Genesis is the book of beginnings, but it is also the book of sibling rivalry. Cain kills his brother Abel, Jacob steals Esau’s birthright, and Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery. But we just heard the reconciliation of Joseph with his brothers. Even though they wanted to harm Joseph, he could see God’s hand at work, enabling Joseph to save his family from famine. The brothers intended to harm Joseph, but God intended that same action for good, to save many people, more than you can count. Out of fear, the brothers ask Joseph to forgive them. Graciously he does. Now Peter will ask Jesus about how often he should forgive. READ Matthew 18:21-35
Have you ever tried to guess how many jellybeans are inside a jar at the state fair? Or tried to count the stars on a deeply dark night? Both are more than you can count. Or have you tried to wrap your head around a billion dollars? I realize it can be counted, but my brain would give up first. Today Peter asked Jesus, “How often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” At first seven seems like a lot, maybe because I can count to seven. Forgiving can be hard and to do it seven times, especially toward the same person is a big ask. So, when Jesus replies, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times” we are like, “No Way” you have got to be kidding. I didn’t want to forgive seven times, and now you say I must forgive over ten times more!
I learned this week, this number may refer back to Genesis. Jesus is recalling the jealousy and tension of Cain and Abel and how Cain is pushed from the land after he kills his brother. Yet strangely, God promised seven-fold vengeance against anyone who slays Cain (Gen. 4:15). Just think of all this as messy family dynamics which are about to get worse. Cain’s son Lamech, after killing someone, claims that God will avenge him seventy-seven times” (Gn. 4:24). Jesus’s call to his new community is to live out a reversal of escalating vengeance through unlimited forgiveness. Jesus is calling us to extravagant forgiveness, more than we can count, forgiveness.
“A story is told of two friends who were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey, they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand, ‘Today my best friend slapped me in the face.’
They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him. After he recovered from nearly drowning, he wrote on a stone, ‘Today my best friend saved my life.’
His friend asked him, ‘After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?’ The other friend replied, ‘When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it’” (Sermons.com, Stephen Felker, How Often Should I Forgive?).
Jesus asks us to forgive more times than we can count, then tells a parable to help us understand forgiveness. You know the parable of the Unforgiving Servant, how one with an enormous debt is forgiven but then locks away a fellow slave for the debt he owes. I had always written off the size of the first slave’s debt as hyperbole, but what if this slave was not a slave as we think of them today, but a servant who oversees the king’s vast wealth? What if he was like Joseph was to the Pharoh managing his assets, and keeping the flow of property and wealth moving towards the king? Then his debt of ten thousand talents makes more sense. You see one talent is worth 15 years of labor, so 10,000 talents is like our national debt. How could a slave create such debt? It is an amount more than you can count.
Yet if the servant was more like middle management, skimming what he can off the top, then maybe the king’s forgiveness was to change the system, was to be like Jubilee when debts are forgiven. But the unforgiving servant says no and throws his fellow servant in jail for a minor debt. He could have shared the forgiveness he received with his fellow servants. Forgiveness should breed forgiveness. But no. The king confronts him saying, “I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” (33).
Does that remind you of anything? Maybe “Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors” when Jesus taught us to pray the Lord’s prayer earlier in Matthew (6:12). That “as” is pretty important. We forgive because God first forgave us through Christ’s death and resurrection. “The reason for the connection between God’s forgiving us and our forgiving others is because of the sheer power of God’s forgiveness. It is so great that it simply must and will change us. The reason God expects us to forgive as a result of our being forgiven is the same reason you can expect to be wet after diving into (a lake): water is wet and when you immerse yourself in it, you get wet. So also with forgiving grace: grace is magnetic and beautiful. When God immerses you in grace and saves your life eternally by it, you will be dripping with grace yourself. You will be full of grace and truth and so spread it to others” (Sermons.com, Scott Hoezee, The Long Haul).
So, I wonder, what keeps us from offering compassion and mercy to others when we have received so much? Why do we withhold forgiveness? I think sometimes we hold on to the wrong, the hurt we feel, because have righteous anger, or think we will show them, by not forgiving. But who does that actually hurt? We end up being tortured like the unforgiving servant. But this torture is of our own making. Even if you have held onto a hurt for many years and cannot see a way to offer forgiveness, know that you can rechoose. Hold your pain up to the love of God and the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross and breathe in God’s forgiveness. Consider letting go of the hurt and moving towards the light of forgiveness. I am not saying this will be easy, but it is worth the effort. Because in the end, we only hurt ourselves when we fail to forgive.
John D. Rockefeller built the Standard Oil empire. Not surprisingly, Rockefeller was a man who demanded high performance from his executives. One day, one of those executives made a two million dollar mistake. Word of the man’s enormous error quickly spread throughout the executive offices, and the other men began to make themselves scarce, not wanting to cross his path. One man didn’t have a choice, however, since he had an appointment with the boss. So he straightened his shoulders and walked into Rockefeller’s office. As he approached Rockefeller’s desk, he looked up from the piece of paper on which he was writing. “I guess you’ve heard about the two million dollar mistake our friend made,” he said abruptly. “Yes,” the executive said, expecting Rockefeller to explode. “Well, I’ve been sitting here listing all of our friend’s good qualities, and I’ve discovered that in the past he has made us many more times the amount he lost for us today by his one mistake. His good points far outweigh this one human error. So, I think we ought to forgive him, don’t you?” (Dale Galloway, You Can Win with Love, Word Pub., p. 215).
If Rockefeller can forgive a two million dollar mistake, maybe we can find it in our hearts to forgive that lingering hurt, to offer grace to someone we love but who created a wedge in our relationship. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you forget, but you allow the winds of forgiveness to blow the sand, and you remember all the times that person saved you in some way. Jesus clearly wants us to forgive our brothers and sisters. To forgive big debts, small hurts, and to forgive more than you can count. So, let’s not end up like the unforgiving servant tortured by the things we can’t forgive. Let us be like Joseph who can see God’s hand in life enabling us to forgive our siblings. L et us embrace forgiveness, for it’s new beginnings, the way it can change a broken system, how Jesus paid forgiveness forward and now we live in God’s love and have the choice to share that love and forgiveness with others. Because we forgive “as” God forgave us. Amen.
Leave A Comment