“The Way of Forgiveness”
Matthew 18:21-35
Luke 22:45-51
Preaching on forgiveness requires a certain amount of bluntness, because mercy is so essential and forgiveness is so important to becoming the kind of people God calls us to be and to co-creating the kind of world—the beloved community, the realm of heaven—that God intended.
Preaching on forgiveness also requires a fair amount of tenderness, because forgiving is hard, forgiving can be scary, and forgiving sometimes goes against everything our gut is telling us.
Preaching on forgiveness is particularly tricky because your preacher needs forgiving as much as anyone, and she’s not nearly as good at forgiving as she should be. But she’s working on it.
Given all those caveats, I hope you’ll bear with me this morning. My plan is to begin with the bluntness and then, after we’ve gained some understanding of the reason for it, finish with tenderness.
And as we begin, I invite you to call to mind and hold in your heart someone or something you need to forgive. It may be a fresh wound or a lifelong scar that’s never healed. If nothing comes to your mind, I invite you to consider something for which you need to be forgiven, if only by yourself.
Pause for a moment and see what comes to mind.
Because forgiveness is not at all theoretical. Forgiveness is one of the more common and concrete challenges we all face as humans. It is central not only to our relationships with one another, but also to our connection with the Holy One.
So, when Peter asked Jesus how many times he needed to forgive someone who’d hurt him, Jesus didn’t mince words.
My guess is that Peter was doing a little brown-nosing, expecting that his suggestion of seven times would win him some sort of gold star. Seven, after all, seems like a lot. Most of us would give up on someone long before we got to seven.
But Jesus’ response blows Peter—and us—out of the water. Not only seven times, but seventy times seven, he says, or, according some translations, seventy-seven times. And neither Peter nor Jesus had pulled their numbers out of thin air.
According to the book of Genesis, you see, Cain was the firstborn son of Adam and Eve. Cain’s birth was followed by the birth of another son, Abel, and in tradition’s first account of sibling rivalry, Cain was so resentful of God’s regard for his little brother that Cain killed Abel and then uttered one of the most cynical lines ever, saying, “What? Am I my brother’s keeper?”
After that, the story goes, God cursed Cain but also promised to protect him from the violence he had inflicted upon his brother. “Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance,” God said.
So there you have Peter’s question about forgiving someone seven times.
Well, Cain went on to have a son who had a son who had a son who had a son who had a son named Lamech. And Lamech was not a particularly nice guy, in part because he carried a huge chip on his shoulder about God’s punishment of his ancestor Cain. Lamech killed a man he said had wounded him, and then bragged about it: “If Cain is avenged sevenfold,” he said, “Lamech will be avenged seventy-sevenfold.”
And so began the “economy of vengeance,” a violent, angry, unforgiving system in which every wrong act was punished, and many wrongdoers were killed. It is that economy—far more than feudalism, capitalism, socialism, or communism—that has shaped our violent, warring, blood-soaked world. It is the economy of vengeance that has filled our prisons to overflowing and sustained the barbaric practice of capital punishment. It is the economy of vengeance and a culture of scapegoating, privilege, and fear that continues to separate people according to race, class, religion, history, gender, and sexuality.
So while Peter was actually offering a measure of forgiveness that would fit nicely into the economy of vengeance, Jesus called for an entirely different way: the way of forgiveness, the economy of mercy. Just as there is no limit to God’s mercy, he was saying, there should be no limit to our willingness to forgive. Just as we have been forgiven of much by God, so we should forgive others.
Jesus seemed to know something many activists do not: That peace and justice begins as an inside job. If we have not made peace within ourselves and in our personal relationships, the outer work of making peace in the world will suffer for it. People who are conformed to the world’s ways of vengeance and violence, scapegoating and retribution will fail to transform that world. The world we live in is the world we make.
We cannot sincerely pray that there be peace on earth if we are not making peace in our own lives. Likewise, it won’t matter that we’ve been a Just Peace church since 1987 if we are an unforgiving congregation of people who hold grudges. We will fail in our mission to be God’s hands and feet, agents of God’s mercy, grace, and healing change, if we refuse to change ourselves.
Refusing to forgive, says the writer Anne Lamott, “is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” Which is to say: Our refusal to forgive another hurts no one more than ourselves. Harboring anger and resentment is, at best, extremely unhealthy.
If we are to replace the economy of vengeance with the way of forgiveness, we must choose to undertake the hard and risky work of forgiveness. I’m not adding the second part of a common phrase—“and reconciliation”—because reconciliation requires two willing parties. But we can’t use another person’s refusal to come to the table as an excuse for our own stubbornness; we can find peace in our forgiveness of another even if the other refuses to meet us halfway. We can choose to begin the process of forgiveness even if we’re not feeling it in our heart; sometimes feeling follows action. If we are to make God’s peace in the world, we must know the healing that comes from being forgiven of God and the peace that comes from forgiving others.
Forgiveness is essential, but it is not easy. And to be clear, forgiveness does not mean acquiescing to mistreatment, abuse, or injustice. At the same time, when we have been hurt deeply by another and a relationship has ended or been badly broken, we must prayerfully examine our own behavior and honestly consider whether we need to forgive ourselves or even ask the other person for forgiveness.
It is my experience that asking for forgiveness for how I responded to being deeply hurt by another opens the door for that person to seek my forgiveness. And then suddenly we can see that we are both hurting and in need of forgiveness and healing.
To walk the way of forgiveness requires grace and courage, hope and a sincere desire for healing. It is a hard road, but it is the only way out of the mess we and our world are in.
Which is harder for you? To say, “I’m sorry?” Or to respond “I forgive you?” Both are essential to forgiveness and healing.
To be God’s partners in healing and transforming the world, we must let God’s Spirit heal and transform us, our wounds, and our relationships. This is the heart of the spiritual life: a humble and joyful relationship with God’s love and grace, a deep connection with Spirit that, if we let it, will always be changing us, will forever be healing us.
Here are a few questions for reflection and action:
For what, and from whom, do you need forgiveness?
What, or whom, do you need to forgive?
How can you seek forgiveness and change your behavior?
How can you begin to forgive?
“Transformation is always possible,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu said. He added that, “We do not heal in isolation. When we reach out and connect with one another—when we tell the story, name the hurt, grant forgiveness, and renew or release the relationship—our suffering begins to transform.”
There is so much hurt to be healed, so much justice to be made, so much peace to seek that the way and the work of forgiveness never ends.
And so I leave you with a blessing for forgiveness from Jan Richardson called, fittingly, “The Hardest Blessing”:
If we cannot
lay aside the wound,
then let us say
it will not always
bind us.
Let us say
the damage
will not eternally
determine our path.
Let us say
the line of our life
will not always travel
along the places
we are torn.
Let us say
that forgiveness
can take some practice,
can take some patience,
can take a long
and struggling time.
Let us say
that to offer
the hardest blessing,
we will need
the deepest grace;
that to forgive
the sharpest pain,
we will need
the fiercest love;
that to release
the ancient ache,
we will need
new strength
for every day.
Let us say
the wound
will not be
our final home—
that through it
runs a road,
a way we would not
have chosen
but on which
we will finally see
forgiveness,
so long practiced,
coming toward us,
shining with the joy
so well deserved.
May it be so.
