Genesis 50:15-21
Romans 14:1-21
Matthew 18:21-35
One of the most important industries
in our society is often one that gets overlooked and is usually looked
down upon. Think about it for a moment. What would you do if the
garbage man missed your house one week? What if he missed it the
second week in a row? What if the garbage didn’t come by your house
for an entire month? How long would it take for your trash to buildup
to the point where you couldn’t take the smell of it anymore or it
wouldn’t fit in your garage? It is such an unappreciated luxury that
we can just take our trash, put it in the can, take the can to the
curb, and let it go. I have a friend who lived in a house with a
bunch of other guys in college and it just so happened that the town
that they lived in charged a really high fee for trash pick-up, so
they just decided not to pay to get their trash picked up. Every week
it was somebody else’s turn to load up their car with that week’s
trash and find a dumpster somewhere to illegally drop it off. Typical
college stuff – pretty stupid, probably unethical, yet because they
refused to pay the price for trash pickup, no one was going to come by
to pick it up. With the toxic & poisonous water that is festering and
stagnant in New Orleans right now, we can see the importance of
removing garbage and sewage from where we live. Every week, just like
clockwork, thankfully, we have the opportunity to put the trash in the
can, take the can to the curb, and let it go.
Its interesting if you ever decide to
do biblical study on the word forgiveness. To Forgive in Greek
literally means to “let go” or to “send away.” In same way that our
trash would build up around our house if we didn’t take it out and let
it go, we have things in our life that need to be let go and set out
to the curb. The garbage in our life is called sin and it comes in
two different forms – the sin that we do and the sin that is done
against us. The sin that we do comes in a variety shapes and sizes
and none of it is good. Broken relationships with our friends and
family members, broken relationships because of our own actions – our
own selfishness, our own pride, our own love of self, broken
relationships with God because our refusal to listen or talk to him,
or to study the Bible or act on our faith. Luther used to spend as
many as six hours a day in the confessional booth listing off all the
sins that he had committed – and he was a monk in a monastery.
Imagine how many we could list if we honestly looked at our lives.
The sin that is done to us also comes in a variety of shapes and
sizes, whether it is the person that cuts us off on the highway or our
child who betrays our trust for the upteenth time. Sin that is done
to us is equally as harmful as the sin that we do. And while living
amongst this sin causes us lots of pain and heartache, and it tends to
clog up our life like big piles of garbage, there is something that we
can do about it and it centers on that word forgiveness. Put it in
the can, take the can to the curb and let it go. At least twice every
Sunday you have the opportunity to put your trash on the curb and get
it collected. Once during the confession at the beginning of our
service and the other time is at Holy Communion. Both are wonderful
opportunities to let go of your sin and send it away – to receive
God’s forgiveness. I’m going to add a new title to Jesus, one that
you’ve probably never heard of before – Jesus Christ, the Holy Garbage
Man. Not just on Sundays, but every day Jesus comes by your place and
is willing to pick up your trash, your garbage, and load it onto his
back. He carries all that nasty stuff with him to the cross and then
takes it with him to the grave. He is buried with it because isn’t
that what we do with trash – we bury it, we put it in a place no one
can get to, and that is what Jesus does with our sin – he is buried
with it. And then he leaves it there and he is resurrected, leaving
our sin behind, freeing us to live a new life. Jesus Christ, the Holy
Garbage Man, is willing to take all that sin away – those sins that
you have committed and those sins that others have against you - if
you will just put it in the can, put the can on the curb and let it
go. Jesus does the rest so that the sin doesn’t build up in our life,
stinking up everything that we do.
Another story about different person
from college. If you’ve ever gone to college, you know that anymore a
days, as you walk across campus there are tons of tables set up
offering students free credit cards. This young man saw all those
tables and immediately signed up for all of the credit cards that he
could because you get a free little gift if you sign up. For awhile,
he didn’t use them, but eventually he did start to use them. In fact,
he started to depend upon them to support his lifestyle, which quickly
became out of control. In fact, he was such a good customer with
these credit card companies that others would also send him cards
without him ever even signing up. And he was glad to use those cards
as well. He paid for school on the cards, he bought not one, but two
new cars, he paid for his groceries and beer, he gave away money and
even loaned some out, he was even able to finagle and buy a house,
completely on credit. Like I said, it was out of control and really
rather sad. Eventually, he couldn’t even make the minimum payments,
but the credit card companies didn’t seem to care – they just compiled
the late fees and the interest and it built up and up. After many
years of free spending, living an extremely excessive lifestyle, never
paying anything back – his debt finally caught up with him. He went
to one of those loan consolidation places for help. Any of you who
have been deep in debt know what this is like. When it was all said
and done, and all of his loans consolidated into one – his final total
was $2.19 billion. Don’t ask me how it got that high, but it was way
more than he could ever pay back in his lifetime. About that same
time, another man walked into the loan consolidation office, put his
hand on his shoulder, and said, “I’m the owner of this loan office and
I see that you now owe us quite a bit of money. I want you to know
that your loans are now forgiven.” He was free to go, his debts were
forgiven and he was free to start over.
Freely forgiven of his debt, the
first thing this guy did was to go back to one of his former friends
who he had loaned money to and demand that his former friend pay him
back the $5,000 that was owed to him. When his former friend couldn’t
pay, he went to bank and had the man’s wages garnished, had his car
repossessed and was relentless in getting his $5,000 returned, even
though his debt of $2.19 billion had been forgiven.
This story is a bit of an
exaggeration, but it is the same parable that Jesus told. What we
often don’t realize is how out-of-control our debt is to God. People
may not say it with their mouths, but deep down there are a lot of
people who think that forgiveness is not that important because our
sins are not that bad or that big. There are a lot of people who
think that someone will get to heaven just because they are a good
person. This parable illustrates how important Jesus is to the whole
equation – we could never in our lifetime do what it takes to get
square with God. It is impossible on our own. Our sin really is that
big and God’s grace really is that much bigger. What he did on the
cross was to take everything that separates us from God – all of our
sins, all of our debts, and bury them, send them away, cause us to let
go of them. He is the only one who can make us acceptable to God.
And yet, it is that easy – put it in the can, put the can on the curb,
let it go. Jesus Christ, the Holy Garbage Man will take it away and
make you acceptable to God.
I have a dollar here that I’m giving away.
Who wants it? Its free, no strings attached. Who wants it?
Why didn’t the rest of you take my
offer? Too embarrassed? Didn’t feel that it was worth it? Scared
that it was a trick or there’s a catch? What’s a dollar to someone
who has hundreds? Even though grace is available to everyone, not
everyone takes advantage of it. Many choose to sit around and let
their debt and their trash build up without ever letting go of it,
without ever asking for or receiving God’s grace and forgiveness. Max
Lucado has also done this dollar bill demonstration before and once he
ran into the person who he gave the money to later that week at the
store. He kidded her about making money off of his sermons and asked
her what she did with the money. “I gave it away,” she said. “When I
returned to my seat, a little boy sitting next to me asked me if he
could have it, and I said, ‘Sure, it was a gift to me, it’s a gift to
you.’” Isn’t that cool? As simply as she received, she gave. As
easily as it came, it went. The boy didn’t beg, the woman didn’t
struggle. How could she, who had been given a gift, not give a gift
in return?
How do we live as forgiven people?
How do we live when we know our trash has been taken away at the
curb? The man in the parable didn’t do a very good job. The
forgiveness that he received didn’t translate into offering
forgiveness to others and his relationships remained broken. The
women that Max Lucado tells about got it. Receiving God’s grace,
being forgiven means that we can then offer forgiveness to others.
Are there situations or people in your life that need to be dealt
with? Is there some unfinished business that God is calling you to
take care of? Seeking forgiveness from others whom you have wronged
and forgiving those who have wronged you means that it is one more
piece of trash that we can put into the can, put the can on the curb
and let it go. Our Holy Garbage Man does the rest.
