Harvest and the gift of forgiveness

Psalm 103: 1-13; Matthew 18: 21-25

The shape of Psalm 103 can help us to shape our harvest celebrations today.

It starts “Praise the Lord, O my soul… And forget not all his benefits”

We have come to this chapel to celebrate harvest because we know that everything comes from God, and without God’s love there would be no world, no life, no harvest.

There is so much to give thanks for. Be brave & shout out some of the things you are grateful for – it could be something you see here today, or something else…

.. that’s a pretty impressive list of things for which to praise God.

After praising God for all the good things with which he has blessed human lives, the Psalmist moves on to talk about what this generous God is like:

“The Lord works righteousness and justice for the oppressed…he made known his ways.. he is compassionate and gracious, abounding in love.. “

God is not just a kind of divine vending machine for the stuff we need in our lives,

God is love, patience, grace…

The harvest we see before us is not just a delight for the senses – although it is that! – it is a sign of the great love of God, that he so loves us that he makes a world where all these good things are possible and the earth is fruitful.

With the Psalmist we pause in our harvest to think about what sort of God we worship – a God of love, righteousness, justice, and gracious forgiveness.

Aware that people do not always live lives which match up to the grace and love of the God who created them, the Psalmist then describes in detail the forgiving nature of God.

“He does not treat us as our sins deserve .. as far as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love…

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he moved our wrongdoings from us”.

This compassionate forgiveness of God is perhaps the greatest gift of all – there is nowhere we can go, no distance we can travel where we are outside God’s love.

This is all very well, but it does provide us with a challenge. If God forgives us, and if we are made in the image of God, to be like God, shouldn’t we be forgiving.

Jesus taught his disciples to pray, in what we call the Lord’s Prayer “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. One possible translation of this is “release us from the power of debt”. 

Jesus knows that we need to be released from our debts – and know we are forgiven; but that true release from debts comes when we don’t hold them against others either – when we are released from the power of remembering a debt another person has with us.

In the story we heard from Matthew’s gospel, Peter has clearly taken Jesus’ teaching to heart – he knows he must forgive someone when they sin against him. But he wants to know when this can stop “how many times must I forgive?”. Peter decides to give a generous estimate “Seven times?”.

You might know the little saying “Fool me once – shame on you -  Fool me twice, shame on me” – it’s all over the internet. If you believe that, perhaps you believe that to forgive someone once is OK, but twice is the limit.. seven times would then feel like quite a lot. That’s Peter’s starting point – should I forgive seven times? Perhaps he’s hoping Jesus will say – no 3 times is plenty!

But instead Jesus says ’not 7 times, but  77 times’ or in some translations “not 7 times but 70 times 7” – I don’t think Jesus meant us to get carried away with the maths (490, by the way) – he’s just telling Peter to keep forgiving until he loses count – and then forgive some more.

And why should we forgive? Because of all the forgiveness God shows. To bring home the point, Jesus asks his followers to imagine a king forgiving a massive amount of debt for one of his servants. If that servant then went off and refused to forgive someone else a much smaller amount, how would that play out? Surely any reasonable person who had had a debt of thousands cancelled, wouldn’t begrudge someone who owed him a few pounds?

And so, back to Peter’s question – how often should I forgive? – time without number, if you remember how many times God has been prepared to forgive you.

Then Peter will be free of the power of debt, of petty grudges, of bitterness. And so will we.

So here we are celebrating harvest and giving thanks for all the good gifts we have.

When I was in junior school we had a rather stern headmaster, who would always say the same grace before school dinner – quite a common one  “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful” but he would always add in a growl “..and mindful of the wants of others”. It didn’t improve the enjoyment of the food – though given how bad our school dinners were it didn’t make them any worse.

He had a point, though, that our gratitude and the awareness of need should be linked. I’m sure many of you will want, this harvest-time, to pray for those who do not have enough food in their lives – whose harvests have failed, whose income is perilous, who are not as fortunate as we are. And that prayer might turn to action – because we have so many gifts we want to give to those who need it.

Perhaps we can also recognise the gift of forgiveness we have been given, and be just as generous with that gift – giving out forgiveness just as we have received it – not 7 times but 70 times 7 – and do so with thankful hearts as we release ourselves from the power of debt and guilt and greed.

In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.