Forgiving as We Have Been Forgiven

The Rev. Joshua Rodriguez-Hobbs
Matthew 18:21-35

I remember hearing this Gospel lesson read aloud in church as a child. I was eight or so, and I had just learned multiplication. The King James Version, which is what I heard that morning, translates the number in the passage as “seven times seventy,”and I sat in the pew trying to figure out the exact number of times I had been wronged by my younger brother, so that I could subtract that number from four hundred and ninety. I was so very determined that I was not going to forgive him any more times than Jesus said I had to.

I think that’s the mindset that prompts Peter to ask Jesus this question, “How many times do I have to forgive?” I think he probably felt pretty magnanimous about offering a number as large as seven. As a child, I remember thinking to myself, four hundred and ninety is way too many times, Jesus. Matthew’s Greek is a little confusing here, but seventy-seven times or four hundred and ninety, the point is that Jesus gives Peter a number that’s too large to practically keep track of, whatever our eight-year-old selves might think. But part of me still wants to.

I’m willing to guess that’s the reality for most of us. Forgiveness is a hard, messy, and uncomfortable business, especially when we are talking about wrongs that have been done to me, or wrongs that I have done. And that’s what Jesus is talking about this morning. Peter’s question isn’t about abstract conflicts. Peter’s question begins “If another member of the church sins against me…” It comes at the end of an entire chapter in Matthew’s Gospel that is devoted to handling conflicts within the church, not outside it. This is intimate stuff, where we wrong and are wronged by people that we know, people that we hope will love us and who hope that we love them. It’s not easy. I wish it were. I’d like it to be easier, but I’m not any more comfortable with forgiveness at twenty-eight than I was at eight.

This past week, a seminary colleague who remembered that I live in Baltimore called me and asked, “Don’t you feel called to preach about Ray Rice this week?” Don’t worry; I said no. But I think this question, which was an attempt to deflect this question about forgiveness to something that is so external to our life together as a parish community, represents an attempt to make things easier. Let’s face it: it so so much easier to talk about someone else’s sin, especially someone who we don’t know, especially a celebrity. Talking about our own sins, talking about the people who we need to forgive is hard. Jesus knows that it’s hard. But he doesn’t make it easier. He doubles down with the parable he tells in answer to Peter’s question. Do you notice the shift that’s happened? Peter asks about forgiving someone else, but Jesus responds with a parable that is equally about our own need to be forgiven.

Now, it’s really easy to get caught up in the details of this parable.We’re trained to thing that kings the Jesus’ parables always represent God. Maybe that’s not a good thing this time, because this parable is about a king who’s willing to sell us into slavery to cover our debts, and who tortures us when we fall short of forgiving. We believe that God is more merciful than that. We’ve got to pay attention to how very exaggerated this parable is, though. That’s a sign that Jesus doesn’t intend us to take it literally. The first slave in the parable owes ten thousand talents. A talent was equal to about fifteen years’ wages for an ordinary worker in those days. So this slave owes the equivalent of one hundred and fifty thousand years’ worth of income. No one ever owes that much money. Like forgiving seventy seven or seventy times seven times, this is supposed to be an absurdly large sum. But this slave, who has been forgiven, doesn’t extend that forgiveness. He immediately goes out and finds someone who owes him some money, an amount that was equal to about one hundred days’ worth of work. It’s not insignificant, but it’s nothing like the debt that he just got out of paying. And you’d think that this slave would show mercy, having been showed mercy. But he doesn’t. He wants revenge. And it’s his downfall. And he receives the exact same punishment he subjected his fellow slave to, but our first slave can never repay his debt, so he’ll never finished being punished. And Jesus tells us that God will do the same thing to us if we don’t forgive others.

That’s harsh. That’s not what I want to hear. I wonder though, since we’re not supposed to take this very hyperbolic parable literally, if this punishment that we’re promised doesn’t occur here and now. When you are really caught up in keeping track of wrongs done, in how many times you need to forgive someone, you get miserable quickly. All the more so if you just flat out refuse to forgive. It takes a lot of energy to carry a grudge, especially against someone close to you. There’s release in forgiving, just like there’s release in being forgiven. St. Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Colossians: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.”

Close your eyes, and take few moments to ask yourself: “Who do I need to forgive? What grudge am I carrying?" Remember, you have been forgiven much. Extend that forgiveness to that person in your life this week. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. Amen.