"The Hard Work of Forgiving"

“Forgive your neighbor the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray.”

“Peter came and said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often shall I forgive? As many as seven times?”

“Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.’”

One of scripture’s clearest mandates to those who profess to be Christian is an obligation to forgive. There are more than 150 references to forgiveness in the Bible.

Over and over again we are told that God has forgiven our sins and so we are commanded to forgive others.

The mandate to forgive is clear, but the reality of forgiving is not so easy.

We know we should forgive. We know there is value in letting go of cherished hurts. But many of us all too often find it impossible to do what scripture says we must.

And hearing Jesus’ words today, that we should be willing to forgive someone who has wronged us as many times as necessary can make us feel even worse by making us guilty about our inability to forgive.

When we find ourselves in that situation we are not alone.

“The inability or refusal to forgive has become one of the greatest destructive elements in the modern world, both for individuals and communities,” says New Testament scholar William Countryman in his book, Forgiven and Forgiving.

“We hold grudges,” he says. “We seek revenge. We cultivate victimhood as our identity. We let the past rule the present. We tend to make war more easily than we make peace, to harbor or even treasure the wrongs done to us more easily than we turn them loose.”

Forgiveness is not easy, Countryman admits, but we make it even harder when we think of it primarily as a duty, something that we should somehow be able to force ourselves to do.

“However hard we have worked over the centuries to reduce Christian faith to a list of rules – be neat, clean and obedient; never miss church; say your prayers; read your Bible – it is really about something much more fundamental and life-giving than duty,” Countryman says.

Christian faith is about changing your heart and mind. That’s what makes forgiveness possible. The point is not to acquire a technique of forgiving or to drive ourselves harder through sheer will power, but to acquire a whole new way of relating to God, the world, and one another.

That is something that the forgiven slave in today’s gospel reading is not able to do. The slave owes the king 10,000 talents – or as Bible commentaries tell us, about 165,000 years’ worth of wages.

The point is, the slave owes an astronomical amount, a debt that can never be paid.

But when the slave begs for mercy, the king astonishingly forgives the entire debt. One would think such an extravagant act of generosity and kindness would transform the slave’s life.

But it doesn’t. Instead, the forgiven slave immediately goes out and demands repayment from the one who is in debt to him.

The heart and mind of the forgiven slave have not been changed. And so even though his debt is cancelled, he remains in bondage to the past.

It seems obvious what the forgiven slave should do. But in reality, he is not so different from any of us. Every Sunday we are reminded that our sins – all our sins—are forgiven by a God of astonishing love and mercy.

And yet all too often we do not let the forgiveness we have received transform our lives; we do not let God’s generous spirit give us a new spirit of generosity.

In our struggles to forgive, it is helpful to remember what forgiveness is and is not.

The dictionary defines forgiveness as “granting pardon without harboring resentment.”

Forgiveness does not mean “making nice;” it does not mean pretending that someone didn’t really mean to hurt you, or be mean. Sometimes people do intend to cause harm.

Forgiveness also does not mean denying that a wrong has been done. All too frequently people have remained in abusive relationships because they believe the Bible’s mandate to forgive means pretending the abuse never happened.

Indeed, Countryman says, forgiveness must begin by recognizing and acknowledging what has happened, by naming the injustice or wrong that has been done. We cannot successfully deal with a problem that we refuse to admit exists.

It is not until we can acknowledge and name what has happened that we can move into the process of forgiving.

Forgiveness is often not a one-time act of will, but a process that may take years. The process begins with prayer regarding the one who has wronged us. That prayer may acknowledge our anger and hurt, and our honest feelings about the person who has caused them.

One of my favorite writers, Madeleine L’Engle, admitted that she has found herself in this situation.

“I sat in my quiet corner one night, the Bible open on my lap, and I knew that I still had hurt in my heart, and that I was still angry at whoever was permitting a great load of blame and shame to be laid on me,” she wrote.

And then, in the midst of her anger and hurt, L’Engle found herself asking God to bless the despicable person who had hurt her.

Her blessing was perhaps not gracious, but it was honest. Her prayer had no demands for justification, vindication, or revenge. No manipulation or insisting that everything be worked out in her favor. No denying her feelings of hurt and anger. No pretending that evil doesn’t exist or didn’t happen.

L’Engle admits that she had not forgiven the person who hurt her, but she was able to turn that person over to God, “knowing that God’s powerful love will do what our own feeble love or lack of it won’t.”

The White Queen in Alice in Wonderland believed that it was a good practice to believe in six impossible things every morning before breakfast. L’Engle says in her own life she has found “it is salutary to bless six people I don’t much like every morning before breakfast.”

If we can do that, remembering that the person in the world who has done us the most harm can be forgiven by God, just as we are, then we have begun the long road to forgiveness.

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Readings

Genesis 50:15-21

Realizing that their father was dead, Joseph’s brothers said, ‘What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong that we did to him?’ So they approached Joseph, saying, ‘Your father gave this instruction before he died, “Say to Joseph: I beg you, forgive the crime of your brothers and the wrong they did in harming you.” Now therefore please forgive the crime of the servants of the God of your father.’ Joseph wept when they spoke to him. Then his brothers also wept, fell down before him, and said, ‘We are here as your slaves.’ But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.’ In this way he reassured them, speaking kindly to them.

Romans 14:1-12

Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God. We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” So then, each of us will be accountable to God.

Matthew 18:21-35

Peter came and said to Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! 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?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

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