Forgiveness from the Heart

A couple of weeks ago More than 90 people – the wounded, the mourning, the defiant – spoke at the sentencing hearing for the gunman responsible for New Zealand’s most deadly terrorist attack, explaining how the massacre changed their lives forever. I read a few of these victim impact statements in the Guardian newspaper.  To be honest it is hard to even imagine what so many people have had to face and will no doubt continue to do so for the rest of their lives.  The trauma must be overwhelming as is so often the case when any of us are so suddenly, pointlessly and brutually hurt by others.  In light of this it makes our gospel reading this morning just so challenging with its imperative to forgive.

How can I, how can we forgive?  And perhaps the honest answer may be – I don’t think I can.  And so, in this context what are we as followers of Jesus to make of this seemingly impossible command?

There are certainly some very stark difficulties and very uncomfortable words given to Jesus that we need to address as we explore the meaning of this gospel and parable.  Firstly, we need to remember the context of our gospel which continues from last Sunday about the imperative of members of the Christian community to be reconciled with one another.  So, what we have now is the inextricable link made between that reconciliation and forgiveness.  Peter has to a large extent taken on board this teaching of Jesus and so he sets the scene by asking him about forgiveness.  Peter extends the normal standard of mercy of the time which was that one could be forgiven three times but no more.  It would seem that seven times was more than generous, yet Jesus’ reply of seventy-seven times sets a whole new standard.  In other words what Jesus says is that forgiveness is not in the end about quantity but rather it is something that must come from the heart.  The point of this whole chapter is clear that Jesus insists on forgiveness and reconciliation to be the hallmark of the Christian community – a community whose sins have been forgiven by God and who only shows itself unworthy of that divine forgiveness if its members are unwilling to forgive the comparatively trifling offences of a fellow brother or sister. 

The parable that follows, it has to be admitted is a pretty horrible or brutal illustration of a refusal to forgive an equal by one who has received from his king or master forgiveness for something infinitely greater.  The shock from this parable comes from the illustration and connection of the king as a kind of figure for God.  However, the behaviour of this king that shifts from his initial decision to sell the defaulting official into slavery along with his wife and children, then the generous impulse to remit the whole of his vast debt, to the final order to hand him over to the gaolers should hardly belong to any Christian or Jewish conception of God.  What Matthew does here is to use the world of the parable as fully as possible to highlight the critical point of God’s extraordinary grace.  And to understand this we need to go back to the parable itself. 

The parable begins with the usual formula, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to …  There is nothing particularly strange or enigmatic about this story except the amount of the king’s servant’s debt, equivalent to something like 150,000 years of wages.  This unrealistic exaggeration only goes to establish the magnitude of the obligation and of course the equally extraordinary act on behalf of the king to forgive it completely because it is unlikely that the servant would ever have been able to repay it.  The king forgave the debt out of pity for his servant – genuine compassion for his failure and the situation he found himself in.  And so, in that final verse of the gospel the critical injunction is forgiveness from the heart.  It is not that we better forgive others or God will get us.  Rather it is about the genuineness of forgiveness that concerns Jesus and not simply the act of excusing others.

This unequivocal injunction to forgive from the heart when we are deeply hurt by others [ and in terms of the parable is again symbolized by the huge debt that is just impossible to repay] then we still have to ask how can we humanly forgive?  How can our forgiveness really be from the heart and what does this mean?  The human response is to say we cannot – it is just too hard.  The gospel response though is different and it is different because of the knowledge and experience of God’s grace through Jesus Christ.  In other words, it is profoundly theological.  Our God is a God of grace.  Like the king in the story, God has compassion on our human failures, and like the king, God acts even more graciously than we could ever expect.  The servant who owed an impossible debt asked for more time to pay what he owed, but the king compassionately and graciously forgave the whole debt!  When we experience such grace, surely, we are transformed in gratitude.  And grace that is experienced and received deeply as grace, in turn can surely only result in a response of grace.  If God’s grace has affected our lives and made a difference then we will live differently in relation to others – we will find ourselves empowered to forgive because even in the most testing and painful circumstances we will at least want to forgive because we know what it is like to have been forgiven.  This may indeed take us a long time – forgiveness, healing, reconciliation is not something that just happens – it cannot often be confined to an act or event [as important and helpful as they may be] but rather it is a journey, a commitment, a determination and a response from the heart that we make day by day.

The critical question that this parable leaves, asks or provokes is not how we can forgive but rather how can we not forgive or at the very least want to forgive, if we have in our hearts and minds received the extraordinary forgiveness of God?  No wonder the fellow servants were so outraged and upset at the servant who had been forgiven so much and who could not go on to forgive his fellow slave for so little a debt?  In fact, what actually happened is that the king’s servant did not really understand or accept the forgiveness that had been granted to him.   By not forgiving his fellow servant he actually was throwing back into the king’s face so to speak the forgiveness that had been given.  His actions said this is not really worth much – this has had no affect on me and so it is taken away.

You can forgive someone until you are blue in the face, but unless they first and foremost realize the injury or offense and in that, then are able to receive the forgiveness, it will have no impact on them.  Of course, on the contrary, it can make a huge difference to us who do the forgiving as it allows us to be free from anger, resentment, bitterness and all the emotions that can weigh us down when we have been so deeply hurt.  And as we forgive, even as we strive and struggle to forgive, we bear witness to the wonderful and extraordinary forgiveness of our God as revealed in and through our Lord Jesus Christ.