Hilton Head Island, SC – October 20, 2019
The Chapel Without Walls
Leviticus 25:8-24; Luke 16:19-31
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” – Matthew 6:12 (RSV)
The fourth petition in the Lord’s Prayer is the most difficult one to interpret properly into English. And the problem hinges on the true meaning of the word which is translated alternately as “sins,” “debts,” or “trespasses.”
If you have visited a variety of churches in different denominations throughout your life, you will be aware that every denomination has its own version of the Lord’s Prayer. Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and maybe the Eastern Orthodox all say “trespasses”: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Baptists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists (or the United Church of Christ) tend to use “debts”: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” It seems to me that in recent years, more and more churches across denominational lines are using “sins”: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
You may ask, does it really matter which of these three words is used? If “debts” and “trespasses” both essentially mean “sins,” then it doesn’t matter. But if those other two older alternatives mean something other than “sins,” then it can matter a good bit. As we shall see toward the end of the sermon, one understanding of the word “debts” can hurl the Lord’s Prayer into an entirely unknown direction, even making Jesus seem highly radical in what he urged us to pray.
Both the King James Version and the Revised Standard Version of the Bible say, “Forgive us our debts.” In ordinary English usage, the word debts does not equate to sins. Nor does the word trespasses appear to be an exact synonym for sins. We all know generally what sins, debts, and trespasses are, and to our way of thinking, no two of them are precisely alike. Sins are sins, debts are debts, and trespasses are trespasses. Lying, cheating, and stealing are sins; mortgages, car loans, and used lines of credit are debts. Going onto somebody’s land when you’re not supposed to do so is trespassing. What are all those yellow “Do Not Trespass” signs out in the country if not warnings to people that they shouldn’t trespass? To go onto another person’s land without being invited is not a sin, exactly, and it certainly does not mean that we incur a debt, unless we are fined and have to pay the court.
With these three distinct but different choices, what specifically did Jesus mean when he gave his disciples this pattern of prayer? Which of these words do you suppose he intended for us to use?
I grew up a Presbyterian. I have spent all but the last fifteen years of my life in Presbyterian churches almost every Sunday. Therefore I always said “debts” in the Lord’s Prayer. The major national and ethnic influence on Presbyterianism comes from Scotland. As far as the Scots have been concerned for more than the past thousand years, they have owed many debts to the English, and many Scots have bitterly resented it. And the English, say the Scots, who say “trespasses” in the Lord’s Prayer, are trespassers. They trespass all over Scottish lands, and always have, say the Scots. The Scots are relatively poor, compared to the English, and they have incurred many debts to the English over countless decades.
But are either of those words what Jesus was talking about when he proposed the Lord’s Prayer as a prayer model for his followers? Wouldn’t sins be closer to what Jesus truly meant?
Which of the three words did Jesus mean? It could make a big difference, couldn’t it?
Here is a personal opinion. “Trespasses” won’t do, at least not in the 21st century. It surely connotes something now which Jesus never intended back then. Maybe it worked in the 17th century, but it won’t work now. The word trespass has become too one-dimensional a word. My Webster’s Collegiate says far more about illegally encroaching on property than about breaking moral rules. Of course, my take on this may be a denominational or traditional prejudice, but I don’t think so.
Perhaps twenty-five years ago, when I was the pastor of First Presbyterian Church here on the Island, I asked the governing board of the congregation if they agreed with me that it would be better to use the word “sins” in the Lord’s Prayer, rather than “debts.” After a fairly brief discussion, they strongly voted to make the change. So the First Presbyterians of Hilton Head Island, along with The Chapel Without Wallsians, say “sins.”
But then there is Obery Hendricks, and his highly provocative and controversial book The Politics of Jesus. Dr. Hendricks is Professor of Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary. He is an ordained minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and is one of the leading black theologians of our country. He also has an unusually radical understanding of Jesus of Nazareth and his ministry to first-century Jews and Gentiles. In his mind, Jesus was crucified for political differences he had with the powers that be much more than for his theological differences with them.
Professor Hendricks puts an extremely thought-provoking slant on this concept. He suggests that Jesus was telling us to ask God to release us (not forgive us) from our debts AS we release others who owe us money. Prof. Hendricks is convinced Jesus truly was talking about debts here, about financial obligations meant to be repaid. In another section of his book he refers to the Year of Jubilee, which is told about in the Books of Leviticus and Numbers.
And what was the Year of Jubilee? According to the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible), God directed that every fifty years, all debts were to be forgiven, which is to say, rendered null and void. Furthermore, all land which had been sold from one individual to another or from one family to another during that five-decade period had to be given back to the original owner or owners. God did not want any of His people to become permanently impoverished by debt, and thus God instituted the Year of Jubilee. Nonetheless, there is no record anywhere that the idea was ever put into practice, not even once. But the theological rationale was there in scripture, and Obery Hendricks thinks that is what Jesus was contemplating when he said we should pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
The economy of first century Judea was very different from the economy of twenty-first century America. There were no banks in Jesus’ day. Thus we may assume the Lord’s Prayer does not require banks to forgive the loans of people who cannot repay those loans, since there were no banks. But presumably Jesus was suggesting that if individuals cannot pay the debts they owe us as individuals, we should forgive them their debts. Thus the prayer asks God to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
However, that isn’t exactly what the text in Matthew says. Instead, it says, “And forgive us our debts, AS WE ALSO HAVE FORGIVEN our debtors.” And that, Christian people, is a horse of a decidedly different hue. This is, in other words, The Petition With The Proviso. We are asking God to forgive us of our debts (or sins or trespasses) in the same measure as we have forgiven the debts or sins or trespasses of other people against us. If we have forgiven them, then we may legitimately petition God to forgive us. But if we haven’t forgiven them their debts, sins, or trespasses, then we have no right to ask God to forgive us for our sins or debts or trespasses.
James Oglethorpe, the founder of the Colony of Georgia, once said to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, “I never forgive anyone anything!” Wesley was for a short time a missionary to the new, raw city of Savannah. Without hesitating a moment, the clergyman said to the wealthy aristocrat, “Then I hope, sir, that you never sin!” Forgive us our sins (or debts) as we have forgiven those who sin against us, or from whom we hold debts. The fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer is the one and only quid pro quo petition, the petition with the proviso.
It is said that when Leonardo DaVinci first did his fresco of the Lord’s Supper at the church in Milan, he painted the face of his enemy onto the head of Judas Iscariot. When he did that, however, he suddenly found himself incapable of properly conceptualizing the face of Jesus. Therefore Leonardo reluctantly decided to forgive his enemy for the injuries he had inflicted on him. When he did that, that very night in a dream the picture of the face of Jesus came into his mind, and the next day he added that face to the central figure in the fresco.
The prophet Amos is one of my favorite prophets, if only because he always tells it like he sees it. That is a style I greatly admire. In the fifth chapter of his prophecy, he laces into wealthy people who take advantage of the poor. If they continue to do it, he tells them, they shall not live in the fancy stone houses they have built for themselves, nor shall they drink wine from their newly planted vineyards. If, on the other hand, said Amos, the rich do right by the poor, then all will go well with them. Wealth in itself is not the issue; from God’s vantage point, it’s what people do with their wealth and how they treat the poor that is the issue.
General Antonio Taguba was a US Army general who was forced to take early retirement when he reported violations by our soldiers years ago at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Innocent Iraqis and Muslims of other countries were arrested by American forces early on in the Iraq War, and they were terribly mistreated, along with others who no doubt were guilty. In the notorious prison, guilt or innocence eventually turned out to be beside the point. Little or no mercy or forgiveness was shown to anyone. At the time, General Taguba was quoted as saying, “I know that my peers in the army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values.”
Because that happened, it has become increasingly treacherous ever since for American soldiers to be captured by enemy extremists. If people are deliberately mistreated, they are far more likely deliberately to mistreat others. Enemy Muslim soldiers know that sometimes some Americans do not live by religious principles established by Jesus of Nazareth, “Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors.” Continually holding the debts or sins or trespasses of others against them is bound to have an adverse effect on us regarding our own debts or sins or trespasses.
Many people consider Dostoevsky’s greatest novel to be The Brothers Karamazov. The best known section of it is what came to be known as “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor.” In it the skeptical anti-religious Ivan Karamazov tries to convince his highly religious but also naïve younger brother Alexei that religion does more harm than good. So to prove his point, Ivan creates a story for Alyosha. The tale is set in Seville, Spain, during the Spanish Inquisition. The aged cardinal of Seville, who is the Grand Inquisitor, encounters Jesus, who has been imprisoned for stirring up the people against the Church. The old man goes on and on about why the Church has to do what it does, why it must imprison and torture and even kill people for the sake of the faith. Jesus listens to this bizarre explanation without one word of response. In the end, when the Grand Inquisitor has finished his diatribe against Jesus and his understanding of Jesus’ notions of religious freedom, he orders the guards to free Jesus. But Jesus must never return to Seville to disturb the tenuous peace the Church has arranged there. Still without saying anything, Jesus kisses the cardinal, and then he slowly walks out of the prison. The cardinal feels he must have the last word, however. After all, he is the cardinal. “’Go, and come no more. . . come not at all, never, never!’” Ivan says in conclusion of his story.
All this time Alyosha has listened with rapt attention. In his youthful spiritual innocence, he asks his brother, “And the old man?” “The kiss glows in his heart,” Ivan answers, “but the old man adheres to his idea.”
If we want to be forgiven for our own sins, then we must forgive the sins of others. All of us engage in many egregious sins, most of us infrequently, but some fairly often. The forgiveness of God is not automatically offered to anyone. It comes with a price tag. The price is the forgiveness of those who have wronged us. “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”