I’ve been a parish pastor for over 25 years. In my experience, the single greatest issue that God’s people wrestle with is that of forgiveness. If you are among those who struggle with forgiving those who have harmed you, I assure you that you are not alone. I pray that there is a word here that encourages and comforts you, as a child of God, who is forgiven by God’s grace through faith in Christ, that you might share that same grace with those around you.
Remember, we are picking up right
where we left off last week with Jesus instructing the disciples that “Whatever
you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will
be loosed in heaven.” With forgiveness on his mind, and with the Master
Forgiver at hand, Peter asks “How often do I forgive the one who hurts me?”
Let’s talk about forgiveness for
a second. “To forgive” means to no longer hold a sin against someone; that is,
to deliberately choose to not seek an eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth
resolution. Forgiveness is an act of love, surrendering the self for the
wellbeing of the other. To forgive is to say “It is finished.” The goal of
forgiveness is restoration. This is true of God’s gift of forgiveness in the
vertical realm as well as our sharing of forgiveness in the horizontal realm. Now,
humanly speaking, we may need to have a discussion about the repercussions and,
this side of heaven, there may be consequences, some of which can be terribly
painful – broken families, ruined careers, incarceration. This can be true even
though the sin itself is forgiven.
Let me re-state Peter’s question:
“How often do I reject the right to get even with someone who continues to sin
against me.” Set aside, for a moment, what you and I know from reading Jesus’
answer. Taking Peter’s question and proposal at face value, forgiving a person
seven times seems rather generous. Sin is serious stuff, so treat it so: “The
wages of sin is death.” Nevertheless, Jesus doesn’t say dismiss the sin; He
says forgive. And, by “sin,” we’re not talking “hurting my feelings.” Let’s
sharpen the point a bit: “How often do I forgive my spouse for adultery, my
neighbor for rustling my cattle, my coworker for slanderous speech, my own
child who tells me to…” In that light, Peter’s suggestion is actually quite
laudable and noble.
Funny thing with Jesus. When you
ask a question of Law (the Law points to us, remember: “How often do I…”), you
get a Law answer. “Forgive seventy times seven.” Don’t get caught up in the
detail whether this is 77 times or 70x7. Really, the math doesn’t matter and it
misses the point. (Who’s going to keep a crib sheet and count score, anyway?)
If forgiving your neighbor seven times is tough, how on earth (or, for that
matter, under heaven) are we supposed to forgive 490 times? For that matter,
how are we supposed to forgive 490 times, or 70 times, or even 7 times when
sometimes, it feels impossible to even forgive a person once?
Now, I want you to turn the
question from the Law-question of “how often do I forgive?” to “how often do I
need forgiveness?” To use another of Jesus’ images, stop looking at the spec in
your neighbor’s eye when you have a telephone pole in your own. Suddenly, you
have a completely new perspective. Rather than we being the ones giving out
forgiveness in a limited number of drips and drops, we realize our own need for
forgiveness is vast, beyond limit and number. Our own debt – or, as we pray in
the Lord’s Prayer, our trespasses - are beyond number. “For I daily sin much
and indeed deserve nothing but punishment,” the Catechism says (5th Petition of
the Lord’s Prayer, Explanation). How
often do I need forgiveness? Constantly, frequently, daily, hourly. What do I
need forgiven? Everything.
To explain this, Jesus tells a
parable that expounds on the idea of “having been forgiven much, we forgive
much.”
In Jesus’ day, “talents” referred
to money. A day’s wage was worth a denarius. A talent was equal to
approximately 6000 denarii – over 16 years’ worth of work! Do the math: how big was the first debt in
the parable? A debt of 10,000 talents at 16 years each…it would take 60 million
days to repay. (If you are curious how this looks in today’s American economy,
per the US Bureau of Labor, the average daily pay in the US is about $170. With
that as our base, 10,000 talents would be roughly $10,260,000,000.) No lender
in his right mind would allow a single person to accrue this kind of debt. Yet,
when the debtor ridiculously asks the king for time, the king feels pity on the
man. Pity – not anger! The idea behind pity is that “one’s guts hurt for the
other person.” Not only does he release the debtor, he forgives the debt
because he has compassion. The man leaves, restored.
I’ve had people argue with me
that forgiveness is too easy. Someone sins and asks for forgiveness and – boom!
- the slate is wiped clean. Yes, in that forgiveness is a constant, but no,
forgiveness is anything but easy. The issue with that thinking is that it
forgets that our sin is serious and stands as a debt to God with the lien being
against our life. The wages of sin is death, remember. In the parable, the
master forgives the servant’s debt of 10,000 talents. He is choosing to not
seek restitution. Literally, by forgiving the debt, it costs him 10,000
talents. The point is that forgiveness is neither cheap nor easy.
Since parables are pictures of
the reigning of Jesus (“the Kingdom”), it tells us something about Him as well.
When God forgives your sins, it is because the debt has been paid in full. Not
with gold or silver, or with the stroke of a pen on a receipt. Your sin-debt is
paid with the holy, precious blood of Jesus and His innocent suffering and
death. He doesn’t count how often have you sinned…seven sins, seventy
transgressions, seventy-seven violations of the Law against Man, 490
desecrations of the Law against God! You
recognize your sins and realize your desperate need for grace – Lord, have
mercy on me a sinner! – and God, for the sake of Christ Jesus, gives you what
you need.
Actually, He already gave it.
Jesus paid your entire debtor’s price in full so that you do not carry the
burden into eternity, His one death for the sins of the world. Your sins have
been atoned for, covered in the blood of Christ, and you have been redeemed,
purchased and set free.
With this understanding, then,
the other half of the story becomes all the more shocking. Freshly forgiven his
own unpayable debt, when our forgiven friend runs into a guy who owes him three
month’s work, he locks the guy up and throws away the key because he can’t pay
it, even after the man begged for the same mercy that he himself had received. Forgiveness
for me, but not for thee… When the king hears of the first man’s behavior,
the debt is restored until every penny is paid…which, of course, will never
happen.
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| Matthew 18:33 - Full of Eyes Permission Granted for Use |
Taking this to our own selves,
what does it say to God when we refuse to forgive those who have sinned against
us? Anwer: it’s a sin against the First Commandment. We make ourselves out to
be God, as if we can determine who is “worthy” of forgiving and who is
unworthy. Forgiveness is not our judgement to make. Forgiveness of sins was won
at the cross. What right do we have to try to meter it out?
Go back to the initial question
for just a second: “How are we supposed to forgive 490 times, or 70 times, or
even 7 times when it feels impossible to even forgive a person once?” In short,
you don’t. God has already forgiven the brother or sister for the sake of
Christ. For you to forgive is to only repeat what God has done for you and to
the brother or sister who sinned against you. It’s having the attitude, “Since
God has forgiven me for the mass of terrible sins I committed against Him and
against my neighbors, and since He has also forgiven you for your sins, what
else can I do but likewise forgive you for the picayune thing you have done to
me?”
The question is often asked “But,
what if I want to forgive, but I just can’t because the hurt is just so deep or
the sin was so terrible.” First, there
is a huge difference between wanting to forgive and struggling to do so verses
flatly refusing to forgive. Refusal is acting as judge, jury and
executioner. That was the
forgiven-but-unforgiving servant in the parable. That does not bode well, as
one who dares to stand in the place of God.
To the person who desires to
forgive but feels unable, I have two words: the first is, repent of this.
Confess your own sin of weakness (feeling unable to forgive) to God, trusting
that Christ died for this, too. Doing so strips satan of his lies and
accusations. Recognize, too, that sometimes human weakness prevents us from
doing what we want to do. Even St. Paul wrestled with “the good I want to do, I
don’t do; the wicked I do, I don’t want to do.” Continue to strive for a day where you can
say, “And, even this, I have forgiven.” The second thing I would say is that I
think we sometimes equate “forgive” with “forget.” Again, our minds don’t
always work that way. And, in truth, sometimes those sins have big hurts; big
hurts don’t disappear overnight. Because you haven’t forgotten it or the
feelings of hurt haven’t gone away, you assume you haven’t forgiven it. Since
it’s hard to discern wherein truth lies, chose to forgive again: “I still feel
the hurt from this, but I continue to forgive.”
As an aside, you often hear
people say, “You have to forgive yourself.” Nope. It’s impossible. Could that
man with a 10,000 talent debt write off his own debt? It doesn’t work that way.
A Christian doesn’t forgive himself or herself. If I am weighted by guilt, how
am I to unweight myself? A Christian receives the forgiveness of God for the
sake of Christ through the means of grace, confession and absolution, and the
Word of God. So, rather than “forgive yourself,” the Christian is encouraged to
trust the forgiveness of the cross is theirs, too. It’s a return to one’s
baptism, where God declares you are His beloved, forgiven child. It’s the
“Amen” to “You are forgiven, dear child.”
I fully acknowledge this is a
simple (but not simplistic) sermon of forgiveness. If you find yourself
wrestling with forgiveness of someone who has harmed you, or if you are
struggling because of your sins against a brother or sister, I would encourage
you to visit with your pastor. Here, especially, the gift of private confession
and absolution is a great blessing. Allow him to speak God’s word of comfort to
you, sharing the mercy and forgiveness that has so richly been given to you,
and encourage you to do the same.
And to you who, in gratitude for
being forgiven much, wrestle to faithfully forgive 7, 70, or 70x7 times, come
and eat…the table is prepared. Amen.
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