Forgiving one another from the heart
A sermon for an induction, based on Matthew 18: 21-35
Peter asks Jesus about
forgiveness ‘How many times should I forgive?’. What a good question.
She let me down again
– should I forgive her again?
He really hurt my
feelings this time with what he said - how can I forgive him?
We have a new minister
who makes mistakes: I have a new church who behave oddly – how can we keep
forgiving and understanding each other?
What difference would
it make to this world if we really took forgiveness seriously? How many times
should I forgive?
So Jesus tells one of
his parables. A parable about forgiveness.. or maybe unforgiveness.
A slave owes his king
10,000 talents. A talent was about a year’s wages for a labourer. This is a
huge sum.
Even if the man lives
on nothing and gives all that he earns to the king it would take him 10,000
years to pay him back. This slave is in deep, deep trouble. Jesus doesn’t tell
us how this man has racked up that kind of debt – but he wants us to know that
when the king threatens to sell the man, his wife & children and everything
he owns it will still not make more than the tiniest dent into the amount he
owes.
He cannot pay this
debt.
So he begs ‘have
patience me and I will pay you all I owe’.
No he won’t. He can’t.
He can never earn enough to pay the king back – not in a month of Sundays (or
approximately 10,000 years).
But the king has pity,
releases the man, and, says Jesus, forgives the debt.
But then Slave number
1 bumps into Slave number 2, who owes him a hundred denarii.
Now a denarius is the
daily wage for a worker – so in other words, Slave 2 owes about 100 days’ or 4
months’ wages. So he begs ‘have patience me and I will pay you’. It may take a
year – or even two – but he should be able to pay his debt off, because it’s 4
months wages, not 10,000 years wages.
But Slave 1 – because
he is nasty and unforgiving- throws Slave 2 into prison until he pays off the
debt.
So Jesus shows us what
unforgiveness looks like – pretty stupid, actually, fairly inhuman, if we’re
honest: a man who has been forgiven 30,000 times what his mate owes him refuses
to be moved by almost exactly the same plea that got him off his huge debt
‘have patience me and I will pay you’.
As so often with
Jesus’ parables this is a ridiculously exaggerated story – no-one, surely would
be so stupid as Slave 1.
But he gets his
come-uppance.
His fellow slaves are
as outraged as we are by his awful, mean, nasty behaviour and tell the king
what has happened.
Then the king summons
Slave 1 and points out ‘I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me
- you should have been just as forgiving’.
And then the king does
something strange – maybe we miss it because we’re so pleased to see horrible
Slave 1 get his just desserts – the king hands Slave 1 over to be tortured
until he has paid the whole debt.
What debt? Didn’t the
king forgive Slave 1 – so he wiped out his debt. Except he didn’t, did he?
We call this story the
story of the unforgiving servant or the unforgiving slave – but we could call
it the story of the unforgiving king – because when the king hears what Slave 1
has done he re-activates the debt which he is supposed to have forgiven.
And Jesus tells us
this story to help us to think about forgiveness. Perhaps we wonder if Jesus
tells the story to show how God forgives. We often assume that any ‘king’ in a
parable is automatically meant to be God. But surely we don’t want God to treat
us like the king – who forgives but then changes his mind.
So how does God’s
forgiveness work, and can it help us with our forgiveness?
Jesus tells Peter to
forgive not just 7 times, but 70 times 7 – in other words – stop counting!
Forgive, keep being ready to forgive, never give up on forgiveness. But the
parable also tells us that forgiveness must be real, and lasting and ‘from the
heart’. You can’t just say you forgive someone and then take it back later.
And the parable also
reminds us that when we stop to take in how much we have been forgiven, it will
make our much smaller amount of forgiveness that much easier to offer.
When we recognise that
God, compared to the King on the story, is even more generous, even more loving
and forgiving, with a grace that lasts and never gives up on us... When we know
how we are forgiven, then we know we can afford to forgive. God’s forgiving
love can change us into people who can be forgiving – truly, deeply, once and
for all – people who offer a forgiveness which lasts – and which changes lives
forever.
So sisters and brothers
in Christ, as you start on this new chapter together, be ready to forgive &
be blessed in your lives together, as God wishes to forgive and bless you.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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