Genesis 50:15-21
Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35
Today Jesus continues his
teaching on forgiveness. This is the heart of the gospel, the good news of
Jesus: God love us and forgives us, and we are to forgive one another. But, how
much?
Jesus has been talking about
forgiveness and Peter, who so often in the gospels doesn’t quite grasp what
Jesus is saying, has a question. “How often should I forgive? As often as seven
times?” thinking, probably that seven times would be very generous, almost
unheard of. And Jesus answers, “not seven times, but seventy-seven!”
Now, what does he mean? If
someone sins against me and comes repeatedly asking for forgiveness, am I to
keep a note of how many times they’ve done it up to seventy-seven, but then, at
number seventy-eight, I can say “Aha! Now I’ve got you!”
Well surely not. If we were
keeping count like that, we wouldn’t really be forgiving the first
seventy-seven times, would we?
As often happens Jesus is
making a reference to the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures that of course
his hearers would have known so well. That phrase, “not seven, but
seventy-seven”, has occurred before. It’s in the Book of Genesis, chapter 4: “If
Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”
The book of Genesis is about
our origins, that’s what the word “genesis” means. It is an epic tale of myth
and heroic story, from the Garden of Eden to the twelve tribes of Israel. This
book of origins holds up a mirror to us and tells us who we are. It tells us
the truth about being human.
And this is where we meet Cain
and Lamech. Cain was one of the sons of Adam and Eve, and the first murderer.
He killed his brother Abel, out of rivalry over whose sacrifice would be
acceptable to the Lord. After this the Lord predicted that this was but the
start of an escalating cycle of violence, “whoever kills Cain will suffer a
sevenfold vengeance”.
Vengeance, once unleashed, has
a life of its own. Four generations on from Cain we get to Lamech, a violent
hoodlum who swears, “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for
striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”
So there you have it. Not seven
but seventy seven times is how violence and revenge escalate, causing more
death and destruction in every generation. So when Jesus repeats those numbers,
and says we must forgive, ‘not seven times, but seventy-seven times’, he is
going right to the heart of the problem, right back to human origins. He is
reversing that ancient escalation of vengeance into an escalation of
forgiveness. Jesus is pointing the way out of the cycle of violence that has
engulfed humanity from the beginning.
Genesis tells us about that as
well, as we heard in the story of Joseph forgiving his brothers who had
betrayed him and sold him into slavery. Humanity’s basic problem is there in
Genesis, but so is the forgiveness that frees us from the cycle of violence and
revenge.
To emphasise this point Jesus
tells a parable about a king and his slaves. The first slave has a ridiculously
large debt – billions of pounds in today’s money. Why does Jesus make the debt
so large? Perhaps it is exaggerating for effect, or perhaps it is meant to
stand for the huge collective desire of all humanity to “get our own back”,
that consuming human desire for revenge. The fact that the consequence of his
debt involves the slave’s whole family suggests this may be so. But when the
slave pleads for time to pay – as if he ever could have time to pay back that
much – the king cancels the entire debt. It’s a sudden revelation of
astonishing generosity.
Now the slave could have chosen
to imitate the King’s generosity and forgiveness. Something so amazing and
overwhelming should surely have brought about a change of heart, given him a
new insight into the debts of others. Forgiveness has set him free, and that
should have opened his eyes to other people’s need to be forgiven, too. It
could have changed the whole way he related to other people, not holding on to
debts, but forgiving.
But, the slave is himself owed
a debt by a fellow slave. 100 denarii. That’s not a small amount, perhaps
around four or five thousand pounds today. So it wouldn’t be a trivial matter
simply to let that go. But he has seen his master’s generosity in forgiving his
own debt. He has experienced the freedom that brings. He could begin to live in
the new way of forgiveness that his master has shown him. But he doesn’t. He
demands that his debt be repaid.
But by doing so, he shows that
he is still living in the old way of being human, the way of vengeance and
getting your own back, the way of ever escalating desires and retaliation. Forgiveness
is not just something we receive. It’s a new way of living that we need to
inhabit.
Now it may seem that there’s a
nasty twist in the tale when the King orders the unforgiving slave to be handed
over to the torturers. What does this mean? Does God torture people who don’t
forgive?
Well, parables tell us what God
is like, but they also tell us about our own perception, our skewed perspective
on God. God is always loving and forgiving, and he does not change. It is our
perception that changes. We can choose to live according to God’s love and
forgiveness, and that will set us free. If we do not, we remain living in those
old cycles of violence and vengeance, and everything will be a torment for us.
God has created us in love to
live in love, but our death-bound desires of rivalry, violence and revenge stop
us reaching this goal. But in Jesus Christ it becomes possible at last to live
in the love that created us. His death and resurrection wipe out our own debt
of sin and enable us to live in his risen life, the life of forgiveness.
So when we pray the Lord’s
prayer, we pray to be forgiven our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
It’s not that we’re striking a bargain with God, but that receiving and giving forgiveness
are two inseparable aspects of the new life God gives us in Jesus.
Forgiveness isn’t cheap. If
someone has really hurt us very deeply, or we have done so to someone else, it
can cost a lot to forgive. Sometimes of course there is a need for justice, or
a need to protect others. But that is not the same as revenge. Forgiveness
means letting go of our hurt, giving up what we think we are owed. But that is
the way to freedom. Holding a grudge, desiring vengeance, these are deadly
things that eat away at us from within.
Forgiveness sets us free, even
if, in the world as it is, it is the way of the cross. The cost of forgiveness
was shown by Jesus himself, who prayed for his murderers, “Father, forgive
them, they know not what they do.” We see all too well, in the world today,
even in this morning’s headlines, the human tragedy, the trail of destruction
still being wrought by our insatiable desire for violence and revenge.
But the way of the cross is the
way of resurrection. Jesus risen from the dead comes to us as the victim of our
human violence, but bringing forgiveness, not revenge. He is no vengeful ghost,
but our life and our freedom. Ultimately, the last word on the universe, as the
first, is love. And we can begin to live in that love, if we will, here and
now.
How much should we forgive? Without
limit, for that is how much God loves and forgives us in Jesus his Son.
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