Forgiving Perfectly

Gospel Reflection Matthew 18:21-35

One of the worst and sometimes best parts of scripture is that you can proof text anything. In other words, you can prove whatever you want via scripture, just by using one out of context verse! This week has so many possibilities! 

Let me offer you an example. 

“Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds!” 

Ok you godly people of Jenison and of Grand Rapids. You who judged for years about Sunday lawn mowing, eat your shorts! I’m fully convinced in my own mind that Sundays are the day for lawn mowing, therefore I must be right. 

Or one other fun example. 

I knew there was something wrong with vegans and their vegetable eating compadres!! Y’all were weak!! See! It’s right here! Where’s the beef? We should all be eating more of it. The Bible tells me so. 

Both of these interpretations masterfully miss the most important part, the essence of the text. 

The bigger point, the most important point, is found in that last line of our text Romans.  We will all stand before that great judgment seat of God, alone. Maybe instead of pouring our energy into “despising” our brother or sister, we might spend that loving, and living into God. 

I say this because even as scripture has its themes — take care of the poor, the immigrant, those on the liminal boundaries, love your neighbor, love God, those are very clear — some of our other scriptures can be opaque at first. 

This gospel, for example. The obvious read is as follows. “WE MUST FORGIVE because God has forgiven us so much more,” but isn’t there more to this than meets the eye?

But do you have questions like I do? There are not a few that rise up an demand answers. Here are three of them. 

• Ten thousand talents is worth the equivalent of 60 billion days of labor. Why would a king loan his slave so much money? Of course, he was never going to get all of that back! 

• What about abusive relationships? How do we forgive that? Does this text demand we go back to those who have abused us? 

• What if we can’t forgive right away? Will I then be handed over to torture until we’re able to? This just sounds like the old way, when debtors would be handed over to prison, where they had to stay until they paid their debt, which became even more impossible as they were in prison and so couldn’t work. It seems unfair. 

Before we move on, a reminder to those of us who willingly take on other people’s guilt, who know that guilty feeling more intimately than forgiveness. Justice exists, right along with mercy. Pope John Paul II survived an assassination attempt. He visited his assailant in prison months later, forgiving him. Yet his assailant remained behind bars. If you are being hurt or abused, this is not for you to take on. Get a therapist who can help you work through the deep wrongs of your life.

But let me cut a different arc. We know this Gospel passage puts the question of how we forgive on the line. It’s the thing, the only thing here. And as per usual, I’m feeling like Jacob the patriarch, the one who wrestled with God and lived as I wrestle with this text. Jacob was the deceiver, the cheater, the mama’s boy who was God’s favorite, the one who walked with a limp the rest of the days of his life. He was the one who selfishly played favorites, so much so that his favorite son Joseph (or maybe it was Benjamin his brother, the 2nd child of Rachel, his favorite wife), paid the long term price. 

And gosh, am I ever glad for this story! The first forgiveness story sometimes makes me want to retch, in a 80’s Valley Girl kind of way. It’s so perfect. So clean. You can look it up when you go home. “You meant this for ill” — this being throwing him in the pit, covering his coat with blood, the one that his dad Jacob gave him, that marked him as the favorite, and then selling him into slavery, and as they say, Joseph’s journey was no easy path. By the time we find him today, things have gotten better, but it took time. A long time of suffering, horror, unfair allegations, incarceration, and then his meteoric rise because of dream interpretations. This got him out of prison and into the position of power in the Egyptian government that he now possesses.  

Joseph forgives. And I’m not trying to be cheeky, but if Joseph can forgive all of that, we all can. 

Now change does not happen in a moment, nor does forgiveness. Even those conversion moments that change everything don’t happen in a minute. Maybe the desire to make the change, the hope to make the change might happen in a minute, but moving towards the change itself? That takes a lifetime. 

Like forgiving. Like learning how to be deeply kind. Like learning to lose and to leave behind those things that should be left behind. Like making new habits that are better for you and your family. Like dismantling generational trauma. 

Because even though this gospel sounds so harsh to my ears, maybe to yours too, there’s more here than meets the eye, things that the folks hearing this story would have heard. It opens up, with the spotlight on Peter. Do I have to forgive again and again for the same offense? Only seven times, right Jesus? 

Great question Peter! I’m going to tell you that you have to forgive perfectly — seven times is Bible shorthand for “perfection” and the guilt does not fall down to the next one born, to our children — seventy seven is the number, at least according to Matthew, the number of patriarchs from Adam all the way to Jesus. And I know you remember in the LP — forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, or as the modern version says, forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Our Presby siblings say “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” 

Oooofffff. 

Jesus is making the claim, that forgiving does something to us. It makes us whole. Full stop. Forgiving others. Healing our generational trauma. Making new habits. Leaving behind the burdens that assail us. Forgiving ourselves. 

Because isn’t this the very beginning? Remembering to throw ourselves onto God’s mercy, the one who will not always accuse us, the one who does not reward us according to what we do, the one who forgives all our sins and infirmities. Because knowing that God forgives us even for those niggly things that we might not consider sins anymore, but those things that hold us back, God forgives, and it's an easy burden to forgive, just like that king in our parable. The king could forgive much because he had much. That money didn’t matter to him; he already had more than he needed. 

Here it is. God does this forgiving thing and this healing thing so much better than us. God shows us how to do it, how to let it go, how to turn it lose, how to be whole, how to increase our muscles of forgiveness, so that before you know it, you’re not just forgiving your neighbor who neither shovels their snowy sidewalk nor recycles, you’re forgiving that one who really wished you harm back in the day and on whose head you’ve wished the retribution of God more than once. And suddenly, you don’t feel that anymore. 

That’s why forgiving is a miracle, a gift that God gives God’s people. I don’t know about you, but I need the grace of God in my life, on my head, in my heart, to forgive. I need help losing. I need help laying down my own debts and dismantling our generational trauma. I need help both forgiving and being forgiven. But it’s not just me. It’s our world, burdened with debt, with sin, with injustice, with unfairness, with harsh words and ideas. This is not the way it’s supposed to be. There is another way.  

May God make it so and may our hands and feet pave the way.