15 Pentecost, Cycle A proper 19, September 13, 2020
Genesis 50:15-21 Psalm 103:8-13
Romans 14:1-12 Matthew 18:21-35
The Psalmist proclaimed that "The Lord is full of compassion and mercy."
If the nature of God is compassion and mercy, and we are made in the image of God, how should we act? We too should be people of compassion and mercy.
And what is the word which expresses mercy the best? Forgiveness.
What if we asked God, God how many times do you have to forgive me? Seven times? And what does the Psalmist say, "As far as the east is from the west, so far God has removed our sins from us." That sound like more than seven times. It sound like more than seventy-seven times.
Why does God forgive? Because compassion and mercy is the divine nature.
When Jesus began his ministry, he found many people who believed that they were unforgiven people. Many people felt alienated from God because the role of the religious leaders had become to make sure that lots of people knew that they were not forgiven. Many people did not know that God is compassionate and full of mercy because the gatekeepers were counting sins, rather than declaring forgiveness. The role of religion was to count the number of sins of the people while requiring so many religious hoops to jump through to qualify for God's forgiveness,
Peter, a disciple was aware of the counting sins game in religious circles so he asked Jesus about the limits of forgiveness. "Jesus, how many time do I have to forgive my brother? Seven times." Jesus answered, "Seventy-seven times." And then Jesus told a financial parable about two lenders and two borrowers. One man borrowed a lot and couldn't repay the debt on time and he begged for forgiveness and received total forgiveness of his large debt. This same man who received the forgiveness of his debt went to someone who owed him a small amount and he demanded that this man pay. And when he couldn't he had him punished. The story was told to the big lender the King, and he was furious at the man who happy to receive forgiveness for his great debt but was unwilling to practice forgiveness to the debtor who owed him but a little?
A central teaching of Jesus about forgiveness is what I call the reciprocity of forgiveness. In the Lord's Prayer, in Matthew and Luke, we are taught to pray, "Forgive us our sins, debts, trespasses, as we forgive our debtors, and those who sin and trespass against us. Receiving forgiveness for ourselves is tied to our willingness to practice forgiveness. That is the reciprocity of forgiveness and this a central teaching of Jesus. Jesus often coupled the healing of people with the declaration of their sins forgiven. Lots of sickness involves people living in the state of mind of guilt and not knowing forgiveness. Forgiven is central to both physical and spiritual health.
If we want to be like God, be like Christ, we need to learn the practice of forgiving and being forgiven.
What does forgiveness mean in a practical sense? It means that God is always giving us time to become better. We not perfect beings. We fall short of God's expectations and our own expectation and the expectations of other people. And what does forgiveness mean? It means that God allows us to tolerate ourselves and each others in this process of repentance. If God demanded that we be perfect finished people all at once, we would be doomed. God as a compassionate and merciful parent gives us more time as we together forgive each other and learn how to be more compassionate and merciful people.
We are mistaken, if we think that God's mercy is carte blanche forgiveness to do whatever we want because we know that God will forgive us.
The forgiveness is operative under the condition of always amending our lives toward being better.
Let us today be thankful that God is compassionate and merciful and forgives us. But let us know that the full activation of forgiveness only occurs when we too, receive God's mercy and compassion to forgive others.
And forgiveness is not always easy, which is why we need to receive it as God's gift even as we as a community try to heal in the mutual hurts and harms that we often inflict on each other.
Lord Jesus Christ, today we pray with new fervor, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us." Amen.
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