How Much Is Enough?

Proper 19A: Matthew 18:21-35

Not long ago, the noted scholar of world religions, Huston Smith, was speaking to a group at a university. As he strolled through all of the world's major religions, he cited one or two aspects of each religion that made it unique, noteworthy. When he spoke of Islam, he noted the way that faith penetrates every aspect of life, the way Muslims pray throughout the day. With respect to Judaism, Smith admired the Jewish people’s identity and story that has been maintained for thousands of years, against all odds, passed down through the institution of the family. Finally, when he came to Christianity, the Christians present wondered what would be the unique aspect of our faith this scholar of world religions would point to. Forgiveness, Smith answered. Christianity is unusual in its focus upon, indeed, its demand for forgiveness. Jesus died for the forgiveness of our sin. And he demanded that his followers forgive others.

And yet, the very thing that makes Christianity so distinctive is also what makes it so difficult.

Last week, we read Jesus’ directions regarding what believers are to do when another Christian sins against them: “If your brother or sister sins against you, go tell them. If they listen, great, you have regained your brother or sister. If not, bring it to the attention of others in the church, who can help bring the offender back.” Assumed in Jesus’ instructions is that we would be willing to forgive the person who’s hurt us.

In this morning’s reading, the disciple Peter asks the most obvious follow-up question: “Ok, so just how many times do we have to do this, to go after the sinner and forgive them? Seven times? Is seven times enough?”

Peter’s not trying to be stingy here. He wants to have a discussion about forgiveness, a thoughtful deliberation about how much forgiveness is too much, what is reasonable and what is not when it comes to forgiving those who wrong us. He wants to know what are the limits, what qualifies as “enough”?

But Peter is asking the wrong person if he wants to know the stopping point for mercy. “No, Peter. Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” Likely the disciples were as shocked by Jesus’ answer as we are. Seventy-seven times…? Is Jesus serious?

I mean, we’re all for forgiveness… if it is appropriate. Pardon is fine…when it comes wrapped in sackcloth and ashes. Mercy is an admirable thing…so long as it’s not an excuse for ignoring wrong. Let us have no weak-kneed, syrupy sentiment masquerading as Christian mercy! There have to be consequences for broken rules. If we let someone off the hook, they’ll think that their behavior is okay and just go do wrong again. Then where would we be? There must be reasonable limits to our forgiveness. That’s what Peter and the others were thinking. And it’s what you and I are thinking, I’ll bet. We’re all for forgiveness, but people can’t just get away scot-free. There’s got to be limits.

I’m not saying Jesus is wrong. I’m just saying what the rest of us believe. We hate seeing anyone get away with doing wrong. Like, when a Texas tycoon milks his bank for millions, I think the rat ought to pay. Or when a truck driver in Florida kidnaps and abuses a child, I’d say, Lock ‘em up and throw away the key. Or when a North Carolina wife poisoned her husband, throw her in the slammer—particularly when her husband was a preacher, for heaven’s sake. “Throw the book at her!”

That is the natural and even reasonable response. But Jesus is not interested in “reason.” He’s interested in redemption, reconciliation, the recovery of the lost, even if it offends our sense of fairness. And that’s what gets us. Jesus may be human but he doesn’t seem to care about the universal human need for justice, the need to see that those in the right are vindicated and those in the wrong get their just deserts.

Well, maybe you think of yourself as above feeling this way. You’re not the sort to harbor grudges, and you don’t want to see anyone suffer, even if they deserve it. If that’s true, I might say it’s because you just haven’t ever really been hurt, sinned against before. But I don’t even think that is true. Think for a moment of the worst thing that someone has done to you, I mean the worst thing—stole from you, cheated you, beat you, belittled you, betrayed your trust, falsely accused you, hurt those you love. Now picture yourself extending the hand of forgiveness, saying the words, "I forgive you.” It’s not easy, is it? There’s something in us that refuses to do it, that just recoils from the unfairness of not punishing them. We can’t bring ourselves to say the words or offer our hand. It just seems wrong.

Now, you’ve likely heard plenty of perfectly good reasons for why, despite our resistance, we should forgive those who’ve done us wrong: Forgiveness can bring out the best in the person. When they see the error of their ways, they might change their behavior. Even if they don’t, it’s good for you. Forgiveness takes a burden of pain and resentment off your back. It prevents you from ruminating on your hurt and wanting to change the past you can’t change. It’ll make you feel better, if nothing else, because you are taking the high road.

There may well be some wisdom and truth in those reasons. I won’t dispute that. But, here’s the thing: none of those reasons are why Jesus tells us we are to forgive others. He doesn’t try to convince us to forgive others because our lives will be made better, or that we’ll be better people if we forgive, or because it’s practical or advantageous, because in many cases it’s not. Jesus commands us to forgive simply because that’s the way God is: forgiving, full of compassion and mercy, even though we’ve betrayed God’s love for us in so many ways. Forgiveness may not be the way the world works, but it is how we work “with the grain of the universe,” that is to say, according to who God is and what God is up to.

Jesus makes this point plain when he tells this outlandish story about a man who is in debt to the tune of 10,000 talents of silver, the equivalent of $150 million, a ridiculous sum, far more than he could ever repay. He’s brought before the king whose money he lost (stole?). He’s got no excuse, no defense. All he can do is grovel and ask for mercy. The king, to everyone’s surprise, has pity on him and forgives the whole debt. But then the same servant, fresh from being forgiven an incalculable debt, then turns around and roughs up a fellow servant who owed him but a few thousand dollars.

It’s an unbelievable story, so over the top, hard to imagine someone acting that way, that he could be so blind, so hypocritical. He was forgiven a huge debt, so how could he refuse to forgive a comparably tiny debt owed to him?

But it’s not so unimaginable. It’s what we all do. That’s what Jesus was getting at. We have met the unforgiving forgiven and they are us. We’ve been forgiven the enormous debt of our sin, the slate wiped clean by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. And yet we cannot bring ourselves to forgive the comparably trifling debts, sins, done to us. We are just like the ungrateful debtor. And we may be in danger of the same fate he met, Jesus warns, being imprisoned for our debts, imprisoned by our indebtedness and our indebting others. That is what is at stake in our forgiving and not forgiving.

Jesus taught us this in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Someone once said that the scariest word in the entire New Testament is that tiny little word “as”: “as we forgive those who sin against us.” For it makes clear the inherent connection between God’s forgiving us and our forgiving others. Our being forgiven is dependent on our forgiving others.

St Augustine of Hippo, a 4th-century bishop in North Africa, recalls how his congregation, when they were reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and it came to that petition, he noted the whole congregation would go silent, resuming only after the petition was done, because they couldn’t face up to what those words demanded.

Now, as unnatural as forgiveness is, nothing of what I’ve said is intended to suggest that it is impossible. But it does explain why we are so surprised and amazed when people do manage to forgive those who’ve done them wrong. Such as when a father forgives the drunk driver who killed his child. Or when the Amish parents of Nickle Mines, Pennsylvania forgave the man who murdered their children. Or when the people of Mother Emmanuel Church forgave the white supremacist who betrayed their welcome and murdered its members. Or when the whole country of Rwanda chose reconciliation over vengeance following the horrific genocide that happened there in the 90s. These examples stick out to us because they are so remarkable, so unusual, so shocking. We cannot imagine how anyone could forgive such heinous acts. It seems an impossible ask.

But I don’t believe Jesus expects us to do impossible things. Forgiving those who’ve wronged us doesn’t come naturally, but is not impossible. Forgiveness is possible because it is an act of grace, a miraculous act God performs in us, sometimes despite us.

Corrie ten Boom, along with her sister, was a prisoner in a concentration camp during World War II. Many of her family, including her sister, were killed in those camps. After the war and after many years of dealing with hate and pain, Corrie came to terms with the evil that had been done to her. And she wrote eloquently on the subject of forgiveness and often gave talks on the subject. After giving one such talk, Corrie was shaking hands with the attendees, when out of nowhere there stood before her a former Nazi SS agent. And not just any SS agent but the very one who had guarded the shower floor at the prison camp where she and her friends had been processed and who had exposed them to many indignities and cruelties. The man expressed his appreciation for her message and reached out his hand to shake hers. But Corrie kept her hand at her side. She prayed, tried to smile, struggling to raise her hand but nothing happened. She breathed a silent prayer, "Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness." Then she recalls: “As I took his hand, the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand, a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it's not on our own forgiveness that the world's healing hinges, but on his. When [God] tells us to love our enemies, he gives, along with the command, the love itself."

As this story shows, forgiveness does not come naturally. It comes from God. Even so, it’s not an act that we can expect to be able to do whenever we call upon God. Forgiveness must be learned. Which is why we need the church. None of the stories of forgiveness I just mentioned—Nickle Mines, Mother Emmanuel, Rwanda, Corrie ten Boom—are exceptional acts of heroic individuals. All of them occur in the context of the church. And those that forgave were able to do it because they learned how to forgive as part of the church.

It is in the church’s coming together each week, retelling stories of forgiveness in the Bible, rehearsing the story of our forgiveness on the cross, gathering around the table to remember the one who gave his life for ours, giving good for our evil, that we learn how we can forgive each other. Only as we the church practice forgiveness among ourselves can we show the world what it means to forgive and be forgiven.

We may never find forgiveness easy, and rarely do we find it completely satisfying. Nagging injustices remain, and the wounds still cause pain. Yet we know we can bring those hurts, those concerns, to God, and ask him to give us the grace to forgive and to accept the forgiveness extended to us. Indeed, that is the only way we can.

And above all, we can pray that God keeps bringing us to church week in and week out, so that we hear of God’s promise of forgiveness, where we  learn to practice forgiveness, and where we are formed and fashioned as the Church, a community of love and forgiveness. Here we find out who we are, and who God has made us to be—forgiven and forgiving. Thanks be to God!