Forgiveness Matthew 5.21-26 All Age Talk

Matthew 5.21-26 All Age Talk

Hands up…

• If anyone has hooted their car horn at you in the last week
• If anyone has hung up their phone on you, or vice versa
• If you have had an argument (and still been fuming at the end)
• If you have shouted at anyone in anger or been shouted at in anger
• If you have spread gossip about someone

So, all of us who have put our hands up, presumably we have been to the person we had the problem with to sort it out before coming to Church. No? Then my question is…

What are you doing here?

In Matt 5.23 Jesus says this:-

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother or sister; then come and offer your gift.”

There are many things we do which are ways of “offering our gift at the altar”. The children have got some examples on yellow cards… Prayer, Praise, Giving, Helping, Serving, Welcoming, Teaching.

We bring these and other gifts to church and offer them in God’s service. But because we are human beings and are not perfect, we usually bring other kinds of thoughts and feelings, which are written on these blue cards…
Angry, Jealous, Hurt, Bitter, Suspicious, Uncaring.

These could be fresh feelings on the surface of our minds, or deep down below the surface. Jesus teaches that if any of these feelings are between you and your brother or sister you need to delay offering your gift to God until you have put this right.

The point Jesus is making seems to be that these negative thoughts or feelings actually make our offerings to God hollow and empty, kind of cancelling them out (the children cover the yellow cards with the blue ones). So we need to deal with any problems between us and our brothers and sisters, or else there will be barriers between us and God.

This is not too hard for me because I have no brothers and only one sister, called Janet, and she lives in England so we don’t see each other that often. As far as I know, there are no bad feelings between me and Janet, so that’s all I need to worry about, right?

Let me ask the children, did Jesus just mean we need to be cool with our actual sisters and brothers – the people who share the same parents as us?

So who did he mean? (Members of our church? Our race or country? Our school or our neighbourhood? Or EVERYBODY?)

That’s right! Like when Jesus said “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25.40)?

Isn’t it clear throughout the gospels that J saw all people as his brothers and sisters and that he came to lay down his life for us all? So that everybody could be adopted as God’s sons and daughters, as Jesus’s brothers and sisters.

SO, when Jesus says these blue cards and these yellow cards don’t go together, that you can’t approach God with a gift and a grudge, there are big implications for us all.

Rethinking what we are called to be

A danger for all people but especially for members of religions, is that we see ourselves as better than other people. As if my church is God’s way of separating the good people (like me) from the bad people (others). So I’d be free to love and belong to God and hate or not care about others. But the Bible says:-

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother or sister, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother and sister.” (1John 4.20-21)

Surely God’s intention through Jesus is to form a new kind of community, open to everybody, in which everybody can experience mercy, love, forgiveness and healing. So we need to see ourselves as forgiven people and to be forgiving people.

I think that’s why we’re here, but don’t let me or anyone else tell you it is easy to forgive. Even as a follower of Jesus. But there have been some amazing examples of forgiveness . Let’s look at 2 of them on the Powerpoint now…
1. Thi Kim Phuk (famous photo of her as 9yo victim of napalm bombing in Vietnam. Now a mother of two and a campaigner for peace and care of war victims, lives in Canada) www.kimfoundation.com
2. Harvey Thomas and Jo Berry (victims, in different ways, of IRA terrorist bombing at a Brighton hotel. Now campaigners for peace and reconciliation, along with Pat McGee, the bomber responsible for their pain) www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN3A7iZYISM

In both these cases the difficulty of forgiving and being reconciled was very great, but the benefit has been beyond measure, bringing healing on all sides and a true flavour of heaven on earth.

Who thinks God was involved in these two cases?... So if God did this for them and through their pain, what can God do for us?

Practical – refiner’s fire

You and I might never be required to forgive in such a dramatic way as those people, but perhaps there are people or situations or memories which are upsetting or harming us, restricting our relationship with God, and for which we desperately need God’s grace and healing.

We know that the Church is meant to be a family in which we can all experience grace and healing and forgiveness. But we also know that for this to happen, some painful changes may need to take place in us.

So let’s ask God to help us forgive others AND to give us the courage to admit our own faults and ask others to forgive us.

As paper and pens are handed out, let me make it clear that I don’t want to trivialize your particular pain, or pretend that it can be resolved in an instant. And if the kind of questions we are raising today mean that you need individual prayer or counseling support, do come and have a word with me afterwards.

If you want to join in with this activity, you can write a word or a name, draw a picture or just keep hold of the blank paper as we pray. Then bring it forward to be burned. We’re not saying burning the paper solves anything, just making a commitment to let God help us. Within the healing community of the Church.

May God give each of us the healing we need and set us free to love all people as God loves. Through Jesus Christ we pray, Amen.