16th Sunday after Pentecost – September 17, 2023

Matthew 18:21-35

Today…Jesus tells the disciple Peter…that forgiveness…in the kingdom of God… must be generous beyond limits.

We should not forgive our offenders a skimpy seven times…but seventy-seven…or seventy times seven.
That is…forgiveness should be our way of life…our default mode.
Why? Because we are a forgiven people…generously and lavishly forgiven by God.
Considering this abundant grace…what possible response can we have…
But to pay the wealth of God’s forgiveness forward?

But first of all…what is forgiveness not?

Forgiveness is not pretending that an offense does not matter.
Or that a wound does not hurt.
Or that Christianity requires us to forget past harms and let bygones be bygones.
Forgiveness is not acting as if things do not have to change.
Or assuming that because God is merciful…God is not grieved and angered by injustice.

OK then…the starting line of forgiveness is the acknowledgement of wrongdoing…of harm.

A great gift of Christianity is that it takes sin and sin’s consequences dead seriously.

Sin wounds. Sin breaks. Sin lingers.
The same Bible that calls us to forgive also calls us to mourn…
To lament…and to hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Forgiveness always works together with the hard work of repentance and transformation.
As theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned:
We must never allow forgiveness to degenerate into “cheap grace.”
That is…the preaching of forgiveness without repentance…grace without the Cross.

OK…forgiveness is not quick and easy.

Not for us humans…not if we are honest.
Forgiveness is a messy and often thorny process that can leave us feeling whole and liberated one minute.
And bleeding out of every vein the next.
No one who says the words “I forgive you” gets a pass from this messy process.

Of course…yes…there are times when forgiveness happens dramatically and instantly.

But most of the time…there is no cleansing altar call moment when the hurts of the past simply slip off our backs and roll away.
There is only the daily business of forgiveness as a slow…sustained way of life.

OK then…what is Jesus asking of us when he tells us to forgive each other again and again and again and again?

In her popular memoir…Traveling Mercies…Anne Lamott writes that withholding forgiveness is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.
Nora Gallagher writes: “Forgiveness is a way to unburden oneself from the constant pressure of rewriting the past.”
Henri Nouwen writes: “Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly.
The hard truth is that all people love poorly…and so we need to forgive and be forgiven every day…every hour increasingly.
Forgiveness is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”

If these writers are correct…then I think forgiveness is choosing to front love instead of resentment.

If I am consumed with my own pain…if I have made injury my identity…
If I insist on weaponizing my well-deserved anger in every interaction I have with people who hurt me…
Then I’m drinking poison…
And the poison will kill me long before it does anything to my abusers.
To choose forgiveness is to release myself from the tyranny of my bitterness.
To trust that my longing for justice is known to God.
To cast my hunger for healing deep into Christ’s heart.
Because healing belongs to him…
And he is the only one powerful enough to secure it.

Retaliation or holding onto anger about the harm done to us does not combat evil…it feeds it.

Because in the end…if we are not careful…we can absorb the worst of our enemy…and start to become them.
So then…forgiveness is a way of wielding bolt-cutters…
And snapping the chains that shackle us?
Forgiveness is saying: “What you did was so not okay…I refuse to be connected to it anymore.”

Forgiveness is about being a freedom fighter.