2011-09-11–The Hard Work of Forgiveness
The Hard work of Forgiveness
Last week, we considered Jesus teaching about the place of reconciliation in our common life. He taught us that, because he is present when we gather together, our common life is to be marked by continous, immediate, and local attempts at reconciliation. There is no point at which we are to give up seeking the lost sheep or forgiving those who wrong us. This always ongoing striving to lived together in peace is to define our community and mark us out as different from the world around us. It is part of God’s mission, into which we have been called by Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a way to bring the reality heaven to earth and to bring earth into the throne room of God.
Now, I hope I did not imply last week that this way of living together was easy. It’s not. It is, in fact quite hard. “It works well in theory, but practice is another matter.” That’s how we might want to put it. If you feel that way this morning, you might agree with the observation given by a minor character in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. In response to the living saint, Elder Zosima’s call to love everyone, one of his devotees said, “I love the whole human race. It is my neighbour that I can’t stand.” Perhaps some of us are like her, this morning. We love the human race. As a whole and from a distance. It’s the people in the pew in front, behind or beside us that really get under our skin.
Peter, apparently, felt that way too. Peter clearly is a practical man. He wants to get past the theory and get to practice. He wants a boundary. He wants to know when his reconciliation obligation has been met. “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often should I forgive?” Notice again the translation change. Peter, like Jesus in last week’s Gospel, is talking about brothers (and we would add, and sisters). He is not talking about someone far away who is easy to forgive. He is talking about Andrew, James, John, Mary Magdalene and Mary, Clopas’ wife. If we are to ask his question with him—and it is right that we should—we should also be thinking not of the Bishop of Montreal, or the Archbishop of Uganda, or someone else similarly safe. He wants us to be thinking about those right around us. So, pause. Take a good look around. And ask Peter’s question again. “Lord, when my brother <insert name>, when my sister <insert name>, sins against me, how often should I forgive?”
Peter knows that keeping things local, keeping things immediate makes the work of forgiveness really hard. Not only is he practical, he’s a realist. So he wants a boundary. When have I fulfilled my obligation, Lord? It’s a fair question. And it’s one, if we are going to take last week’s lesson about reconciliation seriously, that we will ask too.
Jesus takes Peter’s question seriously. He answers it directly. With his answer, “Not seven times, but, I tell you seventy-seven times,” he means, “there is no boundary.” Some texts of Matthew emphasize this open-endedness by having Jesus say “seventy times-seven.” Seven in the numerology of the Old Testament is the number for perfection. To heap sevens on top of each other, whether we say seventy-seven or seventy times seven, is to say always ongoing. There is no end. The work of forgiveness is an always ongoing task.
If you are going to be my disciple, if you are going to be part of the community of brothers and sisters, forgiving and being forgiven is simply how you are going to live together. There is no boundary. No point at which your obligation has been met. Forgiveness is always. Forgiveness is ongoing. Sorry Peter. I know what I’ve called you to is hard. But I’m not letting you off the hook. There’s no point at which you have arrived. I’m calling you to a life of forgiveness not a set number of acts which you can complete. Now, let me tell you a story about forgiveness.
And what follows is the familiar story of the Unforgiving Servant. The story, I think, shows that Jesus is no less a realist than Peter. That when Jesus calls his disciples—brothers and sisters—of a life of always ongoing reconciliation and forgiveness, he knows exactly what he is doing. He knows exactly how hard it is. He knows on what basis it is possible. And he knows the alternative is worse. Let’s take each point in turn.
Jesus’ realism is shown in his acknowledgement that forgiveness follows an act of judgment. The servant’s debt is real and it is large. He owes his lord 10000 talents. The number is an absurd number on purpose. One talent was worth 15 years’ wages for a common labourer. It would take the man 150 000 years to pay back his debt. It can’t be paid back. The lord’s assessment is steely-eyed and straightforward. This indebted servant, if he cannot pay, must be dealt with justly and that means prison. If anyone is being unrealistic, it is the servant. “I’ll pay back every penny!” Of course, he can’t. But this most unrealistic of pleas produces pity. And instead of pursuing the route of justice, the lord adopts the way of mercy. And he forgives the debt.
We often talk about forgiveness as if it is an alternative to judgement. We talk about forgiveness as though it means we are to forget we have been wronged or to pretend that the wrong never occurred. To use the language of the parable, to pretend the debt isn’t there.
But Jesus in the parable does not do this. Forgiveness can only take place after the reality of the debt has been taken seriously. So for us, forgiveness is only possible after an act of judgment has occurred. It is the act of judgment that says, you have sinned against me. You have wronged me. To say this is to make a moral judgment. And until that judgment is made, forgiveness is not possible. Sentimentality is possible. Pretence is possible. But the hard work of forgiveness and reconciliation is short-circuited by the refusal to judge things accurately. If we are to get to forgiveness, we must first name a wrong as a wrong.
Jesus’ realism is evident in when forgiveness follows judgment. And he calls us to that level of realism too. To have the courage to say to our brother, to say to our sister, you have sinned against me.
There is no question that to begin that kind of a conversation is hard and painful work. Jesus himself knows how hard it is. And he knows how hard the next steps are. For forgiveness is not about sentimentality or pretence. It is not about warm fuzzy feelings (though there’s not anything wrong with our emotions).
Forgiveness is about, first of all, the relinquishing of justice. The lord, throughout this story, is in the right. He has made a judgment about the servant’s debt, about its size, about his capacity to repay it. In his call to throw the debtor into prison—however unjust that might strike us—he is, in first century terms, acting justly. When he rescinds his call to imprison the servant, he is relinquishing his claim of justice.
Just so, when we forgive someone, we are first of all relinquishing our claim of justice upon them. You have wronged me. You have sinned against me. You have wounded me. I have a claim of justice against you. I am in the right to make that claim. But I forgive you. I let go of my claim against you. I choose not to pursue justice against you as a way to right the wrong or balance the scale. That is hard work. To say I will not pursue my claim of justice against you is perhaps the hardest thing a person can say to another even as it is one of the hardest things another can hear.
Forgiveness is hard because it is about the relinquishing of justice. It is also hard because it is about choosing instead the way of mercy. Of all the options available to us, mercy is by far the hardest. Jesus knows it is hard. And he calls us to it anyway.
Forgiveness follows judgment—it is realistic. Forgiveness reliniquishes justice and chooses mercy—it is hard. And yet, if you would be my followers, Jesus says, it is the way of life you must adopt. Why? Because you yourselves have been forgiven.
We are the servants whose debts are too big to pay. And however much we might want to say to God, “I will pay back every penny! I will fulfill the requirements of justice. I will do what needs to be done.” When we talk like that—and we all do from time to time—we forget, to use the words of St. Anselm of Canterbury, to account for the awful weight sin. God, fortunately, is more realistic than we are. He knows that our sin is mired us in debts—to use the parable’s own metaphor—that we cannot repay. And, instead of enacting justice, he chooses mercy. He forgives.
Because we are a community of brothers and sisters, united in the forgiveness of God, forgiveness is to define our common life. Forgiveness is the life-style response of people who have been forgiven. It’s not a finite list of acts that, once they have been fulfilled, permit is to revert to claims of justice or worse, vengeance. Forgiveness is now the way that we will approach our brothers and sisters. Forgiveness is part of the narrow way to which Jesus calls us. The narrow way that leads to life. That’s why there’s no exhausting it. There’s no way to bring it to an end. That is why striving toward reconciliation is an always ongoing mark of our life together. This is how God has treated us; this is how God has turned us toward his world. This is how we will live together.
That is the good news of this Gospel!
Frankly, I’d like to end the sermon there. I can’t because this is not where the Gospel ends. Forgiveness is realistic, forgiveness is difficult, forgiveness is a life response to being forgiven. But the last word of the Gospel this morning is a word of warning: if we refuse the way of forgiveness, the only other way is the way of justice.
I think we will be distracted from the point Jesus is making if we end up in a debate about whether debtors’ prisons are just, or whether torture in the face of an unpayable debt is just. Parables are not supposed to have one-to-one correspondences to our world or to God’s character and actions down to the details. Jesus is speaking in broad terms about forgiveness. He is re-iterating and expanding on the point he made in last week’s lesson. Namely, that forgiveness as an always ongoing activity is to be a defining mark of our common life as disciples. And that common life is to be a witness to the world of the character of God.
And the warning with which this parable draws to a close is hard enough without getting into unhelpful speculation about the details. If you, my disciples, my brothers and sisters, if you who have been forgiven by the heavenly Father forego forgiveness, the only other way is the way of justice.
Jesus, I think, displays powerful insight into the human psyche here. He knows that human beings . . . . Well, I can be more specific than that. He knows that I want forgiveness for myself and justice for those who wrong me. Is that true for you too? Would it be true to say that, when we are confronted by a wrong, when a brother or a sister sins against us, we want justice for them, but when we sin, we want forgiveness for ourselves? I dare not comment on what is true for you in this case. But I will tell you that it is all too often true for me.
Jesus will not let his followers have divided hearts, however much we might want to have them. No, he says to us. It’s not forgiveness for me or for us and justice for everybody else. Forgive as you have been forgiven. If you refuse to forgive from your heart, not only will the one who has wronged you get justice, but so will you. Again, I will comment on no one except myself here. I know my own sins well enough to know I need mercy, not justice. And if I am to obtain mercy—as Jesus puts it in the Beatitudes—I must myself be merciful. I must take the way of forgiveness. However hard that way is—and it is the way of the cross—it is better than the alternative. It is better than the way of justice.
The Gospel’s warning is real, and true and weighty. If we want forgiveness for ourselves, we must learn to live a life of forgiveness as we turn out toward others.
Where, then, do we turn to learn this life of forgiveness? We turn to the altar of the Lord, where the forgiveness of God is put on radical display. Where we enter afresh and anew into that forgiveness again. So that, when we turn out toward our brothers and sisters and toward the world, we can live a different way, a way that acknowledges judgment, relinquishes justice and chooses mercy. A way that says, I am forgiven; I will forgive.