by Rev. Canon David B. Tabo-oy
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”Matthew 18:21-,22, ,32-,35 NIV
We are all too familiar with these words of Alexander Pope, “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” This is an aphorism that means making mistakes is part of human nature. Yet, for humans to forgive each other for those errors that’s more like something a god would do. It is sad to note though that we usually use the first clause of this saying as an excuse to our faulty ways. Yet as followers of Christ we must not stop trying to submit ourselves to the whole principle. Forgiveness. This is the gist of our Gospel lesson this Sunday.
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In answering the disciples’ request for help in praying Jesus teaches them that forgiveness — both the giving and the receiving of it — is reciprocal, one cannot have it without doing it. “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15). In answering Peter’s request for help in understanding how far forgiveness needs to go Jesus teaches that God’s forgiveness surpasses both our deserving and our comprehension of it; we who have first been forgiven must, therefore and thereupon, forgive those who have wronged us so much more lightly. Forgiveness in the Gospel of Matthew is not only relational it is reciprocal and reliant. When teaching his disciples to pray Jesus would have us say, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). This fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer is echoed in the lesson of this parable about the kingdom, reflecting it back in reverse. We ought to forgive as our King has forgiven us, Jesus says.
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Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors; as a prayer this puts the emphasis on what we will receive in turn for the forgiveness we have offered. Forgive your brother or sister from your heart; the parable turns the tables, teaching us that we have been first forgiven and encouraging us to forgive in turn. Taken together, this is a composite picture of the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom we practice, both of which are driven by forgiveness.
I am reminded of this simple anecdote about forgiveness. There was once a hand whose fingers were great friends. The owner of this hand started a dangerous job and, despite the care he gave the rest of the fingers, the thumb always came off worse, with lots of cuts and bruises. At first, the other fingers asked the thumb’s forgiveness for their clumsiness, and the thumb did indeed forgive them. However, this happened so many times that, one day, the thumb decided to forgive the fingers no more. He stretched himself away from the fingers, and wanted nothing to do with them. Initially, the thumb looked dignified, straight, rigid and aloof. However, that kind of position was forced and ridiculous. The owner even had to keep that hand in his pocket, and there the fingers suffered in darkness and obscurity. Finally, the thumb understood that it had all been his fault, and he asked the fingers’ forgiveness, fearful that they would reject him. On the contrary, the fingers easily forgave him, because they – better than anyone – knew that we all make mistakes. Friends once again, all five of them worked together to prove to the owner that they were perfectly well again. Before long, they returned to the light again, this time well aware that they should always forgive each other, and thus avoid ending up inside a gloomy and depressing pocket.
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The point of this parable is clear, and its demands both in the context of the Gospel of Matthew and its application in our congregations and communities today is urgent. Forgiveness lies at the heart of our faith in God and our love of one another. Forgiveness, which we receive from God our King in the person of Jesus is what our King expects from his subjects in their dealings with each other. This picture is every single one of us. The apostle Paul makes it clear in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death. The scriptures clearly show us that there is nothing we can do to pay the debt of sin. How can we offset our sins when death is deserved? We cannot. There is nothing we can do to get bout of the consequences of our actions. But God has forgiven the debt and set us free from our slavery to sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The apostle Paul pictured this amazing grace in Ephesians 2, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)…”(Ephesians 2:4–5 NASB 2020)
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Preaching on this same story, John Chrysostom, the early 5th century Archbishop of Constantinople, invited his hearers to consider their own indebtedness to God saying, “What then are God’s good deeds? He created us from nothing, he made the whole visible world for us, the heaven, the sea, the earth, animals, plants and seeds. I must be brief because of the infinite number of his works. Into us alone of all that are on earth he breathed a living soul. He planted a garden for us. He gave us a helpmate and set us over all the brute species, and crowned us with glory and honor. And yet, after all this, when humanity turned out ungrateful toward its benefactor, he thought us worthy of an even greater gift – forgiveness.” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament, vol. 1b, [IVP, 2002] p. 86)
Let us pray.
O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 19 Collect BCP)
