Jesus’s teachings on forgiveness aren’t just hard because we don’t want to do it. We like doing the opposite.
why we need unworthy forgiveness
Proper 19A | Matthew 18:21-35
We might be tempted to call today’s gospel, The Unforgiven, Part 2: The Reckoning.
Last week, we had part one. And in it Jesus just jumps right into it. He starts talking methodology. He’s like, OK. Somebody sins against you, then you go try to make it right. It’s a bit of a twist on our normal expectations. But Jesus seems to be putting the health of the relationship before the value of being right.
We might skip over why this matters, because you and I probably take for granted that this relationship thing is worth something. But Jesus gives it a different look. He considers a different dynamic.
We say we like to forgive. Or that we want to preserve our relationships. So why then do we gossip? Or use passive aggressive speech? Why would we threaten each other if we actually wanted to preserve the relationship?
It’s because we actually like winning more.
The thing about relationships is that we feel a lot less pressure to be nice 99% of the time than pressure to do…a lot of other things.
In the normal course of events out in the world, when you do something wrong, there’s actually a lot of pressure to cover it up. Pretend you didn’t do it. Or double down on it and act like what you did wasn’t really all that bad. That’s where the pressure is. To never admit you’ve made a mistake. Or need to be forgiven.
Flip it around. Find the pressure on the one who is hurt. There isn’t much pressure to forgive. The real pressure is on you to fight back. Never forgive. Make them pay. Retribution.
These are the forces working against reconciliation.
Pressures to keep our relationships broken.
What Jesus does in both parts of the story, parts 1 and 2, is push back against the pressure on behalf of reconciliation.
It’s okay to seek forgiveness.
It’s okay to repent of the bad stuff and want to be forgiven.
And
It’s okay to forgive people who don’t deserve to be forgiven.
This is radical. And it is the move Jesus is making here. To go from the expectations of the world toward the expectations of God.
So the first half of the lesson is talking about a circumstance in which the victim is trying to reconcile, right? The second half asks how often should you forgive? Is there a limitation? How much work do you put into this thing? In forgiving another person. And Jesus says you just keep forgiving.
There is no limit to forgiveness.
So in a way it would be great if Jesus just stopped there. I think we’d feel confident about that. That gospel would make a lot of sense.
We could just say forgive and keep forgiving even though it’s hard. Just keep forgiving.
After all, that does sounds like the end of the story.
But Jesus keeps going.
He gives us another story about forgiveness. And this one is problematic.
Suddenly it sounds like God has a limit to forgiveness.
This story about a forgiving master and his unforgiving slave is kind of shocking. It highlights both the challenge of forgiveness (that we are already intimately aware of). But then it shows us the limitations of someone’s lack of forgiveness.
The impulse I have when hearing this story is to see Jesus as drawing different limits for God than for people. And I get kind of mad about it.
When I do this, though, I’m making the same assumption Peter was when he asked about the limitations. Like what’s the rule here? It sounds like Jesus is making rules for God. Even as Jesus just said it’s not about the rules. Even as Jesus was just making it clear that the rules get in the way of the more important thing.
There’s a conflict here, isn’t there?
The story is actually about that impulse. Jesus pushes against our impulse, the pressure toward vengeance, and forces us to deal with it. To deal with the impulse to limit our forgiveness and find an end to it. How we come up with circumstances in which forgiveness must come to an end. Like the unforgivable sin.
This tension isn’t really about God, is it?
We’re the ones evaluating one’s worthiness of repentance!
This is how this story functions. What do we focus on? But the limits who is in and who is out. What happens when someone else screws up? How do we treat them? How do we treat ourselves?
When we focus on the punishment, we are hoping to justify unforgiveness. This is a way of rejecting the teacher’s teaching. By trying to weasel out of it.
This story of the master’s anger at a slave’s unforgiveness is not about the limits of God’s forgiveness. Jesus reveals the hellish torment of unforgiveness. The eternal torment that comes from refusing to forgive! It is we who keep the wound open! We lock ourselves into the hell we’ve made.
That’s why Jesus pushes against that very pressure. The pressure to condemn. To justify. Hate. Refuse to show mercy. Refuse to be generous. All those things the world ridicules, Jesus teaches are the very means of God’s grace.
Love is messy
The pressure to refuse love and forgiveness and grace is tremendous. Because that way is messy. We have to admit weakness. That we aren’t perfect. That we want so badly to always be right.
And Jesus gets that he’s going against the grain here. That it is way easier to give people just a second chance. That’s it. Not 77 chances. God’s grace really is without limits.
The question is never whether we are worthy of forgiveness. Because if we were, it wouldn’t be generous.
This is way more radical than that. This is about unworthy forgiveness. And putting love and generosity and beloved community before our desires.
In God’s eyes, none of us is trash. And all of us are worthy of love and forgiveness.
Jesus isn’t just trying to get us to believe him. He wants us to spread unworthy forgiveness too. So we all might heal the world.