"Forgive Us Our Debts, As We Also Have Forgiven Our Debtors"
Part 4 of The Lord’s Prayer

Texts: Matthew 6:12; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Today, friends, I want to talk about a source of controversy and division. Sadly, it is a difference that has found its way into the church—in fact, it is found primarily in the church. Maybe it is something you care about and maybe it isn’t. But you’re certainly aware of it. Every once in a while, the conflict rears its ugly head and causes categories to form, an "us" and a "them." Yes, at church! These groups emerge at weddings and funerals, a time when you’d like for everyone to be together. Sometimes the factions even appear amid the quiet of a Sunday morning right here in this Sanctuary.

You know what I’m talking about.

Should it be "debts" … or should it be "trespasses"?

That’s right; the one holy catholic and apostolic Church is divided on the one prayer that Jesus taught us to pray. So much so that I have heard brothers and sisters in Christ refer to each other as "debt-ers" and "trespassers." The fault, of course, lies with Matthew and Luke. Matthew spoke of debts, and Luke of trespasses (at least in the King James Version that provided the Bible memory verses of choice in the formative years of many). There is much to commend Luke’s suggestion. An ecumenical effort to find common ground has written a third version designed for everyone that brings Luke’s language into the modern age and makes a lot of sense: "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us." I’ve told many a person that these all mean the same thing and they should say whatever they’re comfortable with. And I still believe that … mostly.

But I would hate for us leave Matthew’s language behind completely. I would hate to see us lose that strange, sudden reference to something that most of us think of as a financial term, an odd foray into accounting in the middle of a poem that starts by hallowing God’s name and ends with a plea for deliverance from evil. "Forgive us our debts" stands out in a prayer and all the more so when we pledge ourselves to some debt forgiveness, as well. So why have generations of some of us prayed these words – and if we mean to keep saying them, how might our lives look different?

**

The father sees him approaching from a distance. Well, how about that. He’s back. Went out of here walking tall, now coming back with his tail between his legs. Took a chunk of my fortune. Spent it all on "dissolute living"—boy, is that a nice way to say it. The father watches his youngest son walk home. Are those rags he’s wearing? Where’s his coat? Is there no one with him?

The father has already given up much for this young man. He is owed a great deal of money. He is owed a humble no-strings-attached apology for the dignity he lost when his youngest son turned his back on the family. He is owed a debt of love that he gave without condition and for which he got only sorrow and disappointment and despair in return. This son borrowed against all that his father had and that he was, and now he has defaulted on the loan. Not only is he his father’s debtor, it is a debt he can not – will not ever be able to – repay.

The father stands and watches his son for a moment. Yes, that’s definitely him. He’ll be here in a few minutes. The next move is the father’s. How will he receive him?

No one would blame him if he turns him away. Or if he stands perfectly still, arms folded across his chest, listening impassively. He might accept the apology with the stoic gaze of an old man made wiser by his earlier generosity going so horribly wrong, fooled once but not twice. He might send the son into his own fields to work off the debt—maybe even for the rest of his life. The father might reclaim some small portion of his dignity, and might also keep peace in the home. No one could blame him for that; his neighbors would meet at the market and shake their heads and furl their brow and talk about how it was sad, but it was the only thing he could do.

But of course, to do so, would be to plunge his youngest son further into his debt. It would be to extend to him another loan—financial, emotional—at an even higher interest rate, binding him for life to a level of subservience above which he could never rise. It would be to prolong the agony of a relationship turned sour, a trust broken. And so the father does what he realizes is the only thing he can do: He forgives the debt and the debtor. And new life begins.

**

Forgiveness of debts helps us understand something that even talk about forgiving sins cannot. Debt always involves two: The ower and the owed, the lender and the borrower, the one who has for now experienced a gain and another who has experienced a loss. Using the language of debt for our failings helps us realize sin isn’t really a private matter, an individual misstep without consequence beyond ourselves. Sin has a cost. If we don’t see how it costs us anything, then we have willfully blinded ourselves to the cost to the lender of grace. Our sin offends God’s righteousness. It leads to the breakdown of society. It eats away at our sense of the good, surely one of the marks of God’s presence in our world and in our lives. Sin is paid for, one way or another. Sometimes at cost to ourselves or others. Always, ultimately, at the cross.

To pray "forgive us our debts" is to ask God to overlook all that. It is to ask God to burn the mortgage papers, to send the promissory note through the shredder. To pray "forgive us our debts" (and not my debts) is to confess, not just for ourselves but for our whole community, that we have not lived up to our part of the deal, and to plead for mercy. It is to ask to be accepted back as a prodigal people, and to find that not only are we accepted, but we are given enough that we need not ever borrow against our future security again. And God answers, covering shame with grace. God forgives the debtor, and new life begins.

In this earthly world, new life can be hard to come by.

A radio report this week told the story of an elderly woman in Philadelphia who after the death of her husband found herself mired in debt—unpaid bills for utilities, medical care, and of course a modest mortgage on her home. She needed help and called one of those toll-free numbers on TV that said it would help "consolidate her debt." What she got was an offer to pay her bills by refinance her house from what is called a "subprime" lender, a business that essentially makes its money by extending credit to those who may not be able to repay it. They gave her a woman living off her social security checks a loan with payments that after two years would jump to more than double her monthly income. Had the woman not found the help of a community agency that advocated for her with the lender, she would probably have lose her home, the only thing she had left.

Her story is one of many in a country that increasingly involves debt as an instrument of control. Owing something to another puts the debtor at the mercy of the lender. Some have even called it the modern form of slavery—people are never able to climb out of the hole they find themselves in … and no one is offering them a ladder. Money—now, just as 2000 years ago when Jesus talked about debt in a prayer—brings out the worst in people. Money, now as then, is a tool with which we humans, as individuals or as corporations or as nations, can oppress one another if we so choose. And too often we do, shackling society’s least, or future generations, with debt that will never be repaid.

This is a theological issues. Scripture and history witness to the need for the church to stand up and act when justice is threatened, when people are being left behind by the powerful. And when the Lord’s Prayer invokes the imagery of debt in a prayer, we are compelled to acknowledge whether we are speaking or keeping silent, whether we are acting or standing by.

And that is because in the end this line of the prayer is not so much about debt as it is about forgiveness. And it is precisely the seriousness of the matter of debt that makes the prayer’s talk of forgiveness so significant. … and frankly, so frightening. For this prayer demands something not just of God, but of the one praying. In fact, it almost asks God to act in proportion to our action: "Forgive us our debts – as we also have forgiven our debtors." And that ought to frighten us.

**

He hears from a distance, out in the fields. It’s the sound of hustle and bustle. Of his father giving instructions. And then the sound of music and laughter. When the slave tells him what’s going on … about his brother, about his father’s response, about the party going on inside … his fatigue from working in the field and the stored-up pride of doing good work erupt in anger that surely the slave goes back and reports to the father. And why wouldn’t it?

This elder brother, this good son, is now, in a very real sense, owed something. The father has already shown that he will pay out an inheritance on request. The elder son is technically due double his younger brother’s take, and one can’t blame the older for having a good financial head on his shoulders and calculating what will be his share. He isn’t just owed the money, though, he is owed his father’s thanks. Junior has been loyal, working, taking care of the farm, while the problem child has been running around to parties and prostitutes. He is owed appreciation and praise. It is only right. In fact, he is owed a celebration—if any celebration is to be given, especially one involving the slaughter of the fatted calf, then it is this older boy who should get it … no, who is owed it. It doesn’t really matter that he has never asked for it; that’s all the more reason it is his. The old man has a debt to pay, and it is to him. And no one could deny that.

And so with the strains of music rising in the house, with no one but some servants there at his side to witness his frustration, a man’s eldest son has a decision to make. He has to go inside eventually. But will be with a scowl or with a smile? Will he join in a party, or head righteously to his room and tally what he is owed. Surely no one can judge him for his choice—a choice to confront the father for his reckless forgiveness, a choice to offer no such forgiveness himself.

"Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" this new and more accurate translation says—a little different than the way we say it, Jesus putting our forgiveness of others into the past tense (as though it were already a fact), but our own words placing it more conditionally in the present, more honestly making it a wish, a hope. Scary, either way, though. If God really did forgive our debts in just the same way we forgive others’ … well, that isn’t a judgment I would look forward to.

But rather than not praying it any more, perhaps we could pray it more fully. This line more than any other in the prayer reminds us that prayer is not merely a set of words on Sunday, but a set of actions lived out every day. The prayer Jesus taught us is both request and commitment, asking forgiveness of God and committing to forgiveness ourselves.

Who owes you something? Money they don’t have? An apology they won’t give? Trust that they received, broke, and won’t return?

Who can you forgive? A wayward son or daughter? An underappreciative superior? A colleague or sibling or teacher or student who has left you disappointed?

How might your life display forgiveness? Seeking to understand rather than to be understood, seeking to console rather than be consoled, to love unselfishly rather look for love’s return.¹

May we live our lives in such a way that praying "Forgive us our debts as also have forgiven our debtors" might be no longer scary, but the hope of salvation—the beginning of new life.

Amen

¹This is a reference to the prayer attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi (which was also the text of the hymn sung after the sermon). The full prayer, as found in the Book of Common Worship: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.  For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life"..