“Forgiveness”
Rev. Dr. José Irizarry
When in Rome, as you have often heard, follow local customs. So, in respect for the simplicity and directness of sermon titles that you're accustomed to, because I look at your website and so the titles from the sermons from the last month, I decided to title this message forgiveness. No exegetical juggling can extract any other message at the heart of this text than this that in Christ we are called to forgive one another. So what do you think then if we wrap up this time and then go to the next hymn? Yet, I confess my initial intention was to give the title some spunk to tease your imagination and to make you look at this familiar text with some fresh eyes. Therefore, my original title which was Matthew's math ain't mathing. For when you set aside the message of forgiveness, what remains is a story with a heavy reference on numbers. Matthew, like a middle school teacher challenging young minds, renders an a a narrative of algebraic dimensions. Listen to this. This is your problem. If you have seven forgiving opportunities to offer and are given 70 times seven to spend, will you compare yourself to the person who owes 10,000 talents or the one who owns a 100 dinar? Go ahead and solve the problem. Now, it will be tempting to raise your hand and say, "Oh, I know the answer. Forgiveness." But a good teacher will ask, "How do you get to that result? What is your calculation?" Since forgiveness is an ethical demand that is easier to talk about than to put into practice, some deliberation may be necessary. After all, Jesus refuses to offer a simple response to Peter's question regarding the scope of forgiveness and then relies, as he often did, on a parable. And a parable, as we have learned, is not meant to offer clear guidance on existential matters or present plain facts, but to interrupt the person who is attempting a hasty judgment or a declaration of certainty by disrupting his or her thinking. A parable or parabelling as the Greek word baling suggests throws you throws you off from the facile directions your minds takes you when faced with an important question. The parable is not a story meant to instruct how to think or how to act, but an invitation to delve deep into God's mystery and our faith's spiritual truths. If the parable does not veil some of its meaning, it does not fulfill the purpose of its telling. So here is the parable we are asked to hear today. Matthew may know that forgiveness is something that Christ's emerging community, the new ecclesia formed by the message of Jesus ministry and gospel was unable to fully grasp this understanding of forgiveness. Like any other movement that seeks to challenge the status quo and forge a new understanding of tradition, Jesus followers may have engaged in frequent disputes, not only with people outside the movement who saw them as a threat to society and to religion, but also among members trying to shape the group's collective identity. So the opportunities to offend to oppress, to exclude, and to persecute where an ever present reality requiring an ethical or a divinely sanctioned response. What do we do when facing other people's denial of our personhood and well-being? In Matthew's text, the question actually becomes more personal. What do we do when those who hurt us with their words and actions are the ones who share their lives with us, who dwell among us, and who are to be part of a community with us. Peter introduces this important question after observing that the ecclesia, the gathered groups of Jesus followers were threatening the relational strength that Christ's body needed at that time to do its mission effectively. Reading the chapter in its entirety, one can assume the offenses stemmed from competition among leaders over authority within the community and the dismissal of the gifts of some of the members of the community, especially the least of them or those not at the center of decision making. Well, interestingly enough, these may continue to be underlying factors of at the root of interpersonal offenses within our churches today. Who decides what and who is not considered or excluded from decisions affecting the life of the congregation. So things probably have not changed that much. The may the way that Matthew relates the story suggests that in exercising his leadership within these groups, Peter himself was offended by others. For his question is deeply personal. If someone sins against me, how many times must I forgive? So, I'm always intrigued when I read this passage by how Peter asks a relational question while immediately abdicating his responsibility for the interpersonal mishap. We do not know what caused the break between Peter and the named members of the Christian community. But we are forced to side with Peter in our interpretation as he immediately blames somebody else. Should I forgive this responsible person seven times? And in saying this, the disciple wants to show that he is sufficiently gracious. After all, seven or Sheba in Hebrew is the number that serves as a metaphor of totality, of completion. It is the same word without the vowels, sabah, which means full. In other words, Peter was willing to offer complete forgiveness to the one who aggravated him, perhaps expecting Jesus to condition that highly sacrificial commitment by offering some sliver of permission to dismiss others, reducing the need to pardon. Absolutely. What can Jesus say as an alternative to offering full forgiveness, total forgiveness? How can you up the offer of full pardon? But Jesus, who was keenly perceptive of his disciples intentions and aware of the self-centered way they often place or ask their questions, responds with a seemingly absurd proposition. Seven times is not enough. Let's say 70* 7 as is say as is saying you are telling me that you are willing to forgive all the time and I say to you you have to forgive more than all the time. You want to offer full pardon to the one who sinned against you and I tell you God expects from you more than full pardon. Swift camera shot to Peter's confused face. What? And it is in clarifying the confusion that Jesus shares the parable of a ruler who is owed a vast amount of money. An amount that a servant will not be able to fully pay back in his lifetime. When the debtor is brought before the ruler to pay his debt, the impossibility of fulfilling this responsibility breaks the servant down. After all, it was an oath. And fearing being sold as a slave with his family, he pleads for forgiveness. And the ruler moved to compassion, forgave the whole debt, and the servant walked away. released from the burden of that debt. But memory seems to be short for this character, for the servant pays a visit to another servant who owes him a lesser amount of money. The other servant, unable to pay back at the moment, pleads for more time. But the forgiven servant decides to send his spear to prison to be punished for not fulfilling his neighborly obligation. Now in a parabolic spirit, I would like you to pause and not rush to judgment of the unforgiving servant. Let's consider that it is easier for a ruler with plenty of resources to forgive a debt that may not affect his economic well-being than for a servant to forgive a debt for resources he may need for the sustenance of his family. In addition, we ought to remember that now that the debt has been forgiven, the ruler may retain more authority over this servant who now owes him gratitude and loyalty rooted in a in a binding moral obligation. This sermon may be liberated from debt, but he's certainly not free. Paying a debt may have been the only way to freedom, but now that option is no longer available to him or his family, perhaps for generations, the story's interpretation becomes more complicated in its conclusion. As the God who expects us to offer forgiveness will punish those who do not forgive, becoming himself unforgiven. When we look at the parable seeking to identify where to lay the responsibility for forgiving where the good actors and the bad actors are so that we can take a side and try to imitate the righteousness, we find no concrete answer. The ruler is the victim of unreliable servants. The servant is the victim of an econ economic system established by a ruler that forces him into an impossible debt. And the second servant is the victim of an equal who cannot find a way to pardon his debt. And ultimately, God becomes the victim of our incapacity to see ourselves in relationships that require mutual responsibility for our collective welfare. Those who study, the scholars who study the book of Matthew usually say that Matthew tries in his gospel to make a reflection of what is called God's theosis which means God's full identification with the human condition. And therefore in this parable once our relationships are distorted as humans our understanding of God becomes unsound. So what are we to do with this parable? I invite you to see the story as an act or as a call to view forgiveness not as an ethical mandate. we will always fall short of but as a disposition of mind on heart to hear one another in our flaws and burden abilities and to seek restoration of our relationships as the ultimate goal. Communities like families and congregations cannot survive if members do not cultivate this disposition. We ought not to forgive each other transactionally as if keeping track of how many times we have forgiven and how many times we have received forgiveness because that accounting will be futile if the relationships are not fully restored and the community is not healing. There is no blanket forgiveness to offer left and right without communal accountability. Once we reject the quantitative argument as Jesus did with Peter's gracious attempt to establish a lit mouth’s test, we can then go into the heart of what forgiveness entails. The capacity to understand the offending part and when where the offending part is coming from. The courage to repent when we have participated in the offense. The honesty to let our hurt be known to those who have offended us and the willingness to restore the relationship so that we can move on with building together better spaces of communal living and share ministry. Forgiveness is not a single act but a disposition to engage this living process of human reconciliation for the sake of a healthier world where God's kingdom can be palpably entrenched. to pardon everyone and then dismiss the situation and the person who hurt us may not be enough to define Christian forgiveness. It is more than distributing full pardon. It is a reciprocal engagement in which every person is transformed and liberated by the act of reconciliation. We must not forget that in the process we have been forgiven by others and by God by God who gave his only son to wipe out the depth of our sins. You have often heard the phrase, "I forgive but I don't forget." And those who know the gospel feel a little bit uncomfortable with that phrase. But I think we can confidently say with a twist as a statement of our faith, I forgive because I do not forget the grace and understanding bestow on me when I have failed. And because we have received that grace, we are able to share it with others. So let's go out and do the same. My friends, this is simple math. Amen.
