Forgiven and Forgiving: Life in Jesus' Kingdom

[This is the message that was shared during both worship services with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 18:21-35
At the end of last Sunday’s gospel lesson, Jesus describes how people living in His Kingdom, the people of His Church, are to resolve things when we believe we have been sinned against.

As today’s gospel lesson begins, we can almost read Peter’s mind as he asks Jesus, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” (Matthew 18:21)

“I’m willing to forgive someone who’s doing me wrong,” Peter seems to be saying. “But. Lord, if they keep sinning against me, when do I get to stop forgiving?”

Jesus tells Peter how many times he is to forgive a fellow believer: “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22).

Some translations render Jesus’ words as “seven times seven.” Others put it, “seventy times seven.” Various ancient copies of Matthew’s gospel can support any of those translations. But we can’t get hung up here and miss Jesus’ point.

In Jewish thought, seven is the perfect number. It was, according to Genesis, the number of days in the first week of God’s creation and it was on the seventh day that God rested from His labor. Seven is the number of completion and eternity.

So, how often are we to forgive our fellow believers, our sisters and brothers who by their confession of the crucified and risen Jesus, live in the Kingdom of heaven? Jesus says always.

Completely.

Totally.

Eternally.

Repeatedly.

Continuously.

While Peter stands there, undoubtedly slack-jawed and wondering why he would forgive anyone continuously and how he he could possibly do it, Jesus tells what has become one of his most famous parables. He begins: “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like…” Whenever Jesus uses phrasing like this, it’s a signal that the entire fictional illustration He’s about to share tells you what life in His kingdom is like. This is how things work among God’s people, the Church, Jesus is telling us.

Jesus says: “...the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand [The word here in the Greek in which Matthew wrote his gospel is murion, from which we get the English word, myriad...ten thousand] bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled [In fact, the word in the Greek is a form of the verb, aphiemi, literally, released, the word most commonly used in the New Testament for forgave. The king forgave, released the servant from the man who owed the king so much…] the debt and let him go.” [Matthew 18:23-27]

The first thing we learn from the parable about the kingdom of heaven is that it’s where Jesus’ disciples are set free, released! 

By the power of Jesus’ death on the cross, when He offered up His innocent body and blood in payment for the massive debt we owe to God for our sin, our debt is canceled. All who trust in Jesus and what He did for us on the cross, are set free of all we owe God for the ways our lives have violated His holiness:

• all the gossip and misuse of God’s name, 
• all the dishonesty and covetousness, 
• all the adultery and failure to worship God instead of ourselves or our kids or the world, 
• all the financial sleight of hand. 

We are set free to be the people God made us to be! As we sing in the traditional liturgy: “Worthy is Christ, the Lamb who was slain, whose blood set us free to be people of God.”

And when we come together on Sunday mornings, confessing our sins, because of what Jesus did for us and your faith in Jesus, you can believe that when I say, “As a called and ordained minister of the Church of Christ, and by His authority, I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins,” or words like these, it's all true!

“As far as the east is from the west, so far has [God] removed our transgressions from us!” (Psalm 103:12)

Christians needn't say, "I hope that  I’m forgiven.” You are forgiven because Jesus died and rose to bring His forgiveness to all who trust in Him. That’s the first thing the kingdom of heaven is like for those who believe!

Jesus goes on with His parable in verse 28: ““But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

The second thing we learn from Jesus' parable about the kingdom of heaven, the Church, is: It’s the dominion of God in which disciples of Jesus forgive others as we’ve been forgiven.

After teaching us to pray, elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” Jesus says: “...if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14-15)

If, after being assured of God’s absolution--His forgiveness of our sins--during worship on Sunday morning, we harbor grudges or hold things against others, refusing to release them from the debts they owe us, God will clap the chains and manacles back on our lives. Our lives will come back under an eternal death sentence. We will lose our forgiveness. We’ll lose our freedom.

The servant forgiven so much by the king in Jesus’ parable should have been so grateful for his freedom that he readily forgave the man who owed him so little. Instead, he used his freedom as a license to play God over his fellow servant. No matter how often we go to worship, or how many Bible verses we memorize, hurricane victims we help, or mission trips we go on, unless we forgive others as Christ desires to forgive us, we will not be forgiven. We’ll still be imprisoned in our sin.

It’s possible that after Jesus told this parable, Peter was as slack-jawed as he he’d been before Jesus told it. And maybe we find this teaching intimidating. I know that I do!

But the call and command of Jesus in this parable are simple and, if we take them seriously, liberating and life-giving.

Think of what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross and what the Father accomplished for us when He raised Jesus from the dead, think of all of that, as a massive, eternal blank check imparting never-depleted riches of forgiveness and new life to all who turn from sin and trust in, believe in, surrender their lives to, Jesus.

God never tires of forgiving those who genuinely repent and believe in Him. He forgives in perfect seventy-seven times fashion.

In turn, Jesus frees us from the burden of keeping score. He frees us from having to figure out who owes us for hurting us.

Jesus frees us to treat others with the same grace, mercy, and forgiveness He has given to us.

He frees us to get on with the true living of life: loving God, loving neighbor, making disciples.

By the grace of God given in Christ, we are forgiven.

By that same grace, we can forgive others.

Seventy times seven, in utter eternal perfection.

That’s what life in the kingdom of heaven is like, here on earth and in eternity.

Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Forgiveness: Hard and Beautiful

[This was shared today, during a Living Water Lutheran Church women's retreat. I subjected people to listening me sing parts of a few of my songs.]

After teaching the disciples how to pray--including the petition, “...forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”--Jesus says in Matthew 6:14-15: “... if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

The God we know in Jesus is in the forgiving business. That’s why John the Baptist said of Jesus: “Behold, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus is the ultimate sacrificial lamb. He offered Himself to take away the power of sin over our lives “once and for all.” Jesus’ self-sacrifice and our faith in Jesus ensures that we’re set free to live with God for eternity, even now in the messiness of this life. The forgiveness of God offered in Jesus is great news. But Jesus says that in order to claim the Father’s forgiveness, we need to be forgiving. If we don’t forgive, Jesus tells us, “your Father will not forgive your sins.”

The word that Jesus uses that we translate as forgive is, in the Greek in which Matthew rendered the Lord’s Prayer, a form of the word aphiemi. It’s a verb that literally means to send away from, or release, even divorce or separate from. Psalm 103:12 conveys the picture of forgiveness as God sending our sins far from us, when it says: “...as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” When Jesus brings God’s forgiveness to the repentant believer, we are released, set free, and our sins are sent packing! “The wages of sin is death,” Romans 6:23 says, “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

When we’re forgiven through Christ, the boulder of sin that prevents us from claiming the life Jesus died and rose to give us is removed from our path. “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” [Jesus asked the woman caught in adultery.] “No one, sir,” she said.“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” That woman was released from the debt she owed to God for her sin and her sins were sent away. She could walk with God. That’s what forgiveness lets us do.

But forgiveness is hard. The first thing that makes forgiveness hard is that we have to admit that, whether in our thinking or in our actions, we’re in the wrong. Yet, if we’re to receive forgiveness, we have to be open to confessing our sin. One of the most courageous prayers in the Bible is Psalm 139:23-24: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

When I listened to the first drafts of Georgeann’s, Nancy’s, and Dawn’s presentations for this weekend, I urged them to be unafraid to share what they felt comfortable in sharing as they spoke with you. It’s when we see each others’ hearts and lives honestly and appropriately shared, that the message of Christ can be best transmitted between people. So, I’m going to follow my own advice and make a complete fool of myself on this subject of forgiveness.

I write songs...or more accurately, mostly I write parts of songs, most of them never getting completely finished. I started writing songs when I was eight years old after I'd watched The Al Jolson Story and realized for the first time that songs didn't just appear. People actually wrote them. I thought, "That's a good job." So, I went to my bed room, sprawled out on the floor, and wrote my first song. It was only later that I realized that it was written to the tune of The Daring Man on the Flying Trapeze. But it got the ball rolling. I can't not write songs, probably coming up with an average of three song ideas a day. They come to me as I experience life and as I observe the lives of others.

A few years back, I became conscious of a sin into which I’d fallen (it’s amazing how long we can live in denial about our sins, isn’t it?). I confessed. And then, a song came to me. Here's the first verse. (And the embarrassing and vulnerable part.):

What I did was wrong
And there isn’t any way I can make it seem that it was right
Which is why I try avoiding detection in Your light.
It’s a foolish game that I try to play
Running from You see me anyway.
What I did was wrong.

I once sat through an evening with an agnostic man. We talked late into the night. He unfolded a lifetime of regrets, exposing his sins to me.

As I was getting ready to leave, he smiled and told me, “They say that confession is good for the soul. I guess it is.” I told him that yes, confession can be cleansing. But unless we let Jesus take away the garbage, our sin will always be with us.

Forgiveness comes when we let Jesus take our sins away. That’s when we’re released. Many people realize that they’ve sinned; but they’re never forgiven because they don’t give it to the Savior Who wants to nail our sins to the cross and kill off their power over us forever.

And that leads to another song fragment. A friend committed a damaging sin and had no sense of regret for it. On the night we learned of it, I drove to lead a Bible study, thinking about what I would say to my friend had he not cut off contact with all us. This song started to come to me:

Everybody falls off their pedestals and tumbles to the ground
And there’s no point in feigning strength when we all have fallen down
But when I’m made weak
By the things that I seek
I know someone who’s strong
I lift up a prayer
And I know that He’s there
And somehow I can carry on. 

Through the joy and through the pain
Through all the driving rain
In the deep heart of a bleak night
I know my Lord is there
Through the laughter and the tears
Through all the raging years
When all my hope has left sight
I know
I know
I know my Lord is there.

What I wanted to tell my friend is, “Don’t run from God! Don’t run from those who come to you in the name of God. There may be some hard words that need to be heard. There may be some repentance and an honest dealing with your faults. But Jesus shows that God wants what’s best for you. God wants to forgive you and give you a fresh start.” I never got to tell him any of that.

So, forgiveness is hard, first of all because we have to admit that we’re wrong (we have to be vulnerable) and secondly, because it entails surrender to God, the only way we’re to experience the truth that God loves us and is always there for us!

But to me above all, it’s Jesus’ implacable demand that we forgive, that we lay down our demands that others pay up on the debts that they owe to us in order to receive God’s forgiveness, is what makes forgiveness so hard.

When we hear or read about this demand, we seem to automatically think of our need to forgive other people: the people who have wronged us, hurt us, or harmed us. But I think that there are two others apart from other people we must forgive in order to be set free by God’s forgiveness.

The first is this. We must forgive God.

The truth, of course, is that God never wrongs us. Even when He disciplines us or refuses to give us what we want, God doesn’t wrong us.

In Hebrews 12:7-8, we’re told to, “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.”

In other words, whatever bad we experience in this world doesn’t come from God’s hand, but if we will go through it clutching God’s hand, our faith will grow, our character will grow. We will be transformed into the image of the Savior Who died and rose for us.

Besides, as someone has said, when we see that God is all we have, we come to realize that God is all we need.

When Paul asked God to remove that mysterious thorn in his flesh, God turned him down three times and finally told Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9) When we’re weak enough to lay our sins at the foot of the cross, God fills with the strength to live forever!

The other person we need to forgive is, for me, the most difficult one of all to forgive: myself.

Three years ago, I came to be the pastor of Living Water. I believe that it was God’s call to come here and I love this church.

But I have also found it hard to forgive myself these past three years because of how I handled my leaving Saint Matthew, the church we served before.

There were people who had gone to battle on our sides in defense of the Lordship of Jesus and the authority of God’s Word. They were people to whom we’d grown close. They’d endured nastiness, recrimination, and shunning from others. And though I’d intimated that it might be best for me to leave and eliminate a lightning rod of controversy as the congregation moved to the North American Lutheran Church, I caught people off guard when I announced that we were coming to Living Water. Four people in particular, all of whom had firmly stood with Christ and the Bible, felt betrayed by me. They felt lied to and I’ve carried guilt for that ever since. People in whom I've confided have tried to counsel me to receive grace and forgiveness for my repented sin, but mostly, I've insisted on holding onto my guilt, even after Saint Matthew folks have expressed their forgiveness.

I did this even though I’ve long known that there’s a certain egotism associated with refusing to accept forgiveness that’s been offered by God and by others. It’s as if I was saying, “I know that God forgives me and I know that others forgive me, but my standards are higher.” That’s egotistical!

And it’s probably also needy.

I needed to be reminded by God’s Word and by other disciples that even when I don’t feel forgiven or forgivable, Jesus died and rose to make it possible for me to be released--set free, divorced--from my sins. To be forgiven!

Maybe that’s why I often remind people of the promise in God’s Word: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved!”

That includes you. Don’t withhold from yourself what God freely gives to all who call on Him with repentance and belief, forgiveness.

All of which leads me to one more humiliating self-disclosure in the form of a song that is completed and which I even shared with the congregation last year. It’s called Confession and Absolution Song and it’s about forgiveness. There’s a part for you, if you care to join in:

Father, forgive us for all of our sin
Come, Holy Spirit, make us clean within
Through Jesus Christ, we know You're our Friend
Alleluia
Alleluia 

A Friend indeed, but also our King
The One to Whom all creation sings
Our needy selves are all we can bring
Alleluia
Alleluia

Now all who call on the name of the Lord
The One Who saints and angels adore
You have new life and life evermore
Alleluia
Alleluia

Forgiveness is God’s sweetest gift and it’s ours through faith Jesus, Who died and rose for us. Alleluia!

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Forgiving Those Who Hurt Us

[This is the script for a sermon shared with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio earlier today.]

Genesis 50:15-20
Matthew 18:21-35

In today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew, Jesus was asked by His disciple Peter, how often he should forgive others, “as many as seven times?” Peter thought that he was being very liberal in couching his question in this way. To forgive someone as many as seven times, Peter felt, along with the people of his day, was the height of patience and kindness.

But Jesus answers that we're to forgive others not seven times, but “Seventy-seven times.” Jesus’ answer is not a mathematical formula, but a teasing parody of the question posed by His disciple. Peter wanted to limit how forgiving followers of Christ needed to be. Jesus was telling Peter (and us), “Just as there’s no limit to how much I, God in human flesh, forgive all who repent and believe in Me, there should be no limit to your forgiveness of others.”

This teaching should come as no surprise to us. In Matthew 6:14-15, after teaching the disciples what we call The Lord’s Prayer, Jesus said: “...if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

Jesus says that we actually block His forgiveness and life with Him from our lives by failing to forgive. I find Jesus’ words terrifying, frankly. But we should remember them whenever we feed condemnatory feelings toward others.

Yet Jesus’ command that we forgive is more than a stern dictate. Forgiving others is also a gift from God that can set us free for living life to the full.

Our first lesson for this morning, Genesis 50:15-21, shows us how this is so. You know the story of Joseph well, part of whose life our lesson tells us about today. This Joseph, of course, isn’t the one who, nearly two-thousand years later, would be chosen by God to be the earthly father of God the Son, Jesus of Nazareth. This Joseph is the great grandson of Abraham, grandson of Isaac, son of Jacob, the patriarchs of Biblical faith.

At an early age, this Joseph angered his brothers because their father Jacob so favored Joseph and because Joseph reported dreams that God had given to him indicating that one day, his brothers would bow down to him.

The brothers’ resentments toward Joseph simmered until they reached a boiling point: They sold Joseph into slavery and when they came back home from the fields where they’d been tending the family’s sheep, without Joseph, they convinced Jacob that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.

From there, Joseph’s circumstances went from bad to worse.

He became the slave and eventually, the supervisor of all the holdings of Potiphar, one of Egypt’s most powerful generals, only to be falsely accused of attempting to rape Potiphar’s wife, who had been disappointed when Joseph refused to have an affair with her. Joseph languished in prison.

Eventually, Joseph was freed and, gifted by God with both the ability to interpret dreams and lead an organization, he undertook a massive rationing program that saved millions from death by starvation when a famine hit.

You remember how his brothers, not knowing who Joseph was, came to Egypt seeking to buy food and how eventually, Joseph was reunited with his father and how God used Jacob to save God’s people, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, the Jewish people, from extinction.

This, of course, is important for all of us because it was through the Messiah Jesus Who was given to God’s people, that salvation would become possible for all who repent and believe in Jesus.

But our lesson takes place well after Joseph’s reunion with his father. Jacob and all of his sons and their families had lived in Egypt with Joseph for some time when Jacob died.

There are two scenes recounted in the lesson. Scene #1 comes in verse 15. Jacob has died and Joseph’s brothers are in a panic. They wonder, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?” Joseph’s brothers could be cynical, self-centered men and they couldn’t imagine that Joseph was any different.

They projected their own cynicism and selfishness onto Joseph. Afraid for their lives, the brothers concoct a phony story to tell Joseph.

We read about that story in Scene #2 of our lesson, verses 16 through 21. The brothers tell Joseph that, just before he died, their father Jacob had directed them to tell Joseph not to exact vengeance on them for their sins against him.

Our lesson tells us that when Joseph heard his brothers' story, he wept. Joseph's brothers found it hard to believe that a believer in God like Joseph could possibly forgive them. That's why they wept.

They clearly didn't know nor understand the relationship with God that Joseph had. And that’s what made Joseph weep, filled with sorrow for their disbelief and their fear of him.

Joseph says in verses 19 and 20 of our first lesson: “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Though I’ve read them many times, I always find Joseph’s words here breathtaking! And they often choke me up.

Joseph is saying that God can make something of the most sinful actions people may perpetrate against us.

Notice several things about what Joseph says. First: Joseph sees his brothers kneeling before him and, even though this was exactly what God had revealed would happen in the dreams he’d had as a boy, he didn’t like it.

Joseph believed God’s words in Isaiah 42:8: “I am the Lord; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.” Joseph insisted that he wouldn’t take God’s place. He wouldn’t take God’s glory and he wouldn’t do God’s job.

When someone hurts us, we may be inclined to think that it’s only our due that the offending party should, in some way, come crawling to us for forgiveness. Joseph knew that no matter what sins others perpetrate against us, God is really the One most hurt and offended by human sin. When we are offended, it’s good to remember God’s words in Deuteronomy 32:35 “It is Mine to avenge; I will repay.” 

Though today, Jesus entrusts the Church with the responsibility of declaring God’s forgiveness to the repentant and the opposite to the unrepentant, when others hurt us, we aren’t in the vengeance business. We must trust God to sort things out.

The second thing to notice is that Joseph could see God at work even in the midst of his pain. He saw that God had used the adversities he experienced to save whole nations, including the small band of people who would become the ancestors of Israel and through Christ, the ancestors of all who confess Christ as their God and Lord.

Joseph’s connection with God allowed him to forgive his brothers. None of us can forgive others and be free of the resentments that can destroy our happiness, without God’s help and empowerment. It’s impossible to live the Christian life without a connection to the God of the universe definitively revealed to us in Jesus Christ! We can forgive only if Jesus Christ lives within us.

As Christians, we confess that God does live and work within us. As Paul puts it in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” You can't forgive others their trespasses against you. But Christ in you can!

Christ lives in you when you are a baptized believer in Him. Think of what that means for your everyday life! Even on the cross, Jesus Christ was able, we see from Luke 23:34, to pray for those who were killing Him and crying for His blood, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” That Christ lives within every baptized believer in Christ!

We see how Christ lives in believers in a man named Stephen. Five years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Acts 7:60 tells us that Stephen, a mere human being who, through Holy Baptism, had Christ living within him, could pray as he was being stoned to death for his faith in Christ, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

When you believe in the God revealed in Jesus—the God of the Old and New Testaments, you can forgive others because you know that in Jesus, nothing can separate you from God and His love for you. Christians know the freedom that comes to us when God empowers us to forgive others as God has forgiven us because of the cross and resurrection of Christ.

The most common New Testament Greek work for forgive, aphiemi, literally means, release. Forgiveness is releasing, letting go of all pretense of being God, letting go of having any right or responsibility for holding the sins of others ocer their heads, and instead, trusting God to deal with whatever punishments need to meted out against those who sin against us. When we forgive others, God releases us to live with Him always.

Holding a grudge is like holding your breath for an extended period of time. As long as you do it, you can’t expel the toxins of bitterness and anxiety and you can’t breathe in the fresh air of God’s Holy Spirit. If Joseph hadn’t trusted in God to release His grudges and hold onto God through bad and good times, there is no way God could have fulfilled the good purposes that God had revealed to Joseph when Joseph was just a little boy that God wanted to fulfill in Joseph’s life. When we fail to forgive, there are good things that God intends to do through us that just don’t happen. And that is a tragedy.

As Jesus showed us in last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, there are times when we must lovingly confront those we feel have sinned against us. It’s right that we do so. But God can do so much in the lives of people who surrender everything, even their anger and sorrow over the hurts, insults, slights, and horrible injuries others have inflicted on them.

God will do nothing in the lives of people who block His grace by refusing to forgive others. But God releases us from our sins when we forgive others as He forgives us through Christ. If you’ve come here this morning holding a grudge against anybody, I invite you (I beg you) to attempt to work things out starting now. Release those against whom you have a grudge. Release yourself. Above all, I invite you to lay your grudge at Jesus’ cross right now and to let God set you free to live the life you were made for!

9 Thoughts on the Angry Pastor and the Restaurant Server Who Went Viral

My buddy, Steve Sjogren, first alerted me to the image of a receipt on which a pastor refused to leave a tip because she already gave 10% to God. He suggested I might want to blog on the story.

Since then, I've learned more of the details:

A Friday night meal at Applebee’s resulted in more than either the customer or a waitress working that night bargained for after a pastor’s refusal to pay a tip was shared online.

Though the embarrassed patron has apologized for her actions, the old adage of the customer always being right may have some truth to it, as the waitress who posted photo evidence of the tip snub lost her job for doing so.

The trouble began last Friday, when Pastor Alois Bell went to the local chain restaurant with several others following a service at Truth in the World Deliverance Ministries.

When the bill came, she did not include a tip on the signed copy of her receipt. She did, however, include the reason why.

“I give God 10 [percent],” the note on the receipt read. “Why do you get 18?”

The waitress, who has been identified only as Chelsea by The Consumerist, posted a picture of the note on the popular user-powered news site Reddit, along with the caption, “My mistake sir, I’m sure Jesus will pay for my rent and groceries.”

“I originally posted the note as a lighthearted joke,” she told The Consumerist. “I thought the note was insulting, but it was also comical. I posted it to Reddit because I thought other users would find it entertaining.”

Her post instantly got the attention of other users, and eventually the news media. The popular story also got back to its source – Bell – on Wednesday, though she was less amused than others who had seen it before her. She called the Applebee’s where she had eaten to voice her frustration over the sharing of the image, which includes her signature.

Chelsea was fired by managers at the restaurant following the call, despite reportedly being a model employee before this incident...


In an interview with The Smoking Gun, Bell apologized for her actions, which she described as “lapse in [her] character and judgment,” adding that she did leave a $6 cash tip on the table for the waitress who served them that night – who was not Chelsea.

“My heart is really broken,” she was quoted as saying. “I’ve brought embarrassment to my church and ministry.”

Is billing customers 18% for tips a good policy? Probably not and probably not smart either. While many restaurant patrons are no doubt cheap, inconsiderate of the hard work done by servers and other restaurant personnel, a customer alienated because of a set charge for tips is not likely to return, meaning no business and no tips.

Was Applebee's right in firing the server? Probably. Whether it was in the company manual or not, she seems to have willfully violated the privacy of another person for what she characterizes as a lighthearted prank. It hardly seems that.

Was the pastor wrong to refuse to pay the tip and to do so invoking both God and her calling as a pastor? I feel so. I also think that she was right to apologize.

Here's a look at the receipt and Pastor Bell's note.

The entire incident evokes all sorts of thoughts and feelings from me.

1. Let's start with the anger seen in the question, "I give God 10%, why do you get 18" and in the scratches through the levied tip amount.

Anger in itself is not a sin. Jesus, God in the flesh, got angry. (More on that later.) And Ephesians 4:26 tells Christians: "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger."

The takeaway from that passage? If you're angry, don't use it as an excuse to assault another person, verbally or otherwise.

Instead, seek out the person with whom you're angry and, with the idea that you could be wrong, in part or in full, explain your grievance. Seek to get things resolved. (If that sounds like the way Jesus tells Christians to resolve disputes among themselves in Matthew 18:15-20, it should.)

Bell's angry note resolved nothing. In fact, it caused all kinds of problems, for her and for her server.

2. Scripture says that God loves cheerful givers who give "not reluctantly or under compulsion" (2 Corinthians 9:7). Pastor Bell's note made her seem like something other than a cheerful giver! The note comes across as saying that her offerings to God aren't given in grateful response to God for Jesus' death and resurrection, but an obligation she has to keep. "God coerces me to give 10% of my income to Him," she seems to be saying, "You can't coerce an even bigger percentage out of me."

I have to ask myself, "Do I ever unwittingly begrudge God the things I should want to give to Him simply because I know He loves me and I want to love Him back?" I hope not.

3. I feel that Bell mentioned being a pastor in order to give credence to her anger. The message seems to be, "As a pastor, I speak for God. Therefore it isn't just me who's mad at me, it's God too."

That might have carried weight with some people. It clearly didn't with Bell's server.

And here's a news flash for all pastors: Most people in today's society don't respect pastors. They don't regard pastors as authority figures. And most people think that the main thing churches and pastors want from them is money. Your being a pastor does not legitimize your anger! In fact, it should curb it. Not all anger is illegitimate, but its expression by pastors should be rare and thought-through.

If Pastor Bell's server wasn't a Christian, this was the lesson she took away from the pastor's scrawl: We Christians and we pastors are just as self-righteous, angry, and money-grubbing as many people say we are. From Pastor Bell's contrite response to the situation, I doubt that's the impression she wanted to leave with her server.

And I guarantee if you were a spiritually disconnected restaurant server who got dumped on like this by a customer identifying herself as a pastor, you wouldn't be very likely to wake up on Sunday morning and say to yourself, "I want the joy that pastor has. I think I'll go to church today!"

4. I'm not piling onto Pastor Bell here. She has apologized and I believe her apology. But there is a larger lesson here: If Christians or pastors want credibility for the faith we confess, we won't get it by coming across as bullies.

The gospel of Matthew says that the crowds who heard Jesus "were astounded at His teaching, for he taught them as one having authority" (Matthew 6:29). But what Jesus taught wasn't new. Or exotic. And He didn't usually push His "heft" around. Jesus was a servant. He wasn't even too proud to wash the feet of His disciples while telling all who follow Him to be servants, too (John 13:1-16). If God in the flesh served us, even dying on a cross for us, how much more should those of who bear His Name--Christians, we're called--be servants of others.

It's only in being servants, whether we're pastors or plumbers or presidents, that we Christians have any authority.

And, like Jesus, we're to only use our authority (read: the influence we earn through our servanthood) in ways that build people up, even the people we may have to criticize and to whom we may need to speak unwanted truths in love (Ephesians 4:15).

5. Is there ever a time when church leaders should get mad? If Jesus is any example to us, then we must conclude that there are times when anger and setting people straight is warranted. Like when believers who should know better turn their backs on the will of God, or treat each other hatefully, or otherwise sin unrepentantly.

But Jesus never "went off" on prostitutes or extortionist tax collectors. He never blew up on those who were known to have no relationship with God. Jesus always used kindness to lead the spiritually-disconnected to repentance and faith in Him.

On the other hand, Jesus often let some people have it, people like self-righteous Pharisees and temple money-changers who knew God's Word by heart, yet ignored it. His anger then, was aimed at the same purpose as His kindness, to call believers to repentance and faith in Him. For Jesus, anger was a tool expressing God's will and even God's love, not a display of self-indulgence.

Pastors and all Christians are better off to assume that most of the people they meet know nothing about the God revealed in Christ and do all they can to extend to them the same grace, patience, and kindness that Christ shows Christians every single day.


6. Let's assume for just a second that the 18% tip charge came at Pastor Bell out of nowhere. Was it right to just go off on the server?

The better path might have been to ask to speak to the manager about the restaurant's automatic tip policy (and still have left the server with some sort of tip).

Pastor Bell says that she did leave a $6.00 cash tip on the table after writing her note. That amounts to a 17.6% tip, almost the amount that the receipt had charged her in the first place. This tells me that she may have been trying to make a point that she didn't mind leaving tips, only having a particular amount put on her charge account.

I'm glad she left the server a tip. After all, "the laborer deserves to be paid" (1 Timothy 5:18) and most restaurant servers accept lower wages in order to be able to accept patrons' tips. It's not fair to hold a restaurant's policy you find unacceptable against a server who didn't set the policy.

7. In the Internet era, anything we say or do has the potential for going viral. In fact, our deeds can "go viral" even without the Internet, in the swirling cesspool of gossip. This is one more reason I often pray, "God, give me the right words and the right silences. Grant that everything I say, do, and am will bring you glory."

I can't tell you (and won't tell you for fear of it going viral) how often I've gotten in the way of God answering that prayer, not because God couldn't answer it, but because of my words, deeds, and thoughts, I refused to let Him answer it. In the Name of Jesus Christ, I repent for that.

8. Our actions can have unintended consequences for others. Chelsea, the Applebee's server, was, in my judgment, wrong to publish Pastor Bell's signed receipt on the Internet. But her getting fired was in part caused by Bell's ill-advised note. The server still bears responsibility for her action; no one made her send the image of the receipt out onto the Internet. But no note, no appearance on the web, no kerfluffle, no irate call from a violated customer, no firing.

If the server was going to publicize this incident, she would have done better just to post about it on Twitter without Bell's name. I know that the image of the receipt was more powerful than a tweet would have been. But the server would still have her job, while maybe sensitizing some who saw her post on Twitter to be considerate in tipping serving personnel.

9. A final thought: This receipt makes me wonder, "What are the ways in which I indulge my own anger or general sinfulness rather than stopping and asking God to control my thoughts, words, and actions?" How can I be more faithful to Christ while interacting with people in my everyday life?

Those are haunting questions, ones worth praying about.

Epiphany Signs Christ Gives Us to Do

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Luke 4:14-21
This Epiphany season, as we said last week, is a time when we look at many incidents from Jesus’ time on earth that unscramble our picture of Him, helping us to understand that in Jesus Christ, we meet more than just a human being; He’s also God and the world’s long-promised Messiah, Savior, and King.

But the first sign of Jesus does in the lesson and the others we're told about are very different from a voice shouting God the Father’s pleasure with God the Son on the banks of the Jordan or from Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding, which are the signs we attended to over the past two Sunday. The signs in today’s lesson are simpler.

The first one narrated by Luke here comes in a visit home, the reading of a Bible lesson during worship, and a plain, yet forceful statement Jesus makes about Himself.

After being baptized and then propelled by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted, Jesus had done some teaching and healing. His hometown was already abuzz with word about Him. When it reached Nazareth that Jesus was on His way, the hometown crowd was excited. Luke tells us: “When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day…He stood up [and read from the scroll]: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’”

And then, Luke says that Jesus “rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.” In what must have been a moment of high and silent, drama, Jesus then told His townspeople--and us--"Today, right at this moment, in your hearing, all foretold centuries ago has taken place.”

The words that Jesus read in worship that day were from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. You can read them today, in chapters 58 and 61 of Isaiah’s book. Jesus claims that He is the anointed king (that’s what the word Messiah in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the word Christ in the Greek of the New Testament, mean, Anointed One) come to usher in the reign of God. And to prove it, Jesus asks the Nazarenes to consider the signs they’ve heard reports of Him doing: He proclaims good news to the poor; sets captives free; lets the blind see; and He springs the oppressed from their imprisonments. All of these things, Jesus says, are signs of Who He is and Who He came into the world to be for all of us.

These signs should be especially interesting to us because Jesus, later in His ministry, made the stunning claim that in His Name, His Church—you and I--would do the works that He does and, He said, even greater works.

In the list of signs Jesus gives today, there are no miracles of loaves and fishes, no thunderstrikes from heaven, just the tough, healing love of God meeting real people in their everyday lives.

These are signs that Christ wants to perform through you and me. Through simple signs lile these, people see the God we meet in Jesus Christ and come to believe in Him. Jesus wants to empower you and me to do the signs about which He spoke at Nazareth in order to point the whole world to the hope and life that only Jesus gives.

Jesus, for example, wants to set captives free through us. The word that Jesus uses for free here, aphesis, in the original Greek of the text is the same word He uses for forgiveness. It literally means release. In Christ, we are released from the debt we owe for our sin. Followers of Jesus are meant to show others that Christ can release them from their bondage to sin, to fear, and to needless guilt.

True story. “Carl Coleman was driving to work one morning when he bumped fenders with another motorist. Both cars stopped, and the woman driving the other car got out to survey the damage. She was distraught. It was her fault, she admitted, and hers was a new car, less than two days from the showroom. She dreaded facing her husband. Coleman was sympathetic, but he had to pursue the exchange of license and registration data. [The woman] reached into her glove compartment to retrieve the documents, which were in an envelope. On the first paper to tumble out, written in her husband's distinctive hand, were these words: 'In case of accident, remember, Honey, it's you I love, not the car.'”

Every Sunday, you and I pray the prayer our Lord taught us, including the petition, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches us that, “if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” For you and me, sharing with others the freedom from captivity to sin that Jesus brings also sets us free from the paralyzing, gut-wrenching resentments and grudges that can rob us of life and joy when we fail to forgive. Jesus wants to free us from captivity to sin. And through us, Jesus proclaims release to other captives.

Jesus also wants us to bring good news to the poor. The poor were certainly a priority for Jesus and, as you read both the Old and New Testaments, God's revealed Word, you see that the poor has always been a priority for God.

And it's interesting to notice that when Jesus was born, He wasn’t entrusted to parents who were wealthy people. Instead, He was born into poverty. Mary, the mother of Jesus, saw this as especially fitting. Remember how, in the words she spoke to her relative, Elizabeth, Mary said, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty”?

Jesus’ people, grateful for the free gifts of forgiveness and everlasting life, are called to share their blessings and to make the poor a priority. That’s what we do in our servanthood events and it’s what I hope will also be reflected in our generous midweek Lenten offerings for relief to the impoverished and beleaguered people of Haiti, starting on February 17.

Tomorrow night, our servanthood team meets again to plan our next outreach event. You’re invited to participate in the planning, as well as the actual outreach events themselves. Last year, when we collected food for distribution by Hocking County Job and Family Services and later, infant formula and diapers for distribution by the health department and by the agency for Developmental Disabilities, your response and involvement were fantastic! The team meets at 6:00 tomorrow here in the fellowship hall. I hope you can make it.

Through us, Jesus also wants, in the words He quotes from Isaiah, to “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

What does that mean?

The Old Testament book of Leviticus said that every fifty years in Israel, all debts were to be forgiven, all land restored to its original owners or their heirs, and all slaves were to be set free. It was called the Jubilee year.

Fifteen centuries after the laws in Leviticus were given to God’s people, Jesus proclaims a kind of permanent Jubilee! He says that He’s come to forgive all debts and all sins for all eternity. This is a free gift for all who turn from sin and who entrust their whole lives to Jesus Christ.

I find that this message of new life for all who believe in Jesus is news of which the world never tires and for which its need never lessens. A few years ago, in my former community, I met with a professional man on community business. I’d known this man for years. He was someone I had long suspected was dealing with unresolved guilt and questions about his relationship with God that he didn’t have the courage to face. As we were wrapping up our meeting, I put my arm on his shoulder and told him, “You know, the welcome mat is always out for you at our church.” He smiled and said, “I like your style.”

I don’t know if I have any style. But I do know that what I wanted to convey to that man was God’s favor, that God was for him, that God wanted to deepen His relationship with him through the fellowship of a caring church family, and that whatever secret guilt he may have harbored could never be big enough or awful enough to keep the forgiveness of Jesus from him if he wanted that forgiveness.

And that’s true for you and me as well. Every time we come to God in repentance, He declares a jubilee. Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty in full for all of our sins, no exceptions. When we confess our sins and ask God to help us walk away from them, forgiveness is total.

Our friends, neighbors, and coworkers need to know that just as much as you and I do. Whatever your style, whether you’re shy or bold, old or young, you can convey that message to the people in your life. You can declare an everlasting Jubilee free of the weight of guilt to everyone you know!

When Jesus went to worship with the people of His hometown, He told them that they could know He was their Messiah because He set people free through His love, He made the poor His priority, and He showed them that God was for them.

In His Name, you and I can do the same things today, showing people who might feel distant from God and isolated from others that their loving God and His Church are here for them always.

In ways as simple as those used by our Savior, we can be signs of Who Jesus is and of all that He wants to be for everyone for all eternity. Amen

40-Days to Servanthood: Day 25

Servants forgive.

“Forgiveness,” Chuck Swindoll writes, “is not an elective in the curriculum of servanthood. It is a required course, and the exams are always tough to pass.”

Paul writes in the New Testament, “Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32, The Message).

Jesus conveys the same notion, but far more pointedly, in His explanation of the Lord’s Prayer petition that says, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Says Jesus: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15). An unforgiving heart is a wall between God’s grace and us. An unwillingness to forgive others makes us useless instruments in God’s Kingdom.

Several years ago, I was reading the Bible and praying when a thought crossed my mind: Without realizing it, I had failed to forgive people who had hurt me. I suddenly saw that these feelings were blocking God’s power from parts of my life. I asked God to help me to forgive others so that I could allow His forgiveness to come to me. I began listing those I needed to forgive, each name I added coming as a revelation to me; I hadn’t known the bitterness I was harboring.

I’m sure that the people on my list would be as surprised to learn of my bitter feelings for them as I was. I have no intention of now self-righteously telling them, “I forgive you.” My unforgiving attitudes had little to do with them and everything to do with me. After my time of prayer, I felt liberated, ready to be a servant!

If you’re intent on being a servant of God, you might want to ask God to reveal the names of any people you haven’t yet forgiven so that your relationship with God will be renewed and you can be set free for living the life He has in mind for you.

Servants forgive.

Bible Passage to Ponder: “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses” (Mark 11:25).