FIRST READING Genesis 50:15–21
15 Realizing that their father was dead, Joseph’s brothers said, “What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong that we did to him?” 16 So they approached Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this instruction before he died, 17 ‘Say to Joseph: I beg you, forgive the crime of your brothers and the wrong they did in harming you.’ Now therefore please forgive the crime of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him. 18 Then his brothers also wept, fell down before him, and said, “We are here as your slaves.” 19 But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? 20 Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. 21 So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.” In this way he reassured them, speaking kindly to them.
PSALM Psalm 103:1–12
1 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless God’s holy name. 2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all God’s benefits—3 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases; 4 who redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with steadfast love and mercy; 5 who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like an eagle’s. 6 O LORD, you provide vindication and justice for all who are oppressed. 7 You made known your ways to Moses and your works to the children of Israel. 8 LORD, you are full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love; 9 you will not always accuse us, nor will you keep your anger forever. 10 You have not dealt with us according to our sins, nor repaid us according to our iniquities. 11 For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is your steadfast love for those who fear you. 12 As far as the east is from the west, so far have you removed our transgressions from us.
SECOND READING Romans 14:1–12
1 Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. 2 Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. 3 Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. 4 Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. 5 Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. 6 Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God. 7 We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. 10 Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 11 For it is written,
“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.”
12 So then, each of us will be accountable to God.
GOSPEL Matthew 18:21–35
21 Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. 23 For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
HOW MANY TIMES?
Old Arlen was dying. For years he’d been at odds with Bill, formerly one of his best friends. Wanting to straighten things out, Arlen sent word for Bill to come and see him. When Bill arrived, Arlen told him that he was afraid to go into eternity with such bad feelings between them. Then, very reluctantly, and with great effort, Arlen apologized for things he had said and done. He also assured Bill that he forgave him for his offenses. Everything seemed fine until Bill turned to go. As he walked out of the room, Arlen called out after him, “Now, just remember, if I get better, this doesn’t count.”
I saw an advertisement not long ago that brought a rather disconcerting message. The sales piece said: “God May Forgive, But The IRS Won’t.” It went on to offer, for a small price, a little booklet titled “17 Most Common Tax Mistakes Ministers Make, What They Are, And How to Avoid Them.” If I ever decide to try and prepare my own taxes I might need to order a copy. Thinking about that booklet, a thought occurred to me, I wish there was a booklet to help all of us avoid the one most common mistake all of us make far too many times. That mistake is to rewrite the title of that little booklet with our lives to read: “God May Forgive, But I Won’t.”
Or some might even edit it to say, “God May Forgive, But I Can’t.” God may forgive so-and-so for such-and-such, but me? Forget it. Do you have any idea what so and so did to me? Do you any idea how that made me feel? Do you know what that cost me? Do you know where that leaves me? The only honest answer I can give is, “No, I don’t.” Only you know that. But I do know what it will cost you and where it will leave you, if you refuse or you can’t find a way to forgive – according to Jesus, without forgiveness. We must learn to stop harboring grudges, counting costs and leave the accounting to God. We must find freedom for ourselves in forgiving others.
The lack of forgiveness by the IRS is a matter of legend. The lack of forgiveness between “me and thee” is a matter of life — my life and yours. Whether we choose to live life letting go of those things that destroy life, or we hold them close and die every day, that is indeed up to us. When we stop and consider Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness, it is, in reality, teaching on unforgiving, in the sense that it leaves us with little, or should I say no, choice. Forgive and live, says Jesus. As Lew Smedes writes: Forgiveness is God’s invention for coming to terms with a world in which, despite their best intentions, people are unfair to each other and hurt each other deeply. He began by forgiving us. And He invites us all to forgive each other. As I said, when you stop and study all the teachings of Jesus, there is no room for doubt; we must forgive.
First stop and consider the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus taught us to pray, forgive us our trespasses or debts AS we forgive the trespasses or debts of others. In short we’re asking God to remove our sin in the same way, and with the same attitude, as we forgive others who have wronged, hurt or misused us. Jesus went on to further demonstrate this teaching with the parable found in our gospel reading for this morning.
Our gospel lesson for today is the third segment of the discourse which opens with Peter, once again, acting as spokesperson for the disciples (see especially 14:28; 15:15; 16:16; 17:24-27). He addresses Jesus reverently as “Lord” (see also 14:28, 30) and asks about the limits of forgiveness “if my brother sins against me”. Here, Peter seems to be suggesting a limit-“seven times”- which when you think about it, is by most people’s estimation, extraordinarily generous. We also need to keep in mind that the number “seven” often has a symbolic meaning in Jewish numerology and can imply infinity. The text here isn’t clear which Peter meant, but as we’ve come to learn, Jesus’ response, surprises the hearer.
Jesus’ reply explodes the bounty set by Peter’s question: “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times” (18:22). The Greek term used here, heb-dome-kon-takis hepta, could also be translated as “seventy times seven times”. What Jesus is implying here is limitless forgiveness.
This concluding parable, one which is unique to Matthew, anchors the call for limitless forgiveness in a theological conviction (18:23-35). Jesus then continues His teaching by telling the story of the king who decides to settle his accounts with his servants. Jesus begins with a “slave,” a member of the royal household, who owes a staggering amount, “ten thousand talents.”
Ten thousand was the highest denomination in ancient accounting and Josephus reports that the entire yearly revenue from the Jewish tax was only six hundred talents! Maybe it would be better to understand the enormity of the owed debt in terms that are not attached to a dollar value.
The average worker’s wage, when added up over 20 years, was one talent. So by multiplying the 10,000 talents owed by the number of years required to earn a single talent, 20 years, it would take 200,000 years for the slave to earn enough money to pay back the debt. Clearly Jesus is exaggerating here to make His point, but He’s doing it to prove the limitlessness of God’s forgiveness. Jesus continues, when the slave is unable to pay the loan or debt, the king threatens to punish the slave by having the hapless debtor and his entire family and possessions sold. The servant falls before the king and appeals for more time to pay off his debt even though this, too, seems an act of fruitless desperation. The king is deeply moved by the plight of the slave and instead of simply giving him more time he decides to forgive the “loan”. At this point one would think the slave would be greatly relieved at the generosity of the king, but as we’ve come to learn, that’s not the case.
Instead of being overwhelmed by his unbelievably good fortune, the slave goes out and acts brutally toward a fellow slave who owes him only “a hundred denarii”. Contrast this amount, 100 denarii, with the first slave’s debt, 10,000 talents, and the difference is staggering. The average worker’s wage was 1 denarii per day, adding this up, the debt owed by the second slave could be paid back in as little as 3 months. That’s months compared to millennia. The first slave seizes the second by the throat, ignoring his plea for mercy, and casts him into prison. Clearly Jesus’ intent is to show that the same grace extended to the first slave was not extended to the second. Word gets back to the king and judgment comes swiftly; the angry king condemns the slave for his lack of mercy and has him tortured and cast into prison until he should pay his original debt.
This vivid story and its concluding saying illustrate Matthew’s fundamental theology of reconciliation: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart” (18:35). The driving motivation for unlimited forgiveness within the community is imitation of God’s own way of relating to humanity. Because the slave was already forgiven a staggering and unpayable debt by his king, he should have lived his life in memory of that inaugural grace.
Matthew asserts an identical motivation in 5:43-48 where love of enemies is motivated by the realization that the Father in heaven “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (v. 45). Likewise, Matthew’s emphasis on the threat of judgment for those who do not forgive, echoes previous teaching in the Sermon on the Mount: The disciple prays for forgiveness of debt “as we also have forgiven our debtors”- an addition of the prayer amplified in the sayings that are appended to the prayer: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (6:14-15). For Matthew, the divine will remain the guiding ethical principle for the community, a divine will proclaimed in Jesus’ teachings and embodied in His actions.
But even as the Gospel contemplates this difficult teaching, Matthew’s discourse returns to its fundamental theme of limitless forgiveness, a commitment to reconciliation based ultimately on the manner of God’s own graciousness toward sinful humanity. Having said all that, I bet this teaching has stirred memories about someone or something you’re not about to forgive. So, we’re back to Peter’s question, “How many times should I forgive someone who does something wrong to me? Is seven times enough?”
Most people will respond to this question by saying, “There is a limit, Lord! So-and-so, or such-and-such, has gone too far. Forgive? Forget it! Enough is enough.” You have to love Peter! God knows, he’s just like you and me. He is good-hearted, trying hard, but within limits. I sense in the story we read that Peter had just reached his limit with someone or something. I’m curious if Peter’s question wasn’t as generic as we might expect. I wonder if someone pushed his buttons and Peter was pushing back.
The Contemporary English Version of Matthew 18:21 says, “How many times should I forgive someone…?” The New Revised Standard version says, “someone” is, “… another member of the church….” The Greek text says, it isn’t just “anyone,” it’s “… my brother….” Peter had a brother. His name was Andrew. Personalize it. “Peter came up to the Lord and asked, ‘How many times should I forgive Andrew, anyway? Seven times seems more than fair to me!’ ”
I suspect it seems more than fair to you and me, too. Enough is enough, we say. And seven times is more than sufficient. But it wasn’t enough for Jesus. And His answer to Peter says it isn’t enough for you and me, either. Jesus’ answer to Peter’s question was, “Not just seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22 CEV). As Wordsworth puts it in his Ecclesiastical Sonnets: High heaven rejects the lore of nicely calculated less or more. Wordsworth was talking about money and our need to give more. Jesus was talking about forgiveness and our need to forgive more; incalculably more.
Any debate about “how much more,” misses the meaning entirely, as the parable that follows makes clear. The parable is about a man who was a slave. He was owned by the king. And worse, he owed the king — big time. How big? 200,000 years wage worth. The amount owed is absurd. But so is the king’s response. He forgave the debt. Instead of selling the man, his wife, his children, and everything he had, just to make a down payment on a debt that could never be paid, the king forgave every penny. That’s a lot of pennies. A lot of debt. That’s a lot of forgiveness.
According to Jesus, that’s the way God forgives us. Jesus responded to Peter’s counting the petty cash of life, with the amazing truth that we can count on God’s forgiveness again and again and again and again and yet again. God’s love is without limit. But we limit our experience of it when we limit our love of one another — like the slave in Jesus’ story.
I bet that by the end of Jesus parable, Peter must have been squirming. The message for Peter and every Christian is clear. “Peter, considering how much God has forgiven you, how is it that you can be so unforgiving of your brother?” Jesus wasn’t saying that the debt Peter felt he was owed, or the slight he felt he had endured, or the pain he had suffered, was insignificant. It wasn’t. And it wasn’t just, “Oh, c’mon, Peter — live and let live.” It’s “Come on, Peter, forgive. One more time, do what God does all the time.” Jesus’ answer to Peter’s question is essentially, “Peter, you can stop forgiving when God does.”
What that would look like, for God to quit forgiving, is well described by the end of the parable. When word got back to the king that the forgiven servant was so unforgiving he revoked his forgiveness. And the unforgiving servant found himself right back where he started. He was still hopelessly indebted to his master. It’s as though the prayer Jesus taught us to pray had been answered: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” “Be just as forgiving of us as we are of others, O God!”
Someone has said, you should be careful what you pray for because you may get it! Do we really want God to be just as forgiving of us as we are of others? God knows, I don’t, because I know myself too well. I think we all do. So the apparent ending of Jesus’ parable is hard to accept. Because the slave was unforgiving, it says, the king took back his forgiveness. That’s a tough lesson to swallow.
Scholars and commentators handle the seeming suggestion that God would withdraw forgiveness from the unforgiving by saying that suggestion is really Matthew’s suggestion, not that of Jesus. They say that Matthew elaborated on Jesus’ story that really ended with the king’s question, “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” (Matthew 18:33). And that’s really Jesus’ question to Peter. “Should you not forgive your brother, as God has forgiven you?”
“Has God forgiven you only seven, or even seven times seventy times, Peter? Or has God forgiven you more times than you can count? And certainly more times than you want to remember? If God’s forgiveness is unlimited, than why should I do any less for my brother?” I agree with Oswald Chambers, who once wrote: God never threatens;
the devil never warns. Maybe a better way to see this is forgiveness is about an attitude and heart condition.
Bob Patterson writes about … Jesus’ insistence on forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness is not a law, but a disposition of the heart which we learn from Christ Himself. In his novel, Love Is Eternal, Irving Stone has Mary Todd, the grieving widow of the just-slain Abraham Lincoln, say that she cannot forgive the assassin. Her son, Tad, responds, “If Pa had lived, he would have forgiven the man who shot him. Pa forgave everybody.” Thank God he did. Thank God, He does, in Jesus Christ.
N. T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham in England, has written a book titled, Simply Christian. In the religious environment in which we live, where everyone is a liberal or a conservative, or a progressive, or orthodox, or a member of the covenant network, or the lay committee — you name it — it’s refreshing, if nothing else, to hear someone call himself simply “Christian.” And then go on to articulate in a personal, pastoral, sometimes pointed way of what it means to be a Christian. Some are saying that N. T. Wright’s book is simply the best of its kind since C. S. Lewis wrote Mere Christianity.
Early on in his book, Wright acknowledges that being Christian doesn’t always translate easily into being Christ-like. That’s something Paul had trouble with, too. N. T. writes: There have always been people who have done terrible things in the name of Jesus … There’s no point hiding from the truth, however uncomfortable it may be. It’s no part of Christian belief to say that the followers of Jesus have always got everything right. Jesus Himself taught His followers [like Peter] a prayer which includes a clause asking God for forgiveness. He must have thought we would go on needing it.
So how many times should we forgive those who have wronged us? As many times as it takes! If someone sins against us, the most Christian thing in this world we can do is to go to that person in forgiveness and love. Despite what our gut tells us, forgiveness is possible. Not only that, it’s highly desirable because it’s for our own best interest, as well as for those who have offended us. But even more importantly, forgiveness is essential to our relationship with others and with God.
“How many times may my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?” asked Simon Peter. “As many as seven times?” Jesus answered him, “Not up to seven times, but seventy-seven times.” We’re to forgive others at least as many times as God has forgiven us. God stands ready to forgive us as we forgive others as many times as it takes. God’s message to us today is to forgive as we have been forgiven. So go, and share that limitless forgiveness to others and be comforted in knowing that we have been reconciled to God in Jesus Christ.
Amen