Pentecost, Proper 19
The Rev. M. Fletcher Davis
How Often Must I Forgive?
Christians are people who forgive. Nothing about us churchgoers is more widely expected by people who don’t go to church than that. Yet nothing we do is harder.
Once when we were on the freeway heading for the airport, I cut abruptly in front of a car in the next lane. I was clearly in the wrong. I couldn’t ask the other driver for forgiveness, but I could deflect a well-deserved criticism from my front seat passenger. So before Elizabeth had a chance to formulate a tactful expression of her thoughts about my driving, I said, “Look at that! Poor guy that I cut off has only one finger - but he’s waving at us.”
A few minutes later the same guy cut in front of me, then slowed down, way down. When the situation was reversed, when he cut in front of me, the need for forgiveness not so obvious. Why is it always easier to see why others should forgive us than to see why we should forgive them?
When we stand with Peter before Jesus and ask, “Lord, how often must I forgive?” his answer is always, “As often as it takes.” Peter was actually making a generous offer when he asked if he should forgive as often as seven times. [Mt 18.21] The rabbis said you had to forgive three times, but you weren’t bound to that rule the fourth time. Furthermore, unless the other party asked you didn’t have to forgive at all. In either case you were free to retaliate or pout to your heart’s content!
Jesus’ answer is quite a different. He said we must forgive not seven times but 70 times seven times. His point is clear – there’s no limit to the number of times we must forgive. We can do the math in our heads. 70 X 7 = 490. But forgiveness is something we must do in our hearts – with no math, no limits. Love doesn’t keep score.
It is a delicious temptation to think, “Well, that so-and-so will never ask so I’m off the hook!” And if she doesn’t? Does that really get us off the hook? No! Even if the offender doesn’t ask, Jesus says we must still forgive. He said if someone sins against you, you go to him. [Mt 18.15] In other words, even if I’m right, it’s my responsibility to go to the other person and work for reconciliation. That’s tough.
But refusing to forgive leads to brooding over our injuries and that in turn magnifies them until our revenge becomes a boiling poison that destroys not the one who wronged us but ourselves. That poison hurts all our relationships; it even blocks our awareness of almighty God.
As long as we approach life insisting on our own rights, we will never really discover what Jesus means by forgiveness. I saw that up close in my own family. After a bitter battle, my father and sister refused to talk with each other for eight long years. Neither would forgive until the other took the first step. And neither did that until Elizabeth and I got them together at our dinner table.
Too often we define sin as what the other person does. It’s far easier to see that someone should forgive me for doing something stupid – like carelessly pulling in front of another car - than to forgive when the other guy does something stupid, like cutting in front of me.
Forgiveness is at the heart of all our most cherished relationships. It’s not just sentiment. It takes more than a wave of a hand, “Oh, it’s nothing. Forget it.” Dismissing a broken relationship with a wave of hand really says, “You are nothing to me. You have no power to hurt me.” True reconciliation says, “You hurt me, but I love you so much that I forgive you - with no strings attached.”
Do you know the story of how South Africa escaped the bloodbath many predicted when apartheid rule ended with the free elections of 1994? Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu tells that story engagingly in a book he titled, No Future Without Forgiveness. He knows the story well because he was the force behind the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that made South Africa the first country ever to enact Jesus’ teachings about forgiveness as national policy.
If black South Africans can forgive those who oppressed them for centuries, can we after only seven years forgive the people who attacked us so brutally on 9.11 2001? Does Jesus’ admonition to forgive extend that far? Is that what we mean when we pray as Jesus taught, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”? Can we forgive those who hurt not only us but those we love, especially our children?
Jesus saw forgiveness as an act of the will. For him, the will was centered in the heart. He said we must forgive from our hearts [Mt 18.35]. To forgive from the heart is to approach life with our minds made up to forgive anyone who wrongs us.
He makes his point with a parable [Mt 18.23-35]. A king with a big heart forgives a man who owes him 10,000 talents. That’s a huge debt. King Herod’s total income was only a fraction of that. One denarius equaled an average day’s pay. One talent equaled 50 million denarii. So Jesus’ is saying the debt – 500 billion days of work - was so big that no one could repay it. Yet the king forgives that gigantic debt.
And when that slave in turn refuses to forgive the paltry 100 denarii that another slave owes him, the king summons the first slave and remonstrates, “I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” [Mt 18.32-33] Those are our marching orders too.
To forgive from the heart requires a powerful incentive. Jesus’ forgiveness of us offers that. To review the power of his forgiveness, think back over the past month in your own life. Remember the cutting remarks? the shortcuts at work? the self pity? the times you lost your temper? overindulged? gossiped? failed to speak up for what was right, or give glory to God? or what you did you hope no one else will ever discover?
Multiply those self-indulgent, unloving deeds by the many months of your life and you get a huge sum of sins – an unpayable debt. Even so, Christ forgives you - unconditionally. How can we ever repay so much love? The only way to do that is to show our thanks by forgiving others as he forgives us.
In the long course of human history, only one person has not owed an unpayable debt. And when they nailed that one to the cross, before forgiveness was ever asked he prayed, “Father, forgive them.” [Lk 23.34]
And so he prays today, for you and for me. He forgives because no matter how we disappoint him, or deny our guilt, or turn our backs on his love, he continues to forgive us. And that gives us both the incentive and the power to do the same for those who trespass against us. How often shall someone sin against me and I forgive? As often as it takes.
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