Matthew 18:21-25
For many people, forgiving those who’ve hurt us is one of the most difficult demands of the Christian Gospel.
Some years ago, in the movie “Dead Man Walking,” Susan Sarandon played the nun, Sister Helen PreJean, who became the spiritual advisor to a convicted murderer on death row in the days leading up to his execution. One of the film’s most dramatic moments involved Sister Helen’s encounter with the parents of the two young people murdered by the prisoner. They desperately wanted the execution to go forward; and they deeply resented the idea that this nun should be attempting to bring the condemned man any solace or comfort in his last days. Their lives were consumed by the desire for retribution. And watching the film, one’s reaction might well be, “Who can blame them?” If we were in their position, forgiveness would probably be the last thing on our minds.
Yet, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And the parable in today’s Gospel embodies our Lord’s teaching of forgiveness.
Today’s Gospel reading picks up where last week’s left off. There, Jesus was teaching the disciples how to deal with fellow Church members who wrong them in some way. What Jesus said was: If your brother sins against you, take the matter up with him privately; if he refuses to listen to you, take two or three witnesses; if he refuses to listen to them, tell the matter to the whole Church; if he refuses to listen to the Church, then cast him out.
So, at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, Peter replies, “All right, Lord. But suppose he repents and asks to be forgiven? How many times must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” In other words, doesn’t there come a point when someone’s hurt you one time too many, and you just can’t forgive them again no matter how contrite or sorry they are?
Some years ago, in the movie “Dead Man Walking,” Susan Sarandon played the nun, Sister Helen PreJean, who became the spiritual advisor to a convicted murderer on death row in the days leading up to his execution. One of the film’s most dramatic moments involved Sister Helen’s encounter with the parents of the two young people murdered by the prisoner. They desperately wanted the execution to go forward; and they deeply resented the idea that this nun should be attempting to bring the condemned man any solace or comfort in his last days. Their lives were consumed by the desire for retribution. And watching the film, one’s reaction might well be, “Who can blame them?” If we were in their position, forgiveness would probably be the last thing on our minds.
Yet, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And the parable in today’s Gospel embodies our Lord’s teaching of forgiveness.
Today’s Gospel reading picks up where last week’s left off. There, Jesus was teaching the disciples how to deal with fellow Church members who wrong them in some way. What Jesus said was: If your brother sins against you, take the matter up with him privately; if he refuses to listen to you, take two or three witnesses; if he refuses to listen to them, tell the matter to the whole Church; if he refuses to listen to the Church, then cast him out.
So, at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, Peter replies, “All right, Lord. But suppose he repents and asks to be forgiven? How many times must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” In other words, doesn’t there come a point when someone’s hurt you one time too many, and you just can’t forgive them again no matter how contrite or sorry they are?
Peter probably thinks he’s being enormously generous in offering to forgive as many as seven times. But Jesus says no, not seven times, but seventy times seven. The phrase “seventy times seven” is a biblical euphemism that means an infinitely large number. For the Christian, there must be no limit to our willingness to forgive.
We need to understand, however, what forgiveness is and what it isn’t. When someone has hurt you, forgiveness does not mean waving your hand and saying, “Oh, that’s all right, it doesn’t matter.” It’s not all right, and it does matter. If it really were all right, there’d be nothing to forgive.
To ask forgiveness is to admit that one has done wrong. And to forgive is not to excuse the wrong, or to pretend that it didn’t happen. Rather, forgiveness means overcoming our instinct to strike back. It involves letting go of our desire for vengeance and retribution.
Forgiveness of this sort does not mean that a violent criminal shouldn’t go to jail. It does not mean that a chief financial officer who’s embezzled company funds should get to keep either his job or the money. It does not mean that a woman should continue to live with an abusive husband. It does not mean that the Church should move priests who’ve molested children from parish to parish and cover up their crimes. In each of these situations, decisive steps are necessary to safeguard the community and to protect the innocent.
But even in tough situations like these, forgiveness means refusing to be ruled by the hatred, malice, vindictiveness, and desire for revenge that can consume us and poison all our attitudes and behavior. It means refusing to let our lives and identities be defined by the ways in which we’ve suffered or been victimized. After a would-be assassin shot him in Saint Peter’s Square, Pope John Paul II exemplified Christian forgiveness when he went to the prison a year later and personally forgave his attacker.
The parable in today’s Gospel teaches us how to become forgiving people. A king releases a slave from a debt of ten thousand talents. But then the same slave refuses to forgive a debt of a hundred denarii owed to him by another slave.
The key to the story is the difference between the two debts. A denarius was a silver coin roughly equal to the day’s wage of a laborer. But a talent was equivalent to 6,000 denarii. So, the ten thousand talents that the servant owed the king was an astronomical sum. There was no way that the servant could have paid off the debt. On the other hand, the one hundred denarii that the servant was owed by his fellow servant was an infinitesimal fraction of the ten thousand talents. So, it cost the king infinitely more to forgive the debt owed by the servant than it would have cost the servant to forgive the debt owed by his fellow servant.
Our Lord’s point is that we find the motivation to forgive those who’ve sinned against us only when we realize how much more God has forgiven us. To become truly forgiving people, then, we need to realize our own sinfulness and our own need for forgiveness.
Only then can we begin to appreciate the sheer magnitude of Christ’s love for us. He died on the cross to forgive us our sins and reconcile us to God. It cost him far more to forgive us than it will ever cost us to forgive anyone else. So, to become forgiving people, we need to keep our gaze fixed on the cross. Then, and only then, will we know the freedom and joy that comes from being able to forgive others just as God has forgiven us.
Howard Thurman, the African-American preacher and civil rights leader, tells of visiting an elderly black man in hospital. During the visit, the man declared, “You’re looking at a man who cannot die. Not long before the Civil War I barely escaped from the plantation with my life. I was accused of doing something I had not done. The master had me dragged to the smokehouse. I was stripped to the waist and my hands were tied to one of the crossbeams. I was whipped until I fainted, then revived with buckets of cold water and flogged again.
“The next thing I remember was the darkness of the night and someone was cutting me loose and helping me dress in fresh clothes that hurt my skin. Oh, how it hurt! Whoever this was helped me to escape into the woods. Finally I came to the river and got across the Ohio to freedom. Ever since I have been kept alive by hatred for the man who beat me. I suppose he has long since died. The only thing is, I know I dare not die until I forgive him.”
Thurman visited the man many times over the next few weeks. One day he entered the room, and the old gentleman greeted him in great excitement. He said, “It happened last night. It finally happened.” A few days later, the old man died. He knew that none of us can find true freedom, in life or in death, until we learn to forgive.
We need to understand, however, what forgiveness is and what it isn’t. When someone has hurt you, forgiveness does not mean waving your hand and saying, “Oh, that’s all right, it doesn’t matter.” It’s not all right, and it does matter. If it really were all right, there’d be nothing to forgive.
To ask forgiveness is to admit that one has done wrong. And to forgive is not to excuse the wrong, or to pretend that it didn’t happen. Rather, forgiveness means overcoming our instinct to strike back. It involves letting go of our desire for vengeance and retribution.
Forgiveness of this sort does not mean that a violent criminal shouldn’t go to jail. It does not mean that a chief financial officer who’s embezzled company funds should get to keep either his job or the money. It does not mean that a woman should continue to live with an abusive husband. It does not mean that the Church should move priests who’ve molested children from parish to parish and cover up their crimes. In each of these situations, decisive steps are necessary to safeguard the community and to protect the innocent.
But even in tough situations like these, forgiveness means refusing to be ruled by the hatred, malice, vindictiveness, and desire for revenge that can consume us and poison all our attitudes and behavior. It means refusing to let our lives and identities be defined by the ways in which we’ve suffered or been victimized. After a would-be assassin shot him in Saint Peter’s Square, Pope John Paul II exemplified Christian forgiveness when he went to the prison a year later and personally forgave his attacker.
The parable in today’s Gospel teaches us how to become forgiving people. A king releases a slave from a debt of ten thousand talents. But then the same slave refuses to forgive a debt of a hundred denarii owed to him by another slave.
The key to the story is the difference between the two debts. A denarius was a silver coin roughly equal to the day’s wage of a laborer. But a talent was equivalent to 6,000 denarii. So, the ten thousand talents that the servant owed the king was an astronomical sum. There was no way that the servant could have paid off the debt. On the other hand, the one hundred denarii that the servant was owed by his fellow servant was an infinitesimal fraction of the ten thousand talents. So, it cost the king infinitely more to forgive the debt owed by the servant than it would have cost the servant to forgive the debt owed by his fellow servant.
Our Lord’s point is that we find the motivation to forgive those who’ve sinned against us only when we realize how much more God has forgiven us. To become truly forgiving people, then, we need to realize our own sinfulness and our own need for forgiveness.
Only then can we begin to appreciate the sheer magnitude of Christ’s love for us. He died on the cross to forgive us our sins and reconcile us to God. It cost him far more to forgive us than it will ever cost us to forgive anyone else. So, to become forgiving people, we need to keep our gaze fixed on the cross. Then, and only then, will we know the freedom and joy that comes from being able to forgive others just as God has forgiven us.
Howard Thurman, the African-American preacher and civil rights leader, tells of visiting an elderly black man in hospital. During the visit, the man declared, “You’re looking at a man who cannot die. Not long before the Civil War I barely escaped from the plantation with my life. I was accused of doing something I had not done. The master had me dragged to the smokehouse. I was stripped to the waist and my hands were tied to one of the crossbeams. I was whipped until I fainted, then revived with buckets of cold water and flogged again.
“The next thing I remember was the darkness of the night and someone was cutting me loose and helping me dress in fresh clothes that hurt my skin. Oh, how it hurt! Whoever this was helped me to escape into the woods. Finally I came to the river and got across the Ohio to freedom. Ever since I have been kept alive by hatred for the man who beat me. I suppose he has long since died. The only thing is, I know I dare not die until I forgive him.”
Thurman visited the man many times over the next few weeks. One day he entered the room, and the old gentleman greeted him in great excitement. He said, “It happened last night. It finally happened.” A few days later, the old man died. He knew that none of us can find true freedom, in life or in death, until we learn to forgive.
Note: Portions of this sermon appeared in the "Sunday's Scriptures" section of The Living Church, Vol. 249, No. 4 (September 7, 2014), 59. The Howard Thurman story originally came from a commentary by Will Willimon in Pulpit Resource.
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