On Forgiveness

 This sermon was given at our Holy Communion services on Sunday 13th September. The Gospel that morning was Matthew 18:21-35.

St Peter gets a bad rap, doesn't he? He always seems to get the wrong end of the stick in his interactions with Christ. Looking back, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see he often just doesn't understand what seems obvious to us, or he drops clanger after clanger. Nowhere is this more obvious than at Easter when he cries out his unwavering commitment to never betray his friend and saviour, only to do exactly that three times after Christ's arrest.

 It's even more ironic, then, that we find it is Peter who is questioning the limits of forgiveness in our Gospel this morning. I wonder if he looked back upon this conversation on forgiveness when he heard that cockerel crowing that day?

 I think sometimes though that hindsight can be unhelpful. Sure, it can help us see the irony in a situation such as this, but also, I think it can cloud our judgement. In our Gospel, we see Peter posing a question that seems to be born of frustration - "how many times do I have to put up with this nonsense, Jesus?" - but I'm not entirely sure that's where Peter is coming from here. I think there's a clue in a more modern phrase...

 "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

 Forgiveness normally is a one-time thing. If we're feeling magnaminous, then maybe we might forgive a second time. Any more than that, and we're foolish; we're being played.

 But here's the thing, Peter doesn't ask whether once, twice, or even three times is enough when testing the limits of forgiveness. He reaches for something radical, something that represents the nature of God - he suggests seven times might be a good number. The number seven represents perfection and completeness in scripture, and so, in suggesting forgiving up to the seventh time, Peter is striving for perfection. I don't think he's frustrated at all in this question; I think he's aiming to become more like God, to become more perfect.

 But Jesus turns the whole concept on its head. "Not seven", he says, "but seventy seven". Or, as some translations interpret, "seventy times seven". Perfection is not good enough when it comes to forgiveness; Christ says be better than that. Forgive beyond perfection - forgive eleven times better than perfection. Or ten times perfection times perfection again. That's how many times we should strive to forgive.

 

 We can get hung up asking whether it's seventy-seven or seventy times seven that Jesus means here, but that is to miss the point quite spectacularly. Christ pushes Peter past the uncountable. There's effectively no difference between the numbers; the point is they are so high that we'd lose count. We're not supposed to be keeping a score. Indeed, if we are keeping a count of how many times we forgive someone, are we really forgiving them at all? Or are we just making marks on the prison wall until we reach the magical tally point at which we can finally write them off, safe in the knowledge that our own slate is clean?

 But the parable Christ tells next seems to put a nail into that coffin. Our own forgiveness seems intrinsically linked to the extent in which we ourselves are willing to forgive. Jesus shows it with a similar hyperbole to what we have already seen. In the parable we heard, the first servant is forgiven ten thousand talents' worth of debt. In today's parlance, that's probably about eight and a half billion pounds. However, when this servant refuses to pass on even a tiny fraction of that forgiveness, shaking down their own debtor for one hundred denarii - no small sum at roughly fourteen thousand pounds today, but peanuts compared to the billions he himself had been forgiven, that servant finds his own forgiveness is forfeited.

 Jesus' connection between forgiving others and finding forgiveness ourselves should not surprise us. We state it every time we pray the prayer he taught us himself: forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. These things are linked, and if we can find ourselves practising radical forgiveness, we shall find ourselves radically forgiven too! Even more forgiven than our own capacity to forgive.

 But before I finish I need to clear a misconception. Forgiving is not forgetting. Our actions, even when forgiven, have consequences, and so should those of others. I can forgive someone for stealing from me without entrusting them to house-sit when I go on holiday (should we ever go holiday again!), and equally, we can forgive those who hurt or abuse us without subjecting ourselves to that hurt or abuse any longer. None of us are Christ, and we are not called to take on the sins of the world. What we are called to do is forgive, as we ourselves are forgiven - until we have lost count of the times we have lost count, and then again, and again, and again, and...

 Amen