“Choosing to Forgive”
Matthew 18:21-35
Ever have one of those days, months or years when nothing seems to go right?
I mean, it’s like, no matter what you do somebody is mad at you.
And you really are trying as hard as you can, but it only seems to make things worse.
What do you do?
Usually, I’m my own worst enemy.
I really don’t want to be.
I want everything to run smoothly; I want to do God’s will and I want people to flock to Jesus.
I want this church to grow and this community to get turned on to Jesus, His love, transforming power and the joy of serving Him.
But then I feel like I get in the way—not on purpose—but I get in the way.
I maybe make people angry at me.
I don’t want this to happen, but it happens.
Have you ever felt like no matter how bad you don’t want to—you feel like you seem to get in the way of God’s message more than you do in being one through whom God’s message is made clear and attractive and convicting?
I have a hard time forgiving myself when I do this.
How about you?
I hold grudges against me!
And then, as others hold grudges against me as well I feel even more horrible.
Uggh!
When is it going to end?
When am I ever going to get it right?
Or better yet, am I ever going to get it right?
This ministry stuff is hard.
This loving stuff is hard.
Life is hard.
But, I know Jesus.
I know Him just enough to always be wanting more.
And so, as Paul writes in Philippians 3, “I press on…I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me…
…I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.
But one thing I do.
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
I press on.
I think Peter was having kind of a bad day or a bad week or a bad month when he came to Jesus in our Gospel Lesson for this morning.
Maybe a whole bunch of people were getting mad at him.
Maybe he was trying his very best, but it wasn’t good enough for some.
And it’s hard to forgive people when they get mad at you and say all kinds of hurtful things about you.
It’s difficult when you are trying so very hard and people still think you are some kind of nincompoop.
I know how it feels to be a nincompoop in other people’s eyes, how about you?
It’s not fun.
It eats at your self-esteem.
It makes you want to quite—but you know you can’t.
Because Christ’s love compels you.
So, Peter comes up to Jesus and asks Him: “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?
Up to seven times?”
And, again I think we all know this question from our own experience.
We’ve all asked this in one way or another.
I mean, being sinned against, being offended, being wounded, being wronged by someone still happens the same way it did some 2,000 years ago when Peter was asking this question.
We have the same vices, we open the same wounds with each other…
…with our harsh words…
…with our inconsiderate words…
…with our manipulating actions and our raging tempers and our disregard, neglect and abuse.
The damage that comes from these things is probably similar to the sting and the pain that we feel that makes us ask: “How much more of this do I have to take?”
This is a little bit of what I detect in Peter’s question, how about you?
“When is enough—enough?” is a question we probably all wonder when we are really hurt, when we are wronged.
“How many times do I have to forgive?
How long do I have to put up with this?”
(pause)
Talking about forgiveness is deeply personal, not just to some degree but to many different degrees.
When we say “forgive,” one person might be thinking of their significant other who left the lights on and now the electric bill is going up.
But then, someone else in this sanctuary might be thinking about someone who is angry at them.
And they have asked for forgiveness from this person, but the person just won’t let them off the hook.
And that hurts.
It leaves us baffled.
“I didn’t mean to make them mad at me.”
“If I’d a known that what I was doing was going to anger them and make them hate me or not want to be around me…I’d have moved heaven and earth to do things differently.”
We all see things through a different set of eyes.
And sometimes we think we are doing the right thing, but others see it as the wrong thing.
And sometimes those who see things differently won’t forgive us.
Or maybe we won’t forgive them.
Another person in another part of this sanctuary might be thinking about being abused…
…really, really abused.
So, one thing I want to acknowledge is that for somebody who has been severely wounded, severely abused… forgiveness can be an offensive word.
Forgiveness can be one of the harder things in Christianity…
…one of the harder demands it makes that we have to grapple with.
And the kind of forgiveness Jesus is talking about here is the thing about the Kingdom of God that might well be the most insane and foreign thing to the world.
I mean, hospitality and peace are usually seen as good things in the eyes of the world, and Jesus talks about these things a lot.
But TRUE forgiveness is scandalous.
In the eyes of the world, to forgive a deep wrong is something that doesn’t have to happen…
…it’s also, often, something that shouldn’t happen.
That person has a right to be angry.
That person has a right to seek revenge.
That person has a right to watch the one who harmed them go to prison for their offenses or face the gas chamber.
The world says: “You should not forgive them.”
And for more minor offenses, the world says: “If you forgive that person you are putting yourself at risk.
You are giving them the upper hand.
You are giving them power”… and that might actually be true.
So, “How many times before I show them the door?” we might ask.
And the world says “once!”
What’s that old saying?
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
And then the Who sounds in with the scream: “I won’t be fooled again!!!”
So, Peter comes up and asks Jesus how many times he must forgive someone who wrongs him.
And there was already a lot of discussion that had gone on about this by the rabbis long before Jesus arrived on the scene.
And they had decided on the answer to this question and they based it on their interpretation of a couple of verses from Amos.
And the answer they came up with was three times.
Three times and you don’t have to forgive a person anymore.
Three times is enough!
Three times and you show them the door.
So, for Peter to ask “Up to seven times?”…
…Peter is thinking he’s being pretty generous…
…like, “See what I did here Jesus? Pretty good job, eh? That’s a lot of times.”
Then Jesus does what Jesus does and He cuts against the grain of all the different ways of haggling with this and interpreting this…
…and no matter how skillful everyone is they are still playing the wrong game according to Jesus.
And so, Jesus says to him, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
And by saying this Jesus isn’t just giving Peter a bigger number.
He’s not giving us a simple math problem either—Jesus is giving us a Bible quote.
It comes from Cain and Abel.
Cain murdered Abel and then Cain got really freaked out when God gave him the boot out into the wild blue yonder.
Cain got freaked out that somebody is going to come along and murder him, of all things.
So, God puts God’s mark on him and God is like, “Yeah, well, anyone who tries to mess with Cain…
…on that person the vengeance is going to be seven times over.”
So, Cain lives and he has a family and that family has more family and in Chapter 4 of Genesis we get this genealogy which is a list of so and so begot so and so.
But then there is this interruption in the genealogy with this amazing episode with someone who really likes to speak about themselves in the 3rd Person.
It’s this guy named Lamech.
And it says, “Lamech said to his wives, ‘Adah and Zillah…hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me.
If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech is avenged seventy-seven times.”
He’s basically saying, “I have killed a boy for slapping me.
If Cain’s revenge is seven times then Lamech’s is 77.”
So, Lamach inflicts the most extreme retribution on this boy for the smallest of things.
And so, when Jesus is asked a question about how many times a person has to forgive his brother or sister before the person can move on to vengeful actions…violent, even actions or even just showing someone the door…
…Jesus quotes 77 times, but in the opposite direction.
Jesus is saying, “You know how the world does things Peter.
You know how it is when getting even is the first priority.
And it’s not actually getting even because it always escalates into this cycle and things get blown out of proportion and the cycle never ends.
In the world there is an absurd amount of revenge for the smallest of things.
People kill over the smallest infraction.
In the Kingdom, though, it’s an equal and opposite absurd amount of forgiveness rather than revenge—even for the biggest of infractions—even for the worst of things.
Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like…”
And we have the parable of the unmerciful servant.
And this unmerciful servant owes his master 3 lifetimes worth of salary.
There is no way he could ever pay it back.
And the master or king takes pity on the man and cancels his debt.
Then this forgiven servant finds another servant who owes him a measly (in comparison) 3 months-worth of salary.
And the servant “grabbed him and began to choke him.
‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him” for patience.
“But he refused.
Instead, the forgiven servant went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.”
When the master heard about this he called the first servant in and said, “You wicked servant. I cancelled all that debt of yours when you begged me to.
Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?”
And that servant is thrown in jail.
Our lives do depend on forgiving others because God has forgiven us.
And until that forgiveness changes our hearts…
…we will be stuck in a virtual jail cell…
…with the key right in front of us.
And the key is forgiveness.
The key is the acceptance of God’s forgiveness and the entering into new life with God through that forgiveness.
That is when transformation happens.
That is when we begin the journey of living into the new life Christ offers us through His death and Resurrection.
Let’s face it, the debt we owe to God is so out of proportion when it’s compared to the debt owed to us.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
Forgiving others…it is really, really hard--Especially if we have been abused to the point that forgiveness is an offensive word.
So, I wonder if we must get to the point where we just have to let the Crucifixion be enough?
And I say this with all sincerity and with all empathy and with all gentleness to people who have been wounded so badly…
…I don’t say this flippantly or in a sentimental way.
I really mean that as hard as it is…we just have to let God’s death be enough!
Not just for us and God but for our enemy as well.
After-all, that is the only Way to Resurrection.
The Crucifixion is the canceling of all debts—not just between us and God but between us debtors and each other.
Because the thing about Resurrection is that when we’re wounded…
…when we are deeply hurt what we all want is a new life.
We want that life that the Bible talks about where there is no crying and no pain and no tears.
We want a Resurrected life and we feel that the wrong that has been done to us is like a death to us and we just want to be raised again.
But here’s the thing—the wrong that is committed against us is not our death…
…our death is when we choose to forgive.
That is when we decide to die with Christ—to die to self—and live with God.
It’s death to the way of the world and the way of the evil one.
That’s the death we want to enter into.
And so, when we want a new life after being so sinned against and we want to move on but we want that without forgiving…
…It’s like wanting a Resurrection without a death.
It can’t happen.
And so, we are all invited, as Jesus Christ entered into His death, to enter into our own death of sorts which means to forgive and to let it go to release it as if saying: “You don’t have to make this up to me.
I know what you did.
I know what it is.
You don’t have to make it up to me.”
As a priest once said, “The only thing to keep us from the joy of Resurrection is the refusal to die.”
Let’s picture of ourselves standing before the gates of heaven and we are handcuffed to our worst enemy and the only way we can get in is if we bring him or her with us.
That’s what this parable is about, isn’t it?
Who has wronged you?
Will you allow Christ’s death to be enough to forgive them?
Let us pray: Lord, help us to be merciful as You have been merciful to us.
Help us to forgive as we have been forgiven.
Open our eyes to the costliness of grace.
You have gone before us and paid an infinitely higher price to forgive and infinitely greater debt and you invite us to follow You in that.
We pray and we hope as we learn to walk that as we learn to walk in forgiveness with the people who have messed up our lives that we might become more and more like You and that we might find forgiveness and freedom that is truly free.
In Jesus’ name and for His sake we pray.
Amen.
