health? Well, I would say no, and here's why. See, everything about this prayer, everything we've talked about for four weeks now is about God shaping us for a world that does not exist yet.
Jeremy Duncan:A family that is unrealized, our Father. A kingdom that is coming here on earth. Daily bread that is reliable for everyone. Forgiveness that is unrelenting. And next week, desire that is actually pointed at what is good.
Jeremy Duncan:But that means that the invitation to forgive can't be about earning our place in a world that doesn't even exist. It has to be about our participation in what could be right now. Both in where we learn about what is broken within us, but also in where we think about, where we learn how to repair what is broken in each other. I wanna turn to a quote from Stanley Weilhowarwas here. I'm gonna paraphrase him, but he says this, to learn to have our sins forgiven.
Jeremy Duncan:Indeed, to learn that we are sinners needing forgiveness. This is in itself to become part of the kingdom of God. And yet, if we don't learn to forgive in response, then how could we be part of that new reality? The the new people brought into existence by Jesus. To forgive and to be forgiven is not some crude exchange bargain to get on with our lives.
Jeremy Duncan:It is instead to participate in a political alternative that ends our attempts to secure our existence through the suffering of another. Learning to pray with Jesus, therefore, is to become part of the struggle with the power of the world. In other words, the politics of this world, the power of this world has told us forever that the way to overcome our pain, the way to get over everything that's been done to us is to pass it on to someone else, to make them suffer for their sins. The thing is it doesn't work. It can't.
Jeremy Duncan:More pain can't heal anyone, not even you. And that's why to be forgiven, to pray for our forgiveness, to know ourselves as well and truly embraced and loved and completely forgiven is in itself to embrace the futility of holding on to hurt any longer than we possibly need to. We can't pass that hurt to anyone else. We can't make them feel what we do. And so we learn to sit with pain and with sin, to grieve it, to learn from it, to metabolize it.
Jeremy Duncan:But then when we're ready, when it's taught us everything that it can, we let it go for our own good. See, it's not that God is ever holding anything back from any of us. That's not what Jesus is saying here. It's that until we embrace the futility of our unforgiveness, we will always struggle to know ourselves as perfectly forgiven. God is not interested in passing hurt around.
Jeremy Duncan:God is not interested in carrying hurt forward. God is on the cross interested in absorbing all of the violence of the world, including everything that's been done to you. And then inviting you into the world that follows from that. And that means that if we want to know ourselves as forgiven. If we wanna see the future that is possible for everyone, then we have to begin slowly and awkwardly living in the light of what is possible.
Jeremy Duncan:Let's pray. God, for all the times when we have thought that unforgiveness could shield us, protect us, put up a wall between us and the next hurt. And we've imagined that a time would come when we could pass that hurt to someone else, and then it would be even, and that would be okay. Might we recognize that there is a different story at play in the good news of your world. That sin and hurt can be absorbed.
Jeremy Duncan:It can teach us, we can learn from it, we can metabolize it, but we don't have to hold it longer than we need to. And that when we are ready, we can follow in your steps to move forward with new grace and new peace. Extending that story out into all of the relationships around us. God, might we slowly begin to realize that our forgivenness is a reflection of our ability to forgive. To step out of a way of viewing the world that is transactional.
Jeremy Duncan:And instead, to believe that grace and peace and love can change everything. Might we be wise and conscientious in our relationships, but might we always be hopeful for what is possible tomorrow. And may that guide us forward into the future. In the strong name, the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Jeremy Duncan:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website commons.church for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Jeremy Duncan:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.