A Different Bottom Line
Matthew 18:21-35
The following is a letter, written to, of all people, Miss
Manners, the newspaper columnist.
Dear Miss Manners:
I am genuinely confused about what it means to forgive
someone. Does it ultimately mean that, no
matter what another person does to me, I must pretend to the best of my ability
that nothing ever happened?
What is my responsibility when the offending party refuses
to apologize and accept responsibility for actions? Are there degrees of
forgiveness? When an offense occurs must
I abandon my sense of right and wrong just to keep peace? Is this what “forgive and forget” is all
about?[1]
Miss Manners offered a weak response to some of these
questions, so it was clear she was just as troubled by them as we are. Fortunately, Jesus also offered his take on
this question of forgiveness, and his answer carries a little more weight. Before we look to him, let us pray:
Lord,
many of us are genuinely confused about what it means to forgive someone. Do we
just pretend that nothing ever happened?
Do we ignore their responsibility?
Do we abandon our sense of right and wrong? What if we can’t forget, what do we do then?
Speak to us this morning.
Open your word to the eyes of our hearts, we pray. Amen.
Then Peter came and said to Jesus, “Lord, if my brother
sins against me, how often should I forgive?
As many as seven times? Jesus
said to him, “Not seven times, but seventy times seven.”[2]
Jesus’ answer was short and to the point and not at all
what Peter was looking for, because Peter well understood the cost of
forgiveness. That’s why forgiving
someone seven times seemed like a lot to him.
It is not an easy thing. To
forgive even once is to sacrifice the desire for vengeance. There’s no payback. There’s no getting even. Forgiveness bears that cost.
Peter’s question did not just pop up out of the blue. It falls out of Jesus’ words on conflict
management. Jesus had just provided a
practical mechanism for resolving conflict created when someone perceives
another as doing him or her wrong. The point of the process is
reconciliation. At the end of this
procedure Jesus said, “ultimately, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in
heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”[3]
That means that forgiving, or refusing to forgive, will
have consequences in this life and the next.
This is both temporal and eternal.
It affects us now, and God will remember it when we stand before
him. I know that’s true in this life
because I’ve witnessed countless times the refreshing healing of forgiveness,
and I’ve seen the consequences that follow if you don’t.
We
had a neighbor when I was growing up, whose backyard joined ours. In his yard he tended a garden. He was very proud of that garden and worked
long and hard to keep it free of weeds.
When it got hot he would take off his shirt, revealing a scar that ran
the length of his right arm from shoulder to wrist. It was an angry, ugly gash that must have
caused great pain when it was cut.
He
had served as a marine in the South Pacific and was wounded on Okinawa. His arm healed and was fairly functional, but
he still held a bitter hatred for all things Japanese. He could not let go of the pain he had
suffered. Any time the subject came up he would resurrect the pain he endured,
and re-live it as if it were yesterday.
He nurtured that anger the same way he tended his garden. He meticulously pulled away anything that
might overcome it. Long after the wound
healed the heart scar remained. There
would be no forgiveness there. The
deeper hurt never healed. It was bound
to him; he could not let it go.
I
think that’s why Jesus stressed the importance of forgiveness, not only for
what it offered to the offender but also for the healing it promised for the
one that had been hurt. There is no
letting go of grudges when forgiveness is withheld.
So,
when Peter asked, how many times must I forgive; Jesus answered in effect –
every time.
Now,
there are two ways to read this verse.
I’ve seen it translated both ways, and even checked the Greek to see
which one was right, and concluded it can be read either way.
The
Revised Standard Version translates Peter’s question, “How often shall my
brother sin against me and I forgive him?” The word “often” refers to the
number of sins. Peter is really asking, “How many times do I have to take it
before I can let him have it? I got the
part about turning the other cheek, but I only have two cheeks.”
This
reading is very difficult because it can be used to enable and excuse bad
behavior. Husbands who know their Bible
and still batter their wives will pull out this text to tell her that she is
required to forgive him after every assault. Alcoholics who know their Bible
will pull it out to force forgiveness from a long-suffering spouse or
child. A simplistic reading of this text
would seem to encourage an abusive and manipulative cycle where accountability
is ignored, and change not required. In
the context of the whole gospel, this is surely not what Jesus means. He cannot be saying to that Miss Manners
correspondent, “Yes, you must pretend to the best of your ability that nothing
wrong really happened.”
There
is another way to read this verse. The New Revised Standard Version puts that
word “often” in a different place, and in Greek syntax that is entirely
legitimate. This time the translators
used it to describe not the number of sins, but rather the number of times we
are to forgive. It doesn’t refer to
multiple sins; it refers to the frequency of forgiveness. Here Peter’s question is translated, “Lord,
if a brother sins against me, how often should I forgive?”
Now,
why would you need to forgive someone more than one time for the same
offense? If someone says, “I’m sorry”,
and you say, “That’s O.K., I forgive you”; doesn’t that end the matter? Don’t you just “forgive and forget”?
Do
you? Do you forgive and forget? Well, maybe sometimes you do, but if the
offense was bad enough, if you have really been hurt, I don’t think you ever
really forget. Some people are up-front
about that. They’ll say, “I will
forgive, but I’ll never forget.” Since we don’t ever really forget, sometimes
the anger and resentment sneaks back in.
Sometimes in a new conflict, old grievances are resurrected. Arguments
over today’s failing will reach deep into the past and pull out twenty-year-old
transgressions. They are like weeds that you thought you pulled, but somehow
when you weren’t looking, they grew back.
That’s
why we sometimes need to forgive the same sin a number of times. It is rarely a once-and-for-all thing. It is a garden that needs weeding again and
again and again, if ever the flowers are to grow. When we fail to weed that garden it will have
consequences is this life; we will develop a bitter spirit. Jesus also said an unwillingness to forgive
will have consequences in the next life as well. “What you bind on earth will be bound in
heaven, and what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
So that we don’t miss
this point Jesus shared the parable of the unforgiving servant. The story is simple and to the point. There are three characters, a pauper, a
middle manager, and a king. Now, the
middle manager owed the king big time - ten thousand talents of silver. No matter how you run the numbers, the sum
was considerable. To make matters worse,
there were no bankruptcy laws to protect him.
He couldn’t shelter his debt with a million dollar mansion, or hide his
money in the Cayman Islands. There was
no place to run and no place to hide, so he groveled and pleaded for grace.
Remarkably,
the king granted his request and forgave the debt. He didn’t even foreclose on
his house.
The
next day the pauper approached this forgiven middle manager with a story of
woe. He couldn’t repay his debt – a
matter of only a hundred denarii – chicken feed, peanuts. The middle manager became enraged, and had
the pauper thrown in debtor’s prison. He
wanted what he thought should come to him. Let justice be done.
He
was like so many of us who look for grace for ourselves and demand restitution
from others. The reason we are able to
do that with a straight face is because we are quick to offer reasons for our
own shortcomings, but we are slow to excuse those of others. Jesus put it this way; a lot of people are
quick to see the speck in the eye of someone else but slow to see the log that
is in their own.[4]
I
used to see this a lot when I caddied at the York country club. I always
carried two bags and those two golfers would sometimes team up against the other
two. If the bets were high, the pressure
rose. I’d hand a club to one of my guys
and he’d swing away. If his ball sliced
right into the woods, he’d offer a myriad of excuses: “The sun got in my eye”, “The wind kicked
up”, “The caddy (that’s me) gave me the wrong club.” When his partner hooked left into the pond
leaving them out of contention, out of luck and money, he would mutter, “Wimp”,
“He always chokes”, “He can’t handle the pressure.”
That’s
the way that middle manager looked at those who owed him. When he failed to meet his obligations, there
was always a good excuse. When others
failed to meet their obligations to him, they were negligent and
irresponsible. They were deadbeats who
always choked and couldn’t handle the pressure.
When you have this bifocal vision, “an eye for an eye and tooth for a
tooth” makes a lot of sense. It sounds
right and fair up until that time when it is your eye and tooth that are on the
line. Then it is mercy and not justice
you seek.
That’s
why Jesus said, “You’ve heard it said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth, but I say to you, “Turn the other cheek”.[5] Only in that way can the cycle of vengeance
be broken. Only then can reconciliation
follow.
This
is not easy. Anyone who has ever been
hurt can tell you it is not easy, but for those who follow Jesus – it is
required.
A
pastor friend of mine told this story.
He said, a member of his church broke into the choir room one Sunday
during worship and stole his wife’s purse.
He’s preaching and she’s singing in the choir, and this church member
stole the purse, and then used her driver’s license to forge checks all over
town. She had stolen an identity
pretending to be someone she was not.
One
can only get away with that for so long; eventually she was caught, and the
whole church discovered who and what she was.
She was exposed and ashamed. She
thought she was finished, but this pastor, his wife and their church went out
of their way to offer, not judgment, but grace.
They didn’t feel like it. Their
feelings told them to do something quite different. But, their faith required
their forgiveness of this thief.
My
friend said, “The turning point in her life came during a communion service
when she took her place in the line of people coming forward to the table. Through the intervention of the Holy Spirit,
when it came time for her to commune, the only station open was the one where my
wife was serving. As the thief
sheepishly walked up to the woman she hurt, the only words my wife said, the
only words that needed to be said were, “The body of Christ broken for you.”[6]
Every
time any of us takes that bread and drinks of that cup we are reminded that
God’s forgiveness is expressed to us in the only way we would believe, and that
is through the cross. We know
forgiveness is not cheap or easy and mistrust grace that is easily given. We know how hard it is to forgive someone who
has hurt us, so we know how hard it must have been for God to forgive those who
would hurt his children, curse his name and ignore his Word.
When
Jesus, hanging, suspended between the earth and the sky, between heaven and
hell, looked down on those who had pounded the nails into his palms and prayed,
“Father, Forgive them”. We know that was
not easy.[7] No prayer that ever comes from pain is easy;
but those at the foot of the cross that day heard that powerful prayer born
from love, and it changed their lives. Countless believers from that day to
this have heard that prayer of forgiveness, and it has lifted their souls.
If you’ve
ever loved someone who hurt you, and you’ve gone on loving; if you’ve ever
welcomed home a prodigal; if you’ve ever taken the blame when you were not at
fault, but someone you love was; if you’ve ever suffered because of what
someone else you love has done…and if you have let mercy swell up enough to
overcome the urge for revenge or anger or hate in your heart…then you have
tasted a tiny morsel of how the love and forgiveness of God works and why it
works. You have received the bread of
heaven and the cup of salvation.
Through
our shame and sorrow and regret, we learn to give mercy because we need it
ourselves so much. The Good News of
Jesus Christ is that God does forgive you.
The incredible blessing that comes from that is that we are given the freedom
to forgive others, not just once, not even just seven times, but seventy times seven.
Let
us pray:
Lord,
we will never be able to forgive until we first believe we are forgiven. Draw our eyes to your cross so that we might
see hanging suspended between earth and sky, between heaven and hell, your
love, your grace, and your forgiveness.
As we have received that blessing, give us the opportunity to share it
with others. Through Christ we pray. Amen.
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