ECCLESIASTICUS
27:30-28:7
PSALM 103:8-13
ROMANS 14:5-12
MATTHEW 18:21-35
8:30a.m. Service
Sermon – September
11, 2005
“As we forgive those
...”
FORGIVENESS
is the focus for today and for next Sunday’s Scriptures: both God’s awesome
offer of forgiveness to people, and the requirement that people of faith
also be forgiving to others.
The two are
stuck to each other with divinely-made “super glue.” As we say in The Lord’s Prayer, Father, “Forgive us our
trespasses (or sins, or debts) as we forgive
those who trespass against us.” We will
get what we give. It’s a sobering
thought, because forgiveness can be hard for us.
Let us start
by reflecting on what forgiveness isn’t.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean that the offense was “O.K.” If it was O.K., it would not be an offense for which forgiveness
was needed! And forgiveness also does
not mean that the offense was trivial.
If someone asks for our forgiveness and we didn’t consider their act to
be an offense, we should say that, or if it was trivial, we should say that it
was too minor to worry about. But
if someone really asks for forgiveness, that means that person thinks their
behavior was both wrong and significant.
We then should forgive them.
Forgiveness
also does not mean that a person should not necessarily face any consequences
for their behavior. In the event of a
criminal act, for example, the victim may want to forgive the perpetrator
spiritually but still want the perpetrator to face charges so as, potentially,
to protect society from their behavior if it is repeated. On a much smaller level, a child who breaks
something on purpose may still have to clean up a mess caused or have a “time
out,” but the child who is forgiven would not have to compensate for the full
cost of his or her behavior – as indeed, children usually can’t.
Forgiveness often
means that the person forgiven faces much less of a consequence than
they deserve, and sometimes their entire debt is forgiven – as in
today’s Gospel. Justice – what the person “has coming to him or her” – is mitigated
by mercy, by which the person
receives less punishment than he or she deserves.
Forgiveness always means that the person doing the
forgiving waives the ‘right’ to take
revenge. Leave that to God, as the
first reading this morning says.
Vengeance has often led to more pain than the original offense,
especially as it often launches a long cycle of mutual retaliation. If you want to see how this works, go to
Bosnia where the Serbs are still angry that the Muslims won the battle of Kosovo
in 1389. The “eye-for-an-eye” retaliations have continued since, the
recent war being just the latest chapter.
Shiites and Sunnis have been at each other since the 7th
Century A.D., making the Catholic vs. Protestant thing in Northern Ireland look
short-lived by comparison, and the Palestinians and Israelis have been at it
pretty much since Joshua come to Jericho in the late 13th Century B.C.
I say all this not to trivialize any of these conflicts or deny that
there are serious issues in any of them; on the contrary, they are serious and
significant, but endless revenge for past grievances does not lead to any
solutions.
Forgiveness
can break, or at least lessen, cycles of revenge, as has been the effort in
South Africa under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led by Archbishop
Desmond Tutu. There, people – white or
black – who had perpetrated political crimes of violence during the apartheid
regime, could receive amnesty from prosecution if they told the whole truth
about their deeds. In some cases, this
led to buried bodies being found which never would have been found
otherwise. Family members were able to
have funerals and closure regarding loved ones who had simply disappeared,
often while in police custody.
Forgiveness by the government, if not always the families, made that
possible. In some cases, there even was
forgiveness sought and granted by perpetrators and victims or victims’
families, which has led to one of the extraordinary blessings of forgiveness: a new relationship between people, not
weighed down or poisoned by the past.
Even, in some cases, reconciliation.
There have
been times in my life I have found it challenging to forgive, but when I read
the stories from South Africa, my grudges and grumbles seem miniscule.
Forgiveness
can be hard. If you find it so,
remember the answer to “How can you eat an elephant?” “A bite at a time.” If
what you have to forgive seems “elephant-sized” to you, start by forgiving
“bite-sized” pieces – perhaps specific instances or behaviors. Again, forgiving doesn’t mean they are O.K.
or trivial, just that you give up your right to “get back at” the person, and
that you want “what’s coming to them” to be more mercy than justice.
The person you forgive does not have to ask
for forgiveness in order for you to offer it. If you wait for the other person to ask, you are making yourself
the prisoner of their (dysfunctional) behavior! Why give them that power over
you? And, you don’t even have to tell
them that you forgive them. (These two
principles help us get over the frustration of having grudges against people
who are dead or whose whereabouts are unknown.) Just forgive them “in your heart” as Jesus says in today’s
Gospel.
The reality
is that if we do hold onto our grudges, pretty soon it will be the grudges which are holding onto, and
controlling, us. Holding grudges is
something sinners do, as the first reading declares, and the longer we hold
onto them, the more power we give them over us.
So
forgiveness is profoundly liberating for the one doing it! That alone is a
reason to forgive.
And how
liberating is it for us to receive
forgiveness instead of “getting what’s coming to us.” (Isn’t it tempting to pray for mercy for ourselves – and for
justice for those who really bother us?
But God says that’s not how it works.)
I started
with our need to forgive first because of Christ’s emphasis on that in
today’s Gospel and in The Lord’s Prayer.
Mercy for ourselves and justice for others is not offered: “Forgive us
our trespasses as we forgive” is the
way it reads.
Now, those of
us who consider ourselves “good people” who have been the victims of “bad
people” may feel this is unfair. So,
let’s go back to “Bible 101.” The two
greatest commandments are “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your
soul and with all your mind,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Oh, yeah.
Folks, none
of us have gone a day obeying both of those commandments fully, all the
time. The “rap sheets” even for the
best mortals, measured against those commandments, would be book-length.
Or, as in
today’s Gospel, our “rap sheets” would be equivalent to a debt far too vast for
us to pay. In today’s parable, the King
forgives one of his slaves a debt of 10,000 talents. A “talent” in First Century Palestine was the largest unit of
money, and 10,000 was the largest unit which ancient calculators could
handle. A “denarius” was a unit of
money equivalent to a day’s wages for a laborer.
The slave who
was forgiven the vast debt then immediately proceeded to “shake down” a fellow
slave for a debt of 100 days wages – not a small sum, but something that could,
over time, be repaid: 20-weeks salary.
The debt that unforgiving slave had forgiven by the King, however, was
equivalent to 50 million days
wages. You gonna pay that off by
taking a second job? Didn’t think so.
In the First
Century, the Roman provinces of Galilee (where Jesus grew up) and Perea (the
next-door province) combined produced
annual tax revenue of 200
talents. Ten thousand talents was a
number few people short of the Roman Emperor could ever have to imagine.
We have each
been forgiven much by God – more than we could ever repay or earn. We, as St. Paul says, will all “be
accountable to God.” But our forgiveness is revocable if we do
not ourselves forgive.
In Genesis
4:23-24, as things start to “go downhill” fast for the human race after the
disobedience to God in the Garden of Eden and Cain’s murder of Abel, the rule
of disproportionate revenge takes hold.
Lamech, great-great-great grandson of Cain, declares: “I have killed a
man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”
Jesus tells
Peter that he must forgive “not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven
times.” This repeals the curse in
Genesis – but only if we forgive.
We are called to reverse the
curse.
(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard
St. Barnabas Episcopal Church