Forgiveness

 

Matthew 18: 21-35     Romans 14: 1-12

 

If I were leading this service the closing words would be: The blessing of God Almighty be with you, those you love and those we struggle to love. Those we struggle to love is my addition and I continue to use them because I am challenged every time I say those words

However I was even more challenged when my blessing was only for those I love because it’s so easy to love those people I like but not so easy to love those who have wronged me. Blessing those who have wronged me are often those who I need to show forgiveness to.

 

You may wonder why I have made this addition to the set words. My extra words came about when I was car jacked by a 16 year old called Jay a few years ago. I’m not sure why but it was reported in the national papers and even on the London metro – I can only think there must have been a shortage of news that week and what amused me was it started with Hull vicar carjacked and each report added a little more until it read, elderly, disabled, bespectacled Hull vicar carjacked by young thug.

 

There was a lot of opposition to Jay at the Minster, he had hurt me very much but I just knew that I couldn’t leave it at that, there was more to this young man than being a 15 year old teenage thug and I wanted others to share my feelings. Jay and I did a restorative justice programme and I knew  I had to forgive him so that others could see I didn’t hold a grudge against him this young man became part of Holy Trinity coming in every day and helping out.

He had a great relationship with so many of the congregation that had grown to love Jay. He took communion and said he never had experienced the feeling that receiving the bread and wine gave him.

 

It would be good to end the story there however….

Unfortunately after many months and during a period when the Minster was closed for the whole of January Jay turned to his old mates (he was bored with no one around him to care) and the rest is history the prison door revolved once more. But  I say to everyone who asks watch this space I believe that one day he will walk through the Minster doors again, hopefully having settled down and I hope it is in my lifetime. I will probably never know if this happens but I pray that it is in God’s hands.

 

Somehow it was easy to forgive Jay, his past in care and all the rest of it but I have to admit there are people who I cannot forgive and this troubles me particularly when I read the verses from today’s gospel.

  

The debt which any other person might owe us for the wrong done to us has to be trivial compared to our debt in God's sight. If God can forgive us so great a debt, we should be prepared to forgive the much smaller debt which we might feel is due us.

I am challenged by Jesus’ reply to Peter when he asks how many times must he forgive his brother who sins against him and Jesus replies in answer to Peter’s suggested seven times with

seventy times seven. In the Bible seven is regarded as the ‘perfect’ number, seventy times seven means endlessly.

I have had to ask myself can I forgive  seventy times seven when I am struggling to forgive once.

Let’s turn now to the new testament passage to see what that has to say to us.

Looking at the passage we’ve heard, we see Peter again with his quick tongue as he challenges Jesus on forgiveness and Jesus replies with one of those memorable verses. ‘I tell you not seven times but seventy seven times’. Not what Peter wanted to hear - forgiveness is limitless.

Jesus goes on to tell the disciples a parable, a king wants to settle his accounts with his servants, one servant cannot pay the huge amount he owes 10 000 talents so when the servant begged the master to give him more time the master took pity on him and cancelled the debt and let him go. However then the servant went out and when he found one of his fellow servants who owed him just a hundred denarii he refused to take pity on him and had him thrown into prison. The master finding out what had happened had the first servant tortured until he was able to pay back what he owed.

The difference in those two debts was incomprehensible, the first servant owed 10,000 talents, one talent was equivalent to 15 years wages. Whereas the 100 denarii owed by the second servant was so small, one denarius was equivalent to one days work.

So the first servant was forgiven a huge debt yet he went out and dealt mercilessly with his fellow servant who owed him a debt that was a tiny fraction of what he himself had owed.

 

So the teaching that Jesus is sharing is one that runs through all the New Testament – we must forgive in order to be forgiven. Those who will not forgive others cannot hope that God will forgive them. In the very popular verses of the Sermon on the Mount Matthew 5 it says Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

We say every time in the Lord’s Prayer ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’ Jesus after teaching this prayer goes on to say ‘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)

If the master is God then the amount we owe to him is incomprehensible, it is beyond our reckoning, Jesus paid the ultimate price to take away our sin – he paid with his life no money can pay that price whereas what we are asked to forgive is so small in comparison we should not hesitate, but often we do.  We cannot separate the way we have been treated by God from the way we should treat others. The same mercy we have received must be extended to others because the mercy we have been shown is vastly greater than any mercy we shall be called upon to show.

I forgave Jay and I believe because I forgave him and told him so he found it in his heart to look me in the eye and say sorry to me.

There are many others who have forgiven so much more than I did, Damilola Taylor’s father forgive those that killed him in that alleyway. Maureen Greaves forgave those who killed her husband whilst he was on his way to play at the Christmas Eve service.

I met both these people at the launch of the Agape Stories in York. Just ordinary people yet so filled with God’s love that they can turn a broken life round and work to benefit others through their forgiveness.

 

And perhaps that brings us to the other reading we heard today from Romans.

Paul reminds us not to pass judgement on one another, because each of us will stand before the judgement of God. It is not for us to take God’s place. We may have been hurt, we may have been wronged, we may struggle to forgive, but ultimately the other person is in God’s hands — just as we are.

And perhaps that is part of what forgiveness means. It does not mean pretending that the hurt did not happen. It does not mean saying that what was done was right. It does not mean that there are no consequences. But it does mean refusing to carry the burden of judgement ourselves.

So when we find it difficult to forgive, perhaps we need to look again at the mercy we ourselves have received.

And when we find ourselves judging another person, perhaps we need to remember Paul’s words: “Who are you to pass judgement on your neighbour?” We all stand before the Lord.

The people we struggle to love are not outside God’s mercy. They are people for whom Christ died, people whom God has not finished with, and people whose future, like ours, ultimately rests in his hands.

So may we learn to forgive as we have been forgiven, to show mercy because mercy has been shown to us, and to leave judgement where it belongs — with God.

And perhaps that is why I will continue to say, and struggle with  those words in the blessing:

The blessing of God Almighty be with you, those we love and those we struggle to love. AMEN

 Revd Irene