Reading: Matthew 18.21-35

Well, another Sunday, another tricky Bible reading!

Last week, we were thinking about how Jesus told his followers what to do about falling out with each other. He said, don’t moan about it, don’t hold a grudge, just go and have a quiet word with the person who has upset you. Tricky stuff!

And this week, Jesus talks about forgiveness.

Forgiveness: great in theory, harder in practise!

To think about forgiveness this morning, I’d like to talk about bags.

Who brought a bag with them today? Can you show us your bags?

I have recently got a new bag, and it has bought me so much joy! My last work bag was a rainbow handbag, but it got old and tatty, plus Aidan had drawn on it! So, instead of the bunches of flowers I usually get for Aidan and Sophia’s birthdays, I got a new bag! It makes me feel smart. It’s also got my Bebe’s Hive keyring dangling off it, which I love.

This is another bag from our house.

It’s Nathan’s and he hasn’t used it in a while, but this is the bag he uses for camping. I think he took it to Taize as well. It’s great because it’s got lots of pockets and lots of room. I can’t promise that there isn’t a dirty sock lost in there somewhere.

You will see that there are lots of random objects on the windowsills this morning. I would like to fill this bag with those things. Can I have a volunteer to come and put the bag on their back? You’ll need to make sure that you don’t have any back issues.

Children and young people, please can you bring the random things from the windowsills so we can fill up this backpack.

As it gets fuller, it gets heavier.

When people hurt us, it can feel a bit like this. I’m not intending to add so much stuff to this bag that we physically hurt our volunteer today, but when people do us wrong, it hurts our hearts and it can feel heavy.

Can you try and walk around for me a bit, please? Is it harder to walk around now that before the bag was full of things?

You see, being part of a community, a family, a society, inevitably means that we will get hurt. But if we choose not to forgive, we end up carrying these things around with us for a long time. In the end, that is worse for us and for our bag and our freedom of movement.

Anne Lemmot famously said: ‘”Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.”

That means that forgiveness is much more about us than the person we are needing to forgive.

Just to say, though, that forgiveness does not mean putting up with bad behaviour, and letting people treat us in a way which is hurtful.

But when we manage to forgive, to lay that hurt down, this is what it’s like. It’s like taking the backpack off.

Do you feel better now? Lighter?

Children, can you please empty the backpack for me, and put the things back on the windowsills?

I’m sure we can all agree that this is a good thing to do in theory. But like I said at the start, it’s harder in practise, right?

But I think God appreciates it when we want to forgive, even if we can’t forgive just yet.

And I think God gets it when we want to want to forgive, but just now we don’t even want to forgive.

I think God will hear us when we don’t even want to want to forgive, but we know we should.

Forgiveness is not easy, and I think God understands that.

But don’t forget the example that Jesus has set us.

On the cross, Jesus looked down at his oppressors and said ‘Father forgive them, they don’t know what they do’.

Wow! In all that agony, at the end of that trial, after the humiliation and the torture, Jesus said THAT!

I don’t think we are expected to forgive immediately. I may have explained before that I sometimes say to Nathan: ‘Priest Poppy is more than able to say that God forgives you right now, but wife Poppy is going to need a bit more time!’.

But I think we are very much mistaken if we think God is okay with us sitting with our hurt, nursing it, like the grudges we thought about last week, and not even attempting to move forward at all.

On the way in, you were given a little picture of a backpack on a piece of paper. This bag can represent anything you want it to. You can write or draw on it, or you can leave it blank. But I am going to give you the opportunity to respond, and to put your bag by the cross. I’d love it if you could bring yourself to forgive somebody today, but maybe you aren’t quite ready, and that’s fine. Just wanting to forgive, or wanting to want to forgive is a good step.

So, please come forward and place your bag at the foot of the cross of Jesus, whatever that means to you.

Amen.