For Sunday
Proper 19A
Collect
O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
Jesus has already stated what is at stake for the forgiver. How often must you forgive? Pretty much every time. And if you are the one who wants forgiveness, contrition is necessary. All of this is obvious. But now Jesus offers a teaching that puts all of this absoluteness into a relational scenario showing that your being forgiven is not to be isolated from your forgiving others.
This is a familiar tale of predictable selfishness. We see this in literature and life all of the time. We also see the inverse even more regularly—that one may come to understand the problem when it directly impacts them.
These stories work on the logical side of us by connecting our sense of right and wrong with a tendency to miss how this relates to our own behavior. And this is where the brilliance of the teaching lies. Because, after hearing all about how we are to forgive together, Peter makes it about himself. He asks about his own limits of forgiveness. And Jesus tells a parable about a man who is forgiven and doesn’t forgive others. The point isn’t what happens to that man, but how Peter and the disciples can avoid his fate.
And the answer is to forgive. But the reason that’s the answer is that forgiveness is never just about what happens to the forgiver. It is always relational. And the people who are forgiven are always put in positions to forgive others. It isn’t that we neglect to forgive one time. It is how we become people of forgiveness.