Love. Forgive. Let go.

I am not sure exactly what to think about original sin.

That somehow the sins of Adam were so great that the rest of humanity is cursed to carry the punishment of his transgressions does not always make sense to me.

It can be stultifying to hear again and again that you are sinful and I am sinful and we are born sinful simply because Adam ate the of the fruit.

And yet we are not gods, either, and nor are we God.

We are not perfect.

We do sin.

And more so, from our imperfectness, we make mistakes.

And that fact is more resonant to me than we carry the sin from time immemorial and therefore are forever subject to God’s wrath.

So, original sin?

I don’t know.

But are we sinful because we make mistakes, give in to temptation, allow our emotions to get the better of us, judge others so that we don’t have to feel so bad about ourselves?

Yes, I can see that.

I will often speak of our brokenness from this pulpit, how because we are broken, we cannot yet claim the kingdom and claim its arrival is nigh.

But in brokenness, I am not saying we are inherently sinful, that we have no chance in this world and no access to salvation in the next.

What I mean by brokenness, is that we are inherently imperfect.

Not inherently sinful, but just imperfect.

Imperfections, flaws, dings in our armor, can all be fixed.

And it is in our imperfectness from where our sins derive, connive, and survive.

If we were perfect, then we would be but demi-gods created by a God who could only conceive of Gods’ self.

And I am not sure that God wishes us to be just like God or even all of us exactly the same as each other.

I think God created us to revel in the diversity of God’s creation.

It is through our different lenses where we are able to witness the beauty of God; a kaleidoscopic array that can only be understood in community and with the input of all peoples.

Even leaves of the same tree fall in different colors as there is beauty in contrast and differences and opposites.

And so, I do have some issues in fully adhering to or even, admittedly, understanding the theory of Substitutional Atonement, that idea where God sent Jesus to free us from the sins of Adam.

I tend to think that instead God sent Jesus to free us from our sins, full stop.

Not Adam’s sins, but your sins and my sins that we have committed ourselves.

And still, in both scenarios, we can acknowledge it is from sin, eternal, mortal, and otherwise, that Jesus came to free us.

We were freed by God’s forgiving heart and we access that freedom by asking for God’s forgiveness.

So instead of an inherent sinfulness, I would rather claim we are inherently forgiven.

And if we are forgiven, then what exactly is forgiveness.

Well, I would argue that forgiveness is of the very nature of God and if we are to forgive each other, then we are acting as God wishes us to act.

At no point do I think God can hate any of God’s creation, that God would send his creation to eternal suffering and so we are forgiven when we seek it from God and we are to forgive others when they seek forgiveness from us.

We hear this in the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

And still, I’m not sure this answers the question, what is forgiveness?

I see in this scenario it derives from two places.

First is the perfect forgiveness gifted to us from God and we are forgiven by God.

In this case, we are made whole through God’s forgiveness and ultimately, inheritors of the kingdom when it arrives.

Second, when we forgive, we act as God wishes us to act.

As we see in today’s gospel, forgive others or face consequences.

Forgive.

Or to put it another way, let go.

Let go of that what has harmed you.

Let go of that which has hurt you.

Let go of the heartache, the headaches; let go and heal because holding onto hurt can only cause us more pain.

Yes, to forgive is to let go and to let go is to ensure we are not continually harmed.

And so, in this morning’s gospel we hear of the repercussions of not forgiving.

In the parable shared by Jesus, a servant is forgiven his debts and this servant is forgiven a huge amount of money, a sum of which if it was to be repaid would take two hundred thousand years in earnings to pay back.

And the servant’s master forgives this debt, this rather large amount of money.

Upon leaving the master’s house, just after having been forgiven the amount due, the servant is encountered by another servant, someone who owes the first servant some money but certainly not the astronomical amount that was owed to the master.

And what does the debt forgiven servant do?

Does he act as his master acted?

Does he forgive his master forgave?

He does not.

Instead, he sends that second servant to prison until his much, much smaller debt is repaid.

Upon hearing this, the master is angered and says,

‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt.

We hear from this parable that the master, or God we suppose in this parable, wants us to forgive, wants us to show mercy as God has mercy on every one of us.

And if we do not forgive there will be retribution.

Now, it’s hard to get around this lesson that God will actively pursue and punish us if we don’t forgive others the debt they owe us as God forgives us of the debt we owe God.

This debt we owe can also be describe as the repayment for the sins we perform.

By sinning, by wronging others, we are creating a debt, the yawning gap between good and evil, that must be repaid, a gap that must be filled in.

And God will forgive us of our sins.

We need only faith and a willingness to see our imperfections so that we might amend our ways and more so, ask…

Ask for forgiveness.

In this story, we can say that forgiveness is just as important as loving God and each other for we are not loving God if we do not act as God would have us act and we are not loving each other if we do not forgive as God would have us forgive.

And still, there is an even more immediate benefit in us forgiving others. "When you release the wrongdoer from the wrong, you cut a malignant tumor out of your inner life. You set a prisoner free, but you discover that the real prisoner was yourself."

 When we hold onto hurt and harm and anger, we are causing ourselves to carry that hurt and harm and anger and it becomes obvious that one benefit of forgiveness is our own relief, our own well-being.

And when we free ourselves from that hurt, from that harm, from that anger we are making it easier for us to build a community for all God’s people so that when the kingdom does arrive, we are free from debt, debt to God and debt to each other and even, to ourselves.

We are all products of God’s mercy.

We have all been freed of debt through God’s forgiveness.

God does not do this for show, nor is God’s forgiveness transactional.

God forgives us because God loves us.

And yet, as human beings we can see forgiveness as transaction based and not something to be handed out freely.

No, even for someone whom it would take thousands of years to make amends for the hurt they cause, we must forgive them of that pain they caused.

Forgive or risk the peril of eternal grief.

Let go or risk becoming a prisoner to that grief.

Forgive and find freedom.

Let go and create some semblance of the kingdom found in a clear heart and clear mind.

Because we were afforded the unlimited grace given to us by God, we are to share that mercy as it is limitless.

Sometimes, it’s the only thing we can do to heal, to make ourselves whole.

Sometimes forgiveness is the greatest expression of love we have.

Yes, I’ll say it again because it’s all I got: Love God and love each other as God loves us.

And in this morning’s gospel, we find that forgiveness allows us to love the love that God shares with all of us.

Love.

Forgive.

Let go.

Amen.