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Back in my time in Montana, a local church was closing down. At some point in time, they had split away from the Cathedral, the only other Episcopal church in town. Now I’m not sure what the conflict was initially over, though I do seem to recall that most, if not all, of the offending Cathedral members were dead.
The church’s rector made a smart move as they were getting ready to close and asked the Dean of the Cathedral to come over, lead a service at the church, and meet with the members afterwards for a chat. This was an attempt to maybe help convince the parishioners to go to the only other Episcopal church in town so they could still have their spiritual needs fed.
If memory serves, none of these parishioners came back to the Cathedral. Whatever had happened in the past, the grudge was too deep that they wouldn’t set foot back in the Cathedral ever again.
Here is a group of people who were willing to let their own feelings towards others allow them to miss out on connecting with God, on deepening their relationships with the Lord. They’d miss out on something so wonderful just because of something a bunch of dead people did long ago.
Our readings today show the folly in this way of thinking, a way that too many of us in this world and in the church universal, unfortunately, are familiar with. Being unable to forgive, no matter the slight, can have devastating consequences for us.
Take the Crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus. This occurs after the Passover reading from last week. All the firstborn of the Egyptians died as God kept the first born of the Israelites safe. After all the Plagues that fell over Egypt, this is the first that Pharaoh finally stops ‘hemming and hawing’ and definitively allows the Israelites to leave Egypt with their freedom.
Then Pharaoh once again has a change of heart, and chases after the Israelites. Yet the Lord is still there to protect God’s People. God has Moses stretch out his arms so that sea might make way for the Israelites pass. God, in turn, has an angel in the form of a pillar of cloud distract and prevent Pharaoh’s army from catching up to them.
Pharaoh’s army is eventually able to pursue the Israelites again, but this time they have second thoughts. Now they think maybe it’s time to let bygones be bygones and let God’s People go for good.
Unfortunately for them, it is too late. God has Moses stretch his arms out again, and the sea returns to how it was, flooding Pharaoh’s army and chariots until nothing remains.
If that weren’t a powerful example of the dangers of being unforgiving, we see another one in our Gospel reading today. Here Jesus presents a parable where a king has his slave, or servant, come to settle his accounts. After the slave begs for mercy, for forgiveness really, the king takes pity upon him and grants him mercy.
So the slave goes free, and runs into someone who is in his debt. Yet the slave is not merciful with his fellow slave. He has his debtor thrown into prison where he will be punished. He fails to show the same mercy the king showed him.
When the king hears of this, he is outraged. He then remits his mercy and throws the slave into prison too because he could not forgive as he was forgiven.
Jesus makes it clear that this parable relates to the Kingdom of Heaven. He makes clear that this parable refers to forgiveness. Jesus speaks of forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer, where we ask that our Heaven Father might “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” (“Trespasses” or “debts” as our fellow Christian siblings of other denominations would say and is a little more true to the Greek.) This is the lesson the king’s slave forgot in our parable today.
Jesus also speaks of forgiveness at the very start of our Gospel passage today. There, on being asked by Peter how many times one should forgive another, Jesus tells him to forgive “Not seven time, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times” or, as some scholars would say “seventy times seven.”
Forgiveness is hard. We’ve seen that many times in this Season after Pentecost. The consequences of not forgiving, though, can be dire. That is why we are to take the time to try and forgive. That is why we sometimes need many times to forgive, sometimes even for the same thing. That is why Jesus gives us this number. It’s not to limit the times we forgive, but to show that we are called to forgive many many times. We also must remember that God has forgiven us many things. We are to act likewise.
For every story like the Cathedral’s break-away parish and their inability to forgive, there is another one of hope. Around the same time, there was another pair of churches in conflict in Montana just the next big town over. The churches had actually split from each other, but eventually the dust lifted and they came back together. Some members found it difficult to forgive the other members though. Then one day, the rector asked a young soon-to-be seminarian to preach. In that sermon, there was a reminder that following God’s ways means forgiving others as God has forgiven us. After that sermon, one of the members came up to rector and said “Okay, I’m ready to try and forgive them.”
There is hope that we might look past ourselves and forgive. There is hope that we can move beyond the self-destructive cycle of being unforgiving. We just have to realize how much we need to forgive, not for the other person, but for ourselves, for our own health and well-being. We just have to remember how much God has forgiven us.
If nothing else remember Paul’s words spoken in Romans today: “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” If we are to follow God’s ways and not ours, we are called to forgive. Even if it takes you 77 times, or 70x7, take that opportunity and forgive.