In this second week of the 2024 edition of my PRAY Like Jesus series on prayer, we’re exploring the vital practice of confession. Jesus invites us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” but what does it mean to repent? Why is forgiveness important? How do we truly forgive others? And what’s a “trespass” anyway?
Today’s Scripture readings are 1 John 1:5-2:6, Psalm 103:6-13, and Matthew 18:21-35. We also had the joy of celebrating two baptisms during this service at Living Hope. This sermon is adapted from my sermon on February 23 & 24, 2019 (which, due to canceling services for bad weather, was my first time ever leading worship online from home!).
Here’s the livestream from Living Hope and the sermon podcast audio.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
As I said at the beginning of the service, we are spending five weeks talking about prayer. We’re using the model P-R-A-Y: Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield, and Listen to look at the example of prayer Jesus gives us in the Lord’s Prayer.
Last week, we started with the P in pray: Praise, and we talked about gratitude, giving thanks and praising God for who God is and what God has done. If you weren’t here last week, you can go back and listen on our website.
The first line in the Lord’s Prayer is “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
Jesus starts by establishing who God is and our relationship with God, because when we comprehend that the Creator of the heavens cares about us like a good parent cares for a child, we can’t help but give thanks. Praise sets the foundation for everything we pray.
This morning, we’re moving on to the second letter, R for repent. In the Lord’s Prayer, it’s the line, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
I don’t know about you, but I sometimes stumble over that word, “trespasses” – it’s just not a common word. Micah can say the entire Lord’s Prayer, but I’m pretty sure he has no idea what he’s saying for that part. Other translations put it as “forgive us our sins,” or “forgive us our debts,” which have slightly different nuances, but I actually kind of like trespasses.
When I hear trespasses, I think of a big red “No Trespassing” sign posted on a tree or a fence. In the modern sense, trespassing means to stray onto someone else’s property, going beyond the boundaries.
That’s what sin is: Crossing the lines of how God tells us to live. The Bible sometimes talks about the faithful life as a narrow road—trespassing is when you stray off the narrow road, when we try to find our own way apart from God.
In the New Testament, the word “repent” comes from the Greek word “metanoia,” which means to have a change of heart. If you’re walking down the wrong road and you have a metanoia, a change of heart, you turn around and go back the other way.
There were once two pastors standing by a country road, and they had a sign that said, “Repent! Turn back before it’s too late! The end is near!” Each time a car drove past, they’d hold up the sign.
As a car raced past, the drive leaned out and shouted, “Leave us alone, you religious nuts!” From around the curve, the pastors heard screeching tires, followed by a splash. One pastor turned to the other and said, “Do you think we should maybe just write, ‘Bridge Out’?”
Repenting is turning around, making a U-turn.
In the ten commandments, the first sin is worshiping an idol instead of worshiping God. As Christians, we know God is the source of our life, but we’re constantly tempted to find our meaning and purpose in other places.
Sometimes we look for life in sports, or in our jobs. For some, it’s an addiction, or maybe it’s finding your purpose in your kids or your spouse. Maybe it’s trusting in a political party or candidate as the savior.
Anything can become an idol if it moves into God’s place as the source you look to for life. When we put something else into God’s place, that’s trespassing, and we need to repent of it.
And we all do it—First John says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us….If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”
All of us stray off the path. Our English word “sin” comes from the Greek word “hamartia” which is actually a term from archery meaning to miss the mark. We miss the target, we trespass off the path God has created us to travel.
Verse 6 talks about it as us walking in darkness, away from the light of God. If we deceive ourselves into thinking we don’t need God as our source of life, if we make ourselves into our own gods, we’re walking in darkness. Repentance is turning around and confessing the truth: We need God’s help. We need the light of God to lead us on the way to true eternal life, because on our own, we stray off the path.
And when we ask God for help, when we ask God for forgiveness, God hears our prayer.
First John chapter two says, “If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
So what does it look like to repent? The short version is repentance and confession is admitting what you’ve done wrong and turning back toward God.
We confess our sins in a general sense just about every time we worship, but when you pray, when it’s just you and God, it’s a powerful thing to confess more specifically.
Now, God already knows your sins. Obviously. You’re not going to surprise God by praying, “I’m sorry for not returning the extra change I got at Meier, or I’m sorry for snapping at my wife last night.” God already knows. But the more specific we are at remembering and confessing our sins, the more we appreciate God’s forgiveness, and the more we’re able to forgive others.
I often think our Roman Catholic friends have this right with the sacrament of confession and penance, where you name your sins out loud to another person and then hear a personal promise of God’s forgiveness.
I thought about starting today’s sermon by asking you to turn and confess your sins to your neighbor, but I was afraid maybe none of you would come back next week. Naming our sins out loud is hard! But it is meaningful to name aloud what you’re struggling with, where you’ve gone astray, where you need God’s help, God’s grace.
That said, you can go too far in a ritual of confessing, to a point where you start worrying about forgetting a sin and then God won’t forgive it. Martin Luther famously aggravated his confessor Johann von Staupitz with how much he confessed. Sometimes he’d finish confession and immediately turn around to confess new sinful thoughts he’d had while confessing.
Confessing can slip into an obligation, like it’s a prerequisite before God will forgive you, like you’re the one in control of God’s forgiveness.
I suspect that misunderstanding is why we Lutherans rarely do individual confession, although it’s certainly still part of our tradition. If you have something you want to confess individually and receive individual absolution, that’s one of the things I’m here for.
But without getting to the point where it’s trying to manipulate God, confession is powerful. One thing you might try when you pray is writing down your sins, writing down what you’re sorry for, maybe as part of a longer prayer, and then crossing it out, erasing it, and writing a prayer of gratitude for God’s forgiveness.
Because God does promise to forgive. Psalm 103 says God’s forgiveness removes our sins as far as the east is from the west. God does not deal with us according to our sins, or repay us according to our iniquities.
On the cross, Jesus has taken the sins of the whole world into himself and put them to death. That includes your sins. You are forgiven.
That’s the promise of baptism, right? Baptism is the great bath, God washing away our sins, cleansing us, giving us new life. When we repent, when we turn back to God, God receives us with open arms.
NT Wright says forgiveness is not about God tolerating us, not about God managing to overlook our little indiscretions; but about God loving us. (The Lord and His Prayer)
God rejoices when sinners repent. Jesus lays down his life for our sake, out of love. Forgiveness is reconciliation, our Heavenly Father giving everything to bring us into the light, to give us real eternal life.
And as forgiven people, we forgive others. Forgiveness is God’s work, and as God’s children, it’s our work as well.
Peter asks Jesus, “How many times do I need to forgive?” Is there a limit, where someone’s just gone too far? Maybe seven times? That’d be a lot. And Jesus’ response blows Peter’s generosity out of the water. Not seven, but seventy-seven times seven.
You know how sometimes taking the Bible too literally can be a problem? This is one of those times. I’m confident Jesus didn’t intend this to be a math problem. Forgiveness doesn’t stop at the 78th time!
In this parable, Jesus says that the grace and forgiveness we have received from God is so great that it outweighs any debt we could be owed. Forgiveness is not transactional.
I’m not saying to put yourself in a dangerous situation or be a “doormat for Jesus.” Sometimes the church has told people in abusive situations to just forgive and forget, and that’s not right. Forgiving does not mean enabling. But we are called to let go of the grudges we hold, to love our neighbors.
It’s not a trap where if we don’t forgive, then God won’t forgive us; it’s that if we refuse to forgive others, if we hold onto grudges and use our power to withhold forgiveness from others, then we’re demonstrating we haven’t accepted the forgiveness God offers us.
Forgiveness is life-changing. How hard it is to get through our thick heads: God hears our prayers of repentance, and God forgives. You are forgiven. You are washed clean. You are loved.
And because of that, we can believe in a world where despite the evidence, forgiveness is possible. We can believe, as Greg sang, in a world where love is possible, where God’s light will guide us. God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven is built on forgiveness.
This week, may you begin to grasp God’s love and forgiveness for you in a new way.
When you pray, begin by giving thanks to God. Acknowledge the gifts God has given you.
Repent, and give thanks for God’s forgiveness and love for you. Amen
Continue on to part three in this series, PRAY Like Jesus: Ask.