How Do We Forgive?

By the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Matthew 18:21-35

An audio version of this sermon is available here.

In our Gospel reading today, Peter asks Jesus how often he ought to forgive someone who wrongs him. How much forgiveness is enough? How big should our Christian forgiveness be?

It is a question that is especially poignant for us today, on Sunday September Eleventh, 9/11, the tenth anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks our country has ever known. On this day we look back on the shock, the horror, the anger, the grief we experienced ten years ago, when airplanes were used as bombs, and centers of finance and defense came under attack, and thousands of people were murdered in an act of undeclared, indiscriminate, and immoral war. On this day we reflect on everything that has happened in the ten years since those attacks: war on terror, homeland security, coalitions of the willing, attempts at saber-rattling and attempts at peacemaking, culture wars, atheist denunciations of all religion as inherently violent — a world perhaps more fragile, more fearful, more vulnerable than it’s ever been before. And on this day we ask about the role of forgiveness in all of this: How can we forgive those who did this? Should we forgive those who did this? Is forgiveness even the proper category to invoke when we’re talking about things like terrorism and security and international policy and people who have no apparent interest in living and letting live with us? On this day of all days, we hear Peter ask Jesus “How much forgiveness is enough?”, and the question goes right through our hearts.

And as we struggle with that question, and with Jesus’ answer to it, it is important that we keep in mind just what Jesus means by “forgiveness.” In Jesus’ teaching, forgiveness is something more than just saying “It’s okay” or “No harm done” when someone hurts you; that’s not forgiving, that’s just papering over the hurt, that’s just pretending things are alright without making them alright. In Jesus’ teaching, forgiveness is something more than waiting to see if the other person is willing to make up to you before you’ll be willing to make up with them; that’s not forgiving, that’s emotional hostage-taking. In Jesus’ teaching, forgiveness is nothing less than making a new beginning, so that right relationships of mutual well-being can flourish.

That’s what’s happening in the parable Jesus tells in answer to Peter’s question. There was a king, Jesus says, who had a slave, probably a high official in the king’s court, who had mismanaged the king’s accounts badly, very badly, to the point of losing ten thousand talents, which in Jesus’ time would be an unimaginable, astronomical amount of money. The debt threatens to destroy their relationship — literally, the king is planning to sell the slave, and his wife, and his children, and his possessions — and that will remove him from the royal court, that will end his relationships in the palace household, that will take away the only livelihood he’s ever known. Breaking relationship with the king means pretty much losing everything. So the slave pleads, and, even though they both know it’s impossible, the slave promises the king that over time he will pay back everything he owes. But the king has a better idea: he cancels the debt; he clears the books; he transfers money out of his own treasury to make up for what has been lost by the slave’s mismanagement. In this parable the king acts in an extraordinary way to create a new beginning, to remove and clear away all the mistakes and the errors and the ill-will from the past, and to create anew the conditions required to build up a right relationship of mutual well-being between them. As Jesus teaches it, that is the real meaning of forgiveness.

And new beginnings for right relationship is also supposed to be the meaning of being forgiven. When the forgiven slave goes out and meets a fellow slave who owes him a hundred denarii (chicken feed compared to the slave’s own former debt) he goes ballistic: he grabs him by the throat and demands payment and throws him in prison. What he should have done, Jesus makes clear by implication, is to share his new beginning with his fellow slave, to cancel the debt and clear away the old ill-will, to create anew the conditions for right relationship between them. He should have acted from his own new beginning to create new mutual well-being for them both. The fact that he did not do this shows that he has not really understood what the king has done for him, he has not really accepted his own forgiveness, he has not really taken on the work of living into his new beginning. The king ends up reinstating the debt and demanding it be paid, because the slave never really let go of it in the first place. Forgiving and being forgiven both depend on making a new beginning.

And perhaps that’s the important part for us to hear on the anniversary of 9/11. How can we forgive? What does forgiveness even mean in the aftermath of terrorist attack? It means working to make a new beginning. It means not getting stuck in the loss and the anger and the ill-will of the past, -- not ignoring them, but not getting stuck in them -- but clearing the way so we can move forward. It means reaching into our own resources, our own courage and goodwill and creativity, to begin again where things have been taken from us, to start anew where there has been loss. In means working seriously, and intentionally, and prudently, and generously, to create the conditions required for right relationships of mutual well-being wherever we can reach: in our homes, in our communities, in our nation, in our world; in our finances, in our policies, in our military actions, in our environment; with our allies, with our enemies, with those who are strangers to us, with those who believe differently from us, with those who wish us well, and with those who wish us harm. It means refusing to be terrorized, refusing to give in to fear, no matter what happens, because we know that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, and perfect love casts out all fear. For us, on this tenth anniversary of 9/11, forgiveness means committing ourselves anew to God’s work of making new beginnings in our world.

Peter asked Jesus how much forgiveness is enough; and Jesus answered that forgiveness is not a question of enough, forgiveness is not measured by amounts, forgiveness is opening ourselves to be channels of the creatively transforming grace of God. Let it be our prayer today that we may be channels for God’s creative transformation on this anniversary and always.

Amen.