So I love a good story. Anybody who knows me knows how much I love a good story. And I love stories that I grew up around storytellers. My whole family, they're either preachers or mechanics.
So they're gonna tell them stories. I think my favorite storyteller that I know personally, though I'm not related to by blood, but it's Meredith's dad. Like I love Meredith's dad's stories because he just creates these worlds around him when he begins telling the story. He's a traveling salesman for a long time.
And he just has these hilarious stories that he's able to put together. But stories are great because stories are how we see change. Stories, and sometimes they can kind of get underneath what we might naturally assume. And stories can change us.
Stories also have the ability just to paint a picture in front of us of what things look like. I think of the story that my grandmother would tell when I was a kid all the time, grown up in South Mississippi. And my great uncle was a Marine during World War II serving the Pacific Theater. And after the Victory Japan Day in early September of that year, they kept waiting for when he was going to come back and September turned into October and October turned into November and November turned into December and they began thinking about when is he gonna come home as in his borough.
When is borough gonna come home? When is borough gonna come home? And my grandmother was about high school age and she began getting this idea of what if borough is home for Christmas. That'd be cool to have her brother home had the same in three years.
It'd be cool to have borough home for Christmas. And they live, anybody's familiar with Hattiesburg, Mississippi. My great grandfather retired from the army and bought about 2000 acres outside of Hattiesburg. And at the top of the hill in this piece of property, he built his house.
That's where my grandmother grew up and where the whole family lived. And their last name was Steelman. And so there's a road now, it's called Steelman Road. But this had been their driveway.
It had been a gravel road for the longest time. And so the house is just on top of this hill. And you're coming down the road, you take one really sharp curve this way and you keep on coming. And there's another sharp curve.
Both of these curves are pretty sharp. My dad actually stole his grandmother's car one time when he was 12 years old and ran her car into the ditch on one of these curves. Because he doesn't understand how to get slowing down around a curve. But they come around the two curves and they're leaving church on Christmas Eve.
And I hear this story and I've heard my grandmother tell it time and time again. And she starts telling, I can smell the smells. But at Christmas Eve, you've had to have a smell to you. They're coming home from the Christmas Eve service and they're dressed up really, really nice.
And they're in the car, but this is 1945 and so the heat was going on. And in my mind, the windows might be rolled down a little bit. And you can smell people's fires in their house going. And they come around this last curve and they look up at the house on top of the hill and they see lights on.
And the first light that they see on is the light to my great uncle's bedroom, who none of them were living at the time. And that year on Christmas Eve, my grandmother knew her brother was home. I can make images in that because I know that area. But that story, you're probably making images and you're already stories take us to new places.
And Jesus taught using stories for that very reason because stories take us to new places. Stories are how sometimes we can make decisions about things that might be pretty hard for us to make a decision about already. And we also look at stories that we know we're not a part of and we call this series, the stories we find ourselves in. We can look at these stories that Jesus tells.
And we can insert ourselves into it because we can realize that these are asking questions about our heart. They're asking us questions about how we follow God and about how we see God to act. And those are the same questions or the reasons Jesus told these stories 2000 years ago. They're the reasons that the church has been telling these stories for 2000 years.
And so this Sunday we're going to look at a really short parable and then we're going to start asking ourselves some tough questions. And then we're going to read the larger narrative of what this parable is a part. And we're going to ask ourselves the same questions. We're going to ask for 2000 years by people who follow God.
So let's open our Bibles up Luke chapter 7. And we're going to start in just verse 41. You can find it on the screen behind me. If you brought your Bible, you can read along with us.
But Luke 7, 41 through 43. This is what it says. So Jesus told them this story, a man loaned money to two people, 500 pieces of silver to one, and 50 pieces of silver to the other. But neither of them could repay him.
So he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that? And Simon answered, I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt. That's right, Jesus said.
So we have this story, a story of borrowing money, and of not repaying money. And I've told you all earlier, I've been learning more and more about so many things. I can Jesus this time these last couple weeks, because there's very specific examples right here. This is the first week I learned a lot about agricultural practice.
And I learned about money lending last week. And then this week, I end up learning about this whole idea of something that was a very real part of their life. It was called debt slavery. So the man owned, if we look at the description and dig in, this is not just like a random person who has money.
This person is a money lender. That is his job. His livelihood is made off of loaning money to people, and then taking back that money with interest. And typically, at this point in time, the interest rate was about 25%.
So he loaned 500 pieces of silver to somebody, and 50 pieces of silver to other. This equilates to about a year and a half of daily wages, and about two months of daily wages. So let's kind of put those figures in our head. Was that look like to loan out that much money?
It was like to borrow that kind of money, but the whole 25% interest rate in your hand. Now, if anybody hears ever, I've had a problem. Like paying loans back or debt back, if you're dealing with student loan debt or medical debt, there's these ways that we go through it, right? And you can call and say, hey, listen, I'm having a hard time.
Can you give me a month? Or can you reduce this? Or can I remember when we lumped all of my student loans from my seminary degree into loan repayment? It makes things a lot easier.
We're used to that kind of dealing with this. Well, back then, if you couldn't pay your money back, the person you owed money to could just come get you. And for however long it took for you to work it back, you were theirs. OK?
So for him to borrow the equivalent of a year and a half of wages, not going to pay it back. This money lender had within rights to come and get say, OK, yeah, your interest is this. You're interest means like, OK, you're in nine months. You're mine now.
Like that was legal. That was how it happened, OK? So we looked at the store and we also realized that Jesus asked the question, said, who do you think loved him the most? Not who appreciated him the most or who was the most thankful, but who loved him the most?
It's just really weird question about kindness. And what does it mean to cancel that? And just those three verses on their own, we can dig tons of truth at that. We can have tons of conversations about that.
But that whole idea of who do you think loved him the most poses the really big question. So let's read the whole narrative of why and where and when Jesus told that parable and think about what's actually going on. So we'll say Luke chapter 7, we'll read verse 36 to 50. And we'll read the parable in his right place.
So here this. One of the Pharisees, these were religious leaders, asked Jesus to have dinner with him. So Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat. When a certain, a moral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume.
Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet and she wiped them off with her hair. And she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them. When the Pharisees who invited him saw this, he said to himself, if this man really were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him.
She's a sinner. Then Jesus answered his thoughts, Simon to the Pharisee. Right there, Jesus answered his thoughts, like read his mind. That would really freak me out enough to just want to get out of the room, OK?
Jesus answered his thoughts. Simon, he said to the Pharisee, have something to say to you. Go ahead, teacher, Simon replied. Then Jesus told him the story, a man loaned money to two people.
500 pieces of silver one and 50 pieces of silver to the other. But neither of them could repay him. So he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?
And Simon answered, I suppose the one for whom he canceled a larger debt. That's right, Jesus said. Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn't offer to wash the water, to wash the dust from my feet.
But she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You didn't greet me with a kiss. But from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You neglected the courtesy of Olive Oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume.
I tell you, her sins and they are many have been forgiven. So she has shown me much love. But a person who's forgiven little shows only little love. Then Jesus said to the woman, your sins are forgiven.
Then the men that table set up, the men that table set among themselves, who is this man that he goes around forgiving sins. And Jesus said to the woman, your face has saved you. Go in peace. So we find a very different story now, don't we?
And we're trying to figure out what's going on. OK, so we have these two or three verses about canceling debt. But then we have this larger narrative of this absolute crazy thing. Now does this seem weird to you at all?
Honestly, this is, let's walk through this. OK, so you have someone who is extremely respected in town. Here's a Pharisee, very, very influential. You can kind of call him like a town elder.
He invites Jesus to come to his house. And these means were pretty public. When somebody like this, a public official invited an honored guest to their house for a banquet, these were kind of like, it's like, imagine having a barbecue with somebody really important in your front yard. Do you think your neighbors are not going to come like peeking watch?
OK, that's exactly what happened. I mean, there's this big open room. And anybody would kind of come like sit around the corner of the room and they'd stay in the dark. They would be able to eat.
But they'd listen to what's going on. So he invites him to this dinner. It's a public event. And all of a sudden this woman comes in.
The translation we use this morning calls for a known center. OK, other translations will just be, I kind of obvious, and they'll call her a town prostitute. Anytime we find that language in scripture, we need to open ourselves up wider the reality of what's actually going on. In this situation, in this situation only, make sure we understand that.
Jesus really calls out the sin that's going on inside of that. Because from everything we can tell, and the language, and sort of thing, and where they were, that there was a such thing as temple prostitution. It was part of worship. That's weird.
You're looking right now, Java, talking about this. That was what she did for a living. People knew what she did for a living. So she comes in and she begins crying and kissing Jesus's feet.
OK, that's as weird as it sounds. OK? Says that she takes this jar of expensive oil and an anointing sin with it. And here's the thing.
She's typically using this oil for her occupation. Everybody in the room knows what it is. This is as awkward as it sounds. And she breaks it and she annoys it.
And we think about an anointing. Like I went and saw Kate and Daniel and Ash are a couple weeks ago on Memphis. We prayed with him. And I anointed Ash.
That's a cool bit of oil in my hand. I put it on his forehead. We're not talking about that. We're talking about breaking it.
And we're pouring it over his head. He's sitting at the table. And there's this woman just like dumping this oil over Jesus's head. Running down through his hair.
I imagine Jesus has a beard because it'd be kind of cool. That's the picture we have in our head. It's just getting everywhere. She takes her hair down, which is for a Jewish man, that instantly they're going to lock up and get very nervous.
Because the only woman you ever saw with their hair down was their wife or their little girl daughters. Like that, taking your hair down is an extreme, intimate action. Every single thing she was doing looked a little bit too much like her work. And people were flipping out.
The only thing that keeps this from being an extremely obscene event is her tears. OK? She, and one of the reasons that scholars think that this is all going on is because she's fully aware of who she is and everybody else is fully aware of who she is. And she understands her need for Jesus, her need for forgiveness so much she's willing to lay every single thing completely bare.
Her tears are what are stopping this from being just absolutely outrageous. And then Jesus begins having a conversation with Simon when he begins judging her about love. Who do you think loves me more? This outrageous scene was happening because she knew that she had this outrageous need for forgiveness.
So why to debt? Why to forgiveness? Where do these link up chat? Why is this one thing talking about money?
This next thing talking about a completely different kind of is because in the New Testament, the strongest metaphor that we have out of anything is a metaphor between the forgiveness of debt and the forgiveness of sins. They lock up at a weave a very tight blanket together. If we want to understand the operation for how sin is forgiven in the New Testament, how Jesus and how the rising Testament talk about it, we need to look at how they talk about forgiving debt. They're talking about the exact same as the metaphor they choose communicating.
In fact, if I did decide not to do it because I didn't want to bore you. But if I lined up on the screen behind me, all the Hebrew words for loan, for debt, for cancellation, for sin, and then for forgiveness and for holings and transformation, we can't tell them apart almost because they're using the exact same letters and same, they're almost the exact same words every single time. So Jesus tells a story about forgiveness of debt because they're almost the exact same thing. This idea, but we don't get caught up on the idea of the person who's lending because in the Jewish world, if you had the ability to make a loan, that was a very honorable thing.
It was you were offering of yourself. You were offering of where you had abundance. But Jesus taught me the person who's borrowing, but the person who needs grace, but the person who needs forgiveness. And this woman's emotions were her releasing her indebtedness to God.
And she said, I need you a lot. I need to understand your forgiveness. But I also know that the level and the degree that I need your forgiveness, you're offering me your forgiveness at this level. So we see the two as one and the same.
We look at the story that Jesus now tells. And so a couple of things about forgiveness, we're going to talk about this morning. We've kind of told the story of we realize of what this is like and what this is, and how big this is, and how transforming this can be. So a couple of things about forgiveness from the story.
The first one is this. The degree that we are able to enact forgiveness in our life will be the degree to which we are able to comprehend forgiveness. The degree to which we're able to enact forgiveness will be the degree to which we are able to comprehend forgiveness. So story of the 550, who do you think loves him the most?
We look in the Lord's Prayer. We all set it growing up in school. Other situations forgive us. Our debts as we forgive those.
Forgive us our trespasses. We forgive those who trespass against us. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. That our capability, our capacity, our understanding of asking for forgiveness is in line with the level of forgiveness that we're able to receive.
But it's not this give and take. I've done a bunch, so you need to do a bunch of things. I think this is the scene I think about so much. This cannot be transactional.
This cannot be that if I forgive you enough, then you need to forgive me at this level. Or if I forgive other people, that means I'm going to get even more out of them. I think of that favorite movies, Red Dawn. The kids all mad.
Have you ever seen Red Dawn's early 1980s, Russians and Cubans in Made, America, high school kids, 8K 47s, go to the Mountain's and Vitamoth. It's a dream movie for a boy in the 1980s. But halfway through their campaign, an air force pilot is shot down and joins their ranks. And he goes out on a day trip with them.
And at night, he's kind of trying to comprehend what's it like for these kids to be this mad, this frustrated. He looks at one of them. And he orders this very good quote. And he says, all that hate's going to burn you up.
All that hate's going to burn you up. When we refuse to be a forgiving people or to be a forgiving person, then we're not going to be able to take any forgiveness on our own. All that hate's going to burn us up. All of our lack of forgiveness is going to burn us up.
And we cannot expect to understand, to receive, to see, to live in a world full of gracious forgiveness if we are not practicing forgiveness. This is about this wholesale metaphysical shift. We're not trading things off here saying, well, I'll give you this if you give me that. A very common concept in our world right now.
We can't receive responsibly something larger than we can comprehend. We've got a buddy of mine who has a 125 dirt bike. He likes it a lot. And he always bugs me.
He wants to ride my Harley Davidson. I'm like, man, you can't do it. You can't do it. Trust me.
When you're a kid, you want your first car to be something really awesome and sweet, but oftentimes we get a clunker, because what we can handle. Our forgiveness grows alongside our ability to forgive. And a small mindset of forgiveness will make us a miserable person. All that hate is got to burn us up.
And second thing is this. We need to stop weaponizing forgiveness and start practicing it. OK, how many times have you held that against somebody? You're like, you know what?
You know you're in conflict. You know that you're mad at each other, but you're not going to be the first one to say, I'm sorry. Raising my hand right now. Did it this week to my wife.
OK? We get in these power struggles where we do not want to be the first person to say, I'm sorry. We know we did wrong. Because we want forgiveness to be a weapon.
We want forgiveness to be a tool we have. We want it to be something that's going to help us to win. Psalm 130, verse 4 tells us a very different story. And we fail to forgive.
We're missing out on stuff seriously. But you offer forgiveness that we might learn to fear you. It's my practicing forgiveness. We learn who God is.
Because we're doing the things that he does. We're doing the things that he was made to be. We're doing the things that he's called us to. Because that's what he does himself.
We've got to stop a weaponizing forgiveness. And if we're going to stop a weaponizing forgiveness, we need to learn this, that apologies aren't trophies. We don't hold the fact that somebody had to apologize up high. Oh, this eats us up.
Apologies are not something to be earned, but there's something to be given. Proverbs, chapter 17. I can find it in my Bible. There we go.
Proverbs 17, verse 9, love prospers when a fault is given, but dwelling on it separates close friends. But I think back to the conflicts and the picked the places of conflict I've had in my life, what's broken up relationships is the fact that I want to apologize. Because I've held it to be something I've got to earn from that person. I'm not going to be wrong.
I'm going to be right. And they're going to have to admit it. That's not the way forgiveness works. We forgive because we've been forgiven.
We forgive because we know that's how we're going to learn who God is because we're doing what he does. And that we're going to be people that are focused on having right relationships. And so instead of apology being something that typically ends a relationship, we all know that's kind of awkward, right? We finally, the right thing we never talk to the person again.
Apologies to the things now that strengthen relationships and start relationships and take those relationships to a different level. We're able to actually be in relationship with that person. What if us having a forgiveness problem is what's actually bottlenecking us in our life? I've thought about that before a lot personally.
What if us having a forgiveness problem is what's actually bottlenecking us? We like to get ahead, right? We like to move things forward. We like to make things happen.
We actually will take care of ourselves, to take charge of ourselves. We're going to fix what's the matter with us, right? I know. I have a list of what's the matter with.
I don't like about myself. I think I'm willing to fix. I'm not stopping to waffle-house so much because I'm fat. I'm going to have to get salted every now and then.
I know how to fix it. But if a forgiveness problem is actually going on inside of our life and we need to fix that to move to the next level, are you willing to deal with it? Are you willing to know what it's like to be a person that forgives? There's a Native American proverb that says this.
Those who tell the stories rule the world. And I've been thinking about this this week. I saw it come across probably Instagram on a background of a mountain or something a couple of months ago. And I took a picture of it.
I sent it to Evernote, saving it for the series. I don't know why I did it, but I came across again this week and I started thinking about those who tell the stories rule the world. It's not about ruling the world. It's about telling the stories, the stories.
When we're able to actually tell a story that is transformative, when we're able to actually tell a story that talks about how we get to a different place, that doesn't rule the world in an authority or I control this. It says, I've conquered this thing. Because of Jesus, I'm able to walk through this world in a completely different way. That things are able to not just tear me down and get me mad, make me blow up and get angry, something like that.
Where my life is ruled and my life is driven and my life is focused because of what Jesus has done for me. Where he has taken me versus my failures to take myself someplace. A few years ago, I began realizing something that I had a pretty big part of my own personal story that I felt happened over a decade ago, somebody who I felt had wronged to me. And I held out for that apology.
I held out for it for years, I mean years. And this whole thing was like, I thought it was a pretty big part of my story. Oh, I've been taking advantage of it. I hadn't been, I was unsatisfied with how something happened.
I allowed it and I never said anything about it. I got to get fester to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. A couple of years ago, I began realizing, you know what? I think I might have been wrong there, just a little bit.
And every some more time I'm thinking through, I'm realizing, you know what? Maybe I was wrong a little bit more than a little bit. In another situation, I started growing up. I started realizing that, no, it wasn't.
I was wrong a little bit. It was wrong like this much. I was just a jerk. And I needed to talk to that person.
And I saw him, like six months. And I've seen him since then. I've voted him for a while. I'd run into him.
And this is also not happening in ministry. This was like a church issue. This wasn't something bad. I'd run into him.
I kind of have to, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, I'm trying to get out of this. Because I knew it was going on.
So about six months ago, I was at this event, and he walks in the room. And the last time I talked to him, it's actually been pretty fun. And so we're sitting there, and I've been meaning to drive over to where he lives one day, and take him out to lunch, and have this conversation. But I was like, you know, maybe this is just a time to talk about it.
And I said, man, I've got to tell you something. I'm really sorry for all that. I think the exact phrase I used was, I was sanding your drawers. I'm really sorry for that.
And I don't know if it's something you realize or recognize, but I need to apologize to you. And he looked at me and he said, man, there's nothing you have to apologize for. It said, I was really tough on you. And I'm sad that they didn't get communicating the way I wanted it to, because I wanted what was best for you.
And I wanted you to be able to grow up and to mature and have more opportunities than this sort of a thing. And he's bigger than me. And so if you're a guy who's a big guy, it's very rare that you get a hug from somebody who's bigger than you kind of miss that whole, when you're a kid and you kind of gettin' in velvet up, he's like six, five. And he came in this big old huge bear hug.
And he said, man, I've always loved you. And I realized that moment, I was in my own insecurity, in my own inability, in my own need to be in charge and to be on top and to win and to have nothing wrong with me, I missed out on a relationship for the last 12 years that could've been continuing to be beneficial to me. Of someone showing Christ love, someone showing Christ graciousness in our lives. Those who tell the stories, rule the world, those who tell the stories are able to change the world.
This is not about someone forgiving us. This is not about, someone coming to us and asking about apology, because every one of us has situations, we can't make a lie to that. The truth wrong has been done to us. And we feel like it needs to be fixed.
We've got those issues. But what we can control is us having the ability to go out and us having the ability to say the words, I'm sorry. And us saying, I apologize to us. I forgive you for this, because Jesus is first forgiven me.
If we want to understand that love, understand that power, it's about us moving from someone who bars 50 pieces of silver and learn what that's like, and move into a person who bars 500 pieces of silver. I know what that's like. And they're borrowing more and more and more because God's graciousness has promised us. But some of these parables tell the story about it expanding more and more and more and more as we participate in God's graciousness.
So what story are we telling? And how are we allowing Jesus to rewrite our story? Of how we have been forgiven, but also how we had in turn forgiven.