Our sermon this week concentrates on forgiveness and mercy. 

To fully understand it, we need to look back at last week’s reading which talks about forgiving someone who, in our eyes, has done something wrong.  It’s about us forgiving. 

It’s interesting that there’s no mention of reconciliation here.  Jesus’ teaching is for everyone who’s listening of course, but his message is to the heart of his followers individually, to the hearts of those who have already decided to make him the centre of their lives.  The action of forgiveness is the action of one person, me!  I can’t order someone else to be forgiving, any more than I could order them to like my favourite dish or flower or friend.  So I can forgive someone, but there can be no reconciliation unless both parties agree.  That is actually a bit of digression, but it seemed to me to be important.

So in today’s reading, we have Peter coming to Jesus to ask how many times we are to forgive someone who has done wrong to us.  The numerical answer comes out to be seventy seven, or seventy times seven in some Bibles, but the point Jesus makes is that it’s not a few times, it’s a lot of times. 

Jesus tells the story of the king who was owed a lot of money by one of his subjects, and threatens to sell him along with his family to get enough money to repay the debt.  The subject, the servant, pleads with the king for more time to get the money together to pay off the debt.  The desperation of pleading man and his family were well illustrated in the children’s version of the story we saw a moment ago.  The king took pity on him and let him go, to the huge relief of him and his family.  In other words, he let him off his debt of a lot of money. (An aside on this, if you’re thinking this through, the King has forgiven his subject for now … though he may still be expecting to get his money back in the end.  The King’s servant had a debt to pay to the King, and that was a deal that had been struck!) Nonetheless, the long and short of it is the king has let him off a big debt.

The servant goes off to do what he can to get the money together.  Maybe he could work extra hours, or sell off some of what he has, but it turns out he’s entered into borrowing arrangements with other people around him too, and they owe him some money in their turn.  So the king’s subject goes off to see if one of them can pay the money he owes.  Their answer, like the king’s subject’s, was no, he could not pay off his debt. 

The King’s subject attacked his debtor, and the man did exactly as the King’s subject had done before him: he pleaded for more time to get the funds together.   The King’s subject was in exactly the same position as the King had been: he could show mercy and forgive the man and give him more time to pay.  But he does exactly the opposite: he showed no mercy whatsoever and had the man thrown into prison.  There were other servants of the King around when this happened, and seeing the injustice the King’s servant did to the man, they reported it to the King.  Having heard of the injustice, the King calls his servant back and tells him how wrong he’d been to have the man who owed him money imprisoned.  He was angry that his servant had not shown mercy.  The King had shown mercy and let his servant off a huge debt, but the servant couldn’t let the other man off for even a small debt.  He showed no mercy.  He was unforgiving.

Then there’s the last verse in the passage which is a sharp, direct teaching for us.  Jesus says, “This is how may heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.” 

This verse, in the light of the reading, prompted the following observations.

First.  One of Jesus’ well-known teaching techniques was to make a really strong statement about a case, almost overstating it, to drive a point home. This verse can make God sound the exact opposite of the loving God we know, there is judgement in it.  But then it could be said that it’s like the action of a loving parent, and we’re like children who may need to be brought up short from time to time to understand the potential implications of our actions.  

Second.  Jesus is speaking to everyone, both those who have decided to follow him and those who are just curious.  But his message is particularly relevant to those who have decided to follow him, and that includes us today.  They – we –  have already had sins forgiven.  If they/we continue in old ways and are unforgiving to the people in our lives, there is still room for the Holy Spirit to work to help them/us to forgive. We are all human, and God knows our human weaknesses, and the fact that we struggle to be the people he teaches us to be.  We make mistakes!   But he’s always alongside to help us overcome them.

We need to do our best to be forgiving in the first place, but we can struggle to forgive sometimes.  Sometimes when we can’t forgive in our own strength, we can do so in God’s strength.  There is the story of the Second World War prisoner of war who was to meet her jailer.  She struggled with the very thought, but then realised that although she couldn’t do it in her own strength, she could ask God to enable her to do it in his strength.  That is what she managed to do.  And remember Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 4:26, “In your anger do not sin.”  In the context of today’s reading, do not let your struggle to forgive lead you to sin.  In Matthew 7:1, Jesus teaches, “Judge not, lest you be judged.”  Prayer is the key.   Being honest with God about our struggles with forgiveness (or anything else) helps us to clarify our feelings.  He knows our feelings already, but our openness with him helps the Spirit work in our hearts and minds, and in turn, in the situation.

Third.  As we look back at the story, we see the King’s servant pleads to have his debt written off, and the King is merciful and writes it off, because he feels the pleading comes from a right place in the man’s heart.  So we too, at any time we feel we have done wrong, will plead our case.  But the last phrase in the passage is key: “from your heart”.  As I’ve said, honesty with God is key.  What we say must come from our hearts, from our innermost being.  And if we do that, we are assured of God’s forgiveness.  It is easiest if we can walk the way the Lord teaches in the first place, but let us be thankful as we remember how much we have been forgiven by God, and do our best to forgive and show mercy to those around us.

Amen. 

Post script.  Following the service, two points were raised with me.   In both cases, the words of the old hymn are the first priority: “Take it to the Lord in prayer.”  The following may be some help too.

We can forgive but it is hard to forget. 

My image to help deal with this is a roundabout.  When we are driving to a new place, often we come to a new roundabout.  It usually incites anxiety and hesitation about exactly where we are to go, what the exit looks like, is it a busy roundabout. 

But the next time I come to it, I recognise the approach to it, and I prepare myself, trying to remember the detail so I get it right.  After several more trips, the roundabout doesn’t cause me much problem at all.  There may be some difficulty, but I know where I’m going, and because I’ve navigated it before, I will almost certainly be able to get around it again, even if it takes two passes at it!  It seems to me we can view a forgiven but not forgotten situation like the roundabout.  The first time we dealt with it, it was hard, full of anxiety and challenges.  Each time it comes to mind, or its memory is triggered by circumstances, it becomes real for us again, like the roundabout.  But each time it is triggered, we recognise it for what it is.  We may have to go through some of the same process we had to in order to forgive in the first place.  But each time we meet it, or see the possibility of it coming up, we know how to handle it, and hopefully it will become a little easier, a little less stressful to deal with, each time it comes back to us.  Each subsequent time we meet the memory, we know we’ve forgiven and God has forgiven us, and we need to remind ourselves of that again. 

Also, sometimes we have to try to simply turn our minds to something else when it comes back.  It can require a lot of discipline to force the thought out and replace it with something else.  Sometimes we can do it, sometimes it will be a lot harder.  God knows our weaknesses and is with us through them.

I know God has forgiven me for the things I’ve done wrong, but I find it hard to forgive myself.

The answer to this can be in the passage we’ve read.  God has already forgiven us a huge amount of sin, who are we to feel we can’t forgive ourselves.  But it can be really hard.  Again, we can try to remind ourselves that God has forgiven us, with varying degrees of success.  In my experience, there is often an energy associated with feelings like this.  It is good to use this energy to try to work out a strategy to try to overcome the wrongdoing, or the memory of it, so that some good comes from the challenge.  Sometimes it helps to try to see ourselves as a friend in the same situation.  What would we say to them?  This may help to put our situation into perspective, and help us to forgive ourselves.  It helps us to remind ourselves that God loves us, and let that thought be consolation to our hurting souls.

Prayer is key in both these situations, but it can also be helpful to talk to a trusted friend. Having someone walking that difficult stretch of road with us, reminding us of God’s love, and praying with us as well as for us, can help. Sue Joyce, Reader