“To Forgive as We Are Forgiven”
Psalm 103:1-14 and Matthew 18:21-35
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
9/17/23
Let my whole being bless the Lord!
Let everything inside me bless his holy name!
2 Let my whole being bless the Lord
and never forget all his good deeds:
3 how God forgives all your sins,
heals all your sickness,
4 saves your life from the pit,
crowns you with faithful love and compassion,
5 and satisfies you with plenty of good things
so that your youth is made fresh like an eagle’s.
6 The Lord works righteousness;
does justice for all who are oppressed.
7 God made his ways known to Moses;
made his deeds known to the Israelites.
8 The Lord is compassionate and merciful,
very patient, and full of faithful love.
9 God won’t always play the judge;
he won’t be angry forever.
10 He doesn’t deal with us according to our sin
or repay us according to our wrongdoing,
11 because as high as heaven is above the earth,
that’s how large God’s faithful love is for those who honor him.
12 As far as east is from west—
that’s how far God has removed our sin from us.
13 Like a parent feels compassion for their children—
that’s how the Lord feels compassion for those who honor him.
14 Because God knows how we’re made,
God remembers we’re just dust.
(Psalm 103:1-14 – CEB)
21 Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Should I forgive as many as seven times?”
22 Jesus said, “Not just seven times, but rather as many as seventy-seven times. 23 Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 When he began to settle accounts, they brought to him a servant who owed him ten thousand bags of gold. 25 Because the servant didn’t have enough to pay it back, the master ordered that he should be sold, along with his wife and children and everything he had, and that the proceeds should be used as payment. 26 But the servant fell down, kneeled before him, and said, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’ 27 The master had compassion on that servant, released him, and forgave the loan.
28 “When that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred coins. He grabbed him around the throat and said, ‘Pay me back what you owe me.’
29 “Then his fellow servant fell down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’ 30 But he refused. Instead, he threw him into prison until he paid back his debt.
31 “When his fellow servants saw what happened, they were deeply offended. They came and told their master all that happened. 32 His master called the first servant and said, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you appealed to me. 33 Shouldn’t you also have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ 34 His master was furious and handed him over to the guard responsible for punishing prisoners, until he had paid the whole debt.
35 “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you if you don’t forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
(Matthew 18:21-35 – CEB)
Peter is always pushing boundaries, always trying to wedge his will into Jesus’ teachings. In today’s passage, he wants some clarification on this whole business of forgiveness. How often should we forgive? he asks. As many as seven times?
No, says Jesus, not seven times, but seventy-seven times, or—according to some translations—seventy times seven. Even with my fourth-grade aptitude in math, I know that equals 490.
One has to imagine Peter standing there in disbelief saying, What?! Forgive that lying, cheating, good-for-nothing four-hundred-ninety times?!
Forgiving the same person nearly five hundred times seems like too much to ask, doesn’t it? Besides, when does extending that much grace make you a doormat or even an enabler?
Into that moment of mystified resentment Jesus launches into the distressing parable of the unforgiving servant. It’s distressing because Jesus uses hyperbole to jar his listeners into re-imagining the role of faith in the world.
God’s household, says Jesus, is like a servant who owes his master 10,000 bags of gold. Where the Common English Bible uses “bags of gold,” the NRSV uses “talents.” And while there’s no consensus on what that figure equals in contemporary terms, a conservative appraisal suggests that 10,000 talents represent more than a hundred thousand years of a laborer’s wages. So, when Jesus tells his story and asks his hearers to imagine a servant asking for a little more time to come up with the money, he’s not being playful. He’s being preposterous. It’s impossible for a servant to pay off a debt of more than 3 billion dollars. This is Jesus’ way of saying that this story is about more than money.
Jesus is also gently chiding Peter for trying to keep accounts. To keep track of how many times who forgives whom is to avoid forgiveness, or to use it as some kind of leverage over other people. It’s like saying: Don’t forget, I forgave you when you were unkind to me, or failed to have my back, or to thank me. So, you owe me!
If that’s how Peter understands forgiveness, then neither seven times, nor seventy-seven times, nor four-hundred-ninety times will ever be enough, because he is keeping score. He will always be the servant who begs for mercy but refuses to grant it.
There’s a cliché we’re all probably familiar with: Forgive-and-forget. Forgive-and-forget works for spilled milk, or for an oversight by your bridge partner, or for buying mint chocolate chip ice cream instead of the butter pecan your spouse asked for.
Forgive-and-forget does not, however, apply to matters that cause genuine harm and suffering. Even true forgiveness does not forget intentional betrayal or injury. Indeed, true forgiveness remembers what caused the suffering. True forgiveness looks the offender in the eye and says, What happened should not have happened. It caused me great suffering, and neither you nor I will forget it. Nor should we. While our relationship will be different from now on because of what happened, we have been through it together. So, I choose not allow that moment, nor its memory, to limit my joy or to control my future. I will not allow it to reduce me to something less than I am in Christ. Will you walk with me through this death-shadowed valley and into new light and new life?
Forgiveness is not fulfilled by simply declaring forgiveness any more than a marriage is fulfilled by saying “I do.” To forgive is to ask the other person to join us on a journey toward new relationship and new wholeness. That person may not come with us. They may not even acknowledge a need to be forgiven. And when that’s the case, forgiveness becomes that much harder, and that much more important. To withhold forgiveness until it is earned, or to use it as a self-aggrandizing gesture, is to keep score. And that means we’re not settling debts; we’re racking them up.
The same is true when we find ourselves needing to confess to someone else and to ask their forgiveness. In confession, we acknowledge to another that our decisions and actions have caused suffering. That person may not be ready to forgive, but just as we can begin the journey of forgiving another, we can also begin the journey of being forgiven.
Whether forgiving or being forgiven, when humbly offered, the act of forgiveness releases us from the toxic burdens of resentment and vengeance. It banishes the demons of judgment. So, whether given or received, forgiveness is nothing less than the way of resurrection.
Because forgiveness is a way of life that requires practice, and because it’s a cross to bear, maybe it’s helpful to try learn to forgive ourselves first, to confess our own selfish judgments and fears, and to offer grace to ourselves. To forgive as we are forgiven is to love as we are loved.
I think Jesus refers to self-forgiveness when he speaks of forgiving “from the heart.” Our unforgiven selves can’t be truly grateful for the grace God shows to us, nor can we share that grace with others.
It seems to me, then, that in Jesus’ parable, the so-called master doesn’t represent God—in fact, not at all. He represents forgiveness itself. When shared, forgiveness has the power to set us free from crushing imbalance. It has the power to give us new life. And when withheld, it has the power to burden us, to imprison us in the bitterness and hopelessness of score-keeping.
Having said that, forgiveness does not allow wrong-doing to continue just because we have found the strength to forgive. While Jesus forgives unilaterally and completely, he does not ignore or excuse actions that require forgiveness. The whole point of the Incarnation is that, in Jesus, God enters a world of resentment and retribution to demonstrate love and to do justice because allowing us to continue living and acting destructively is neither loving nor just.
There’s one dynamic in today’s parable that never gets attention. What happens to the relationship between the unforgiving servant and those who report his un-forgiveness? While their actions help to end one person’s injustice, they also deliver that person into a place where he will never again experience forgiveness. Can such relationships be redeemed?
The parable may have a preposterous set-up, but that unanswered question is real and relevant. How can we address our own unresolved issues of confession, repentance, and forgiveness? Where will we find the strength and grace to forgive as we are forgiven? How will we live the parables of our own lives so that we witness faithfully to the restorative love and justice of God in Christ?
As followers of Jesus, our demonstration of love and our work for justice begins in our own hearts where we forgive ourselves. Then, it moves out to our own families and communities where we forgive each other.
And from there, we move even further, with our hands and feet, hearts and tongues, eyes and ears—all in grateful witness to God’s redeeming love and restorative justice in and for all Creation.
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