Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday September 13, 2020
Scripture:
Matthew 18:21-35
Jesus’s disciples came
up to him one day to ask him about this Kingdom of God that he kept talking
about. What is it going to be like? Who is going to be the greatest person in this
kingdom? And Jesus, rather than
proclaiming any one person to be the king in this kingdom, instead he started
talking about community. He talked about
living well together. He talked about
being humble, and welcoming the least valuable members of our current
society. He talked about how to resolve
disputes in this community when they eventually arise. And he promised that he would be there at the
center of this community, at the center of this kingdom.
Peter, one of the
disciples, well, he was listening hard to everything that Jesus had to
say. He recognized that it wasn’t going
to be easy, living in this sort of community.
And so he asked Jesus, “When someone does something wrong to me, I can
forgive them. It will be hard, but I can
do it. And if they do something wrong to
me again, I can forgive them again. How
many times should I continue to forgive them?
Shall I forgive them seven times?
After all, seven is the number of wholeness, the number of perfection,
and so a seven-fold forgiveness is perfect forgiveness.”
But Jesus stopped him
there, before he could go any further.
Jesus said to him, “Seven times isn’t enough, because what happens the
eighth time that they do something wrong to you. No – instead of withholding forgiveness after
seven times, you must forgive them seventy seven times; even seventy times
seven times. Too many times to keep
track of, too high of a number to be able to keep score. Perfection, multiplied.”
Now I could stand here
today, and preach a sermon about the beauty and importance of forgiveness. I could quote the bible at you, and cite the
tradition of the church, and talk about how forgiveness is central to our
identity as followers of Jesus Christ. I
could talk about how, each time when we pray the Lord’s Prayer together, we
say, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against
us.” I could talk about the Old
Testament idea of jubilee, where after 7 cycles of 7 years, all debts would be
forgiven and everyone in society could have a fresh start on equal
footing. I could read the parable of the
Prodigal Son, whose wrongs were forgiven and he was welcomed home. I could talk about Jesus, on the cross,
calling out to the one whom he calls Father asking for forgiveness for those
who were torturing and crucifying him.
But I can’t preach
that sermon. I can’t preach it, because
forgiveness is hard. Forgiveness is so
hard, that it borders on impossible. If
forgiveness were easy, then it wouldn’t be something that Jesus needs to teach
us. If forgiveness were easy, then there
would be no need for Truth and Reconciliation commissions in South Africa, in
Rwanda, or here in Canada. If
forgiveness were easy, then philosopher Jacques Derrida wouldn’t have written,
“forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable” ("On Forgiveness"), for if something is easily
forgivable then it doesn’t require a true act of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is hard.
When I think of the
times when I have had to forgive someone, it brings up feelings of discomfort,
of stomach churning. It is a visceral
response. I’m not going to share any details,
but I think of a time when someone in my life betrayed a significant
trust. It hurt. I lost sleep over it. That betrayal of trust worked its way
backwards, and made me lose my love for something that I had previously
enjoyed. I was sad, and I was angry. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with that
person ever again.
Jesus says that we are
to forgive someone 77 times, and here I am, struggling to forgive someone just
once.
I remember discussing
forgiveness in a class at AST, and how difficult forgiveness is, and the
ethical dimensions of forgiveness. Our faith gives us an absolute imperative to
forgive. Jesus tells us that we are to
forgive – no ifs, ands, or buts. We can’t put conditions on our forgiveness –
if only that person would do this or say that, then I could forgive them. No – Jesus tells us that we are to
forgive. Yet ethically, what does it
mean to forgive someone who has done something illegal or harmful, and shows no
signs of stopping or wanting to change their behaviour.
I think that, before
we look at what forgiveness is, it is important to look at what forgiveness is
not.
Forgiveness is not
easy. I think that is pretty easy to
understand.
Forgiveness is not
forgetting. If something is so trivial
that we could forget it, then does it really need forgiving?
Forgiveness is not
allowing ourselves to become doormats.
Too often, these words of Jesus telling us that we are to forgive
someone who has done us wrong 77 times, or seventy-times-seven times – too
often these words have been interpreted, often by clergy, to encourage people,
especially women, to remain in abusive relationships. But forgiving someone does not mean that you
give them permission to do the same harm to you over and over and over again.
Forgiveness is also
not the same thing as reconciliation.
Forgiveness is the act of letting go of the hurt. Reconciliation is rebuilding a
relationship. As followers of Jesus, I
do believe that we are called to reconciliation as well as to forgiveness, and
I think that forgiveness is the first step towards reconciliation, but they
aren’t the same thing. In order for
reconciliation to happen, there has to be a commitment by both parties to
rebuild the relationship, and forgiveness is a necessary part of the process so
that past wrongs aren’t continually being held against the person. Forgiveness, the letting go, can happen
without reconciliation; but reconciliation can’t happen without
forgiveness. They are related, but they
aren’t the same thing.
This is what forgiveness isn't. So what is forgiveness
then?
A wise mentor once
told me that forgiveness is about not giving another person permission to take
up space in your brain, rent-free. Or,
to flip it around, writer Anne Lamott says that when we don’t forgive, it is
like drinking rat poison ourselves and expecting the rat to die (Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts of Faith). When we hold on to our resentments, our
anger, our pain, the person who caused them isn’t affected at all – we are the
ones who are harmed when we withhold forgiveness. We give permission to that other person to
occupy space in our brains, and to continually cause us pain. Forgiveness is the act of letting all of that
go.
In the parable that
follows the teaching, the person who refuses to forgive another’s debts is sent
off to be punished, to be tortured. And
while this may seem to be an extreme reaction, I think that often the torture
that we experience when we don’t forgive another person doesn’t come from
outside – instead the pain that we continue to experience over and over again
is coming from inside ourselves.
Getting back to my own
experience of a betrayal of trust, I ended up working through my pain with a
spiritual advisor who was able to help me to let go of this pain and anger. I don’t think that reconciliation is ever
going to be possible in this situation, but if the person who betrayed my trust
were ever to express a genuine desire for reconciliation, I would be open to
it. For now though, forgiveness is going
to have to be enough.
In that conversation
at AST about the difficulty of forgiveness, and the ethical implications, my
professor, Dr. Alyda Faber, said, “the first step towards forgiveness is a
desire to forgive.” Forgiveness is
hard. If we don’t want to forgive
someone, then we aren’t ready to go there yet.
She shared her own story with us, and said that each morning she would
wake up and ask herself, do I want to forgive that person yet. And for the longest time, the answer was
no. She wanted to hold on to her anger
and pain. But then one morning she woke
up, and the answer was yes. She wanted
to forgive the person. She wasn’t able
to forgive them yet, but she had taken the first step.
And I think that this
might be why Jesus tells us that we may have to forgive someone 77 times, or
490 times. Because it’s a process – it’s
not like we can chose to forgive someone once and it’s over.
Even in the process of
writing this sermon, I dug up my old pain thinking about how I had been
betrayed. And I had to make a conscious
decision once again to forgive that person – to not let myself dwell on the
pain that had been inflicted.
To move from a
betrayal of trust to a much more traumatic event, I want to finish with a
powerful song by Canadian rapper Shad called "I'll Never Understand." He wrote this song with his mother,
Bernadette Kabango. She is Rwandan, and
several of her family members were killed in the genocide in 1994 – her father,
her brother, her sister. She wrote a
poem about the process of forgiveness, and her words and voice are interwoven
with her son’s voice. She talks about
the process of forgiveness being like untying the chains that were keeping her
bound to the people who killed her family.
Her final words in the poem are:
“I untied the chains,
Painfully, purposefully
Knowing the one who said to do it
seventy times seven
Totally understands the depth of my
pain.”
(If
you want to listen to the song, you can find it by clicking here.
Content warning: the song talks about the events that inspired it.)
And I think that’s
maybe the key to all of this. Jesus
tells us to forgive again and again, but he isn’t telling us this in any
superficial sort of way. Jesus knows
what it is like to forgive the people who were torturing and killing him. The one whom Jesus calls “Father” knows what
it is to forgive the ones who killed their child.
Forgiveness is
hard. But we are called to untie the
chains that keep us bound to the past, bound to our pain, bound to the one who
caused us the pain. We are called to
untie those chains and move on towards healing and freedom. And may God be with us as we go, and may the
Holy Spirit give us the strength to do so.
Amen.
Image: “chained”
by Jamie Bradway
CC BY-NC-ND 2.0