August 12, 2007 

Rev. Dr. Jon Smoot

 Why is it so hard to forgive? The scriptures, and other ancient wisdom, tell us that forgiveness is one of the most powerful tools in our moral and emotional tool-box for effective and joyful living – so I ask again, why is it so hard to forgive? Our world is ripping itself apart with the inability to forgive ancient or fresh wrongs, real or imagined, and so goes the endless cycle of bloodshed and blood-feud and innocent lives caught up in others’ bitterness and destructiveness. Who will forgive – and so destroy the ring of violence gripping our world? Where are the moral leaders?

Every day we are presented with sometimes trivial and sometimes heart-wrenching events in which we need to forgive others or be forgiven. How can I forgive my best friend for gossiping about me in the school lunchroom? How can I forgive my business partner who double-crossed me? How can I forgive my addicted spouse or child or partner who keeps breaking my heart? How can I forgive the parent who made such a mess of my early life, and is now dead and beyond my reach? How can I forgive the terrorists of 9/11, as the 6th anniversary looms? Ami even supposed to? Then there’s the diffuse rage we feel toward our elected leaders who have betrayed us and destroyed our trust – on too many fronts to count. Who and what am I supposed to forgive – and what am I supposed to let smolder as a fire in my belly, for a constructive and healing use of my rage? What place does forgiveness have in a town like ours that rewards clever deceit and has a long and unrelenting memory for public failure or mistakes? And is it possible to forgive too soon? You bet. Should we forgive and “forget” recurrent abuse of any kind? Absolutely not. No wonder forgiveness seems beyond us, with each application, new questions.

 

Now, we all know that we’re supposed to forgive – and that’s fine in theory. But what if we can’t or won’t? Now along comes this story from Matthew – what are to make of this? Is Jesus adding insult to injury? If I don’t or can’t forgive someone from my heart, God will not forgive me and punish me? Oh, that’s just great…

Let’s look more closely at this story, for the good news – for the gospel is always good news.

 

First off, biblical commentators remark that we need to recognize that this parable is not a “go and do likewise” parable, like the Good Samaritan story. This is more of an allegory, which means that not all of the details about the king’s behavior in the story are to be taken as statements about the nature of God – especially the torture part!!  Jesus is addressing a very human need and a very human problem in response to Peter’s question about how many times we are to forgive. Jesus is telling Peter and us that to ask how many times we are to forgive is to ask the wrong question. To forgive is not a matter of math – there is no quantity to forgiveness. Even to “count” how many times we forgive someone means that we don’t yet get it – that we have not truly forgiven them for the wrong they’ve done us. Chances are we’re just claiming a false higher moral ground, biding our time to slam them later.     

 

The unforgiving servant in the story is, in fact, a highly placed, but subordinate official to an Oriental Sultan or Potentate, and this man is responsible for managing the tax revenues of several territories. He has embezzled what amounts to a day’s wages for 100,000,000 laborers – an absolutely unthinkable sum of money. His situation is beyond hopeless – facing lifelong imprisonment for himself and his family. In desperation, and maybe not firing on all cylinders, he offers to pay back what he obviously cannot. He falls on his face and begs for mercy. Fat chance of that.

 

But surprise, surprise. The king changes his mind, releases the man from his just sentence, and cancels the debt – an outrageously generous act. Now just look at what this governmental official doesn’t do. He doesn’t shout, “Yippee!” and go home and dance with his wife and children like Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a wonderful life.” There’s no gratitude in his twisted little heart. What does he do? On his way out from the king’s presence, he runs across a man who owes 100 days’ wages, grabs him by the throat and shakes him like a rat with a terrier, ignoring the man’s cries for mercy and promises to pay back what is an eminently repayable amount of money. He tosses the man in debtor’s prison. Of course, this gets back to the king, who, in righteous and understandable fury reverses his clemency, and throws the ungrateful wretch into prison and turns him over to the torturers.

 

Moral of the story? God can’t and won’t forgive if you don’t forgive others? No. The primary focus is on the outrageous and illogical mercy of the king, and only secondarily, on our need to fervently pray for the strength and courage to resist the temptation of getting even with those who have hurt us. We are to implore God for the grace to reflect on the magisterial and unimaginable generosity of our God, and replicate it in our lives. (Nice idea – but how do we do it??)

 

Forgiveness, as demonstrated in the gospel, goes like this: Real forgiveness from the heart means that we have two tough choices to make toward the offender: (1) to forgive is to make a conscious choice to release the person who wounded us from the sentence of our judgment, however justified that judgment may be. We leave behind our resentment and desire for retribution – in this way, we can forgive and forget – not that the wound itself is ever forgotten, but that the wound’s power to hold us trapped in continual replay of the painful event is broken.

 

(2) Secondly, without excusing or softening the seriousness of their offense against us, forgiveness involves excusing persons from the punitive consequences they deserve to suffer for their behavior. The behavior remained condemned, but the offender is released from our desire to see the consequences of their harmful behavior land on them like a ton of bricks. Whoa – how on earth are we supposed to pull that off?

 

Henri Nouwen, in an article on forgiveness points the way forward. He writes: “…other people are just like me. We are all very limited and can love only in a conditional way. The great tragedy of human love is that it always wounds. Human love is imperfect, always tainted by needs and unfulfilled desires; forgiveness is made possible by the knowledge that human beings cannot offer us what only God can give…unconditional love…and forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly.”

 

We love poorly. Only God loves completely and perfectly. The heart this is open to God’s kind of loving is a heart that knows expansiveness and release, and knows how to be expansive and releasing to others. You stop keeping score – because you no longer need to. You know that sin happens – in you, and in others. “Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly.” When someone hurts you – before you go to the place of payback – first recognize the fact head on that you have wounded others. But humbled and instructed by it, and see what begins to be released in your own soul. 

 

God has not dealt with us as we deserved – so why should we play judge, jury and executioner for others? Only God has the wisdom and the resources to know what consequences are needed in any person’s life to heal and restore human sanity and wholeness. The church is the place where we learn the disciplines of companionship with God and with one another. So the church must be the place where we learn to practice forgiveness – where we learn to prepare ourselves, and others prepare themselves, to be mended where there was a break.

 

Elder Bonnie Holcomb, in her 2006 Lenten brochure submission passed along a beautiful insight about forgiveness that her father provided her. Her father was a Christian Church-Disciples of Christ pastor for over five decades. Before that, he was a welder of battleships in Oregon, during WWII. Bonnie writes: “The expertise required to pass the welder’s exam included a fine ability to judge the readiness of the two surfaces to be joined.   When he and I conversed recently about the subject of forgiveness, he recalled his year as a welder to make a very important point on the topic. Reflecting on the two parts of the break in interpersonal relationships, he remarked that only when there is a readiness to give and to receive the grace that lies at the heart of forgiveness can a true healing take place. It is grace that defines forgiveness and grace that heals the brokenness that required forgiveness in the first place. 

 

This is when my father referred to his experience as a welder. “A weld will only last if both broken ends are prepared and ready for the bead to bring them together. When that happens, the welded point is stronger than any other spot on the rod. Even if the rod eventually breaks, it will not be at the point where a good weld occurred. The same is true of forgiveness, which is our gift from God. We have to prepare ourselves properly to receive the grace and let the work of grace be done through us, both as forgiven and as forgiver.”

 

Forgiveness is all about grace - the readiness to give and receive grace – the grace that we have tasted through God’s first reaching out to us over the brokenness that we inflicted on God. If you have tasted this grace, then you are ready to go out and act like it. We, the followers of Jesus, are a living experiment whereby the world can see what sort of people God is capable of producing, and reproducing – through grace, and grace alone.