Scripture Passage: Matthew 18:21-35
In the first week of my basic preaching class in seminary, our professor assigned us the task of telling a brief story about a time we changed our minds about something. One by one, we got up in our preaching lab and gave our inaugural test sermons. I told a story about living in community with someone who regularly threw recyclable glass bottles into the trash. Because I personally feel caring for Earth is an ethical imperative and recycling is the very least we can do, I was angry at my housemate. In fact, I was blinded by rage—and by the limited perspective that comes with being 23 years old. In my story, I emphasized how I changed my mind about this person, how I moved from hating her to, three months later, discovering she had value and that I could enjoy her company. Even as I stood up and told my story to my preaching lab, I had that niggle at the back of my mind that something wasn’t quite right, but I ignored it. I sat back down, and as was the effective custom of our preaching professor, I received immediate verbal feedback from both the professor and the other students. And the first thing Craig, our professor, said was: “You haven’t forgiven her yet, have you?”
She’s not the only one I haven’t forgiven.
I and we have many excellent reasons for not forgiving people, for not letting go of our anger and rage. They harmed me. Their actions have changed the trajectory of my life. They harmed the planet. They perpetrated or perpetuated injustice, on a personal level or a systemic one. They are not sorry. They continue to do the very thing for which I do not forgive them. They broke the law and deserve to be punished. They exercise deplorable ethics. They are hypocrites.
The excellent reasons that justify not forgiving others, not letting go of anger all have to do with the other person, yet forgiveness is not contingent on another person’s action or inaction. Reconciliation is…contingent upon more than one person’s action, but forgiveness is a one-person job.
Today, Peter asks Jesus: How often should I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus responds: Not seven times, I tell you, but seventy-seven times. And then, Jesus goes on to tell a story about a king who forgave an astronomical debt for a slave and how that same slave failed to forgive a much smaller debt of a peer. There is much to say about forgiveness given Jesus’ words: how score-keeping is problematic in relationships, how not forgiving lets the person who wronged you control you, how living in relationship with a person you’ve forgiven also includes clear boundaries, how ongoing relationships necessitate continuous forgiveness, how we must acknowledge the pain we experience even if we forgive someone.
But what strikes me this morning is the humility of the king in Jesus’ parable. The kings of Jesus’ day exercised power in a way we in the 21st century no longer see, dictatorial power without checks and balances, without investigative journalism, without an international criminal court. Yet the king of the parable who could do whatever he wished forgives the astronomical debt of the slave. The king who has every right to hold over his head the debt of the slave chooses freely not to do so. The debt is legitimate and enormous, yet the king exercises enough humility to let that debt go unpaid. Jesus does not tell us why the fictional king of the parable forgives the debt of the slave. However, the enormous sum of money the slave owes indicates to readers and hearers of this story that the king knows the slave will never be able to repay it. Ever. So what good will it do the king if he refuses to forgive it?
Similarly, our omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God could freely choose to hold our wrongs, our sins, our flaws over our heads. We have legitimately hurt our neighbors, perpetrated and perpetuated injustice, broken God’s law. And of course, we don’t get away with anything with an all-knowing God. Yet God does not count our sins against us. God’s forgiveness is an act of humility, a humility most profoundly evidenced in the incarnation: that God God’s very self would come and meet us in the human flesh of Jesus.
Having been so graciously and humbly forgiven, why do we still struggle to forgive? Perhaps we have not embraced humility, at least in those troubling relationships. For when we are bound by our pride and arrogance, no matter what the other person does, it will never make up for what they did to us. They could full-out confess, change their ways, pay their price, and we, in our pride and arrogance, would still demand more. To forgive is an allowing, a letting go, a release from our own pride and arrogance.
The question of the day is: What does humility look like? Or, in other words, what is an example of humility? Chad, what does our community say?
See the responses from the community on the Facebook feed from this day.
What humility looks like for me? I’m disagreeing with someone. Not a fight, just a disagreement. There’s a moment when the other person makes a good point, and my first instinct—I don’t know about you—is to deny that their point is valid, insightful, even good enough to change my mind. My first instinct is to defend my original position, to become defensive, to point out all the ways I am in the right and all the ways the other person is in the wrong, to explain why I thought thus-and-such and why that was such a good reason. I have had so much practice at being defensive that humility in that moment sometimes seems impossible. But here’s what humility looks like for me in that moment: I listen to the good point of the person, and I say: Okay. You’re right. I take in their point. I rearrange mentally. I make space for what they said. If it’s in an email, I don’t explain why I did what I did; I just respond with how we’ll move forward. And on we go with our conversation or onto another activity, but my mind is changed. I feel off-balance for a bit having conceded, but I know a lightness and peace because of my letting go. I also know, personally, the fear of appearing inadequate or incompetent or unlovable when I back down and concede the person’s good point, but this humble response—of concession when other people are right—is what reveals my, our wisdom and competence, not the other way around.
When we are struggling to forgive, it is as if we are having a disagreement within ourselves. We are defending our right to be angry and hurt. When we concede to a greater wisdom and a promise of peace, when we practice the humility of letting go, that is forgiveness.
As much as we may struggle to forgive, to practice humility, to follow the teaching of Jesus today, for God, such forgiveness is old hand. The humble king of the parable who forgives a great debt for no reason other than wanting to do so, that is God who forgives all our sin. For that, we say: Thanks be to God! Amen.