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Judging by the question Peter asked Jesus, the topic of forgiveness was just as confusing for people in the early church as it is for us in the 21^st century.  According to Matthew, Peter asks Jesus how many times he has to forgive someone who has wronged him, and Jesus says not seven times, but seventy times seven, a Jewish way of saying “infinity.”  Then he tells a parable that seems to compare God to a short-fused boss who generously and extravagantly forgives the debt of one of his slaves, but at the man’s first mistake afterward, turns him over to be tortured for the rest of his life.  As if that’s not difficult enough for us to swallow, Matthew adds a postscript for our benefit: “The same thing will happen to you, if you don’t forgive others from your heart as God has forgiven you.”                       

This parable is more likely to make me try to forgive from fear than from my heart.  But ultimately, I believe that Jesus did not tell this parable to engender fear.  Rather, he told a parable about God’s abundant grace and our expected response of gratitude.

Let’s look at the parable and its context.  The Gospel of Matthew was written for the early church, and Matthew places this parable at the end of a discussion about how church people are supposed to be towards each other.  Behind Peter’s question, “Lord, how often. . .?” are two possible concerns, one focusing on the offended party and the other on the offender.  We know that there must be limits to patience with misbehavior.  Peter may be asking, “If my fellow Christian insults me repeatedly, must I go on suffering this indignity just because she always says “Gee, I’m really sorry!?”  Or Peter may be asking, “Is it really in the best interests of my brother for me to go on tolerating uncivil behavior when it is clear that his repentance is superficial and he has no intention of changing?  That doesn’t seem helpful.” (See Douglas R. A. Hare, Interpretation: Matthew)

These are legitimate concerns–we experience them every day–but Jesus’ answer addresses neither of them. He’s like people who are experienced at dealing with reporters: they communicate what they have in mind, no matter what question has been asked.  Peter’s question has already been answered in the previous paragraphs, in Matthew 18:15-20.  Jesus encourages confrontation and consequences for offenses that threaten Christian fellowship.  According to the Gospel of Matthew, some actions are absolutely not to be tolerated in Christian community.  It is the responsibility of individual Christians and the church to deal forthrightly and openly with them, establishing consequences if repentance does not occur, says Jesus, very clearly in the Gospel of Matthew. Today’s parable deals with different issues related to forgiveness.

First, let’s remember that there is nothing particularly Christian about the practice of forgiveness.  Whatever our religion or non-religion, we must request and grant forgiveness almost every day of our lives.  Most transgressions are trivial and unintentional–garden variety, we might call them. We forget to pick up milk at the market or speak an overly harsh word to someone who then feels hurt by the encounter.  Maybe someone cuts us off at the exit ramp.  These are ordinary consequences of being human and imperfect.  Human community and Christian community require the constant, steady lubrication of both forgiveness and an attitude of grace towards one another’s imperfections or differences. 

  “How many times are we to forgive one another for these types of mistakes,” asks Peter?  According to Jesus, we are to forgive an infinite number of times, someone who has repented, for we have been given and forgiven by God more than our imagination can hold.  As with the agent who owed an absurdly large debt, we too, are in our Creator’s debt beyond any human ability to repay: 

Did we create ourselves? 

Did we create the mountain peaks or the stars at night or the water that makes our life possible?

Are we responsible for the wisdom and grace, love, strength and peace we receive that is beyond our own? 

And what about that which we have done and left undone, sins small and large, seen and unseen for which we are forgiven in Christ each day? 

We are deeply in God’s debt, and God expects us to respond to others with the graciousness God has shown us.  “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small,” says the familiar hymn.  “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.”

There are other dimensions of life where forgiveness is more problematic. In particular, does one forgive, and if so, how and when, if the injury is caused intentionally or is repeated or is malicious, abusive or violent?.  Must Jews forgive the death camp guards?  Must victims of violence in Israel/Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq forgive those who are responsible?  Must victims of rape and murder in Kenya and genocide in the Sudan forgive the perpetrators?  Must African Americans and Latinos unjustly imprisoned forgive the officers and courts who put them there?  Must those who are physically or verbally abused or sexually molested forgive those who heap such injury upon their body and soul?  Are we to hold this parable over the heads of such survivors and tell them Jesus says they must forgive or they will burn in Hell forever?  In spite of what the parable appears to say, I’m convinced that the answer is NO. 

I want us to be careful with this parable, because its misuse causes injury to faithful Christians who struggle to forgive, but cannot do so. When they remember this passage, or it is quoted to them by other, faithful Christians, they often wonder if they are bad people because they can’t forgive, and fear God’s punishment for their lack of forgiveness.  When it is misused, this parable can cause great damage to our sisters and brothers who have already been victims of evil and need now not to be victimized by the church.

This morning, with the words of suffering and trust from Psalm 31 in the background, we bring together this parable of debt forgiveness with Jesus’ words from the cross in Luke 23:34.  When the three passages are seen as threads in a larger fabric, they become not words of fear, but a message of good news, grace and hope.

This gets a little complex, but bear with me, please.  We’re going to talk about power.  Power relationships between people or groups can be equal or unequal.  When power relationships are equal, as they are supposed to be in the church, in marriages and holy unions, scripture is clear: if the other person repents, we are to forgive freely and infinitely.  But when the power relationship is not equal–including in the church and in intimate relationships–when one party holds more power than the other, the biblical directive is different.  Nowhere does the Bible say, that someone of lesser power in the hierarchy must, themselves, forgive a person of greater power who has caused them injury.  Let me say that again:  Nowhere does the Bible say that someone of lesser power must forgive a person of greater power who has caused them injury.  When I read those words in a Bible commentary some years ago, I was so stunned, that I researched it on my own and realized the author was correct. 

The first century Mediterranean world was a very hierarchical society.  Jesus addressed people up and down the hierarchy, and we know that the church always included people of all levels, free and slave, rich and poor, landowner and tenant.  The primary word used in the New Testament for forgiveness, which is the word used in today’s text, comes from the commercial world and has the implication of a more powerful being, whether God or a person, releasing another from a debt or an obligation or a penalty.  To be indebted in a commercial transaction is to be in the inferior position; the creditor is always in the position of power.  The number of people losing their homes in the mortgage crisis makes the power dynamic clear.

The hierarchy of forgiveness upheld by Jesus and scripture is that one forgives those below oneself, or equal to oneself in the hierarchy.  This is why we ask God, who has infinite power, to forgive us.  This is why, in the Lord’s Prayer,  Presbyterians say, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” those who are indebted to us–instead of trespasses or sins.  Forgiveness flows down, from the more powerful to the less powerful.  It does not flow up, from the vulnerable to those who hold power over them.  To have forgiveness flow upward would too often perpetuate patterns of injustice, injury and evil.

Jesus’ parable of a king and his servants could not be more hierarchical.  Again, forgiveness comes down from the most powerful to the least powerful.  Jesus is clear in his parable:  if one chooses to accept the gift of forgiveness from one higher up or equal, “that choice must govern those situations from which one benefits as well as those where one’s own debt is insurmountable” (Ringe, 1985, 95).  In Jesus’ parable, the progression of forgiveness does not move up the structure of power from the lowest agent to the middle and then to the king, but only down, from the king.

Some of you know that I am a survivor of assault and sexual violence in childhood perpetrated by people who were not part of my immediate family.  When I preach about the power of good to triumph over evil, or life over death; when I preach about a Christian response to capital punishment, or the roles of forgiveness and healing; when I speak about the power of God to redeem even the most horrible experiences that can happen to us, I speak from personal experience of great evil.  I speak, as well, from personal experience of the grace of God manifest is more ways than I can know or name, for which I am immensely grateful, and to which I trust my life. 

This also means that, although there are times to address the easier dimensions of forgiveness, I could not look myself in the mirror if I preached merely garden variety forgiveness or dodged those times when forgiveness is either extraordinarily difficult or impossible. Your experience need not be the same as mine to have encountered times when forgiveness is difficult or seems impossible.  Such times are a part of life, no matter what our life story is.  So let’s talk about forgiveness: what it is and is not, when we forgive, and when we take the business of forgiveness off our shoulders and turn it over to God.

Here is what forgiveness is not: