Forgiveness
/
Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? -Matthew 18:21
Last Sunday’s gospel was about conflict management. Jesus spoke to the disciples how to approach someone who has wronged you, and then, if they do not change their ways, he recommended that they “Treat them as a gentile or a tax collector.” The thing is, Matthew himself had been a tax collector and most of the church members reading Matthew’s gospel had once been Gentiles. So Jesus, in other words, was asking them to treat them as they themselves would want to be treated - with patience and forgiveness.
So this week, upon having heard that advice, Peter asks Jesus how often he would be expected to forgive someone whose ears remain closed and heart remains stubborn. “As many as seven times?” he asks.
In the NRSV version of the bible, Jesus replies, “77 times.” In some other versions, it’s translated 70 times 7. Either way, the number seven implies infinity in the bible, so by multiplying it, Jesus meant to convey that you pretty much have to forgive your sibling in faith an unlimited amount of times. Really? This must be one of the tallest orders in the gospels! We know all too well what a challenge it can be to forgive - even once - let alone unlimited times. What about tough love? What about healthy boundaries? What about self-care? What about not being a doormat? Can Jesus be serious?
Each Sunday we pray the words that Jesus taught us: Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Do we forgive those who sin against us? Can we? Especially if they’ve really hurt us? Can this be the expectation?
Jesus says, yup, sorry. It is. Keep on forgiving - like he did. Jesus himself forgave even his executors. If we mean to be serious about following Jesus, we need to wrestle with what it really means to forgive (and what it does not mean) and then practice doing it infinite times, even when it’s really difficult to do. Even when we don’t want to. We have to drop all the grudges we carry toward ourselves, others and God.
So this Sunday we’ll be exploring the practice of forgiveness, even in an era when there’s plenty of hurt going around. How can we practice forgiving those who sin against us as God forgives us?
