What Does Forgiveness Look Like?

14 September 2014 – Year A, Lectionary 24

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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Grace and peace is yours, from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

I’m going to start today with a question: What does forgiveness look like?

I’m starting with this question because that’s the question at the heart of Peter’s question to Jesus: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” In other words, Jesus, what does forgiveness really look like, anyway? How abundant is forgiveness?

Well, Peter should know by now that when you ask Jesus a question like this, you’re typically going to get an answer that’s all about the kingdom of heaven – an answer that makes perfect sense in God’s kingdom, but to us, sounds a bit “out there.”

Jesus answers with what we call the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. I’m going to tweak it a bit to fit it into 2014:

There’s this man who owes a bank a lot of money – about six hundred thousand dollars – an impossible sum of money for him to repay on his salary. Since he cannot pay, the president of the bank orders that he and every family member – even the children - have to work extra jobs in order to earn enough to pay off their debt. One day, the man goes to see the president of the bank and he begs for freedom from the impossible debt. The bank president has pity on the man and his family, and he relents, and forgives the entire debt.

The man leaves the bank and is heading home to give his family the good news. While walking home, he sees a coworker and he remembers, “Wait a minute – he owes me fourteen thousand dollars!” The man proceeds to rough up his coworker in order to collect what’s owed him. The coworker begs for more time to repay his debt; instead of being merciful, the man has his coworker thrown into jail.

So, yes, the man who has just been forgiven this huge, impossible debt - forgiven only because of the mercy of the bank president – he turns the tables of forgiveness over on top of this other guy, and all because of a much smaller amount of money.

But another coworker is also there, and sees everything that happens. He knows the bank president, so he goes and tells the banker what he’s just seen. The bank president, furious, has the forgiven man picked up and thrown into the tiniest jail cell he can find. He’s allowed no visitors, and given one meal a day. And every time the guards walk by his cell, they give him a punch in the gut. His family keeps working all of their extra jobs until they can pay back the impossible debt.

Now, obviously, I changed a few things in this parable – to help us to see that Jesus uses extremes in his parables on purpose: in order to capture the attention of his audience. But there is also in this parable the sense of Jesus wanting to push open our minds, to expand what we think forgiveness looks like, and what unforgiveness looks like. Can forgiveness really look like a king’s or a bank president’s mercy, given to someone who owes an impossible debt? Can unforgiveness really be so harsh – as harsh as torture - for the one who refuses to forgive another?

There are two sides to focus on in this parable: that of the one receiving forgiveness, and that of the one offering forgiveness. On the one hand, the parable reminds us that God forgives us our impossible debt – one which we can never hope to repay. Our sinfulness is ever with us, and we are ever the poor, struggling person, asking for mercy.

On the other hand, the parable reminds us that forgiving others is absolutely vital. When we have been hurt by someone, it is often forgiveness that can move us forward.[1]

Most of us have things we remember our parents (or others) saying over and over again. I remember time and time again, when I’d just related some complaint to my mom about something that someone had done to me, she’d listen, and then simply say, “You sure are letting that person have an awful lot of power over you!”

She was right. I had been wronged, in whatever way, and yet I hadn’t gotten around to forgiving that person yet. I was holding onto the wrong and holding onto the pain or trouble they had caused. As long as I held onto all of that garbage, I wasn’t free to move forward, and so I was, in a way, letting that person hold me back. I was like the tortured servant, doomed to be hurt by my own unforgiveness, again and again.

Like the extreme forgiveness initially offered by the king in the parable told by Jesus – or the bank president in my version - forgiveness may not make a lot of sense to us, or to others, especially when we are looking at someone whom we feel owes us an impossible debt.

And yet this parable has another lesson for us: that our own forgiveness and our ability to forgive others are absolutely bound to one another. What is it that we pray in the Lord’s Prayer? “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” As Luther wrote: “…we ask that God would give us all things by grace, for we sin daily and indeed earn only punishment. So, on the other hand, we, too, truly want to forgive heartily and do good gladly to those who sin against us.”[2]

As we daily receive grace and forgiveness, so we are called to offer grace and forgiveness to others over and over again. I’ve often told people that I don’t think of forgiveness as a once-and-for-all-time thing. Forgiveness is a journey, sometimes made up of a thousand steps – a thousand decisions made weekly, or daily, or hourly to forgive that person who has hurt me or wronged me in some way.

Peter wants a number when he asks Jesus his question: is it seven times I should forgive, Jesus? Jesus’ answer, seventy-seven times[3], shouldn’t be taken literally and we shouldn’t create a tally sheet. Rather, that number is meant to be representative of an overall huge number of times that we are willing to forgive – or something closer to what Martin Luther King, Jr. called a “constant attitude” of forgiveness.

We are closing the sermon time today with a rite that we use almost every Sunday here at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church – the rite of Confession and Forgiveness. On Sundays that we use this rite, we stand and face the baptismal font, as a reminder of our own baptismal identity: that we are washed in these waters and marked as Christ’s own forever. But may we also remember that, in our baptisms, we are called to live as forgiven ones, and as forgiven ones, we are called to forgive.

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[1] I will note here that this parable has been wrongly used at times to justify someone staying in an abusive situation. Telling someone who is being abused to “forgive and forget” their abuse is neither helpful, nor the point of Jesus’ teaching here.

[2] Luther’s Small Catechism, explanation to the Fifth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer.

[3] OK, or seventy times seven. Not the point!