Forgiving as we are Forgiven

It seems so right and fitting that we begin this academic year with gospel readings and other lessons that so crisply and clearly lay out the basic themes of a life in Christ. In tonight's lessons the theme is forgiveness, a notion that is elemental and foundational to Christ's teaching. This theme of forgiveness seems especially appropriate for us to ponder in the week following the anniversary of the September 11 attacks on our country.

The first reading from Ecclesiasticus sets out the Old Testament's call for us to act with forgiveness to others. Indeed, our forgiveness of others is essential if we are to receive forgiveness from God. Jesus repeats this principle in the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us..."

And tonight we conclude our reading through of the Epistle to the Romans, which we began in the summer. Paul calls on Christians to refrain from judging one another. The differences between the ways various ones of us follow Christ are to be accepted. Our responsibility is to love God and one another.

We continue to read from the section of Matthew's Gospel which deals with God's forgiveness and our role in extending God's forgiveness to all people. Peter asks Jesus how many times he is to forgive someone who wrongs him. Peter asks if seven times is enough.

In Jewish tradition, with which Peter was familiar, God would forgive three sins and punish the fourth one. So, here Peter doubles the standard and adds one for good measure. His intent seems to be generous in his forgiveness, perhaps expecting that Jesus would demand at least this level of generosity.

But Peter miscalculates. The Greek version of Jesus' answer is ambiguous because it can either be translated as "seventy-seven times" or as "seven times seventy." It really doesn't matter which translation you choose because even if you plan to stop at seventy-seven instead of 490, either one of two things will happen. You will either get so caught up in counting and keeping track that forgiveness is impossible, or you will forget where you are in your counting and let the matter drop. If you get caught up in the counting, then you are like a rogue banker who delights in foreclosing mortgages, or like one bent on vengeance no matter how repentant the one who has wronged you is.

What is Jesus' intent here? I like the English translations in which Jesus tells Peter to forgive "seven times seventy" because it makes clear the reality that the meaning is countless times. We can do the math for seven times seventy in our heads. But instead of doing it in our heads, I think Jesus wants us to do it in our hearts. I think Jesus want us to loose count and then give up. I think Jesus wants us to drop it and forget about it.

The reason I think this is what Jesus wants is that right after telling Peter to forgive seven times seventy times, he tells a parable in which he explains that God's total forgiveness of us lays on us the obligation to forgive our brothers and sisters unconditionally. Here again, Jesus gives us a little math problem to work out, but an obscure one.

A slave owes his king 10,000 talents. In order to understand Jesus' meaning in this parable, you have to understand what 10,000 talents was worth. Scholars tell us that, "A talent is the largest monetary unit... equal to 6,000 drachmas, the wages of a manual laborer for fifteen years. "Ten thousand" is the largest possible number. Thus the combination is the largest figure that can be given. The annual tax income for all of Herod the Great's territories was 900 talents per year (M. Eugene Boring, The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. VIII, Nashville: Abingdon, 1995, page 382). So, the debt Jesus is talking about - 10,000 talents - would be like using our word "zillions", or an unimaginably huge number.

The point here is that such a debt could never be paid off even in several lifetimes. The slave tried to buy a little time by asking the king to be patient and promising that he would pay the debt. The king forgives his debt, in Jesus' words, "out of pity for him."

So, the slave is suddenly debt free. He must have had a lilt in his step when he left the presence of the king, having had such a burden lifted from his shoulders. But he then fails to do for his own debtors what the king did for him. He does not forgive as he was forgiven, and this leads to his ultimate downfall.

In this parable Jesus illustrates two points at once. He makes it clear what the extent of our forgiveness should be and also that it is only because we are already forgiven by God that we are asked to forgive those who wrong us.

As I have said here before, this is where it gets really hard to be a Christian. There are so many ways in which we are called upon by God to forgive and to accept forgiveness, and each of them is equally difficult, and sometimes seemingly impossible. Here are a few examples:

• You must tell someone you have harmed that you are truly sorry and want to begin again.
• You must tell someone you haven't actually harmed, but who thinks you have, that you are sorry and want to begin again - because even though you have done nothing wrong, they feel wronged and won't continue the relationship until you apologize. As you ask them for their forgiveness, you are silently trying to forgive them for their prickliness.
• You must tell someone who has harmed you and asked for your forgiveness that you honestly do forgive them.
• You must forgive someone who doesn't think they have harmed you. And you must do this internally and spiritually, because it would offend them to think they actually need forgiveness - and because you would sound like a self-righteous prig.
• You must forgive someone who knows they have harmed you, but who doesn't care - or who even feels all right about having harmed you.
• You must forgive someone who has harmed your child, or someone for whom you care deeply, whether they want your forgiveness or not.
• You must forgive yourself for all of the stupid, careless and terrible things you have done to others. (This list is from a sermon by The Rev. Susan Klein, rector of St. Aidan's Episcopal Church in Malibu, California.)

Earlier when I was talking about the difficulty - and the folly - associated with keeping count of the number of times you have forgiven, it must have occurred to you that keeping count defeats the whole enterprise. That's because real forgiveness has to come from the very same place where all the hurt and disappointment live and fester as well - from within our hearts. When we need most to be forgiving, we are often unable to be because our hearts are so full of hate and pain there doesn't seem to be any room for forgiveness. There's sort of a moral Gresham's Law at work where bad thoughts and intentions drive out good ones.

We have to release and let go of the hate and anger before forgiveness can enter our hearts. And that is the part that takes effort and often seems impossible. This is where prayer comes in. When we say in the Lord's Prayer "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" we are expressing not so much a fait accompli as a wish, at least as far as forgiving others is concerned. We must ask God for the grace to forgive as we are forgiven because it is so often impossible to do without God's help.

So, we gather here tonight as Christians have always gathered - a community gathered around a holy table marked by faith and obedience to God's Word. That obedience applies not only to our relationship with God but also to our relationships with one another. We are called by God to be a community marked by acceptance of all and by forgiveness. We are not a gathering of perfected saints. We are, rather, a gathering of sinners who have known God's love and forgiveness and who in turn are asked to extend that love and forgiveness to all people. We gather around the Lord's table, in awe of God's love for us, and eat his bread and drink his wine - the Body and Blood of Christ - not as a reward for good behavior or a job well done, but as food for our spiritual journey toward accepting God's love and forgiveness, and forgiving others deeply in our hearts.

Amen.