Forgiveness is Medicine

 

Based on Matthew 18:21-35

             This week concludes a series of teachings from Matthew 18, Jesus’ instructions he gave his disciples about how to relate with each other in community. For Matthew’s church, as well as our own, we have for us wise and helpful instructions on how to maintain a healthy community. Like any relationship, it takes work and intentionality to keep relationships strong and healthy. What a gift that we have these guidelines from the scriptures that give us a tangible process of how to keep our relationships healthy but also a reminder of the necessary values that undergird healthy relationships in community.

            Before jumping into this week’s scripture, let’s have a quick reminder of last week’s teaching on how to hold church members accountable when they do something offensive. We recall that three step process, moving to the next level if the person who committed the offense refuses to listen. If, after the three levels of accountability demonstrate the offender won’t listen to anyone, then the relationship with the community shifts. They are no longer like family and are now to be treated like an outsider, like a tax collector or Gentile. And, as we recalled how Jesus was often criticized for eating with Gentiles and tax collectors, this means when someone leaves the church that doesn’t mean we break off relationship. The other part of last week’s teaching that is critical to keep in mind is that for this process of accountability to work there have to be some values in place. We have to love each other like family. If someone is like a brother or sister to you, that means you trust them, respect them, want what is best for them, are invested in their growth. These values have to be in place before we can have the courage and take the responsibility to hold each other accountable. If we lack these values then healthy accountability can’t happen. We either won’t care about holding each other accountable or we will fragment as a community and fall apart.

            Today, we add one more value necessary for healthy community life. It is the value of forgiveness. As family, who love, trust and respect one another, we must forgive each other when we mess up. Holding on to grudges, withholding forgiveness, is like acid that eats away at the bonds of love that hold us together. It is so important in order to keep relationships strong that forgiveness take place. We are going to talk about forgiveness this morning.

            Peter sets this teaching up by asking Jesus a question as he wraps up his instruction on how to deal with conflict in the church. Peter wants to know how often we are to forgive someone. Why Peter suggests seven times as the possible limit we don’t know. But we can guess that Peter is attempting to sound generous, that forgiving one person seven times goes beyond what can be expected. This question Peter asks is also found in Luke 17:4 but there is a glaring difference between these two versions. In Luke 17:4 Jesus is teaching about forgiveness. He says, “If the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.” The big difference in this teaching in Luke and Peter’s question in Matthew is that when Peter asks the question he says nothing about the offender saying “I repent.” Maybe Peter implied that, but I think it is significant that this is left out.

            Do you remember last week I pointed out that when an offender is pulled off to the side to be talked to privately, all the offender has to do is listen? They don’t have to ask for forgiveness. They don’t even have to agree they did anything wrong. All they have to do is listen. Listening is not the same thing as agreeing. If you trust, respect and love one another however you will listen to each other, and that is the most important thing when dealing with conflict. What about forgiveness? Peter presents the question without specifically asking if the person who offended has to first ask to be forgiven. Jesus goes on to say that we are to forgive the person not up to seven times but seventy-seven times. Actually, it is limitless. As Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 13, love keeps no record of wrongs. People who love one another don’t keep track of how many times they forgive the person they love. That’s kind of silly, honestly. But I think the most important point is that forgiveness is to be offered whether the offender asks for it or not. The following parable underscores this point.

            We go to this parable of the two servants. Both servants are being held accountable for the debt they owed. Notice that both of them ask for patience as they attempt to pay off the debt. Neither of them asked to have their debt forgiven. That’s an important point that underscores that whole process of accountability we talked about last week. The king out of pity forgave the first servant the debt that he could never pay. He could not. It was an unrealistic amount he owed. For perspective, it would take a common laborer fifteen years to earn one talent. To earn 10,000 talents would take one person 150,000 years. This is a ridiculous number meant to make the point that there was absolutely no way this servant could repay that debt. Even if the king did sell him and his family into slavery as well as all his possessions, that would barely make a dent in this massive debt. Yet, the servant asks for patience, knowing full well he would never be able to pay it back. So, the king forgives the whole debt. What an amazing act of generosity. And, again, the forgiveness was offered out of pity, not because the debtor asked for the debt to be forgiven.

            Then, being mindful of the incredible amount of debt that this servant had been forgiven, we are shocked when he fails to forgive the debt a fellow servant owed him. One day of common labor equaled one denarius in payment. This servant owed 100 denarii. It is still a significant amount but payable. They could work something out, some kind of payment plan. It would take time but that debt could be repaid. It is nothing in comparison to 10,000 talents of debt. Yet, the servant throws the fellow servant into debtor’s prison until the whole debt is paid. He had the right to do that. But wow, that was pretty harsh, especially when you consider how much he had been forgiven.

            And that is the core point of the story, which is underscored in verse 35, the moral of the story, where Jesus says that we are to forgive each other from the heart. I think forgiveness from the heart means the forgiveness is sincere. But I also think Jesus says it has to be from the heart because when forgiveness is withheld, that’s where the corrosive acid of unforgiveness does its work, on our hearts. I am convinced that forgiveness is critical medicine to heal the hurt inflicted on our hearts when we have been hurt by someone else. That’s why it doesn’t even matter that much if the offender asks to be forgiven first or even acknowledges they did something wrong. It’s not really about them. Forgiveness is necessary for our own healing. That’s why it is to be offered regardless and as many times as needed.

            A spirit of forgiveness is a necessary value for the health of a community. Forgiveness is medicine. It helps to heal the hurt in our hearts. It helps to heal the relational bonds that hold a family together. A community in which forgiveness is not freely offered is a community quickly headed for destruction because unforgiveness will absolutely obliterate a community. For our own heart health and for the health of the community as a whole, forgiveness must be offered to those who mess up.

            But there is one thing so important to keep in mind. Forgiveness is not the same as permissiveness. I could see how this parable of the two servants can give the impression that forgiveness means letting someone off the hook. The first servant got his massive debt forgiven. He didn’t have to pay it. Here’s the problem. If forgiveness means a “get out of jail free” card, then people can get the attitude that they can do whatever they want to each other and there won’t be any consequence because they will be forgiven. That’s not the kind of forgiveness that Jesus is talking about. I mean, it is true that when a debt is forgiven that you don’t have to pay it back. But when we forgive each other from the heart this has to do with heart healing and with keeping relational bonds strong.

            What I am trying to say is that we can forgive someone and hold them accountable for what they did. If someone offends you, you want to forgive that person from the heart as Jesus directs, but you also want to pull them aside privately and talk about what they did, which also Jesus directs. Forgiveness does not short circuit the accountability process. In fact, forgiveness is the lubricant that helps make the process work. Accountability without forgiveness can quickly lead to bitterness. Healthy accountability requires forgiveness.

            Please hear me, I am not saying this is easy. I’m not going to start naming examples of how people hurt each other in ways that makes forgiveness hard, if not impossible. Each situation is different and the intensity of the pain or betrayal can vary. Some people are not as easily offended as others. Some people have an unbelievable capacity to forgive while others struggle with forgiving others their whole lives. Sometimes we are in a good head space and we are able to forgive easily while other times when we are tired or stressed forgiveness is much harder to achieve. Sometimes forgiving someone is easy and sometimes it’s hard. Forgiving one person over and over for the same thing gets frustrating. Still, forgiveness is the medicine for healing. We offer forgiveness to those who sin against us, not only because of that line in the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” but because forgiveness is necessary for our own healing. It is a process. It can take time. And some offenses are so great, the hurt so deep, that forgiveness just isn’t going to happen. Withholding forgiveness, however, should be the exception and not the rule, unless we are bound and determined to have a bitter heart, weigh ourselves down with grudges, and rip apart the ties that bind us together. I for one have no desire to be a part of a community where forgiveness is not freely offered, even as I am held accountable for the times I screw up.

            I think this parable also gives us some insight into what can help us be more forgiving. The first servant was forgiven a lot. It was an incredible act of mercy given to him. Anyone who has been under the weight of debt who has had that weight lifted knows what it feels like. If we consider how often God forgives us for the ways we fall short, the ways we offend God by our actions or inactions, the things we say or fail to say, I mean, I’m pretty sure that God is regularly forgiving me for things I didn’t even know I did. That’s often the case in our relationships. How many times have you offended someone and didn’t even know you did it? How many times has someone hurt you and they seem completely oblivious to what they did? Yet God forgives us. We recall how Jesus shed his blood on the cross for the sake of the sins of the whole world for all time. All sin has been covered by the blood of the Lamb. The incalculable amount of sin each of us have committed and will commit in the future has already been covered by the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. In Christ we are forgiven. To the extent that we can marvel at and deeply appreciate how much we have been forgiven, the grace that has been given to us by God’s mercy, the easier it is to forgive others, whom God has already forgiven. Easier, I said. I haven’t even talked about the struggle of forgiving ourselves. That would be a whole other sermon. I just want to end it here by reminding us again of the values needed for healthy community life which we find in Matthew 18. The values that maintain healthy community are familial love, loving each other as brothers and sisters, the values of trust and respect for each other, and the value of forgiveness. Love, trust, respect, forgiveness: these are the values that undergird a healthy practice of accountability, that provides healing to our wounded hearts, and that keeps a church together.