Today's passage from both the Hebrew
scripture and the gospel have to do with forgiveness. In the first
lesson we hear of the final reconciliation between Joseph and his
brothers. You may recall that, years earlier, the older brothers had
tossed their spoiled, uppity younger brother into a dry well, debated
about killing him, then sold him into slavery and passed him off as
dead to their father.
“What if he still bears a grudge
against us?” they ask. Um . . . ya' think??
So the brothers concoct another lie,
telling Joseph that their father begged for forgiveness on their
behalf. It's hard to tell from this passage if the brothers were
reconciled because of the false edict from Jacob, or if Joseph really
would have forgiven them no matter what. But the result of this
story is that forgiveness wins the day.
Today's gospel also addresses
forgiveness. Peter asks, “Lord, if another member of the church
sins against me, how many times should I forgive? As many as seven?”
Many translations have Peter asking how
many times he needs to forgive his brother, not another member of the
church, leading some people to postulate that Peter and Andrew had
been arguing, or that this was intended to focus more on family
issues. But the point is the same, how many times are we supposed to
forgive a person who has hurt us? According to Jesus, not seven
times, but seventy-seven times.
One of the things we need to know about
Matthew is that he is making the case for Jesus as the fulfillment of
God in the Hebrew scriptures. He is arguing that this Jesus-movement
thing is not a new religion, but a fulfillment of the Hebrew faith.
We see this in the beginning of his gospel where he opens with the
genealogy, or genesis, of Jesus. His first two chapters of the life
of Jesus are, essentially, the story of Israel. Generations and
dreams and the killing of infants and escapes into and out of Egypt
all tie Jesus to the history of Israel. He also does this subtly in
other places, like today's passage.
Do I forgive seven times? No,
seventy-seven times. This also goes back to Genesis. There was a
seven-fold vengeance placed on anyone who killed Cain for his killing
of Abel. And Lamech proclaimed a seventy-seven-fold vengeance on
anyone who attempted retribution against him for his murder of a
young man. Matthew has Jesus going back to the Hebrew scripture and
saying the level of forgiveness will be equal to or greater than the
vengeance that was proclaimed.
Okay – enough Bible study and back to
this issue of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is often misunderstood and
it can never be forced. The line, “You're a Christian so you have
to forgive me,” comes to mind. There seems to be a belief that
forgiveness is simply granted because Jesus said so. But this does
nothing to rectify the problem and places the onus all on the victim.
If I leave here and slam into Bill's
car, and then say, “Sorry, please forgive me,” without doing
anything about it, I'm not so sure bill has to forgive me. In the
Rite of Reconciliation, the sinner can be asked to perform acts of
penance or to make restitution as part of the act of forgiveness.
The disciplinary rubrics state that if
a priest knows of a person who is living a notoriously evil life,
they are to withhold Communion until repentance and amendment of life
has been made.
Repentance, amendment of life, and
forgiveness all go hand in hand. But does forgiveness REQUIRE
someone to repent and change? That is a tricky question. Do I, as a
priest, offer absolution on the condition of
repentance, or do I offer it on the promise of
repentance? That's a deep discussion.
But when talking about forgiveness,
here's why I think Jesus throws out seventy-seven and why he tells
the parable of the unforgiving servant.
Forgiveness, at its core, is about
ourselves. Forgiveness doesn't mean we have to become best friends
with those who have hurt us. Forgiveness doesn't mean we have to
remain in a business partnership with someone who cheated us. It
doesn't mean a woman needs to marry her abuser or rapist.
What it does mean is that we have to
get to a point where we are not controlled by the hateful or hurtful
actions of the person who caused us pain. Forgiveness means that we
have reached the point where we can move on with our lives.
The best thing I've ever seen on
forgiveness was a movie called, “Diary of a Mad Black Woman.” In
short, a woman learns her lawyer-husband has been having an affair.
She learns he had children with the other woman, then he throws her
out of the house, all the while planning to marry his mistress. The
next day he gets shot, leaving him crippled. The mistress leaves
this now broken man, and the scorned wife becomes his legal
caretaker. By the end of the movie it looks like they have patched
things up and are ready to move forward together. Instead, she takes
off her wedding ring, basically says, “I forgive you,” and walks
out.
Forgiveness is about being able to live
your life in such a way that you don't allow those who harmed you to
continually harm you. It also means that we don't focus all our
energy looking for revenge or payback. And if that takes
seventy-seven times, so be it.
Otherwise, if we don't forgive others,
we will end up living in a prison of our own making – just like the
unforgiving servant in Jesus' parable.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those
who sin against us. The question we need to be constantly asking is
this: Are we seeking forgiveness, or are we seeking revenge? How we
answer that question will determine how we live our lives.
Amen.
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