Year A

Matthew 18:21-35

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

To Forgive is Life

In the Sunday morning bible study last month, led by Cory Williams, we spoke about the many gifts that God so freely gives us to do God’s work in the world. A gift that some people have is a gift for forgiving. Such a gift should not be taken lightly because for most of us we struggle to forgive. There is a very familiar and true saying; “To err is human.  To forgive is divine.” I came across another version of this saying recently “To err is human.  To forgive is darned near impossible!” The inability to forgive has always been a destructive force in our world, especially for governments, communities, and its individuals. We do have a tendency to let the past rule the present and the future and when we do, we can find ourselves trapped in emotions like anger, resentment, spite, and hostility, emotions that can poison our lives and our relationships with others.

Over the past 30 or so years, the medical and scientific community has studied the importance of forgiveness for our health and well-being. It is now widely documented that unforgiveness, or holding on to past hurts and resentments, deeply affects our emotional and physical health. There are many situations in our world, in our families, our church, in the places we work, that when unforgiveness is not dealt with it can fester into deep, painful wounds. Therefore, the lack of forgiveness between “me and thee” can be a matter of life — my life and yours. We can choose to let go of those things that can destroy life with the help of our faith. Yet, as followers of Christ, we can think of forgiveness sometimes as a duty, you know a Christian duty.

We have worked hard over the centuries to reduce Christian faith to a matter of rules when it is really about something much more fundamental and life-giving than duty. Our faith is about the change of mind and heart that can change and affect our whole lives. It’s called conversion which is nothing less than having our minds and hearts transformed by the Holy Spirit according to the mind and heart of God. By God’s grace, we see things differently and this makes true forgiveness possible for us. The necessity of forgiveness for life, Jesus speaks to today in this story of the Unmerciful Servant because he knows the effects that unforgiveness has on us and our world. Therefore, Jesus’ teaching today on forgiveness is actually rather unforgiving, in the sense that it leaves us with really no choice. Forgive and live, says Jesus.

This section of chapter 18 of Matthew which includes this rather prickly parable ends the section in which Jesus talks at length about what relationships in the Christian community are to be like. He makes the point over and over again that the life of the community, the family of God, is the most important thing in the world, and that those who want to be members are called to do everything in their power to nourish and strengthen the bonds of their love. Nothing is to get in the way of that, not quarrels, or rivalries, not even out and out sin. If one goes astray, the rest of the flock are to do their best to go find the lost one and bring them back. The disciples listening to Jesus speak of what is required must have been concerned and looking for a limit to just how far they must go with this relationship business.

Peter says, Lord, “If another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times? “Not seven times I tell you, Jesus says, but seventy-seven times.” There is no limit, Jesus says, make it a way of life, make it a habit. This question Peter asks plagues all Christians in all places and times: When may we stop forgiving those who offend us repeatedly? Jesus makes it crystal clear: never. God is a God who forgives completely, and the community of Christ is called to do the same. True forgiveness is not about forgetting the sin but remembering that we have been forgiven. Remembering that forgiveness can overcome the sin in our lives because God is there to forgive and renew. So, as was his custom, Jesus emphasizes his answer to Peter with a story, a story about a king who wishes to settle accounts with his servants, many of whom owe him money.

The servant who is brought before the king owes an outrageous sum that he could never repay. The king’s initial reaction is to sell this servant and his family which was prohibited in Jewish law, this puts utter fear in the servants heart, such so, that he begs for mercy.  The king portrayed as a sever master, much to the servants surprise, forgives the entire loan. However within minutes, the first servant forgets the mercy he has just received and neglects to pass it along. What seems obvious to us and would have been to the original audience of Jesus’ parable, is that the first servant should treat this unfortunate fellow slave with the same mercy that he has received? To act mercifully toward his fellow slave, the ungrateful servant must first be able to see himself as both the debtor and the debt-holder.

We are both the fellow servant and the king. We have received mercy and should be able to give mercy. Every time we petition God in the Lord’s Prayer “to forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors,” we are reminded that we are to be like the merciful king, acting toward others as the king acts toward the servant. This may seem impossible, yet with God’s grace, with God’s help, all things are possible. This is the nature of God’s mercy toward us and we are to live mercifully toward one another. The good news is that God in Christ through the Holy Spirit has set us free and because we have received God’s mercy and unending forgiveness through the cross, we are free to forgive and receive others in mercy.

It begins when we make a choice to forgive from our hearts, as the king did in this story. Forgiveness is not easy it is hard work. There is no way to erase the past and we always carry it with us but we make the choice of how we carry it into the future. Forgiveness can turn past wrongs into future possibilities because we learn, by forgiving and being forgiven, to live with each other mercifully. For, when we rediscover the depth of God’s forgiveness for us and share it with others we find life. We are not enslaved but free because God’s generous life of forgiveness becomes our life, also. It becomes a habit.

Let us pray, Lord God, we ask for your mercy and help to forgive those who have offended us. And we ask that you give your mercy to those we have offended, that all our lives may be a witness of your unending love, forgiveness and mercy now and forever. Amen