Tough Love: When We Don t Forgive! Matthew 18:21-35 Then Peter came and said to him, 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. With some scriptures it s hard to reply Thanks be to God when the minister says This is the God s living Word. Our gospel lesson today may well be one of those texts. We return to it every three years in the lectionary. But we should probably read it once a month, for what is harder and what is more important than this call to forgiveness? That this passage is in the lectionary means that we re going to be instructed to read it every three years, on the second Sunday of September, when we re remembering the events of September 11, 2001. So this passage is set like a stumbling block before us on a day when we re least inclined to forgive. That this passage is placed here is not a new development. The lectionary has placed it here for decades, knowing that as congregations regather from their summer vacations, that we need to become reacquainted with one of the most essential of Christ s teachings. By putting this lesson here, we are all being reminded of the absolute urgency to forgive. Personally, I wonder what grudge ol Simon Peter was nursing when he asked Jesus: Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? I mean, do I have to forgive as many as seven times? Maybe he was tired of James and John s constant bickering. Maybe he was weary with Thomas doubts. Maybe his brother Andrew had been getting under his skin, as only a brother can. So Peter is asking about forgiveness here but he s also keeping
score. He s seeking limits to his love. He s grinding an ax. He s asking forgiveness while he s loading his guns for the right moment to get even. But then who among us hasn t asked, How long, O Lord? or How many times? about who keeps offending us? Peter, like us, wants to know how long he s got to put up with someone before it s okay for him to go off on him. Peter accepted the fact that if one were to follow Jesus, forgiveness simply had to take the place of vengeance in he heart, but Peter still did not like the idea very much. He wanted a precise number to work with because, after all, he s got his limits. So Peter asks his question Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me tell me how long I ve got to put up with it. Peter s question is a classic, but Jesus answer is much classier. Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven. If my math serves me, that s 490 times. If you were going to keep that kind of score not just on one person but on all your known associates, you really would need to set up an Excel spread sheet in and adjust your figures each night. You might as well give up and not keep score at all. Which is precisely Jesus point, of course. Knowing that Peter was a little hard-headed, and afraid that Peter has not quite understood the message, Jesus goes on to tell the parable of the King who forgave a great debt. This guy owed the King like a quadzillion kahunas, and the King forgave him, only to discover the man whose debt he forgave refused to forgive a tiny debt, like five bucks, owed to him. Okay, said the King. My bad. I thought you wanted to operate by the Royal Mercy Method of accounting. But you actually prefer the Pound of Flesh Method, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth accounting, so we ll go by that. So, Jesus said the King had the man tortured until he paid back every shekel he owed. Sounds harsh, but the moral of the story is harsher yet: So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or your sister from your heart. i God will torture us for not forgiving until our debt is paid in full for all the ways God has had to forgive us? Does Jesus really mean that? I mean, what if he means that? If so, then throw away your calculator. Write poems in your ledger. Throw yourself on the mercy of God, and don t ever keep score in your relationships again. Because you could never, ever get ahead with God if you were to choose the pound of flesh method of accounting. I mean, what if God gave you exactly what you deserve? No more, no less? What if God were to forgive you exactly in measure as you forgive others? This is tough love. Love that calls us to accountability. Yet Jesus, because he loved those who would follow him, because he wanted them to know the core values of the kingdom of God, wanted to startle the Christian community awake to the reality that divine mercy and human mercy were profoundly intertwined. We acknowledge that every time we pray the prayer our Lord taught us to
pray, saying, Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. This is the only line in the entire prayer that has a condition upon it, suggesting that there is an intrinsic relationship between our ability to forgive other people and God s willingness to offer forgiveness to us. If we don t forgive, we re not going to be forgiven. That s tough. The matter of forgiveness is of utmost importance and ought to command our attention. I cannot tell you how difficult it is to preach on this subject today on the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. It s so difficult to try to think about how we can even begin to forgive in a world like this one. The television media understandably have been highlighting those events this entire week. The most meaningful broadcasts to me have been the ones that have explained the memorial that has been built on the site of the Twin Towers. The names of every victim have been inscribed on the walls of the memorial there, but not necessarily alphabetically. Many have been grouped next to their friends, their co-workers, those close to them. In seeing those tributes, I remember that every single name represented a human being of worth and inherent meaning. Every person was someone s son or father, mother, or friend. This week I ve seen interviews of numerous children whose had a parent die at the World Trade Center or at the two other sites. I was so impressed by their determination not to let that event warp their lives or cripple their spirits with hate. Many turned to art, some designed memorial tattoos, some turned to creative writing. All found a way to move forward into wholeness and healing. I resolved during one of those shows that with God s help, I was not going to let the terrorists have still another victory. I was not going to let them implant a spirit of hatred and vindictiveness inside of me where the spirit of God ought to be. I was not going to give up that territory to them. As I did that, I felt a sense of spiritual freedom akin to that which I have experienced when I have received forgiveness at the hands of another person. Have you found the grace within yourself to forgive those who have wronged you, whosoever they might be? Repeatedly Jesus reminds us that you and me, each and every one of us, have already received forgiveness from God far beyond what we can ever calculate or understand. The only thing that could possibly cancel that out, he tells us, is if we refuse to forgive. O how hard it is to hear the commandment to forgive. One theologian puts it like this: We who follow Christ are always being commanded to do things we cannot do. We are commanded to love, to serve without counting the cost. The hardest of all is the commandment to forgive. We are bidden to do it, not because it is possible on our own, but because as we try what we are commanded to do, it is given to us as a gift from God. So you see? It s no innocent question Peter is asking Jesus. There s a lot
riding on whether we determine to forgive. We like to put it off on others and blame others and say You did this. You did that. That s why I hate you. That s why I won t forgive! But as legitimate as the blame game may seem to us, as common as it is in human relationships, God doesn t buy our excuses. But God stands every willing to forgive. God didn t major in accounting, thank God. I think God majored in the humanities instead. Because if God were all justice with no mercy, we would all be tortured all the time. Then again, maybe that s why so many people are tortured in their relationships, tortured by their score-keeping, tortured by their inability to trust others, tortured by their failure to participate in community. They don t know how to forgive because they just don t get it, they forget how much they ve been forgiven. In her powerful autobiography The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom tells of her experience after World War II, of preaching at a church service on the subject of forgiveness. As she left the pulpit and came down to the center of the sanctuary, she noticed a man coming toward her, his hand extended. She recognized him as the chief guard at the prison camp where her sister had died and where both of them had been incarcerated. His face was beaming. How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein, he said. To think that, as you say, God washed my sins away. Corrie Ten Boom found herself paralyzed as the guard thrust out his hand to shake hers. She could not raise her hand from her side. Even as the vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of love or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him, give me your forgiveness. Suddenly she was able to move her hand, and as she touched his hand, flesh to flesh, she writes, from my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world s healing hinges but on Christ. When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives, along with the command, the love itself. ii What this tells us is that we must see the urgency of forgiveness, the sinfulness of hate. We must see that we must make the decision to forgive, even when we think we do not have the power. For the love, the power, the miracle of forgiveness will be given us by God. To forgive is not to excuse that which is unjust or cruel. To forgive means this: to make a conscious choice to be unbound by evil. When someone does something evil to us, the first injury they do is their fault, but if we hold on to a feeling of vengeance and hatred in our own heart, then that person does a second injury, and the fault for that is ours. God s love is not a namby-pamby love that let s us get away with anything. It holds us accountable. Like a parent who is trying to bring a child into maturity and adulthood God holds us accountable. And
like a parent, God has forgiven us many, many times. But, as God s children, if you and I do not forgive, we re going to be called to account. And we re warned: that love is tough. You are either a very rare person or a very young person if you have no one you find hard to forgive. And I know forgiveness is not easy. It is not a moment, but a process which requires honesty and communication. We have to swallow our offended pride and admit our own responsibility for the breaches that divide us. But my friends, this is the place to do it. Don t insult your God by refusing to accept the forgiveness God offers. Don t reject the grace God offers you by refusing to lay down the grudges you are carrying. Join in God s peace and be healed. Accept God s grace and then offer it to someone who has offended you. Remember that you have been forgiven a great injury against God. Can you not forgive those who have injured you? I m going to close this sermon by inviting you to join in a brief confession of faith. This is an affirmation that what God offers us is greater than anything this world can do to us. This confession is not printed in your bulletin however. It s in the form of the old Call and Response where I give you the words and you repeat them. So as you are able, would you please rise and repeat these words written by Desmond Tutu of South Africa who had to overcome his own pain and injury in order to forgive. May they be for today and for the days ahead our affirmation of faith. Please stand. Goodness is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; forgiveness is stronger than injury; life is stronger than death; victory is ours through God who loves us. Thanks be to God!
imatthew 18:35 iinew York: Bantam Books, 1971; p. 238.