Forgiveness Doesn’t Count
Matthew 18:21-34[1]
We have a saying about forgiveness. Or, at least, we used
to: “Forgive and forget.” The idea is that when you forgive someone, you wipe
the slate clean and forget that they ever wronged you in the first place. I
think there’s a reason why that “used” to be a saying for us. If we’re honest
about it, we have to admit that there are some things we really can never
forget. Last week I told you the story about the decades-long process by which
I forgave my father. And while I certainly don’t dwell on the things he did to
me, I can never forget them. I just can’t. It’s what happens to us when we
experience trauma, especially at a young age.
These days it seems that our attitude is more one of
“Forgive, but never forget.” It’s okay to forgive someone when they harm you.
But in this day when taking care of ourselves takes priority over everything
else, we tell ourselves that it’s best never to forget what others have done to
harm us. There is some wisdom in that. If someone is still harming you, you
need to remember that they aren’t safe, even if you’ve forgiven them for what
they’ve done. But I’m afraid “Forgive, but never forget” too easily turns into keeping
track of what others have done to us. Holding a grudge and harboring bitterness
basically amounts to counting up the wrongs that have been done to us.
Our Gospel lesson for this week talks about forgiveness
that doesn’t count up the wrongs done to us. You may recall that our lesson for
last week was about how forgiveness calls us to take the first step in making
things right when our relationships are broken. This week our lesson begins
with a question from Peter: “Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me,
how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times?” (Mt 18:21, GNT).
I like the way the Good News Translation puts it here: “how many times do
I have to forgive?” Peter assumed there was a limit to how many times a person could
reasonably be expected to forgive. And in Peter’s mind, forgiving someone “as
many as” seven times would have been considered generous. The implication is that
no one should “have” to forgive someone more than seven times.
But Jesus answered Peter in a way that pushed him way
beyond what he thought was “reasonable” or even “generous.” Jesus said, “No,
not seven times, … but seventy times seven” (Mt 18:22, GNT). I think
it’s safe to say that Peter and the others were shocked. This went beyond
anything they could imagine. The idea is that forgiveness doesn’t count. When
we really forgive others, we don’t “keep score” of what they’ve done against
us. As St. Paul said, when we love someone, we “keep no record of wrongs”
they’ve done to us (1 Cor. 13:5, NIV). And since Jesus commands us to
love others, it sounds to me like he calls us all to “keep no record of wrongs”.
We can’t truly “love” our neighbors unless we also forgive them.
To help us understand what it looks like to forgive without
counting, Jesus tells a parable. Because of the way Matthew arranges his
Gospel, it’s easy for us to think that Jesus meant this parable to be about
God. But it’s not. It’s a story about a cruel and heartless tyrant, one who
wouldn’t hesitate to sell someone into slavery or even resort to torture. It’s
a story the people would have been all too familiar with, since they had been
ruled by cruel and heartless tyrants for centuries. Kings in those days were by
definition tyrants. Their word constituted the law of the land, so whatever
they wanted defined right and wrong. The people of Jesus’ day had lots of
experience with that.
This tyrant decided to settle accounts with those who owed
him money. That would also have been a familiar scene. When we’re told that one
of his debtors owed him 10,000 talents, we may not realize we’re talking about a
fortune beyond imagining. These days it would have to be measured in billions
of dollars. The shocking part of this story is that when called to account, the
debtor asked the tyrant king for more time. It must have been a painful scene
to watch. There was no way he could have ever repaid such a huge debt. His life
and the lives of his family were hanging in the balance. The real shock came
when this cruel and heartless tyrant “felt sorry” for the man. He went beyond
giving him more time to pay; he forgave the entire debt! That kind of thing
would have been unheard of. No one would have expected this tyrant king to show
such generous mercy.
That part of the story is all preparation. The real story
is about this man who owed a fortune beyond imagining, and who begged for more
time to pay but instead walked away a free man. It would stand to reason that
anyone who was handed such a generous gift would walk away a changed man. But
as we see, the story goes on to tell us that the first thing he did was go find
someone who owed him money and try to force him to pay! What kind of person
would do that? Didn’t he learn anything from the mercy that had been shown to
him?
It was outrageous. And it outraged not only his peers, but
when they reported it to the king, it outraged him as well. It outraged him
enough to call the man back in, revoke his earlier mercy, and consign him to
punishment and torture until that whole unimaginable fortune he owed was repaid,
in all likelihood, for the rest of his life. That’s why we know this isn’t a
story about God, but about a cruel and heartless tyrant. God’s mercy never
fails, he never revokes his forgiveness. The point of the story is that even a
cruel and heartless tyrant knows that it’s only reasonable for those who
benefit from mercy to pay it forward to others. As the tyrant king said, “You
should have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you” (Mt
18:33).
This story reinforces Jesus’ shocking demand that we
forgive one another “seventy times seven” times. That’s the kind of mercy God
has shown us. As the Psalmist said in our reading today, “He has taken our sins
away from us as far as the east is from west” (Ps 103:12, NCV). The
prophet Isaiah declares in the name of the LORD that God doesn’t even remember
our sins any longer (Isa 43:25)! That’s who God is: merciful and generous
beyond our ability to imagine. And because God forgives us without counting,
Jesus teaches us to forgive each other in the same way. We who have received
the gift of God’s incredibly generous mercy are called to forgive each other
without counting.
If you’re thinking that’s impossible, I’m sure you’re not
alone. In fact, from the time Jesus spoke these powerful words the Church has
struggled with them. It doesn’t seem practical: won’t unlimited forgiveness
encourage people to go right on doing whatever they please? But Jesus isn’t
looking at things from a human point of view. He’s talking about the way things
are meant to be from God’s point of view. Forgiveness received is to be shared freely
as forgiveness given to others. And those of us who know God’s incredibly
generous mercy in the complete and irrevocable forgiveness he has given us are
to forgive each other in the same generous way. We’re to forgive without counting.
[1] ©
2023 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 9/17/2023 for Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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