Pentecost 16 – 2023
Matthew 18:21-35
Marian Free
In the name of God who has overlooked all our sins and who wants only what is best for us. Amen.
Forgiveness is perhaps the most misunderstood of Christian teaching. This is a consequence of a number of things: we turn it into an instruction – You must forgive (or else), we fail to understand that ultimately forgiveness is something that God does, and finally, we forget that there is no sliding scale when it comes to being perfect which means that as none of us is perfect, all of us need forgiveness.
A lifetime’s experience tells me that turning forgiveness into a commandment is not helpful. This approach fails to capture the nuances of forgiveness – for example, forgiveness does not mean overlooking sin, it doesn’t mean condoning bad behaviour or that there are no consequences for causing hurt, breaking the law or doing the wrong thing. On the other side of this equation, forgiveness may mean stepping into another’s shoes and trying to understand what drives them to act the way they do. It may mean giving the other the resources – education, housing, employment – so that they can address those things that lie beneath the outward expression of confusion or pain . Turning forgiveness into a commandment not only ignores the subtleties of forgiveness, but creates a situation in which a person who has been deeply hurt and traumatised, is further traumatised by feelings of inadequacy and guilt when they cannot find a way to forgive and have to hand the situation over to God.
Forgiveness, like most of the things that God asks of us, is ultimately for our benefit – not God’s. God knows that our lives will be fuller and richer if we are able to let go past wrongs and hurts, rather than harbouring resentments which only serve to make us bitter and unhappy and do nothing to restore a damaged relationship. In fact, more often than not, the one who has caused offense is not affected at all as a consequence of our failure to forgive – we are only hurting ourselves. As Anne Lamont said in her memoir Traveling Mercies: withholding forgiveness is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die .
That said, there are some things that are almost impossible to forgive. Torture and sexual abuse for example, leave scars that are so deep and so painful that it may take years of recovery before the victim is able to move forward, let alone heal. In such cases the wounded may only have the strength to hand forgiveness over to God. Corrie ten Boom, an internee of some of the Nazi’s worst labour camps, spent a lifetime after the war preaching forgiveness. She tells the story of an evening when, after she had delivered her message, she was approached by a man whom she instantly recognised as a guard who had treated her beloved sister particularly badly. The man said to her, I know that God has forgiven me, but I would like to hear that you have too. In that moment Corrie froze. She simply could not reach out her hand to take his. All that she had said, all that she genuinely believed could not at that moment be put into action. In that moment the pain and hurt of her experience was still too raw. Corrie could only pray and as she prayed, she felt her arm move and her hand take that of her sister’s tormenter. In that moment it was God, not she who extended forgiveness .
In order to truly forgive, many of us need to be reminded of our own need for forgiveness, and to feel the sense of awe that we, who are so far from the glory of God have been forgiven and set free. It is this aspect of forgiveness that today’s parable addresses. A slave owes a king ten thousand talents – an amount of money few of us could imagine – well over one billion US dollars! Remember this is a parable – Jesus is not suggesting that the king or the slave would have that much money, but rather that the debt is beyond anyone’s ability to pay and that the forgiveness of such a debt is unbelievable! Certainly, the reaction of the slave indicates that he can’t believe it to be true. Instead of extending the king’s act of generosity of a fellow slave, he demands the repayment of the paltry amount of $430. (Of course, it is equally possible that the first slave felt he had earned/deserved forgiveness of the debt.) Either way, he appears not to have appreciated the enormity of the king’s generosity, it has taught him nothing about the nature of the king and has apparently left him fearful and insecure.
There are many among us who are like the first slave. We either think that we are so good, that we have done nothing that needs God’s forgiveness or that what we have done is so bad that God couldn’t possibly forgive us. The parable says otherwise. We are all in need of forgiveness and God is capable of forgiving the most outrageous of debts. When we truly understand that we (with all our imperfections) have been forgiven, we understand that others – more and less imperfect than ourselves, will also have been forgiven.
Forgiveness is a gift not a demand.
It is something God does – especially when we cannot do it ourselves.
We who are forgiven and free, cannot help but extend forgiveness to others.
Swallowsrest 