In an imperfect world we need to be ready to forgive and we need to be ready to receive forgiveness. Both things can sometimes be hard. It can sometimes be hard to give forgiveness and to give it completely. It can also sometimes be hard to receive forgiveness and to accept that we are forgiven. Jesus tells us in all these issues to take as our reference point the forgiving nature of God.
Peter asks Jesus how often he must be ready to forgive someone who is sorry. He no doubt thinks his offer is generous… seven times he offers. Jesus’ answer is basically that he should not limit his forgiveness. The passage which our translation has as seventy seven times could also be translated “seventy times seven times” so the point is times without number.
Jesus’s point is that we are in receipt time and time again of the mercy of God. Would we want to place a limit on God’s mercy towards us. If we have received mercy and depend upon God’s mercy we must be merciful too. The poet, George Herbert, put the point of today’s parable succinctly:
“He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself.”
Jesus’ parable illustrates the teaching from the Lord’s Prayer: forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. The king in the story forgives an enormous debt. Just to give you an idea of that ten thousand talents would be about the equivalent of 100,000 days wages or 274 years of wages. A debt which could not be repaid. The unjust servant in turn will not forgive his fellow the equivalent of 100 days wages. That is a significant sum but nothing compared to the forgiveness that he has received.
The forgiven servant’s lack of forgiveness for his fellow is shameful and has terrible consequences for him. A refusal to forgive can have hard consequences for us too.
In Great Expectations by Charles Dickens the grotesque character, Miss Haversham, is a lady wasted by time who wears a faded yellowing wedding dress, holding on to the grudge against the man who jilted her at the altar many years before. She lives in a bubble of grudge which leads her to behave cruelly to those around her.
Holding on to an injustice can eat at us and make us bitter; a sense of grievance can be a powerful and overbearing thing even if it is a justified sense of grievance.
But should we always forgive? Peter’s question in today’s gospel is about forgiving someone who is repentant. What about forgiving the unrepentant? What about forgiving abusers or people who have destroyed our lives? People who have done us enormous wrong? To say to someone who has been badly abused by someone, someone who is unrepentant perhaps, “you must forgive” could be rather like compounding the abuse and saying to the person: “you are a bad person because you cannot forgive.”
I’m not suggesting though that we should only forgive the repentant. It certainly helps if someone is repentant but thankfully Jesus did not limit his forgiveness to the repentant. He said from the cross: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” If we love much we can forgive much and not just for our own sakes but we can rise above the wrong that someone else has done and still see them as someone to understand and even love.
Our Old Testament reading today is interesting. Joseph’s brothers say “sorry” but their motivation does not seem to be sorrow but a desire to save their own skins. It reminds me of the story of the prodigal son in St Luke’s gospel. The Son when he comes to his senses does not seem at first to be motivated by sorrow but by self-preservation. He knows he will be better off in his father’s house. (Luke 15.17-18).
You could imagine Joseph saying: “well you’re not really sorry are you? You just want to save your own skins!” He doesn’t though. His reference point is not what his brothers have done, it is what God has done. After all, no-one “deserves” forgiveness as such. If it was deserved, it wouldn’t be forgiveness. Forgiveness is always a gift. But if we remember that we have received much, we should be prepared to give much.
And perhaps the idea of referring things to God may even be able to help in the extreme cases where people struggle with the pain of great wrongs, unrepented. If there are situations where we cannot forgive, perhaps we can still find ways to “Let go and let God” and try to work through the pain of the wrong-doing and leave judgement to God.
Amen.
