Forgiveness: how many times?

Passage for reflection: Matthew 18: 21 - 35

I wonder what you think the hardest bit of Jesus’ teaching is? What’s the thing he expects of us we find so hard to actually do? I suggest that it is to forgive those we don’t want to forgive, the people who have hurt us. We don’t want to let them off the hook. And yet, Jesus makes it clear if we are truly his people, forgiveness has to be at the heart of our lives, and we have to mean it! If you have ever visited the ruins of the old Coventry Cathedral you will have seen on the altar these words “Father forgive.” Two words which take us to the cross and the cry of Jesus Christ who showed forgiveness to those who only showed him violence. 

In the Gospel passage for this Sunday, Peter asks Jesus how many times we need to forgive someone.  And let’s face it Peter was being quite generous – we might even say irrational - with the suggestion of seven times. But Jesus says seventy times seven – other translations have it as seventy seven – either way it simply means ‘just go on forgiving’  - be open to the possibility of forgiveness even when it seems to be the least likely outcome on anyone’s agenda.  Or perhaps another way of putting it is: ‘if you are keeping count – you probably haven’t forgiven in the first place.’

I think if we are really honest we like to hold grudges, we like to remind the person who has wronged us of their guilt and we will do our best to avoid reconciliation because we can’t want to move on from the hurt we have suffered. 

Let me share three examples: 

As a child, I would easily break things by being hand fisted. I still do as a child of 53!! My mother whenever I broke the latest Christmas present would not just chastise me for what I’d just done but would regurgitate every single thing I’d broken in the past, like setting fire to a Scalextric set... don’t ask! She never forgot or forgave. 

I had two church members years ago who were close friends. But one Christmas one of them dared to put a knitted nativity set on the communion table much to the horror of the other. He told her her knitted figures were rubbish. She got really upset. It was Friday coffee morning. She went home upset, slamming a few doors on the way out. A few minutes later, her husband appeared, and punched her critic in the face! I spent ages trying to get the two friends to reconcile. They continued to sit in church each week but never spoke again because they couldn’t forgive each other because the other “started it.” They both went to their grave not having sorted a silly thing out. 

I was asked to listen to a local preacher once. His service was on forgiveness. We were jollying on fine, until he decided to list all the people he could not forgive. The Japanese and Margaret Thatcher were top of his list! 

To harbour the hurt and cling on to the pain defines us as victims and can eat away at us to the point that we are captured by it and imprisoned by its negativity.

 

So how, I wonder, do we begin to forgive?
Of course there is no easy answer.  

I think we need to remember what Jesus has done for us before we can consider reaching out to others. Remember Jesus in the pain and darkness of the cross says “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We are forgiven! Isn’t that amazing? Jesus opens his arms around us and says “no matter what you do to me, I love you anyhow. I forgive you, not just once, but for always. Go and sin no more.” 

When he was Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey said something which gets to the heart of the matter. “To have been forgiven oneself is the greatest possible impulse towards forgiving others, and the will to forgive others is the test of having effectively received God’s forgiveness.” 

It’s the point of the parable Jesus tells in Matthew 18 – we who are forgiven ought then to forgive others.  Forgiveness is essentially relational – it’s not just a private matter of ‘Me and Jesus’ religion.  It’s about the lifestyle we adopt in any community – at home, work, church and society.  Are we people whose life is diminished because we have held on too long to our resentments instead of opening the door to a different sort of future? Like rehearsing old wrongs in our lives, not moving on, and not making the first move to reconciliation. 

 

Jesus tells Peter to forgive seventy times seven. Peter badly hurts him by denying him when Jesus needs him most on the way to death. 

Jesus meets Peter on a beach after he rises. I wonder how I’d have felt if I were Peter? What would Jesus say to me? Be like my Mum, the two involved in knitted nativity gate, or the preacher unable to forgive and expecting others not to forgive too? No - he offers reconciliation. He doesn’t mention the wrong. He asks if Peter loves him. He gives him a job. A new beginning Peter doesn’t deserve. At the heart of the Gospel there is grace. 

Great God of wonders! all thy ways
Are worthy of thyself divine;
And the bright glories of thy grace
Among thine other wonders shine:

     Who is a pardoning God like thee?
     Or who has grace so rich and free?

Pardon from an offended God!
Pardon for sins of deepest dye!
Pardon bestowed through Jesus' blood!
Pardon that brings the rebel nigh!

O may this glorious, matchless love,
This God-like miracle of grace,
Teach mortal tongues, like those above,
To raise this song of lofty praise:

How do I become a seventy times seven forgiving person? 

Dr Martin Luther King whose Baptist Manse was firebombed by his opponents in the Civil Rights campaign had, on the surface, many reasons to hold a grudge yet this is what he said: 

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.  Those who are devoid of the power to forgive are devoid of the power to love.  There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.  When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”

To return to Coventry, I find the cathedral litany of reconciliation really powerful. It’s prayed to bring the hurt of the world to God and it’s a commitment  to a radical way which is the way of Christ. 

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,
Father, forgive.

The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,
Father, forgive.

The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth,
Father, forgive.

Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,
Father, forgive.

Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee,
Father, forgive.

The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children,
Father, forgive.

The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God,
Father, forgive.

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

I guess none of us would ever claim to be experts when it comes to forgiveness – yet maybe that’s no bad thing.  What’s important is to keep alive in our hearts the desire and longing to live at peace with each other and search together for what forgiveness and reconciliation actually looks and feels like in our community. It’s hard but we really need to try. Else we aren’t really Jesus’ people.