Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

This evening we continue our preparation for the passion of our Lord by reflecting on the Fifth Petition in the Lord’s Prayer; Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. In his Small Catechism, Luther explains that we pray in this petition that our Father in heaven would not look upon our sins nor deny such petitions on account of them. We are not worthy of any of the things for which we pray, neither have we deserved them. But we pray that He would grant them all to us by grace. For we daily sin much and indeed deserve nothing but punishment. So will we truly, on our part, also heartily forgive and readily do go to those who sin against us.

When we navigate everyday life it is impossible to reconcile some conflicting attitudes about how we are doing and why. See if this does not fit your thinking. On the one hand, you sometimes look at things and evaluate what you have and do not have on the basis of what you think you have or have not deserved. Usually, am I correct, those things you can put in the plus column are usually the elements in life where it is easy to think you have had coming to you. But about the negatives, it is easy - is it not - to ask yourself and others skeptically: what did I do to deserve that? Yet, on the other hand, at meal time, having devotions, when you are here in Church, and at other times your language reflects the idea that whatever good things you have should be regarded as blessings - things undeserved - that you have received from your gracious Heavenly Father. Part of you seems to be committed to viewing life according to what you and others have coming according to merit, but another part of wants to live by grace alone. Since we are simultaneously a new creation in Christ and yet at the same time, a vestige of the Old sinful Adam, this is not surprising. For this reason, this petition is included in the Lord’s Prayer and is particularly fitting as we reflect upon why we need the saving work of the cross of our Lord. It challenges us to smooth out our thinking about ourselves and our neighbors by healing balm of grace.

The whole idea of a Lenten Season is to provide penitential reflection on our true human condition and how the life of grace is the only life that can secure for us a happy future. We reflect on the poverty of our resources over against the magnitude of the problem of sin in order to rekindle our desire for a Savior and a renewed interest in His passion trusting that God will continue to be gracious to us for His sake. But then, here is the tension. Part of us wants to live with God and our neighbor on the basis of evaluating things being right according to what is deserved. But then, we want to live by grace - what is clearly not deserved. And sometimes we divide it up this way: Give us grace, Lord; but give our neighbors who wrong us just what they deserve. But the Lord and this petition in the prayer He taught us will not have it both ways.

We pray in the Lord’s prayer for God’s continual blessings for all manner of our human needs and we trust that He will favorably hear us for the sake of the grace that is our in Christ Jesus. And it was Jesus who taught us how so to pray here in the prayer that He taught us. And accordingly, here in this fifth petition, we acknowledge and plead for a life of grace that is all of one cloth. We pray that our forgiveness of sins and our forgiveness of others who wrong us may be all one of the same. Here, we acknowledge that not only are all of our conditions to be ruled by grace, but so also how we treat our neighbors as well. Getting what you do not deserve requires also giving to others what they do not deserve. As you live by grace with your God, so you must live by grace with your neighbor. And that is what a blessing is. It is a gift. It is getting something that you do not deserve. The general perspective is this: If it is good, it came from God. If it came from God, it is a gift, a blessing. And to live by God’s blessings, including his forgiveness, is to live by grace. We pray, according to Luther in this petition that as we are blessed by grace, so we bless others by grace. . . . being blessed and being a blessing. And the former we may have confidence in, so that the latter we may be bold to provide - for the Lord of grace rules over both each of us and our neighbors.

The challenge of this petition is for us to let the life of grace permeate all our thinking about our selves and all our thinking and dealings with others. We neither deserve God’s blessings and grace that cover our transgressions and our sin-filled lives, nor do we deserve the transgressions of those who sin against us. So, as we travel to Jerusalem in search of the One who provides the graciousness of God, let us travel both for our own sake and also for the sake of our neighbors. Let us travel to Jerusalem that grace may abound both to us and through us - so that both we and all our neighbors can live on the basis of everybody getting what they don’t deserve. It’s the way that God does justice, and it is something both you and your neighbor can live with.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. A-men.