Matthew 18:15-33
Seventh Sunday of Easter: May 24, 2009
In a story on NPR’s, All Things Considered, two people, Jennifer and Ronald, tell their story about forgiveness. Jennifer begins: “I picked Ronald out as the man who had raped me, only to learn 11 years later that I had made a mistake. That was unbearable. Discovering the truth filled me with overwhelming guilt and shame for mistakenly putting an innocent man in prison. Meanwhile, the guilty person was left to commit further crimes on women. I found it almost impossible to forgive myself.
I ask Ron if he would ever forgive me. And with all the mercy in the world, he took my hands and with tears in his eyes, he told me he had forgiven me a long time ago. At that moment I began to heal.”
Then Ronald shares his side: “Forgiving Jennifer for picking me out of that lineup as her rapist took less time than people think. I knew she was a victim and was hurting real bad. Jennifer and I are friends. And some people don’t really understand it. But we were the victims of the same injustice by the same man, and this gave us a common ground to stand on. Together we were able to help each other heal through a shared experience. I could choose to be bitter; I could hate the prison guards and the system. But I choose to forgive them all, so that I stay free and not be a prisoner for the rest of my life.”
These are the kind of stories we always hear in church when the subject of forgiveness comes up. They are so inspiring. OR, more likely, they become hammers of guilt for those us unable to forgive someone in our life that has hurt us so badly.
You might be surprised to know that for some pastors – myself included – it is very hard to preach about forgiveness. The problem is mostly that a sermon is a terrible way to talk to people about forgiveness. It seems like a pastor’s job, in light of passages like this, is to challenge everyone to forgive, regardless of circumstances or how hard it is. But that ideal principle often leaves folks with questions like, “Am I really supposed to forgive my rapist?” Or, “if I’m supposed to forgive 77 x 7 times, what does that look like if my husband is beating me? How do I forgive that? And what does it mean to forgive someone who never admits or acknowledges they did wrong?”
If I were speaking with anyone pastorally about such questions, I would never counsel forgiveness if it means forgetting what happened and the impact it had. I would certainly never advocate forgiveness if it means abuse of some kind would just continue. And personally, I’m a big fan of forgiveness coupled with justice. Most pastors have seen the deep pain and hurt experienced by victims who are suffering a double portion – they have been hurt, and now, because of some notion of forgiveness they learned about in church, they are feeling guilty because they cannot just forgive and forget like Christians are supposed to.
So, I always hesitate to take on the topic of forgiveness in a sermon, worried that it will just hurt victims more and justify forgiveness without accountability. At the same time, I do think that we are called to a radical kind of forgiveness, in the same way we have been called to radical notions of loving, feeding, sharing and friending in these last few weeks.
At first glance, in this passage it seems like Jesus is asking us to forgive no matter what and no matter how often we are hurt. So immediately my hackles are raised. But, once we take a second look, we will see that Jesus isn’t talking about whether a victim should forgive the one who wronged them. That’s just not what this passage is about. This is about the church and this is about power.
Peter’s question about how many times we should forgive is surrounded by two stories. One is about the church and one is about power. First, before Peter’s question, we have the instructions to the church on how to deal with someone who sins.
Then, we have Peter’s question. How often should I forgive? And Jesus answers, “not seven times, but seventy times seven times.” I did the math: we should forgive 539 times. Of course, that isn’t what Jesus intended – that we do the math. He is suggesting an infinite amount with his use of the numbers 7 and 77. 7s indicate completeness, universality, infinite amounts. He is stressing that forgiveness is never worn out.
Finally, we have the story of the unforgiving servant. A man owes someone a lot of money – in fact more money than he could ever realistically repay. The one he owes has every right to have him thrown in debtor’s prison. But, after begging for mercy, he is forgiven his debt. Then we are told that someone owes this same man money that they are unable to pay. Even though he had been forgiven his own debt, he refuses to forgive the one who owes him.
Three parts – all about forgiveness in some way. Clearly, Jesus is saying that forgiveness is a fundamental value and necessary practice. But we have to look carefully at the context to see what Jesus exactly means by forgiveness. Notice, he is clearly talking to the disciples, the seeds of the early church, not the sinners. These are the insiders. This is about the church.
Here’s the scene: Jesus is sitting down at a session meeting with the elders and pastor. The session is debating how to handle people in the church who do something terrible, really hurtful to a person or the whole community. Because, they tell Jesus, you just know that will happen. It always happens. And we want to be Christian about how we handle it. And Jesus says, “it’s a lot of work. Are you sure you’re up for it?” “Yes,” they reply in unison, as any good session would do. “Well, you have to do whatever you can to help this person understand and repent and so be forgiven and remain a part of the family. First one person – a really wise, compassionate person, should go talk to him. If that doesn’t work, take someone else. And if that doesn’t work, then the whole church needs to give it a shot.”
“And,” one elder asks, “if that still doesn’t work?”
Jesus smiles every so slightly. He looks at his friends and says, and “if that doesn’t work, then they become like Gentiles and tax collectors”. And after a brief silence while the words sink in, the session members begin to smile ever so slightly and some give up a half chuckle. They get the joke. Time and time again, who is it that Jesus spends time with, heals, forgives, restores to community, eats with, cares most about? Gentiles and tax collectors. After all that work trying to get someone to recognize they have sinned, and they just don’t repent, now they’re to treat them like the ones Jesus call us to love the most. Funny.
Only they know the joke isn’t actually all that funny. In the same moment that they are grasping the irony of what Jesus has just said, they understand the heavy obligation that places on them and the church. Sure, there may be times when, in order to maintain the integrity of the community, you have to ask someone to leave. But you still have an obligation to remember and love the outcast with the goal always being to restore them to community. They are now the lost sheep you seek. They are the tax collector you love and eat with. This is about the church.
This is also about power. We know Jesus isn’t answering the question of how many times I have to forgive the person who stole my car, so what question is Jesus answering. We find it in the first verse of chapter eighteen. The disciples ask Jesus: “Who is greatest in God’s realm?” This is about power. The insiders are asking Jesus about power, and in part Jesus responds with the parable of the unforgiving servant.
In this parable, we aren’t even dealing with someone who has hurt another person. This isn’t about sins that need to be forgiven. This is about debt. In our world, the ones with the power are the ones to whom things are owed. Whether that is money, or respect, or time, or a favor. In God’s realm, the greatest one is the one who gives up this power by forgiving any and all debts – anything that is owed her.
Jesus basically tells them that not only does it not make sense to ask, “who is greatest in God’s realm?”, he suggests that if you don’t give up all your power, you won’t even get to see God’s realm. The only way in is through weakness – through forgiving anyone who owes you anything.
And that shouldn’t surprise us at all. It makes complete sense when we look at Jesus’ life. The weak, the powerless, the victims, the marginal, the hopeless. These are the ones Jesus included in his family, in his realm of healing and love and forgiveness and hope.
It seems that in Matthew’s day, the church needed to be reminded that they had power. They had power to say who was in and who was out. They had the power to forgive sins. And apparently they were not always exercising their power in a Christ-like way.
I do believe that when we are hurt, even hurt badly, forgiveness is still the goal. But it isn’t always clear to me exactly what forgiveness looks like from the place of the powerless, the abused, the victim. What I do know is that psychologists rightly tell us that if we forgive too soon, if we try to forget and move on before we have worked through what happened, the hurts will come back to haunt us and those we love. We need time to be angry, afraid, sad and whatever else comes up when are badly hurt. Often we need justice – we need to feel how much that matters to us, even if we will never get it. Only after working through all that, are we really able to freely forgive and move on in a healthy way.
We also know that holding on to those intense feelings for too long – not being able to let go of the anger and not being able to move from that place of victim, will eat away at us over time. Forgiveness really can heal and free the forgiver as much as the forgiven. But how long all of that takes varies wildly depending on the circumstances.
We won’t figure out how to forgive in these situations by listening to a sermon on forgiving 77 x 7 times. It needs to be worked through with trusted friends, in a pastor’s office or in counseling. Surely forgiveness is the goal, but forgiveness from the standpoint of a victim – someone with no power – does not look the same as the forgiveness of debt offered by the rich man to the beggar.
At the very least, one thing each of us can do in light of this passage is to look more critically at how the Church talks about forgiveness, and to see the role of power in forgiveness, and challenge those ideas of “forgiveness” that merely continue hurting the victim and protecting the abuser. But more than that, as the church, we also have to ask ourselves some hard questions about forgiveness. They go something like this: Who is indebted to us? Who have we hurt through use and abuse of power, and where do we start looking for them so we can repair the damage? Do we really need to forgive all debts owed to us? Always?
Sometimes we, like the disciples, can get too focused on whether we are good enough – whether we believe the right things – whether we’re a part of the right church that pleases God most – whether God really loves us because we go to church and eat vegetarian . Wondering how we will fit into God’s realm, whether we are going to be “in” our “out”, is really a luxury for insiders. And it looks tragically funny when at the same time we ignore the outsider and ignore how we and our systems and our institutions might be hurting others.
Given the context of church and power, when Peter asks how many times one should let someone sin against him, I think he’s asking how many times someone can sin and still be a part of the church. It’s a question about what people in the church should look like. How good do they need to be? How closely do they need to follow church law? How much do they need to fit in with the others? I think he’s asking about what the church should be like. And Jesus says, “Well, if it’s anything like the realm of God, it will be full of sinners…Gentiles and tax collectors. There’s no way around this. You all are imperfect to the core and I love you for it. And the church, if it’s anything like the realm of God, will hold power over absolutely no one. Everyone’s debts will be forgiven, and everyone will forgive any debt owed them.”
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” We know the truth – we pray it every week. Forgiveness, radical forgiveness, always starts with God. God has forgiven us – God forgives us over and over and over again…maybe even more than 539 times. And God forgives us not out of power, but by becoming humble and becoming human, just like us Gentiles and tax collectors. God gives up everything to be in relationship with us so that we might find freedom and forgiveness without shame or guilt. And now, we are called to go and forgive likewise. So, is our church like the realm of God? How well do we practice forgiveness? Amen.
