TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME A

[cappie]

Have you ever heard this warning: Be careful what you pray for – you might get it.  Here’s a prayer many of us pray at least once a week – forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Is that what we really want? We know we want God’s forgiveness. Of that, we are quite sure. However, we are not so sure about the second part, about the way we forgive others. 

In our Gospel Reading, Peter comes to Jesus and asks, “Lord, if someone sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”

Peter always asks the questions that we would like to ask. He is so earnest and so eager to do the right thing. But Peter also always seems to be getting it wrong, earnest and eager, he tries to be even more extravagant than the rabbis, and he adds three more times. He asks, “Should I forgive a person even up to seven times?”

Seven times is a lot. It’s three more than the rabbis. Perhaps Peter was expecting Jesus to praise him for even suggesting such extravagant forgiveness.   Rather, Jesus turns and says, “No, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”  Jesus is holding up an enormous number, a number so big that we can’t begin to calculate it in terms of forgiveness. Peter wants a rule, a measurement, so he holds wide his hands and says, “This much, Lord? Should I forgive even this much?” And Jesus says, “No, much more than that. You’re not even using the right scale. As far as the east is from the west, that’s how much you should forgive.” It’s such an enormous amount of forgiveness, it would be senseless to try to calculate how much or how often.

 It seems as though Peter comes to Jesus with his own version of  Forgiveness.  Peter’s question, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” is like asking, “How many times, on a scale from 0-7, must I forgive someone?” Jesus’ answer, as we have seen, is literally off the scale: “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”

Now,   I really don’t think if Peter had asked, “How many times should I forgive, as many as 77 times?” that Jesus would have said, “Yes, 77, that seems about right.” Rather, Jesus’ response is a way of saying the question and what it is trying to measure is not quite right. The Psalmist says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.” It’s hard to put a number on that type of forgiveness!

  We may think Peter asking Jesus if he ought to forgive someone as many as seven times is a reasonable request for some practical guidelines. For most of us, sometime in our walk with the Lord, we have probably asked ourselves: Am I doing this right?

 The spiritual danger is that  we may become a bit too preoccupied with ourselves.  We can too easily slide into self-righteousness, the smug attitude that knows what real forgiveness is, who is a truly forgiving person and who is not, who deserves forgiveness and who does not, and maybe even the extent and limits of forgiveness.

 However, we are all utterly dependent on the unconditional, unmerited grace and mercy of Christ, who has removed our sins as far as the east is from the west.

That’s why Jesus tells Peter the story about the unforgiving servant. In the parable there is no way the servant will ever be able to pay back what he owes, the king just forgives the debt, every last cent, and sets the servant free. Yet, as we see, when the servant, who has just been forgiven a debt of a bazillion dollars, runs into a servant who owes him a hundred denarii – which amounts to a few dollars in comparison to what he owed the king – what does he do? Well, he grabs the guy by the throat and demands that he pay up. And when the king finds out that the servant for whom he had just forgiven an unimaginable amount wouldn’t forgive the pittance that was owed him by another, he had the servant thrown into prison.

Jesus reframes the whole question about forgiveness. When it comes to forgiveness, we are all like servants who owe our Lord  more than we can imagine.   But the good news is that   God forgives us anyway,  completely, irrevocably, utterly forgiven and healed by Jesus. God is the God who forgives.

We forgive, then, because God forgives. The forgiveness that we are to pass on to others is the forgiveness we have in union with Christ. Not because we are moral heroes or because we seek our own wellbeing, but because we are forgiven sinners.

 

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

[BarbTherese]

Thanks cappie