Tap Shoes R Us

Thomas Fletcher was a man with an idea. Even more than that, he was a man with ambition: He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be respected. Even more than that, he was a man who owned a pair of electric hedge clippers, which he had grudgingly lent to his no-account next-door neighbor, Bill Chatsworth. But I digress: Tom Fletcher had an idea, and he had ambition. What could possibly make him more money and gain him more renown than to become an internet millionaire? It seemed that everyone had heard of folks like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, men who had discerned a vacuum in the American marketplace and rushed to fill it. All Thomas Fletcher needed was to find a similar void in the market, and then be there with the answer. After pondering these things for several months, and having stayed up late one night watching "Singing in the Rain," he believed he had identified his opportunity. He would become the world's leading internet provider of tap shoes. Who didn't love tap dancing? And Fletcher's subsequent research convinced him that that segment of the marketplace was deliciously under-represented.

First he had to acquire some capital, something that turned out to be even easier than he had naively expected. For the famous venture capitalist Barton Sizemore had long practiced the strategy of occasionally investing in something that sounded so bizarre, so strange, so out-of-left-field that it just might work. And if it did work, the payoff would be colossal. So Sizemore agreed to loan Fletcher the tidy sum of one million dollars for a half-share in his profits, with the provision that if the business wasn't as lucrative as hoped, the million dollars would be repayable at the end of a year's time.

Thomas Fletcher was elated. "Tap Shoes R Us" was about to become a reality! First, using part of the money, he bought himself a new car; it wouldn't do for an internet mogul to be seen driving around in Fletcher's rusty old bucket of bolts. Secondly, he paid to have his house painted and a swimming pool installed in his back yard. Finally, the frugal entrepreneur invested the remainder of the loan into inventory, purchasing tap shoes of every size, style, and color. His garage was soon full to overflowing with box after box of shiny metal-tipped shoes.


He created a rudimentary website featuring his treasures, then sat back, and waited for the sales to come rolling in. And waited. Sat back, and waited. He put his shoes on sale at reduced prices. And still he waited. He slashed those prices, and slashed them again. When his shoes finally started to sell, he had slashed prices so far that he was actually losing fifty cents on each pair that he sold.

At the end of the terribly short year, Mr. Fletcher had no profits to speak of, and the million-dollar loan had come due. After dodging telephone calls from Barton Sizemore for a couple of days, Fletcher knew he had to make a showing before his partner.

"Mr. Sizemore," Fletcher pled, "I fear that I am unable to pay you the money that I owe. But, please, give me a little more time—just one more year. Things are really starting to take off. Just a little more time!"

Sizemore was not moved. He said, "I've seen your projections, and at the rate your company is bleeding cash, you'd never be able to pay the debt you owe, not if I granted you two hundred lifetimes in which to do it. Now, be a reasonable man, and sign over your possessions to me—your car, your house, whatever else you may have that's of value. I'll set you up with employment at minimum wage, and you can repay me bit by bit, by returning half of your wages to me."

The tremulous Thomas Fletcher cried out, weeping: "Please, good sir! Just six more months! I'll find a way to repay all that I owe!"

Sizemore considered for a moment. He had been doing remarkably well on his other investments lately, and a caprice of sweet charitableness wafted across his capitalist heart. "I'll tell you what, Fletcher: This is your lucky day." He opened his desk drawer and took up the loan contract in his hands and tore it right down the middle into two pieces. "I am forgiving your debt, Fletcher. You don't owe me anything."

Tom Fletcher was stunned—too stunned even to mumble a proper "thank-you." As he walked dazedly back to his car, his natural suspicion reasserted itself. Why would Sizemore do such a thing? What was his hidden motive? What if he changed his mind? I'd better try to scrape together that million dollars anyway, just in case he does, so thought Fletcher. And then he remembered his shiftless neighbor, Bill Chatsworth, and the electric hedge clippers he had lent out. As soon as he had pulled into his own driveway, Fletcher stomped over to his neighbor's house and demanded the return of his property.

Bill Chatsworth was humble and apologetic. "I'm sorry, Tom, but those clippers of yours broke while I was using them. Just give me a week, though; I'll buy you a new set that's a little bit sturdier."

"You, my friend, have just bought yourself a ticket to small claims court!" fumed the same Thomas Fletcher who had just been forgiven his million-dollar debt. "And I'll be darned if I don't get something extra for punitive damages too, for my pain and suffering!"

Bill Chatsworth, ashamed and a little afraid, went into his house and immediately dialed up his cousin's office. "Barton Sizemore, please," he asked the secretary. "Cousin Barton, I hope you won't consider this too forward of me, but I find myself in need of a short, small loan."

"Tell me all about it," replied his kinsman. Less than a minute later, he was sifting through the contents of his wastebasket, bellowing out to his secretary, "Martha! Fetch me a roll of tape!"

* * * * *

There was an incident awhile back when I overheard a Christian friend say that something another Christian had done was "unforgivable." Now that friend may have been speaking in hyperbole—and likely he was—but it made me wonder: What if that person had meant it? Did he really mean that he had no intention of forgiving the party who had committed the offense?

I wondered, in the light of the cross as well as the plain teaching of Jesus Christ, how that could be … and then it occurred to me that maybe that friend simply didn't know what the Scriptures have to say about forgiveness. It is a subject that is too easily ignored in our modern American society—ignored in the Church at our peril.

There are many passages in the Bible that address this subject, but for the sake of time I'll limit my scope to a few. All I'm going to do for the next few minutes is read some Scripture passages, each of them a quote directly from Jesus, and then highlight the pertinent point so it doesn't get glossed over.

From the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught the famous prayer that many of us pray every day, and all of us pray at least once a week:

"In this manner, therefore, pray:

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen" (Matthew 6:9-13 NKJV).

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." The famous Bible commentator Matthew Henry (a Presbyterian minister from the 1600s and 1700s) said this about those words: "Those that come to God for the forgiveness of their sins against him, must make conscience of forgiving those who have offended them, else they curse themselves when they say the Lord's prayer."

Do you know what the very next words were that Jesus spoke following the conclusion of His prayer?

"For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matthew 6:14-15 NKJV).

Is there any further comment necessary? "If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." Again, Matthew Henry speaks: "We must forgive, as we hope to be forgiven; and therefore must not only bear no malice, nor mediate revenge, but must not upbraid our brother with the injuries he has done us, nor rejoice in any hurt that befals him, but must be ready to help him and do him good, and if he repent and desire to be friends again, we must be free and familiar with him, as before."

Now listen to Mark 11, verses 25 and 26: Jesus as He teaches His disciples further about prayer:

"And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses" (Mark 11:25-26 NKJV).

No further comment necessary, is there?

Now think back to the first part of the passage that was read a few minutes ago (Matthew 18:21-35), with Peter asking Jesus how many times he was required to forgive an offending brother. Peter suggested a very generous seven times, but Jesus stunned him by saying, "Not seven times, but seventy times seven!" Some translations render that figure as "77 times," but it doesn't change the import of what Jesus was saying: it was a staggering amount of times to forgive. It certainly meant that our call as Christians is to always forgive, for, as it says in 1 Corinthians 13, love keeps no record of wrongs. If you're keeping no records, it's going to be hard to know when you've reached Transgression #78.

Why is it so hard to forgive? There are a couple of reasons, I think. The first, and the most egregious, is that we have far too small a view of our own sin. We in the American church tend to have a pretty favorable opinion of ourselves; we think we're pretty good folks. Like the Laodicean church in Revelation chapter 3, we have said that we're rich, we've become wealthy, and have need of nothing, and we don't realize that we're wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. We don't realize that all of our righteousness is as filthy rags. We think we deserve riches and comfort and peace, and we fail to appreciate that it was our sin that Jesus bore upon Himself when he went to the brutal cross for our benefit.

Jesus said that he who is forgiven much loves much, and he who is forgiven little loves little. If we fail to comprehend the cost of our sin, our love remains small, and our ability to commensurately forgive is compromised.

The other reason I think it's hard for us to forgive is that we want to see what we perceive as justice for ourselves. I'm not denying that sins against us are real, or that they don't hurt, or that there isn't sometimes significant wrongdoing committed. And every TV show and action movie that we watch encourages us to seek vengeance; we absolutely love it when we see the bad guys get what's coming to them. But Jesus' words still stand: Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Forgive not, and you will not be forgiven. Why is that? You've heard it said, "Vengeance is mine," says the Lord. "I will repay." That's not just a famous saying; it's Scripture, from Romans 12:19. When we insist on seeing our own vengeance carried out, we are stealing glory that God has claimed as His own.

How do we see our own vengeance carried out? It's not always a case where we see our cause vindicated and the other person revealed as a villain and punished. The person who's offended us does not always repent, or even realize that they've offended us at all, for that matter. Sometimes our own vengeance is as subtle as us clinging to our right to insinuate to others that the offending party is guilty of some sin against us, and tasting the sweet nectar of our enemy's reputation being tarnished. We think it's only fair; after all, they owe us something.

So, how do we stop this perilous act of unforgiveness? I think it's illustrative that Jesus used economic terms in His parable from our Scripture reading this morning. He spoke of two men owing debts and being unable to pay. That first man in the story, the one who owed the debt so huge it could never be paid off—that's us, in our sins, owing a price we could never, ever pay to a holy God—a God who has chosen to love us and forgive us and make us a part of His own family. The second man, who owed a piddling little amount to the first man—that's everybody who's ever hurt or offended us. It's every unfaithful spouse, every rebellious child, every gossiping neighbor, every thief or murderer or kidnaper. For any crime that can be committed against us falls far short of our offense against Heaven's holy Father and God; that's not me talking, it's Scripture. And our proper response to those who have sinned against us is to say, "In light of how much Jesus has given me … you don't owe me anything."

In fact, the way we forgive our debtors can be an act of worship. When we say, "I am aware of the precious price Jesus paid for my sins. In comparison with such a love, I forgive my debtors freely and wholeheartedly," that's an act of worship.

When we say, "I understand that God has said, 'Vengeance is Mine,' so I defer to His wisdom and glory," that's an act of worship.

When we believe and treasure the words of Holy Scripture above our own wounded feelings, that's worship—that is us properly showing forth the image of God to our broken world.