16th Sunday after Pentecost
What is there to be said about forgiveness when we live in a world that has no real concept of it? Where, when you live in a small town, everyone still remembers that one time you did that one thing and no one will ever let you forget that they remember. When you are defined by that old sin, that old post, that old harsh word, that one time you just lost it and you’ve been embarrassed and ashamed ever since.
What can we say about forgiveness in a country where one wrong word gets you labeled a racist or a ‘phobe of some kind? Where people dig through old social media posts and dredge up one another’s sins from ten years ago and parade them in front of the world? Where our denomination constantly laments the sin of racism, but never talks about forgiveness for it? When our society keeps fracturing into increasingly hostile tribes defined by the sins of others? We start to think that if only we could make THOSE PEOPLE PAY, it would all come out right and the world would be better.
But whose math are we going to go by? Three strikes and you’re out? I’ll forgive 77 times but not 78? Just pretend that this bad thing never happened? Say I forgive but I really don’t, and I certainly won’t ever forget it?
No. None of that works. It will eat us alive. And it’s why we are living in a time in which everything is permitted--even encouraged—but nothing is forgiven. And we are increasingly at each other’s throats seeking vengeance dressed up as justice, because mercy and forgiveness feel weak, and feel like we are making excuses.
The only escape from this hell of our own making and the future it dooms us to as individuals and as a society, is to reclaim a biblical understanding of forgiveness: what it is, and what is isn’t. Because without Jesus and his forgiveness, all we’re left with is trying to make other people atone for their sins against us, and resent it when they can’t or won’t.
Now listen carefully: biblical forgiveness doesn’t mean we pretend everything is fine when it clearly is not. Biblical forgiveness doesn’t mean that the rich and the powerful and the strong get away with anything. Biblical forgiveness doesn’t mean that we tell an abused victim that she just has to forgive and “be Christian about it.” It doesn’t mean that people get to walk all over us and we have to let them. But neither does it mean that we can seek revenge, or expect our conditions to be met before we forgive, or even that we are due an apology.
So if forgiveness is not about getting back at someone who hurt you, or pretending everything is fine, then what is it? If it’s not saying that people can treat you however they want and you have no rights, you just have to be nice—then what is it? Listen to me here—Forgiveness in the Bible is nothing more, and nothing less, than letting go of our claim to vengeance.
When you forgive someone, biblically, you are not saying that the wrong did not occur. You don’t pretend as though everything is magically okay. You are not saying that you agree to a sort of voluntary amnesia. Or that another person’s behavior doesn’t matter and they can do what they want.
Rather, what you are saying is that the wrong has been acknowledged, the sin has been exposed, and thus the relationship can now move forward together. That doesn’t mean that the relationship will necessarily look the same. It may need to be renegotiated. It might even have to be crucified and resurrected as something entirely new. There may be earthly consequences to the person’s sin, like involving the police or other authorities.
In bad cases, it may well be that the only way for you to forgive—the only way to move forward—is to let go and walk away, trusting that what cannot be healed in this lifetime will surely be restored in the Resurrection at the end of the age. This too is a type of healing, a form of forgiveness. Because hanging onto hatred, however deserved, will poison you for the rest of your life.
That sort of bitterness becomes a stinking sore, a wound that refuses to heal. Left unattended, taken too far, our thirst for vengeance can twist us and eat away our soul. We ourselves become sick, and the sin continues to poison us, and fester into hatred and resentment. You know people like this in your life, I bet. I know I do.
But more than that, there are eternal consequences to our unforgiveness: St. Paul is right in the second lesson today when he says that we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. If we persist in refusing to forgive, if we ignore the mercy that God has given us and the implications for the rest of our lives, if we continually harbor grudges and won’t let hurts against us go, no matter how small, then the consequences for our eternal souls are dire: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart,” Jesus says. Forgiveness is the way that God sets us free. We let go of revenge, so that we can grab on to truth and reconciliation.
When we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us,”-- this isn’t a request that God’s forgiveness mirror our own. That would be awful. Instead, we pray that our forgiveness mirrors God’s: that when we can’t let go, when we can’t forgive, when the wound is just too deep, then the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, to burn up in His holy fire the bitter hardness of the hatred in our hearts.
Look at Joseph in the first lesson from Genesis today. It was only natural for Joseph’s brothers to wonder, now that their father had died, if Joseph would get back at them for all the wrong they did to him. They surely deserved whatever they had coming to them. But do you wonder why Joseph starts to cry when he hears his brothers’ fearful speech to him? It was because he had already forgiven them. Joseph was already reconciled to his brothers. They weren’t his slaves, or his servants, or people he was going to hold grudges against—they were his brothers.
Yeah, they sinned horribly against him, but they were his brothers and he loved them so much, even after they sold him into slavery. There are few stories in the Bible as beautiful as the one about Joseph reconciling with his brothers. With God’s help, Joseph had let the past go, let the hurt go. It had to be with God’s help.
And because of his free forgiveness, his brothers had the freedom to love him and be reconciled to him. What his brothers intended for evil, God intended for good. God brought forth a new life for his people in Egypt, just as he brings forth new life in Christ for us.
“Let go and let God” seems so….I don’t know. Trite. Cliché. A 1970s sticker on a dusty Sunday School blackboard. But it’s absolutely true. Let go of your desire for vengeance, your desire to be justified, your desire to be right, your desire for payback. Let it go. Let it go because you have been forgiven by God, because your sins have not been held against you. Because your debts have been paid.
For people who have been brought out of the darkness into the light, who have been snatched from the jaws of hell, there is only one option that can arise from grateful, changed hearts: forgiveness. For people who have been freed from three-strikes-and-you’re-out-for-eternity, there is only one way to go: Mercy. Time after time after time. Not three times. Not seven times. Not seventy-seven times, but as many times as God has forgiven you. Amen.