Forgiveness

Matthew 18:21-35

Every single one of us on this planet has been forgiven. By God yes, but if I have learned anything about parenting--all of us have been forgiven. Repeatedly. My wife and I have lost count of how many times Zoë has turned over our cat's water bowl in her strange fascination with his water and food bowl. So we forgive our daughter at least once a day if not more.

We need forgiveness to survive. And as Christians we cannot ever be impossible to forgive, nor are we permitted to refrain from forgiving anyone who seeks forgiveness. That is the covenant God seals with us in our Baptism--the covenant forged by the suffering at human hands of Jesus Christ on the cross.

So let's talk a little bit about forgiveness, because this can sometimes be misconstrued in ways that lead to violence and abuse. Jesus tells his disciples after being asked how many times they need to forgive someone who has wronged them to not only forgive "seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times!" Jesus is saying to forgive always.

But what does that mean when the person who has wronged you is actually unsafe to be around? As I have said before, we cannot look at Jesus' words here as a commandment to allow yourself to be repeatedly aggrieved and abused by someone. There is a mistaken conventional wisdom that scripture teaches us to "forgive AND forget." But "forgive and forget" is nowhere to be found in scripture. Forgiveness does not require forgetting--especially when remembering a wrong is crucial to prevent it from happening again.

Forgiveness is the act of letting go, and, yes, it can include reconciliation. But as the parable of the "Unforgiving Servant" in Matthew demonstrates, being forgiven does not necessarily lead one to not recommit harm, either. A servant goes before a "Lord" and is asked to pay his debts, an astonishingly absurd amount equal to thousands of years of wages. When the servant begs for mercy the Lord has pity on him and forgives the debt.

The servant, overjoyed, goes on to live his life and comes across someone who owes him about about 300 days worth of wages. This servant grabs him by the neck and throws him against the wall demanding payment of the debt. Others who witnessed it, concerned, tell the Lord and the Lord summons the servant again and reestablishes the debt, and tortures the servant.

Jesus ends this parable with a warning: "So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” Taking this at face value and not thinking deeply about it makes this a very terrifying scripture: if you do not forgive everyone God will torture you. Yikes.

There is more to this than what is on the surface. This story in scripture invites us to think deeply about what forgiveness is, and not simply shrug and say "forgive and forget." Forgiveness is not just debt cancellation. And in some ways, forgiveness has very little if anything to do with the person who hurt or betrayed us. We should have pity on the servant who never fully received the joy and understanding of the forgiveness he received—because if he had, then he would have been able to extend that same forgiveness to the one who owed him far less an amount than he owed the Lord in Jesus’ parable.

Forgiveness starts and ends with us. When we forgive from the heart, we cast off the need for vengeance. We release ourself from the burden that unresolved anger and rage can bear upon us. We don't need someone to apologize to us for us to forgive them. When an apology comes, that certainly opens the door to reconciliation. And forgiveness is vital for reconciliation. But before any of that, forgiveness begins and ends with us.

The reason we must forgive every time is because when we don't forgive, we stop ourselves from loving. And the more that we do that, the sicker we become with sin. When we refuse to forgive, we end up being stuck playing tapes in our head over and over of being wrong. And the torture is being a spectator to the wound we refuse to allow to heal.

Forgiveness is vital for our own healing whether or not it leads to reconciliation. Perhaps the torture Jesus was referring to that his Almighty Father would inflict on any who did not forgive their brother or sister from their heart (Matthew 18:35) is simply the torture we cling to when we find ourselves unable to let go of our need for vengeance and our hurts from being harmed.