The Flow of Forgiveness

How do we temper mercy with justice?

When is it time to hold others accountable for their actions and when is it time to forgive others for their failures?

Is there a difference between how we approach these challenges with fellow members of the church and how we do so with those beyond the church?

These are some of the deep questions evoked by our readings today—from the episode of Egyptian destruction in Exodus, to Paul’s desire to bless differences of religious observance while keeping the Romans rooted in Christ, to Peter’s question about how many times to forgive and Jesus’ parabolic response featuring an unforgiving servant.

They are not just questions of a bygone age: these are ones we continue to struggle with in our own time.

Today I’d like us to look more closely at the gospel as a way of approaching some answers.

Peter asks Jesus how many times he’s supposed to forgive a sibling in the church who sins against him, and rather than stating a humanly reasonable limit, like seven times, Jesus instead says forgiveness should be limitless.

To illustrate his point, Jesus then likens the reign of God to a Lord who began to reckon the accounts of his servants.

As would be most financially prudent, a servant whose outstanding debt was truly outrageous was brought before him.

That servant’s debt in talents is the equivalent of a billion euros or dollars—it is an amount so large it approaches the American bank bailouts of 2008 in size and scope.

After the servant begs to have this debt forgiven, the Lord, out of pity, cancels the debt and the servant goes free.

Take a moment to get in touch with how such forgiveness might feel.

Take a deep breath and imagine what such undeserved and unearned freedom would mean to you.

Now take that feeling back to the parable and the forgiven servant’s response.

Instead of seeing his newfound freedom as the template for how to engage fellow companions in the kingdom, the servant instead creates a dam on the river of forgiveness that so recently flowed his way.

“Pay what you owe,” he then demands, and throws his neighbor servant into prison instead of passing on the debt relief he received.

Word of this reaches the Lord’s ears, and where there was once abundant forgiveness, now the servant finds a lifetime of torture while he remains trapped under that mountain of debt.

Jesus warns his hearers that God will do likewise to all of us if we do not forgive a brother or sister from our heart.

Take a moment to let the feeling of that unforgiveness sit with you.

Take a deep breath and notice—how does your body and soul process the pain and violence that arise when someone puts an end to the free flow of grace and forgiveness that was once received?

I don’t know about you, but I do not like the way the weight of unforgiveness sits with me. 

And I can easily imagine how IF I chose to make unforgiveness the norm in my interactions with those who owed me something or who wronged me, the free child of God I am created to be would soon become incarcerated in an invisible and torturous prison of my own making.

Perhaps you have friends or family members whose lives you’ve seen deteriorate because of such unforgiving accounting. Maybe hearing this feels a little heavy on you right now.

While it may be tempting to judge or to fix others as identified patients in a broken system, I think a better response to Jesus’ parable today is to begin with the only person over which we have even a modicum of control—ourselves.

As uncomfortable as it is, and as much as it may make me squirm, the deep wisdom of this parable only starts to flower when I allow its teaching to change the way I relate to others.

As a Christian, I believe God has done an amazingly forgiving thing through becoming human in Jesus Christ and then opening the doors of resurrection by exposing the crucifying tendencies of our world toward those who tell the truth, live for love, and dare to challenge entrenched structures of power.

The sins that I’ve personally accumulated in thought, word, and deed are heavy burdens.

The sins that infect us because we exist in broken and dehumanizing systems out of harmony with creation are heavy burdens.

As one who has tasted the abundant life and forgiveness that Christ offers, I have a choice in how I will respond.

Will I allow the river of forgiveness that washes over me in baptism to flow forth from me freely?

Or will I stop that flow in a failed attempt to hoard the benefit of the freedom I’ve been given, and see the gift of it deteriorate and dry up within my heart and soul?

Dear siblings in Christ, we are a people called to advocate for justice and to hold the outside world accountable for its actions—especially the actions that run counter to the vision of the beloved community that we’ve glimpsed in Jesus Christ.

We are a people called to tell the truth when it is inconvenient and when it costs us social capital and standing.

But for us to do such things in a way consistent with the principles of the Gospel, we must first be spiritually rooted as individuals and members of the Christian community who draw deep from the living and forgiving water of Christ.

That means facing the blockages in our own lives and relationships, and seeking to both experience the freedom of our forgiveness and to pass it on to others.

Take a moment and imagine someone whose debt you haven’t canceled, whose account is in arrears with you.

What would it mean for them and for you to know the fullness of forgiveness?

How might sharing the gift of God’s grace change the way we serve together as a church?

And how might practicing this as individuals and as a community allow us to extend the borders of forgiveness beyond ourselves?

Let’s start small this week—mustard seed small—with ourselves, and perhaps with repeated practice and training we may better learn how to be stewards of mercy AND justice, forgiveness AND accountability, necessary truth AND inexhaustible love.