Pentecost 15 A: Forgiveness & Possibility
Dear Partner in Preaching,
I have come to love this passage. The operative words, however, are “have come,” because I didn’t always. And I the reasons I didn’t always love this passage, but now do, are intimately tied together.
My difficulty with the passage has quite simply been that forgiveness can be so exceptionally difficult, and never more so than when it commanded. I don’t mean the occasional moment of warm-hearted forgiveness, overlooking someone’s minor slight when you feel magnanimous; nor do I mean the spontaneous forgiveness you feel when someone is genuinely contrite over some accidental – and again preferably minor – fault. What I mean are those things that are really hurtful; those times when the person seems disinclined to take responsibility, let along apologize; those episodes that continue to wound each time you remember them; those words or deeds that have marked you deeply and painfully and feel like they’ll never go away. Those are things that are so incredibly hard to forgive.
Which is exactly what makes this passage so painfully difficult. Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive someone, and then offers to do so seven times, an answer that both more than satisfies the law and feels to most of us rather generous. And Jesus then comes back with – and here it varies by translation – seventy-seven, seven times seven, seventy times seven. Quite frankly, I think it hardly matters how you translate it because, no matter how you slice it, it’s a heck of a lot of times to forgive the same person for sinning against you.
And then Jesus tells a parable about forgiveness that, well, only intensifies his response to Peter. The parable turns on the contrast between just how much one person is forgiven and how little that same person is asked to – and refuses to – forgive, and this time the translation – from ancient currency to modern – matters in order to draw out Jesus’ point. So it’s probably a good idea to let your folks know that a talent was about 130 lbs. of silver and would take a laborer about fifteen years to earn. Which means that the servant owed the king about 150,000 years of labor! In other words, he would never, ever be able to pay this debt back. A denarius, by comparison, was worth about a day’s wage, which meant that the second servant owed the first about a hundred days of labor – no small debt. But still…and everyone who hears this parable gets it…how could he possibly not overlook that (relatively) minor debt when he had just been forgiven an impossibly huge one? The parable closes ominously, as the unforgiving servant is handed over for punishment until he pays and Jesus warns that we, too, must forgive others or face the consequences.
All of this contributes to why I have consistently found this parable so hard. Why then, suddenly, do I find myself strangely attracted to this parable?
I’m not totally sure, but I think that amid my despair at every being able to forgive the way the king in the parable forgives, it occurred to me that I don’t have to. That’s not really what Jesus is asking. I’m don’t have to identify with the king in this story, I can identify with the servant with the massive debt who has just been forgiven so, so much. Which means that my first job isn’t to assume or insist that I must forgive incalculable debts, but simply to bask in the unbelievable forgiveness, acceptance, and grace that I have experienced and try, as much as I can, to live out of that. The failure of the first servant isn’t simply that he won’t forgive his comrade, but that he has just experienced an utterly unexpected, completely beyond-his-wildest-dreams, life-changing moment of grace and seems absolutely untouched by it. And for this reason, he lives devoid of any sense of gratitude. His whole life changed…and he didn’t even notice.
As we approach the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, it occurs to me that Luther’s great insight was simply realizing that righteousness was not God’s expectation but instead God’s gift. It wasn’t his responsibility to be “right with God,” but God’s responsibility to put him right. And once he realized that some of God’s favorite things to do are to forgive those who seem unforgivable, love those who feel unlovable, and make right those things that seem so persistently in the wrong, Luther was not only freed from his fear of punishment, but also freed to love and forgive and care for those around him. So also, I think, with forgiveness – when we realize that forgiveness is not primarily God’s expectation but rather God’s gift, we sink into that mercy and grace and find ourselves more able to turn in mercy and grace toward others.
Some days this insight alone is enough to redeem this parable for me. But, truthfully, on others it’s not, as I still wonder if there isn’t some hidden obligation to forgive or even to accept God’s forgiveness sufficiently. In those moments, I return to the act of the king and simply marvel that such forgiveness is even possible. Even when such forgiveness doesn’t seem possible for me – because, yes, forgiveness can still be hard – then I am still comforted by the fact that it’s possible for God. Let me say that again: Forgiveness is a possibility. Whether I realize it or not, my struggle to forgive, my inability to live in grace, is not the only possibility and, further, my inability does not have the last word. Which creates a new possibility. Indeed, forgiveness – whether God’s or ours – interrupts the relentless cause-and-effect (and eventually eye-for-an-eye) rhythm of the world. To put it most succinctly: the very possibility of forgiveness – again, whether God’s or ours – in turn creates sheer possibility: things do not always have to be the way they are. And I find that not only comforting, but uplifting and empowering.
So perhaps the task this week, Dear Partner, is simply to announce the king’s forgiveness, the unbelievable, nearly inconceivable, amazing and unpredictable and possibility-creating forgiveness of God which each of us has been granted…and then simply see where the chips fall. Can we talk about how forgiveness frees us, even heals us? Sure. Can we invite others both to recognize where they’ve been forgiven and consider where they might forgive others? Possibly. But maybe before and beyond and after any of that, we just keep coming back to the incredible and oh-so-easy to overlook fact of God’s sheer forgiveness and the possibilities that forgiveness creates. And perhaps simply by focusing on and announcing that, all the other things we hope for will come to life in joyful response.
Blessings on your preaching, Dear Partner. In a world that seems to have a very hard time forgiving and is in desperate need for a word of grace and possibility, your sermon will be like water on parched ground. Thank you. Even more, thank God for you.
Yours in Christ,
David
Thank you for this commentary; I was struggling with this text…again. Your take on it is real; a gift instead of an impossible necessity.
It seems that forgiveness is a paradox in which we find ourselves. We acknowledge that we are forgiven, but then find it difficult to forgive others. I often wonder what folks in the pews are thinking when I announce God’s forgiveness, and if they really believe it. But the paradox is this–forgiveness is at once the most gracious gift we offer and the most selfish thing we do. We forgive because the relationship is more important than ego. We forgive because we simply cannot continue to live a life informed by hurt feelings and broken trust. And, yes, we forgive because we lay the foundation for how and when we ourselves are forgiven. Forgiveness also lays the new foundation for the relationship that emerges from the seeds it plants. Forgiveness is difficult, because we are not God (hence, those pesky writings about judging others) yet we carry the gift of God’s image. A most ingenious paradox. Cue Gilbert & Sullivan for the offertory.
I am in a text study group in the rural area where I serve with a priest and a UCC pastor. I have never had the opportunity to talk about what happens in the confessional from a priest’s perspective and I asked him about penance – how does it work that he offers a word of forgiveness, but yet still gives some form of penance after that word of forgiveness has been given. Chicken and egg, no? But he told me that he sees penance as an ongoing conversation with the word of forgiveness (that would be my words for what he said) – when he gives a penance, let’s say for talking back to your mother, the penance would be something like, “Now go and think about how much your mother loves you and what she does for you.” The penance is a means of further reflection both on the sin and a deeper ongoing understanding of the forgiveness received. It seems to go along with your sense of embracing the “possibility” of forgiveness. It’s hard for us to fully take it in, what we’ve been given and how to live in it.
My other thought about this is that I’ve seen very little discussion about how foolish the king was to trust the servant so much that he loaned him that much money to begin with! I mean, really! Didn’t the king know from the get-go that he would never see the loan repaid? Doesn’t God know that we will never be able to repay all the many benefits we have received? And, yet, God continues to give, knowing that disappointment is coming, when we fail to appreciate all that we’ve been given let alone all we’ve been forgiven.
Very insightful–thank you for taking this to a deeper level for me.
David, I just have to say I still struggle. Vs. 33-35 make me think that we have oversold grace. I can’t ignore that the master takes back the forgiveness and holds the servant back up to impossible task because the servant refused to forgive, or as you put it, “he didn’t even notice.” Just as the Lord’s prayer ends with a call to forgiveness, it strikes me that we must forgive or else the grace we claim isn’t truly working.
Perhaps that is because a unforgiving heart calls into question the reception of forgiveness in the first place. I too struggle with the idea that God would rescind forgiveness already given at times…because it seems like God is talking out of both sides of his mouth…and we certainly cannot assert that we “earn” our forgiveness through forgiving. These seem much more to me, even parabolically, as “proof in the pudding” concepts. The forgiven heart forgives. its not a statement of Law but a fact of the regenerative heart.
I am seriously questioning whether this parable was really about forgiveness or if this is just how Matthew weaved the story together. Why? Precisely because of the king’s response at the end which proved he really did NOT forgive the servant. Forgiveness is not revocable – it is either forgiveness or it is not. I suggest this parable is really about having humility when you have received mercy. Debt forgiveness is merely the means by which mercy was shown (but there are many ways to show mercy besides forgiving debts).
It seems to me that the parable and Jesus’ words to Peter are only tangentially related. His command to forgive without scorekeeping (seventy times seven) follows Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians that love keeps no record of wrongs. However, this demand, as you state, is a difficult one. It is especially difficult in cases of systematic abuse, sexual assault or rape. Demanding victims forgive their abusers borders on spiritual abuse.
I plan to separate the parable from the teaching on forgiveness and address the three phases of forgiveness: forgive, reconcile, restore. Encouraging abuse victims to forgive so that their abusers don’t live “rent free” in their heads doesn’t require them to reconcile with them or restore them to their prior station. It is also important for victims to hear that their abusers have NO right to demand forgiveness – it is a gift and will come when it is time for it to come. The mercy forgiveness brings is often to the one doing the forgiving rather than the one who caused the offense.
I think we discover we have forgiven someone when we forget what happened.
My husband was publicly dumped on by a woman in his congregation in a meeting. In the course of her speech, she made the comment that she was interested to see she was the only one “with concerns” who showed up that day. I thought that was an intriguing remark and reflecting on it later, I came to the conclusion that she was acting on the convictions of others. So, seeing her being a soldier ill used on a battlefield, I let go of what she said. (Plus, some of what she said was so entirely off the mark as to be readily dismissed.)
She disappeared from the congregation for a long time and then one day, was back. She sought me out after worship, gave me a big hug, and whispered in my ear that she owed me and my husband a huge apology. For the life of me, I had no idea what she was talking about. I simply squeezed her back, kissed her cheek, and said I was glad to see her again. It wasn’t until I was driving home later that I remembered! I was so surprised at my total lack of memory that I laughed and laughed and then realized that was the way God forgives us – completely.
I like this. Thanks.